29.1 Fic: Mika Reflection 2

Mika watched as Shiv shut the balcony door softly and padded off toward her own room. He was left with his thoughts; more than enough to fill the massive room.   On the bed, Rose sighed a sleepy whine. He stood up and crossed the room, carefully avoiding the decaying wreckage of an unnamed beast, sat down, petted her head.   "Oh, meu doce menina, I think I'm in trouble."   The hound roused herself long enough to lick his hand, then went back to sleep.   He flopped backward. The bed was far too soft. He sank halfway into it. Shut his eyes. Replayed Shiv’s voice, her neutral, factual, ‘check my sources ‘cause I know they’re solid’ voice.   ‘Seems like you both might be in this a little too far to back out now.’   Until tonight, he would have quibbled the ‘both.’   He opened his eyes. Looked up at the skylight that took up most of the ceiling.   The stars filled the space like they'd been poured over it. A dim echo of a face fixed in his mind like a constellation.   He’d expected deflection. Snark. Something flippant about how he’d better be grateful. Not the pink tint that started on her cheekbones and blazed like a sunrise across her face. The way her lips pressed together like she was trying so hard not to smile but couldn’t stop. It rounded her cheeks, squinted her eyes. Made little wrinkles in her nose.   What was he supposed to do? Stop? He could sooner pull the sun from the sky. The last time he saw her that speechless, flushed and flustered...     It had been an indulgence, a thought experiment. ‘If love was something I could still look for and Mirage was someone I could seek it with, what would I say’? An innocent game of pretend.   ...Right?   He shook his head. Either way, he hadn’t expected the same reaction to strictly – strictly – platonic gratitude. He’d stuck to facts. Or tried to. He guessed it did kind of get away from him.   It really was to her credit that he wasn’t shouldering his pack alone, scanning job boards for the least-dubious offers, spending all his concentration on wards, hiding the resultant headaches from daylight. It was just hard to leave it at that when she’d given him so much more.   She’d seen him at his lowest, and even when their rapport was half-serious jabs and fine-tuned insults, had refused to let him fall any further. Even before she had any idea what he was up against, she wouldn’t let him off the hook to fight it, to try, to laugh, to reach out. Not for a single second.   Of course she told him to rewrite the ending. She either didn’t believe in them in the first place, or didn’t feel their stings. Inevitability slipped off her like oil from clear water, powerless. What was doom to her? She danced in libraries, sang to the wind, laughed with her head back, smelled wildflowers, kissed strangers.   Ice interrupted his reverie, a cold shard in the chest.   The impossible divide in their social strata, the madness tightening its grip on his mind, the ill advised prospect of dating a colleague. With so much else in the way, could the death knell really be the banal, the common, the well-worn ‘I’m just not looking for anything serious right now’?   Or ever?   He tried to think. Had she ever mentioned anyone who stuck around longer than a day – a night – a week? He didn’t think so. She didn’t tend to linger even on those short term rendezvouses. Was it a consequence of life on the road, the frustrating inadequacy of letters? Or was her heart as fickle as her moods, racing from electric storm to cloudless sky without a backward glance.   It hardly mattered, he reminded himself, since he couldn’t offer anything more long term than that anyway. The future he’d chased before this bullshit started – before he knew it started – was thoroughly outdated. Incompatible with the puppet strings in his back.   He sifted a box of dusty dreams from memory. Brushed it off. Hesitated. Cracked it open. Tiles of blurry, conceptual visions stared back, shifted with indecisions. Sometimes an apartment, one with room to have friends over. Someplace south of fifty-second, close enough to dad’s place to look in on him sometimes. Not even fifty yet, but already rubbing at his back all the time. Pai wouldn’t say anything when it got too much. Mom couldn’t be home constantly, especially when he couldn’t work anymore. He’d just have to pay attention. Besides, it would keep him near the Library.   But then, there was so much beyond Midnight. He could always come back, but to stay seemed a waste. Even Dad thought so.   ‘Go, filho. A man ought to have stories.’   He remembered listening, wide-eyed, to stories of monkeys stealing washing left on the line in a village that pai swore was real, but which felt fictional in its complete separation from his world of crowded buildings and narrow streets. Begging to be told about the ship’s journey, until he could smell the spray over the bows and taste its salt.   