Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 29th March 2022

The difficult part ended up being waiting for Stuart to be alone.

"His taco truck is very popular," Krel observed to Aja. They were both sat on a bench in the park, watching for their opportunity. Aja glanced over at her brother; Krel's face was supported in both hands and he looked bored. Well, she supposed that stakeouts and low-tech surveillance was not exactly his thing.

"The crowd cannot last forever, little brother," she soothed him.

Two hours later, she was willing to admit she might have been wrong. There had not been a single mekron where Stuart had not been in the company of some human or other, none of them the friends who knew their secrets. Krel had graduated to scrolling through his phone and engaging in a GIF war with Toby. Even Luug seemed wilted and dispirited, flopped on the ground at their feet.

"All right." Aja stood, drawing the eyes of both of her companions. "It is time for a change of approach," she decided, formulating her new plan on the fly.

"Aja...?" Krel asked.

"Come on. We are going to get tacos." As if on cue, her stomach growled. "Also, I am hungry."

"Yes!" Krel's eyes gleamed as he stood. "Now you are talking."

As they joined the short line, Aja debated how to go about this. Bluntly give her name and Krel's? Bluntly tell Stuart they knew he was a Durian? Bluntly ask for his aid and eventual friendship?

...She admitted, she had not been the subtlest of queens. She was a warrior, and had not gotten the chance to find out how her mother had made the seamless switch from war to diplomacy. More than once, Zadra had reassured her that such things took time. But time was a luxury they did not have right now.

Finally, she and Krel were at the front of the line.

"So, what'll it be, kids?" Stuart asked.

Aja and Krel looked at one another. "I was thinking, an alliance between House Tarron and Stuart of Durio?" Aja said.

She wanted to hit herself as Stuart paled and took a step back, retreating into his taco truck.

"And also, a pair of burritos," Krel said. Luug barked. "Make that three."

Stuart's eyes were still huge, his face blank with fear.

Aja sighed. "Let me begin again," she said. "Hello, I am Aja Tarron of House Tarron, of Akiridion-5." She lessened the application of the portable transduction, letting her eyes show black. "This is my little brother Krel Tarron, and our pet Luug. We would like to purchase three burritos, please."

Stuart swallowed then stepped back to the truck window, ducking down to peer into her eyes. "Are you... really Princess Aja?" he whispered.

"Queen-in-Waiting Aja," Krel corrected.

Stuart's eyes widened. "Wow. Seems I've missed a few things in interstellar gossip."

Aja smiled and reupped her transduction, making her semblance return to a human norm. "Krel and I, and our guardian, Varvatos Vex, will be staying in Arcadia for a while, and we would like to acquire both your friendship and assistance, if that is possible."

"Also our burritos," Krel butted in. Aja resisted sighing in exasperation. Krel stepped closer. "There has been a coup on Akiridion-5," he murmured, just for Stuart to hear. "General Morando has betrayed our parents and our people. We know we cannot hide from him forever, and that he will come here searching for us."

Stuart was rubbing his chin in thought. "General Morando, eh? Heard a few things about him. Well." He stood upright again and extended his hand through the truck window. "I am Stuart of Durio, and any assistance I can render to House Tarron is yours to claim!"

"Thank you," Aja said politely, shaking his hand the human way.

"And also." Stuart's eyes suddenly went starry. "Can I have your autographs, please?"


Douxie got in late, and looked absolutely drained.

"Long day?" Jim asked from the dining table where he was sat, trying to eke out another couple hundred words on the thematic appearances of water in The Great Gatsby.

"Mmm." With a bit of stage makeup applied, Douxie could have done a credible job as a zombie.

"And how was your day?" Archie inquired, leaping up onto the dining table in blatant feline (draconic?) defiance of all household rules.

"Oh, you know. School," Jim offered, watching as Douxie dragged himself to the kitchen and investigated the contents of the fridge. With it being only himself for dinner tonight, Jim hadn't bothered to do anything fancy; he'd just microwaved a mini-pizza for one. "Leftovers are on the top shelf," he offered.

