Heartworm

“This shouldn’t work. None of this. We should not work. We don’t work.”

“It feels like we work well.”

“Maybe…” Cecelia trailed off. She didn’t seem entirely convinced by my words. I couldn’t tell if I was either. Her indecisive statement plunged into our conversation with lethal precision, killing it just as it started. The conversation must have had a little Deathless blood in it then, because it came back to life after a few minutes of sitting in silence.

“I should have died, Ester. I did, in fact. Phern is just too stubborn and crazy to let it be that simple.” Her serious tone, and usage of my name did a lot of work towards setting the unsettling mood. She tended to use nicknames, more than my actual name. I didn’t mind. With Cecelia, I never would. But it caught my attention that she opted to set aside the nicknames for our talk.

“Crazy? For trying to save you? She thinks of you as a sister, Cecelia.”

“As do I. Which is why I fear for the day that I might not be around. I know she won’t handle it well, and I’d hate for Phern to lose herself in the grief.”

“Why are you talking so much about death? It’s like it’s the only thing floating around in your head since you came back?”

“Because it looms over us! I catch a glimpse of its eyes in the shadows all around us. Death is watching us, waiting for one of us to fall into its chilling palms. The Empire wants us dead, or worse. There are enough resources within the Empire to keep their search going indefinitely. It’s starting to feel less like they might catch us, and more when they will catch us.” Her words were nihilistic, and very different to the mindset that she had even just days ago. Had her near death experience shifted her perspective that much?

“You sound an awful lot like you’re giving up. That doesn’t feel like a very Cecelia thing to do.” I replied, taking the small silence to attempt to slide a little bit closer to her. We had decided to sit near a fallen tree, to give us something to lean against as we sat in the grass.

“I’m not giving up, Ester. The Empire will have to kill me before they get around to you. Unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what will happen.”

“Don’t say that. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“I didn’t say you would. But you might not have a choice. It’s fine, though. Really. I’ve been ready for this for a while.” There it was again. That sorrow in her voice, in her body, in her eyes. I couldn’t stand seeing it.

“You’re acting like you have a death wish.”

“I don’t wish for death, Ester. I’m just prepared for it. Have been for years. Do you seriously think I became a Life Hunter because I wanted to live a long life?” Her words wrapped firmly around my heart like a hand. It wasn’t crushing, but it was certainly noticeable. Enough to be in the forefront of my mind at all times. “I killed my first Deathless at seven, and decided to make a life out of that destruction. Life Hunters do not live particularly long, Ester. I don’t think I really expected to make it this far.”

‘Life Hunters typically only hunt for a few years. Then they either have the intelligence to put it down, or they become confident enough that their fate becomes inevitable.’

“But you’ve made it this far. You don’t think that happened for a reason?”

“No. I don’t. I don’t think fate had a bunch of mouth-sex with death to keep me alive this long for a special reason. I think it just happened. A luck that I’ve never thought to thank.”

‘Luck indeed, to have avoided meeting me in her hunts.’

“I-I guess. I’m not sure I believe much in fate either. I meant it more in a personal way. That maybe you survived so long because there was something pushing you forward. Something you couldn’t afford to die before you got a chance to do.” I finally got close enough to Cecelia to rest my head gently against hers.

“Maybe…” Cecelia attempted to sink the same knife into the conversation. I wasn’t going to let it die so easily.

“You’ve sacrificed so much to save me, Cecelia. More than anyone else has ever sacrificed for me.” I almost backtracked my words to apply an exception for Vyra before I changed my mind. Vyra had done a lot for me, more than anyone else. But she hadn’t sacrificed much. She hadn’t needed to. Life was simpler back then. Even when she died, it was not a sacrifice she had expected to make. It was a mistake. My mistake. “To be hunted by the Empire, to throw yourself into all of this danger just to protect someone that you didn’t even know at the time.”

“Back when I thought you were some nerdy guy.” She chuckled.

“I mean… I still am.”