He’d toyed with the idea of landing in place further down the coastline. Green fields under enormous blue skies. Wildflowers and sea winds. Maybe even as far as the bay mouth. Lots of pretty little fishing towns, none more than a ship’s passage from the Black City. He could always come back to visit.   He’d wondered, as the walls of Midnight shrank behind him, where he’d end up, what stories he could tell, if ever he was the one being asked for a bedtime tale. Would Midnight’s black stone walls and foggy streets sound as impossible as monkeys making off into the rainforest, waving shirts like flags?   It didn’t really matter where it was, but he had always figured on having somewhere to come back to. Rooms to warm with hearth and laughter. Floors to dance into smoothness. Lazy mornings. Close nights. Making home, one memory at a time. Maybe eventually, possibly, with the right person, a family.   Well all of that’s pretty much out, isn’t it.   He put the dream down and shut the box, annoyed with himself. Naive fantasies of a time when his biggest concern was figuring out a way to see more of the world and still make sure his hypothetical kids could know their vovó e o vovô. When it still made sense to think about his parents’ age as if he’d outlive them. When heredity was a matter of colours and shapes.   Bright and unbidden, Marwa’s voice echoed in his mind, contradicting him.   ‘It’s okay, we have a plan for that, now.’   A Wish. Just thinking it felt silly. Magic powerful enough to rewrite reality. A logistical nightmare of circular arguments and mislaid burdens of proof. Even if it was real, it was almost certainly arcane magic. Yet another manipulation of a Weave that may as well have been fictional, itself, for as far as his ability to use it went.   Something itched like static in the back of his mind, and he frowned.   If magic had a form that predated the Weave...   Had. The elemental chaos is ancient history, literally.   But it’s not like it has no remnants. Elementals go back that far, or so it’s said. Genies trace their roots back there too, but that’s more like ancestry. I think?   He frowned. Weave history, the formation and evolution of the arcane’s presence in the material world, was not a topic he’d delved far into. But this house had a wizard.   I might need to borrow the library.   It was petty, but he couldn’t help wanting to put it off. Wizard books were just so... annoying. Verbose. Obtuse. Characterized as much by the self-important authorial tone as by a tendency for each section to rely on ten others – always located in other books in other libraries – just to make sense. And those were the published volumes.   Spellbooks and personal accounts were always further obfuscated by what an extremely charitable person might call ‘basic substitution ciphers.’ Someone more candid might call it an unnecessary stream of clumsy metaphors that weren’t even any fun to unscramble. Some mages didn’t even go that far. He almost found the ones that just wrote in Draconic more annoying. Language was only a protection if you assumed no one who mattered could understand it.   He wondered what kind of code Marwa’s dad used. If he wrote his notes plainly, he might be the first mage to ever do so. He wondered if he even had any books on the fundamentals of the weave and its nature, or if that kind of thing was like keeping a guide to the Common alphabet for a wizard of his calibre. He might have to take this line of inquiry on the road.   He wondered what kind of world this was, where he was thinking seriously about Wishes.   But then, a lot of impossible things were happening lately.   I’ve been throwing that word around an awful lot, haven’t I?   The list of absolutes whirled around him. He caught the pages one at a time, gathering theses like papercuts. They shook in his hands, unwilling to bear scrutiny.   Too bad. We’re past-due for another shakedown.   He shook out the rules, tapped them in order, squinted through the objecting, screaming fog.   Rule one: It wants to be Known, be Present. It mustn’t.   Fine. One thing still solid. You hear that?   If the thing(s) on the other side of the door were capable of hearing in any sense, it was unlikely. He could hardly hear himself in there.   Nobody gets to know you. You don’t get to manifest a single cell. You are getting extinguished. You’re going to gutter out, unknown, forgotten, unnamed. So help me.   Pain, white hot and burning cold, lanced in a gripping torrent through every wire in his brain. He grated his teeth, refused the hand that wanted to rub his forehead as if it would help anything. He wasn’t sure if the thing(s) understood his words, his belligerence, or just his refusal, but defiance never went over well.   