Heartworm

“CiCi!”

The expeditious emergence of our entourage’s most eclectic member prevented me from embracing Cecelia the moment she awoke. But I couldn’t blame the blur of brown and green that latched onto Cecelia. Phern was teetering on the edge of a mental break the more it seemed like Cecelia wouldn’t pull though. She had every right to rush to her side as soon as she recovered. Or… partially recovered, as proven by the “fuck!” that Cecelia whimpered out as Phern snapped her arms around her sister.

“Sorry! I’m just so happy you’re alive! You wouldn’t believe what happened after you got stabbed! Ester went all super freaky mode and started fighting Laia while I went to a boat by the dock with Sebil and then Laia did this big sacrifice thing to get super powerful and Ester was slinging blood around like a fancy witch because she had to fight Lucas as well since he ratted us out except he didn’t really want to fight us but then when Ester stabbed Laia super good and ran away Lucas followed because Laia told him and then we he got to the ship Ester turned herself in because she was afraid and then when Lucas took her she fell into the lake and found a bunch of fish people while Sebil and I dragged you into the forest to try to find help but-”

“Phern.” The words were quiet, but stern. Not in a judgmental way, but in an almost rehearsed delivery, like Cecelia had become used to silencing Phern when she got too entrenched in voraciously spewing all the information that she felt was relevant.

“Sorry! I’m just so happy you’re alive!”

“I know, you already said that.” Cecelia gave a lopsided grin and wrapped her right arm around Phern. I imagined that the action was supposed to be a hug, but with how weak Cecelia looked, I doubted there was any sort of pressure put into the actual hug.

“Right… the last two days have felt longer than a jibbery jabbleknock’s explanation of their family tree.” Cecelia’s smile grew even wider at Phern’s characteristic Phernism (still need a better term for it, maybe I’ll ask her about it).

“Hah! Very entertaining!” I looked over to see Nessyndra nearly double over onto the ground in her laughter. More laughter than I had ever seen her exhibit before, and all due to a nonsensical statement from Phern. There was no way that she understood what she was referencing, right? A jibbery jabbleknock was something Phern almost certainly made up on the spot.

“I uh… still haven’t had the fish lady explained to me yet.” Cecelia said, looking over to Nessyndra as her uproarious laughter reached its crest and began to trickle away. Much like the water that continued to cascade down her body from the crown atop her head.

“That would be Nessyndra, love. She’s rather new to Phern and I as well.” Sebil spoke over the remaining laughter.

“I told you there was a monster in the lake called Nessie! My momma told me that it eats up naughty children, and my momma is never wrong!” Phern chimed in.

“You’ve told me plenty about your mother’s stories, and most of them are ridiculous.” I took the time to finally approach Cecelia as she spoke about Phern’s mother. I wanted to get close enough to comfort her, to say the things I was afraid I wouldn’t have been given a chance to say. “Didn’t your mother also say that caves are haunted by orphaned ghosts? She was just trying to scare you away from being a reckless child, Stump. Not that it worked particularly well with all that highway robbery you were up to.” Cecelia snarked, seemingly ignoring the fact that she took part in the same robbery as Phern.

“I too, was told many tales to prevent me from engaging in perilous behaviour! My mother warned me all about the dangers of going up to the surface, because I would be hunted and eaten in less than a day! She also told me that I would get deathly ill and melt into a puddle if I touched a Dryling.” Nessyndra smiled. Having met Kyrsta, and even more so, seen her past, there was a revealing kind of sadness in those warnings. Using fear as a motivator was never a good idea, but it seemed like that was all Kyrsta knew to use.

“...right. My mom told me to avoid demonkind at all costs, but then I became one. I think we can all agree that we’ve strayed very far from our mother’s wishes.” I said, finding it quite ironic just how far I deviated from my own mother’s plans for me.