“Almost. Not much of a guy anymore, huh?” She smiled. The warmth of it was enough for me to ignore the gust of cold wind that followed. The deepest chill could never cool the heat inside my heart that flickered to life when Cecelia looked at me like that.

“True.” I replied, tentatively resting my hand near the bottom of her cheek.

“I thought about the night at the lake when I was dying.” Cecelia spoke softly, there was no need for volume when our faces were only inches apart.

“You mean when we talked about all of the constellations?” I was curious as to why that memory would be the one that replayed in her mind as she collapsed to the ground at the dock.

“Yeah. It was a nice night. It was quiet, just the two of us, and we got to look at the giant dick and balls in the sky.”

“Inthenia’s blade. I still can’t believe you never learned about the blade that cut down Baehevar.” I laughed for a few seconds while looking up to the sky. Since the topic had shifted to them, I figured I would check to see if I could find any constellations through the gaps in the trees above us. There was in fact a gap above us, and while it wasn’t that large, it was enough to see some of the stars.

‘You think it’s amusing to joke about the death of Baehevar?’

Lilith, chill out. We’re just joking around.

‘I find no humor in those jokes.’

“How was I supposed to know! They’re just a bunch of silly stars that fly around aimlessly. At least… that’s how I’ve always viewed them. It was nice to feel like even the mighty stars struggled to find a purpose.” Cecilia’s words struck me hard. The way she viewed the stars was very different to me, yet it was just as beautiful. Moreso, even. She empathized with the stars, whereas I only looked to them for guidance in expectation that the stars already had everything figured out.

“Why was that on your mind? You could have thought of anything. Your parents, Ffenton, Phern. Why me? Why the conversation at the lake?”

“I thought I would think of those things to be honest. They say that your entire life flashes before your eyes moments before death.” Cecelia said. I couldn’t blame her for thinking such a thing. I thought the very same, before it was proven, quite brutally, to not be the case.

‘You’re welcome.’

“Bullshit.” I echoed the same word I thought as I was dying in the basement of Varenthell.

“Yeah. Turns out it’s bullshit.” Cecelia paused for a moment after speaking to turn and look at me once again. Her eyes softened, as if she realized that I was talking from direct experience about dying. “So instead of all of that, I just thought of our conversation. More specifically, the thing I regretted not saying. I didn’t realize how much I regretted it until it felt like I’d never get another chance to.”

“I regretted that conversation as well… There was more that I wanted to say, but I was too afraid to say it.” I admitted. There was a confession I nearly made that night, but I was afraid of how it would sound.

“On three, then?” Cecelia smirked, hoping to pry the confessions out of both of us with a simple tactic.

“Sure.”

“One. Two…”

“I think I doomed our relationship.”

“I love you, Ester.”

The two of us could only stare at one another with shocked expressions. It felt too terrifying to even attempt to blink while locking eyes.

‘How amusing…’

“You love me?”

“You don’t think we work?”

Again, we had spoken simultaneously, only to pause in the aftermath of our own words.

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Of course I love you!”

For the third time in a row, we had started speaking at the same time. This time, we both looked at each other with a heaping of confusion. In the realization that we would never make any progress talking over one another, Cecelia leaned back away from me and waited for an explanation.

“It’s a superstition. It’s said that if a relationship begins around the time when Pulchra Flamma is close to Duo Amantis, it spells an inevitable disaster for the relationship. It happened in my last relationship! I tried to ignore it, and Vyra ended up dead. This time, I tried to ignore it again, and almost immediately after you almost died!” I knew how it sounded. It was probably just an overreaction, a hyperfixation on celestial bodies that have no real effect on the world below them. But it didn’t feel that way for me. I’d seen the fervent worship of certain stars as extensions of Gods when I was younger. I had seen the utility of guiding stars on certain expeditions within my history classes. I had also personally experienced a crippling heartache as a result of commencing a relationship while Pulchra Flamma and Duo Amantis were too close to one another. It didn’t feel very superstitious to me. It felt real.