"Mmm. Noodley thingie again okay, Arch?" the wizard asked.

"Yes, please," Archie replied.

"It's baked chicken alfredo," Jim said. "'Noodley thingie'," he muttered under his breath, offended.

"Spoken like a true gourmand," Archie told him.

"How would you know? You dump hot sauce or pepper flakes on almost everything you eat," Jim countered.

Archie sniffed. "Draconic tastebuds require rather a different level of spice than you tend to use," he informed Jim, even as Douxie dished two plates of alfredo and rotated them through the microwave. "Your human tolerance for capsaicin is, dare I say, pathetic."

Jim reached a sudden epiphany. "I am going to order you Stuart's ghost pepper nachos."

"He's tried them," Douxie said, sitting down, a plate in either hand and utensils held between his fingers. Two glasses of water telekinetically followed him and gently came to rest on the table's surface. "And complained."

Archie sniffed. "They need significantly more meat relative to the amount of chips."

"Yes, yes, I'll ask Stuart for double carnitas next time you're in the mood," Douxie told him, and dug in.

It wasn't hard to make the leap between the pair of them having spent the afternoon at the Triple-H Ranch, and Douxie having done a lot of magic, draining him. Jim narrowed his eyes and abandoned his homework as the wizard and the dragon ate. Instead, he stepped into his kitchen and did a quick survey of what he could make that was high-calorie and delicious.

Rice pudding would have been good, and he had the ingredients for it, but it would take too long. So chocolate pudding it was.

Jim stirred and mixed and simmered as Douxie gradually stopped looking like death warmed over, and by the time his and Archie's plates were clean, Jim was setting bowls full of pudding in front of them. Topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, because he wasn't a barbarian.

"What...?"

Jim settled down with his own bowl in front of his laptop and pointed his spoon at Douxie. "Eat. Or I take it back."

Douxie stared at him for a minute, then sighed and obeyed.

(Jim would not admit to preening when there was a moan of appreciation from the other side of the table.)

None of which was helping him come up with a thematic conclusion to his essay. Jim slouched in his chair, glowering at the laptop screen.

"All right," Douxie finally said, "what's the computer done to you?"

"It's not the computer, it's the homework," Jim explained. He sighed. "I hate English essays. I don't know what water means in Great Gatsby! I can do history essays just fine..."

"Ah. The blue curtains problem."

"The what?"

Douxie shrugged. "Why are the curtains blue? Do they represent melancholy, or dreams, or... are they just blue curtains?"

Jim threw his hands up. "Who cares?"

"People who read and write stories a lot, and care about them the way you care about recipes," Douxie replied. "Water, though... uh, let's see, what's the usual meanings for that? Sex. Self-reflection. Or mirroring and opposites. Death, as by drowning. Gatsby drowns, I think?" he asked.

Jim nodded. "Well, shot and drowned."

"Hmm. And there's a thing in there about alcohol, too, that you could tie in." Douxie gave a thin smile. "There are those that say true self-knowledge is to be found in the bottom of a glass of whiskey."

Jim blinked, surprised. "You drink?"

"Not often." Douxie waved off the question. "It's not great for either guarding one's secrets or keeping one's wizardry under control. But," and here he smiled at Jim, "you do realize that for most of history, ale, small beer, and wine were all safer beverages to drink than the local water?"

Jim blinked several times. "No. Strickler kind of didn't cover that in class."

"Heh. Prohibition may be dead, but its shadow lies long across the land."

Jim looked thoughtfully at the screen, things reordering themselves in his head. If he shifted his focus a little, maybe... He set down his pudding and started typing.

"When's this due?" asked Douxie.

"Wednesday," Jim said, moving a paragraph.

"At least this is not last-minute revision, then," said Archie.

Douxie scoffed at this familiar. "At least Merlin never assigned ten inches of writing on the internal workings of a twingewaddle, due at daybreak."

Jim paused and looked up at his brother. "What's a twingewaddle?"

"Feathered amphibian." Douxie pinched his fingers to about the size of a quarter. "Mostly found in Hampshire and Brittany, though I think there's now a breeding reserve in Michigan. Not actually useful for much other than eating the local bugs."