Gripe all you like, he grated, forcing breath as nails fired through his joints, That one’s staying.   It faded. Slowly. Flared like a threat. Died. Left him the headache.   It’s fine. Fuck. Gonna take more than that to change my mind, you faceless fucks. Ow. Nothing coffee can’t fix. Good rule. Keeping it. I’ve been sloppy, though. Must be more careful about sharing details, however vague. They add up.   He exhaled.   Next.   Rule two: Shutting this shit down must be priority one.   No arguments there. Running out of feasible options faster than I’d like, but that’s no excuse to slouch. We’ll ask after the stupid wizard-books in the morning.   Rule three: Keep it away from others – this is a solo mission by both necessity and natural consequence: there is no love without trust, and we are fundamentally untrustworthy with this thing in our head.   Okay, we might be due a re-evaluation on that one.   Parts of it still felt solid, especially in the wake of that evening’s... errand. He didn’t know why he thought he’d be safe in a house, surrounded by people. Why would it care? Something needed doing, now, and it’s off you go.   He was lucky no one got in his way. Everyone was lucky they didn’t get in his way. He doubted they’d even have to go so far as trying to stop him. Wasting precious time could be enough. Tactics were loaded into his brain alongside locations and routes, and the only distinction in preference between avoidance, death, and disability seemed to be their varying capacity to attract more interference.   People could choose to trust him, but that didn’t make it a good idea. Didn’t make it fair to ask for honesty, transparency, when he couldn’t return it. Didn’t make it safe to get close.   But then, some people didn’t seem to give a fuck about staying safe. She’d be that even if she wasn’t named for a firestarter, for reactive sparks, for the sharing of gentle light into the coldest, darkest places, for brightness that brings colour, warmth, life. She could be named Despair and she’d take it as a challenge, he was certain.   ‘Gotta watch myself with you,’ she’d said.   You really, really do.   But her voice came floating on memories of music, strings sighing a gentle, swaying melody. He'd told her she was a sky full of stars. Short of the mark again. She was the sun, the moon, the entire vaulted heavens and every wonder beneath them.   Should I teach you ‘belíssima’? ‘esplêndida’? ’a música ensinando meu coração a dançar novamente?’   He exhaled in a frustrated sigh.   Maybe I should teach you ‘inútil.’ You’ve never understood it, but I’m starting to. Holding you at my arms' length is making them so, so tired. This empty space is so heavy. Inútil, pretending I don’t want you any closer. Ververdadeiramente fútil, acting like I can keep going like this. You’ve given me so much. Forgive me my selfishness, I want more.   Whatever that even means, anymore.   He sat up, rubbed his hands across his face. Drummed his mental fingers on the lid of the closed box. The worn, domestic dreams that reverberated back at him still felt distant, but no less warm. Someday. Maybe. If there really was an ‘afterward.’   For now, though?   If I were to say everything I’ve been biting back?   If I could reach for you, if by some miracle you could reach for me, could I make you understand that if I had a Wish right now, I’d use it to ask for an eternity by your side, curse or no curse? That I’d rather dance into the dark with your hands in mine, than live a long, free, healthful life without you?   Probably not. You never let me get away with fatalism.   Could I tell you it’s okay if you’re tired, too? I see you when you’re road-weary, you know. Looking up like you can see home through the clouds. Feeling the wind like it can carry you there. Can I be home to you? Even just a part of it? Would you come to me when the rainclouds gather? If I can't chase them off, will you let me stay with you ‘til they break? I want to scare off your shadows, live in your light, shine it back at you, get caught in your breeze, lost in your colours. I want to hold you until I know your shape by heart, I want to kiss you until you’re dizzy. Until we both are, breathe your laughter, hear your heart.   Fuck Rule Three. Damn my big mouth. You’ve torn my logic to pieces and you’re all I can see through the rubble. I’m tired of asking why you trust me, trying to teach you not to. You’re a terrible student and a foulmouthed delight and I don’t give a fuck what I said before. Loving you might just be the death of me, even if you don’t tear me in two or mock me into the godsdamned ground.   But it seems like a decent way to go, holding your hand.   He drew a slow breath, let it out too fast. Dropped his hands from his face. His heartbeat sounded loud in the room. He swallowed.   Now I just gotta figure out how to do that.