“Not all of us, love. My mother always hoped I would become an inventor. The last time I spoke with her, she was awfully proud of the machinations I showed her.” The warm smile that radiated off of Sebil’s face was pure, and the antipode to everything that we were discussing. Despite seemingly missing the memo, it was nice to know that at least one of us had a mother who was proud of them. Though I suppose that isn’t necessarily true. Phern’s mother was extremely odd by every account that I had heard, but she also loved Phern more than you would think a mother possibly could. Nessie’s mom was… complicated. But I had front row seats to their farewell, and pride was the primary emotion that colored Kyrsta’s face as she wished her well, surpassing even the fear she felt watching her daughter leave. Even Cecelia had a mother that was proud of her, at least… before she died. In the brief moments I discussed her family with her, Cecelia had illustrated a picture of a loving family, one that would have- no- did do everything in their power to help their child.

Even though all of their relationships were complicated, it seemed everyone in the Bandits had a mother that could be proud of them.

Everyone but me.

I know I couldn’t confirm it yet, but every fiber of my being knew the truth. I could feel it in the twitching of my muscles, the pangs of fear that shivered up and down my spine. There was no way that my mother would be proud of her child. The moment I died in Varenthell Academy was the last moment either of my parents would feel pride for me. Or even acceptance. If the news that I was still alive, only as a demonic woman ever reached them, acceptance would be the furthest thing from their hearts. It was a cold kind of realization to know there was truly nothing to return to. There was no home, no family, no life for me in Varenthell. The closest I was to home was with the odd arrangement of elusive individuals that surrounded me.

‘My mother never had a shred of pride for me, Ester.’

Is that supposed to make me feel better?

‘Yes. I wanted you to know that you are not alone in that regard. It is a difficult pain to carry alone.’

Oh. Thank you… You haven’t mentioned your mother before.

‘She is not worth mentioning. The only good she ever did was give life to my sister and I.’

If she was so terrible, why does the pain still follow you?

‘Because she left a hole in my heart. No matter the virtuousness or vileness, I will always yearn for that which I never received. Even centuries later.’

Well you don’t have to feel it alone anymore. I know that doesn’t fix it, but sometimes it’s nicer to hurt in shared company than by yourself.

‘Then you can hurt with me. So long as you keep this to yourself. My family is not a topic for any ears to hear.’

“Your mother is still alive, Sebil?” Cecelia decided to ask the question that nearly all of us wanted to ask when he first mentioned his mother.

“Of course. I haven’t visited in a while, but that was due to health issues more than anything else. I plan to see her again within the next month or two if we are able to break away from the Empire’s bloodhounds.” His words pressed against my chest like a tightening vice. Health issues. A month or two. He wanted to visit his mother one more time, with the expectation that it would be their final meeting. I hated how casually he talked about it all. He had clearly accepted his death long ago, but it made me feel like he wasn’t even trying to find a cure anymore.

“Damn, I think I just assumed everyone had a dead mom here.” Cecelia shrugged.

“My mom isn’t dead, Cecelia.” I squinted my eyes at her as I spoke. She knew my mom was alive, right? We had talked about my parents a few times.

“Eh, with how much of a cunt she is, I think it’s best we just pretend she’s dead.”

“You can’t say that about my mom!”

“That she’s dead? I said I was pretending, Ester.”

“No! The other part!”

“You don’t think she’s a cunt?”

“No! I-I… well I mean…”

“So you do! Just say it for Gods sake!” I wasn’t sure what to say to Cecelia. It wasn’t like I disagreed with her, but agreement or not, it felt like a different thing entirely to say it than just think it.

“What is a cunt, and why is Ester’s mother one of them?” Nessyndra joined the conversation, marking her as the second person to call my mother a cunt. Immediately upon hearing Nessyndra, Phern began to cackle and collapsed on the dirt next to Cecelia’s sleeping mat.

“Maybe two months is generous…” Sebil muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. As if the gesture could squeeze all of the disappointment he felt out of his body.

“My desire for learning has ignited such mirth within Phern. I am not sure I understand her delight.” Nessie moved over to Phern to stand just above her as she continued to laugh. “Why are the discussions of cunts filled with such hilarity for you?” Her question reignited Phern’s witch-like cackling, to an even louder extent than before.