Jim blinked. "I can never tell if you're pulling my leg or not."

"In this case, not," Archie informed him. He licked his lips. "Delicious pudding, by the way."

"Yes, thank you," Douxie agreed, fingers still on the spoon resting in his bowl.

"Should I ask what you were working on today?"

Douxie took a deep inhale. "Armor," he admitted. "Got all the pieces of the gold layer woven and assembled, for all four garments."

Archie, unexpectedly, snickered. "Booties."

Douxie pointed his spoon at his familiar. "They are not booties!"

"They are."

"Booties?" asked Jim.

"Footwear," Douxie told him. "Protection for going up against a fire god who can literally turn the ground under your feet to lava."

Jim... hit save on his laptop, and turned to face Douxie fully. "When were you going to tell me," he said quietly, "what was going to happen after we killed Bellroc and Skrael?"


Douxie lowered his spoon, returning it to the bowl of (admittedly delicious) chocolate pudding. He set it back down on the table, his appetite suddenly gone. "Jim-"

"You're supposed to tell me these things," Jim accused, rightly. "You promised."

He hadn't, actually, but that was the technical difference between the wording of a vow and the spirit of a vow. He'd pledged himself to Jim, to advise the young king who had proven himself a true brother. And he was so much older, there was so much he knew that Jim didn't, that Jim needed Douxie's knowledge. "I don't know," was the only answer he could give.

"You don't know?" Jim's voice was incredulous.

The accusation settled heavy into Douxie's stomach. "I should have."

"Yeah, you should have! We're kind of talking about the end of the world here, Douxie!"

He swallowed and rolled with the blow. It was his fault, he'd screwed up, he'd take the punishment. "Not... the end of the world. Simply a natural disaster or two." He swallowed again. "Three, if we can't save Nari this time."

"Doux-"

He chuckled, low and bitter. "Depending on what we got, it might work out even in the long run. Bellroc's fire, maybe it'd be something like Mount Tambora again, cool off some of the global warming."

"Douxie," Archie said lowly.

He looked up, met Jim's eyes. "Worst case scenario, we can't save Nari... and we end up with Yellowstone erupting or something of a similar magnitude."

Jim looked confused. "Yellowstone? Like the national park?"

Douxie nodded. "Like the national park that has a supervolcano sleeping under it."

Jim thought about that for a minute. The color slowly drained from his face. "Seriously?"

Douxie closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. "Seriously."

"So we're saving the world just to destroy it?"

"Saving what we can of it," Douxie agreed miserably.

He felt it, felt the waves of power rippling through Jim's voice, when he said "That's not good enough."

And Douxie knew the words probably weren't directed at him, were meant for the situation instead, but he couldn't help but feel like they were. "Not good enough" had been the running description of his life.

He swallowed, and shoved that feeling down into the yawning pit of inadequacy that lay at his core, because none of that was helpful right now.

Opening his eyes, he met Jim's fiery blue gaze. He wet his lips before speaking. "I can't make the whole world see magic and not fear it, which is what the Order wants," he said. "One more slip-up, and I'm cast out of what passes for society among wizards. I can't change the world all by myself, Jim."

Jim's expression refused to budge. "'A wizard doesn't make mistakes, he makes unexpected possibilities'," he quoted to Douxie.

Hearing his own words, Merlin's words, from Jim's lips, took Douxie aback. He hadn't expected them to be wielded against him like that. Something he'd long taken as an aspiration, a goal, was being used as a weapon, leveled as an accusation. A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind, most of them along the lines of yes, he knew he wasn't as good a wizard as Merlin, had never been, would never be-

-But another part of him, burning low with anger, took it as a challenge.

Because fuck Merlin, for never telling him that he could be good enough. Fuck the Arcane Order, for thinking he was something to be ignored and steamrollered over. And even fuck himself, for being made of a pile of insecurities balanced atop a chasm of trauma.

Fuck it. The Order want magic returned to the world? Then screw the hedgewizards.