“Fuck the superstition! Why would you believe in something so disastrous when it’s just an old story from the past. Most old stories are outdated or bullshit. Or both.” Cecelia was just as skeptical as Vyra was.

“That’s the same thing that she said! She didn’t believe it, and then she died.” I tried not to think much about the scenery. A charred bedroom. A bloody hand, clasped in mine. A bloody hand, limp. It was too much to remember.

“But that’s not why she died! You told me yourself, it was the fucking headmaster. You’re conflating these two things as if it directly caused her death. Or mine, for that matter!”

“Am I? It was days after we started dating that you were stabbed!”

“Because I slipped up! I should have noticed sooner that something was wrong about that man. I guarantee that it wasn’t the constellations that kept me from noticing sooner.” It hurt to hear that Cecelia blamed her fate on herself. Not noticing sooner, being distracted, or whatever else she had come up with to explain how it happened. I wondered if she knew the truth. That I probably could have stopped it if I had paid more attention to my senses. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t pin it down until it was too late. If it was anyone’s fault besides Laia, it was mine.

“I don’t want to believe it’s true, Cecelia! But I’m scared that it is. I don’t want to lose you. Especially if you really feel that way about me.”

“If I really love you? Of course I do, Ester! It was eating me up inside that I hadn’t said it that night. It would have been perfect… under the stars, alone in the moonlight. I was just too scared.”

“Cecelia? Scared? Here I thought you loved scary things.” I chimed, opening my mouth and flicking my tongue across my sharpened fangs.

“When the scary things are attached to a face as beautiful as yours… yes.” Cecelia reached out with her index to tap the end of my nose. The button-nose that she was so very fond of. “When they’re more existential… no. I haven’t felt love like this before, Ester. It’s horrifying. The hookups and trysts I explored across Kistram were pleasant, but ephemeral. This feels like a love that I’ve known since birth, and I will continue to know in every beat of my heart long after it's decomposed. It’s entirely new, and I don’t deal with unknowns particularly well. That's why I couldn’t bring myself to say it until now.”

“I happen to like unknowns. Especially when they opened up my heart and filled it with thoughts of you. I feel like it’s only appropriate for me to extrude all of my mushy gushy feelings as well. I love you, Cecelia, and I want to make this work.”

“A Deathless and a Life Hunter.”

“I think you’re more of an ex-hunter at this point.” I brushed aside the tufts of hair that encroached on her face.

“This shouldn’t work. We shouldn’t work.” Cecelia replied, parroting her earlier words, reciting the fears that pulsed in both of our chests.

“But we can. We do.” I asserted. I knew that we could. I had to believe we could work together despite the writings on the wall. What did it matter, after all? The writings of the past, the status quo that bind, none of it had any place between the two of us. The only thing that belonged between Cecelia and I, was our entangled breaths. Hot upon release, and quickly cooled by the steady winds all around us. Eventually, the steady breaths between us ceased. How could it exist when our mouths were pressed against each other? The warmth between us grew as we pressed against one another. Our hands and tongues danced across each other under the light of the moon, filtered and partially obscured by flowing branches full of leaves above.

* * * * *

“If that is the title you all share, then I would love to share it as well!” Nessyndra happily replied to Cecelia, even taking a moment to look around the small ‘dining’ room of the portable tent. The table was just as cramped as always, without enough space to comfortably fit all of us. We were currently adjusting to trying to fit another person in the small space. The adjustment? I was sitting on Cecelia’s lap at the table. Something which had gone verbally unacknowledged. Phern had let out a happy little gasp when she saw it, and Sebil had even smirked a little when he took his own seat. This sort of public affection was still relatively new to me, but after all of the private affection we had just exchanged in the forest, it felt slightly less intimidating.

We also didn’t have enough chairs.

“Can she just become a Bandit? Do we need to initiate her in some way?” I asked Cecelia, as the leader of our belligerent group.

“Oooooo! We can make her do a big obstacle course and splash a bunch of water at her to disrupt her!” Phern shot up from her chair, slamming her knee into the table as she did so. It was deeply concerning how she lacked much of a reaction for how hard it sounded like she bashed her knee.