“Are you feeling healthy enough to move, Cecelia? I have some things I’d like to discuss with you, if that’s okay.” I asked Cecelia in a somewhat hushed tone. If not for me leaning in towards her ear to speak, it would have been entirely drowned out by Phern’s laughter.

“I’m feeling surprisingly good, all things considered. It’s just a stab wound, and I’ve been there and done that about a hundred times.” It didn’t seem like Cecelia understood just how dire her condition was. Now might not be the best time to get into her nearly fatal tussle with death, however.

“Phern? Can you set up the tent? I’d like to be able to talk to Cecelia in private for a while. We won’t go far, and we’ll be back in a few minutes, yeah?” I knew the question had sunken into her stomach enough to digest because even though she was still chuckling, she nodded towards us and started to stand up from the dirt and leaves.

“All this talk of moms makes we wanna talk to mine. I think I’ll catch her up on everything that’s been happening lately.” It was heartening to know that Phern might finally get a chance to talk to her mother again. As far as I knew, she had yet to talk to her mother at all since they first discovered me in the church. There was a lot to catch up on.

“Your mother travels with this group? I am shocked you have not introduced me to every member yet.” Nessyndra questioned.

“My mom doesn’t travel with the group, silly. She’s dead! Although it would be really funny if we dragged around a bunch of bones, wouldn’t it?”

“But… you said that you were going to speak with her? Is this a metaphor that I have let fly above my head?”

“No metaphors! I can just talk to her with a ritual I do. It’s kind of this cultural practice that my people do that allows someone’s soul to be preserved when they die through a special burial. That way, if a descendant wants to see their family they can perform a ritual and see them again! I know it’s kind of weird, so you probably couldn’t understand how something like that would work.” I couldn’t help but snicker as Phern described the process to Nessyndra. She had unintentionally described her own culture’s practice in a way that lined up almost beat for beat with Crutia cultural practices of soul stones.

“I understand it perfectly! I can’t believe Drylings also utilize such practices! Can I see her soulstone? Or at least see you attune to it to see the memories of your mother?”

“Can you what-now with the who-now when I what-when?”

Cecelia and I both chuckled to each other as we walked away from the camp. Hearing the conversation between Phern and Nessyndra fade away was quite amusing. Each time I felt like we had walked far enough to no longer hear them, I would hear a loud exclamation from one of them. Eventually the discussion at the campsite was quiet enough to be unintelligible. That was with my Deathless hearing as well, so Cecelia had likely stopped being able to hear them a while ago.

“So…” I said, without even a consideration for the next words that I would say. What could I say, after all? Everything in the past few days had been stuffed into some kind of pressure cooker of contemplation, only to explode into a mess of memories that only vaguely felt real. Two days ago, I watched Laia plunge a knife into my girlfriend. A girlfriend that had only gained that title a few days earlier. We had made things official and within a few days, my mistake had almost gotten her killed. Was that some kind of sign?

“That’s it? So? I thought you would have been a lot more excited to get some time alone with me…” Cecelia’s whispered words brushed across my ears. Our bodies were dangerously close to one another. Dangerous only in the sense that our conversation might never get a chance to start if we continued at this rate.

“You don’t have to whisper, Cecelia. I made sure we’re far enough away from the camp.” I replied, tentatively moving my right hand over my stomach as a midpoint between its desired destination and its starting point at the side of my hips.

“Ever the pedantic, Bandit. Same as the day I slumped on the docks. Well… mostly the same.” She reached a hand behind me, planting it firmly against the small of my back. The warmth of her touch across my body, the familiar thickness of her ashen scent, it was all overwhelming in the best way. It exceeded my capability to soak it all in, leaving me desperate for more nerve receptors just so that I could feel more of her touch at once. As quickly as she placed her hand along my back, she walked her fingers down my back until they wrapped around the newest appendage of mine. A tail, one that I continued to forget about until it brushed my legs and sent a momentary alarm through my mind. Once she had wrapped her hand around the tail, she pulled it around the left side of my body to hold it out between the two of us.