Never breaking his gaze from Jim's, Douxie pulled his cellphone out and dialed a number.

"Mary," he said when she picked up, "when do you want to start filming those spellcasting videos?"


The thing about words is, they have consequences.

The thing about wizards is, when they speak with intent... the universe notices.

Magic hums in the background of all life. Life, in fact, cannot exist without it. Here and there across the cosmos magic sparks more powerfully, in suns, on planets, in living beings. The more complex the being, in fact, the more magic it possesses. Sapient beings manifest the highest amount of magic in the known universe. Few planets, however, have species who concern themselves much with magic; here, Earth is an outlier. The bulk of its sapients either rely heavily on, or are in fact entirely born from magic. Curiously, among all known sapient species, humans have the shortest lifespan and the least amount of magic. It crops up only sporadically, intensely, in those humans known as wizards, whose lifespans tend to match the rest of the galaxy. Humans are generally thought of as weak, defenseless creatures to be pitied, if they're even thought of at all. Their lives are so short that, the odd wizard or two notwithstanding, they are surely creatures of little consequence.

Those who think this are, to put it bluntly, wrong.

Humans have their brief existences balanced out by a few things. One is fecundity; they reproduce quickly and often, and have, in fact, become the dominant sapient species of their homeworld, pushing all others either into hiding or extinction. This stems from the other key trait that dominates human life: their psyche. While individuals can and do vary in temperament, overall, humans have a drive that many other sapients lack. They constantly push the boundaries of their understanding and their abilities. This allows them to conquer. To kill. To thrive on challenge and stubbornly succeed where many other species might simply give up and walk away.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every stone thrown in a windless pond causes ripples, impact tremors.

On a planet where most magic simply keeps things humming along and alive, because few of the other sapients have humanity's drive to study and push and master the primal forces of the universe, a wizard who is no longer an apprentice but not yet a master, throws a stone in the form of a vow.

There are ripples.

The technomancers are shocked by the sparks jumping from their cellphones. A smith mage watches as every candle in his house flares bright for an instant. A young libriomancer and his winter-mage partner both feel a chill in their bones. Across the globe, a more seasoned libriomancer lowers his book, wide-eyed. On a floating castle, a plethora of instruments in a master wizard's study suddenly go cuckoo, then fall silent, as the wizard himself and the green goddess with him exchange startled glances. On another castle-

"What was that?" Bellroc demanded, their voice phasing in and out of plurality.

"A change of the wind," Skrael replied, incredulous.

Their dark knight companion said nothing, did not react. He was immune to magic, and perhaps could not even detect the surge.

And trapped in a heartstone, hundreds of feet below Arcadia Oaks, green eyes flashed in rage, a frozen mouth voicing a mad scream that went unheard by any outside of her crystal prison.


The shadows in Claire's room danced, like she was spinning around with a flashlight in hand. "What the-" she said, staring, as they returned to normal.

Her first thought was Morgana, and her first instinct to go into the shadow realm to look for the other shadowmancer.

Her second thought was If she's loose, I can't take her on my own. I need backup.

Setting down her pen, Claire grabbed her phone and opened up the group chat. /The shadows just went all weird in my room and I didn't do anything. Is Morgana loose?/

Her fingers drummed against her desk while she waited for a reply. When she didn't get one immediately, she stood, and started to pace. Maybe she should call Douxie. No, he didn't actually know any more about shadowmancy than she did. She could call Jim...

No. She forced herself to be still, to wait. Draal or Blinky or Aaarrrgghh would be down in Trollmarket and would check where Morgana was imprisoned. It would take them a few minutes to get there.

As she was still, as she waited, she heard a skittering over her head. Claire looked up at the ceiling of her bedroom and saw nothing. Raccoons in the attic? Her eyes narrowed. Or goblins.

Her mouth in a line, she shoved her cellphone in a pocket and grabbed the staff that was leaning in the corner of her room. It wasn't a real wizard's staff, more of a glorified broomstick with the ends sawed off, but she'd wanted something to fiddle with, to practice fighting with when she got antsy.