“Water, love? Wouldn’t that be helpful for her? She’s got that contraption on her head to keep her hydrated already. Though I’d say it’s doing a better job of hydrating the floor of the tent.” Sebil huffed. I could immediately sympathize with his concerns. As an inventor with many intricate creations very sensitive to water, the new presence of an eternally soaked companion was likely not conducive towards his passion projects.

“A course made up of obstacles? That sounds like fun!” Nessie seemed to love Phern’s idea. It was, however, still two against three. I was not spending our time building an obstacle course for Nessundra, no matter how excited about it she was.

“We don’t need an initiation, stump. We just need an agreement. Perhaps a vow?” The idea that Cecelia presented made quite a bit of sense. Having an actual vow would also give us a chance to set up a concrete set of ‘rules’ or ‘tenets’ for the Belligerent Bandits.

“We also need to change our sleeping arrangements. Nessyndra needs a new room, preferably away from my own.” Sebil seemed to have trouble setting such a firm boundary. I don’t think he realized that with his effortless charisma, Nessyndra hadn’t felt the slightest bit offended. “No offense, Nessyndra. I just can’t afford to wake up soaked one of these days. My inventions are not hydrophobic, though perhaps that’s an investment I need to start making.”

“Gods I would hope they aren’t, Sebil. I wouldn’t want your machinations to take issue with us being together.” Cecelia’s sly speech slipped seamlessly into a kiss upon my lips. It was done so smoothly that my mind didn’t even have time to react. My body, however, had already known what to do. I pushed back gently into the kiss for the short few seconds that it lasted before Cecelia broke away from me.

“What?” I turned to the side to see Sebil’s expression moulding every facial feature on his face into the most confounded state it could occupy. Cecilia simply smirked at him. “I said hydrophobic, love. I’m not sure what you’re-“ In an instant, I could see the realization sizzle across his mind like a shooting star. “Perhaps I should make my inventions hydrophobic…” He offered what little amount of mischievousness he was able to convey. It was nice to know there was some of that brewing inside of him, even if it didn’t often present itself.

“I can do another room! But five rooms is about the maximum I can expand to within this tent. Anymore, and the condensed mass of the pocket dimension could reach a breaking point. Five is the very limit of ‘safety’ we can do.” When Phern started talking about pocket dimensions and condensed mass, I felt it was best to trust her instincts. She did not have the level of book smarts I have, but I had faith in her, and she had faith in her gut. I had to hope her gut had no intentions of imploding her friends.

“Great, so we move Sebil and Nessyndra to opposite sides, and we come up with some way of insulating her room so the rest of the tent doesn’t become a waterlogged pile of eccentric spices.” I set forth a fairly reasonable plan. But I couldn’t help but feel like there was something missing in my plan. Something that had slipped my mind. “Is there anything else we need to get done tonight? We’re going to need to get back on a schedule of travelling as much as possible away from the Empire. Which for now, is anywhere away from Uroro. We can discuss destinations tomorrow on the walk.” I moved towards my own room within the tent. A room that I hadn’t been in for nearly a week, though it felt like it had been much longer than that. It felt like a breath of fresh air. Or it would if the sticky stench of Phern’s spices weren’t so overpowering.

“Well you did forget something.” I felt Cecelia’s hand gently rest on my own hand as I reached for the flaps that sealed my room shut. “You promised me that you’d help to warm me up after we talked in the forest. I hope you weren’t planning on leaving me all cold…” Ah. So that’s what had been on the tip of my tongue earlier. Maybe there will be something else on the tip of my tongue very shortly.

“Well we can’t have that, now can we?” I pulled at the string that tied the flaps that made up my ‘door’. The magical string slithered away, leaving the flaps dangle limply for the time being. I let Cecelia go in first, and then I quickly followed, pushing the flaps together once more, where the same magical string sprang to life to sew itself in between the flaps to keep the ‘door’ shut.