“Care to tell the telltale tale of the tail, or do I need to squeeze it out of ya?” Her grin was infectious, but it only reminded me of the point of this conversation. It had been accentuated by the few words that she had said to be thus far. It was a casual disregard for the fate she barely avoided.

“You’ve been thinking of that the whole walk here, haven’t you?” I rolled my eyes at her. She might be quick of wit, but I could see the mischievous glimmer in her eyes as she pulled my tail out in front of me. She had been waiting to say those words for at least a few minutes now.

“If I did, would you think any less of me?” She batted her eyes at me. It made me wonder if she was trying to be flirtatious or humorous. Then again with Cecelia, it was best to always expect a mixture of the two.

“Maybe… I haven’t decided yet.”

“Then no. It just slipped right off of the tongue.” Her smirk reminded me of everything I had been chasing down in Uroro. She was the glimmering star full of snark that I so desperately pursued.

“It’s a rather short story, I’m afraid. I used an excessive amount of magic in the fight at Urden. It accelerated some changes, and the next thing I knew I woke up with a tail. But enough about the tail, I wanted to ask-”

“Ah! It feels so… strange. I love the texture though! It’s almost like I’m stroking black flames without any of the heat.” I didn’t mind the interruption too much. She was clearly occupied with the odd form of the tail. By Gods, I was occupied by it as well. My first thought when I saw it was that a shadowy snake was hunting me. An embarrassing thought to look back on, but I could easily blame my confusion on the fact that I had just come back to life. The tail was beautiful in its own wake. The form it had grown into was mostly made up of shadow, much like the rest of my Deathless body. It was covered in the kind of ebbing shadow that looked like pitch black fire flowing through a space it should never occupy. The tail was quite obviously thickest where it met the rest of my body, but it got surprisingly thin down the length. Beyond the halfway point of my tail, it was hard to tell if there was even a tail anymore, or the physical manifestation of shadow that kept the same properties as the tail itself. In my human form, this was now the most blatantly Deathless feature I possessed. So much so that I might have to rethink the terminology of calling it my ‘human form’.

“Yeah, it’s pretty weird. It feels a lot like how my body feels when I’m transformed. I’m not sure you’ve ever actually gotten a chance to feel my body when I’m like that. I was going to ask if you-”

“Boy do I want to. It’s a little frightening, but I feel like I could get around to taming that shadow dog cat form of yours with enough time. I at least want to know what you feel like underneath all of the shadow that coats your body.”

‘I’m sure she’s felt plenty of Deathless flesh after all the years of killing our kind.’

“I think it would feel a lot like my tail, if I had to guess.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m usually not in a relaxing environment when I transform, Cecelia. It’s kind of a last resort. But I brought you out here to-”

“We should try it then! That way you can spend even a little time as a Deathless without feeling like you’re gonna die at any second. If you only use that form when you’re at death’s door, you’re gonna get quite the negative association.” This third interruption told me everything I needed to know. It wasn’t an accident, she was deliberately trying to evade the topic. That only made this conversation more essential.

“Cecelia. We can’t keep avoiding it. You almost died. For fuck’s sake your heart stopped multiple times! You don’t even seem to care!” The moment I spoke the words, I knew this was the conversation she feared. Her face hardened, and she let my tail slip from between her fingers.

“I’d rather leave it in the past, button-nose. I lived, so everyone can clap their hands, do a little dance, and we can keep on our merry way.”

“You don’t seem particularly thrilled that you survived.”

“Should I?”

Her words took the form of pincers, and they were doing their damnedest to clip their way into my heart.

“I’m sorry… that’s not really what I mean, Ester. I just- there’s more than just relief to be felt. It’s complicated, and it takes a while to explain.” Cecelia did her best to smile. I knew the action was performative, just something to comfort me.

“I have time.”

“Sure, but do you really wanna sit around in the dirt in a cold forest? I mean, we could just go back to the tent and snuggle up in your room.”

“I’d sit in a lot worse than a cold forest for you, Cecelia. Please.”

“Okay… sure. But you’d better promise to warm me up when we get back into the tent. The amount of wind that makes it through this forest is ridiculous.”

“Promise.”