Weapon in hand, Claire left her room and walked down the hallway. She wasn't quite tall enough to reach the trapdoor, but fortunately she was from a species that believed, quite firmly, in tool use. Her staff slipped neatly into the ring at the bottom of the pull, and she hauled it down, stepping back as the ladder unfolded. Going up the ladder with one hand, staff in the other, she cautiously peeked up into the attic.

It was dark. Almost pitch black save for the small square of ambient lighting coming through the trapdoor.

Frowning, Claire concentrated, reaching out telekinetically. There was a switch on the wall, two feet in front of the trapdoor-

Click.

The attic flooded with light, to the sound of a garbled protest from the other end. Right over her room.

Gritting her teeth, Claire clambered up the rest of the ladder and headed for the source of the noise, ready to smash some goblins or evict some raccoons. Well, if it was raccoons, she was ready to assess the situation, back carefully away, and put in a call to animal control, because Claire really didn't want rabies or anything. Or maybe she could shadow-portal them to the woods outside Arcadia...

Staff at the ready as she rounded the last set of boxes, she stopped. And blinked. "NotEnrique?"

Her changeling brother was in the middle of what she could only describe as a nest made out of old blankets, a metric ton of socks, and... Suzy Snooze. His back was to her, and the battered stuffed bunny's head was flopped over one of his shoulders, being held in his arms.

Setting her staff down on top of the dresser, Claire sat down cross-legged next to her brother. "Hey, bro, what's up?"

No answer.

She looked around. "I used to hide up here all the time too, you know. There's this great trunk over there," she said with a gesture, "that has all kinds of dress-up clothes in it. I spent hours up here pretending I was on stage."

Still no answer.

Claire scooted a little closer and nudged NotEnrique with her elbow. "Penny for your thoughts?" she offered.

He didn't look at her. "Tryin' ta figure out where I go after you get 'im back."

It took Claire a second to parse that "'im" meant Enrique. She blinked. "Why would you go anywhere?" she asked.

The changeling shrugged. "Your ma hates me, so I can't stay here. An' I can't go down to Trollmarket, not with the witch still trapped there."

The penny dropped. "Oh," Claire breathed, realization dawning. Several things suddenly held new light. Enrique's nest up here, in the dusty attic where no one went, and its location over her room, not her parents'. His stash of socks, an emergency food supply. Even those coins and gems he'd extorted out of their group treasure haul. It was his running money, something to buy him safety, however temporary.

She swallowed. "What did Mom say to you?"

He shrugged. "Don't matter. She just wants your brother back, and as soon as he is, I'm outta here."

Claire breathed, fury at her mother suddenly spiking. But she shoved that away; it wasn't useful. As she shoved the anger away, plans and backup plans unfolded. Jim and Toby had space in their basements for NotEnrique, if push came to shove. Because he was right; Trollmarket wasn't safe for any of the changelings until Morgana was dealt with.

But none of that, she thought, was what NotEnrique needed right now.

What he needed was a family.

And even if Ophelia Nuñez didn't love NotEnrique, Claire did.

"C'mere," she said, and pulled her changeling brother into a hug.

And if between her and Suzy Snooze, NotEnrique started to cry a little... well, Claire let him keep his dignity, and pretended she didn't notice.


Author's Note: The baked chicken alfredo is a reference to chapter three of Claycastles' Pros and Cons of Eternal Youth over on AO3. The twingewaddles, and their breeding reserve in Michigan, are a reference to the frickens (frog-chickens) that appear in the background of a couple of Seanan McGuire's Incryptid novels and short stories.

To all my loyal readers, my apologies, but I'm going to be shifting to a twice-a-week update schedule at this time. It's either that or I'll have to end up taking another hiatus to build my chapter reserve back up. I very much know where this story is going (well, I know the important plot points, anyway; there is a good deal of delightful meandering and discovery involved in my writing), and I very much do NOT want this story to end up as an abandoned WIP due to authorial burnout. And right now my writing schedule just can't keep up with my posting schedule. So from now on, I'll be posting new chapters on Mondays and Fridays. Thank you very much for your understanding and forbearance.