Chapter 23: Fire’s Night
WINTER BREAK - December 18th
Aries and I spent most of this week trying to pick out gifts for Kelyn and Elandria. Elandria's gift was something I found immediately and unexpectedly. A seasonal vendor in town was peddling homemade soap carvings. One soap carving was pigeon-shaped and smelled like patchouli and cardamom. Very Elandria. The vendor tied an orange ribbon around the pigeon's neck for a festive touch. Perfect.
Aries didn't really get it, but I told him he could sign his name on the card as well. It was more on him to help me brainstorm something for Kelyn. He hadn't been living with her the last few weeks, but he'd been in her sigils class for all of last term. There was no pretending that hadn't been his favorite class.
"Are you sure you want me to come for dinner tomorrow?" Aries asked. We were poking around a stationary shop then. It was the third or fourth shop that day and we were both already tired of looking. The question had come out of the blue.
"You got somewhere better to be or something?" I said. I wasn't really asking. I knew he didn't.
I could have told him it was Kelyn and Elandria's idea, that they'd been the one to suggest I invite him, mostly out of supposed politeness to me, but I also didn't really want to. I liked the idea of them having Aries over for dinner. We'd been meeting up most nights anyway. It felt wrong to ditch him in favor of spending a holiday with the Marblebrooks alone.
"No," he said. He grinned to himself. He was a little too happy, but I could let him have this.
Especially since that night I talked to Elandria. She was sitting in the sunroom with a book, Boaz, and a plate of peas. Boaz fluttered his wings at my arrival and Elandria glanced up from her book over the frames of her glasses.
"Something wrong, Zephyr?" she asked, without setting down her book.
I'd been putting off saying anything for way too long. It was going to be awkward but better I say now and get it over with. "Nothing wrong, no," I said. "I was hoping to talk to you about something... Just a clarification."
Elandria flipped her book face open on the table. To my surprise, it was a book with a cover not terribly dissimilar to the werewolf novel in my room upstairs, only instead of a werewolf, it was a woman and a mermaid.