Kaia the Argent Wing

A third of the main school building was a write-off. The flaming core was too powerful and imbued with too much Storm energy for the weak Pre-Storm construction to survive, and so the fire had claimed a large swath of it before we got it under control.

The deaths were a far greater loss than the building, though. With the other dead we lost that day, the number was up over one hundred Edgewood souls gone. Added to that, we lost two hundred when Pastor Thomas and his ‘faithful’ traitors were thrown out.

Over the intervening hours since the Battle of the Six Fires—as we were calling it—that number had risen by two. Some of the wounded had died in the night.

The sky when we all woke the next morning… though… I almost cried when I saw blue between the clouds. The temperature had risen by fifteen degrees too, and by breakfast, we were above freezing again.

“I want it,” April declared.

I blinked my thoughts away and looked up at her. I was Kaia again, after having slipped away in the night to shift.

“The lump of living fire?” I asked, looking back at it.

We'd extracted the strange core from the building, and now it was sitting in the parking lot, melting a hole in the asphalt. If it weren't for April's class giving her immunity to fire, we could never have even gotten it out. Now I was trying to understand what had even happened to create the thing. Was it something to do with the storm bird, or was it just a sufficiently large fire turning into a flaming tornado?

“We could stick it in a forge, Kaia,” she said, grinning. “Imagine how good it would be!”

Huh.

Like a switch had been flipped, I looked at the two-foot-diameter sphere with my crafter's eyes and my word but the opportunities.

“I totally agree. Ask the Captain first, of course, but… it could do wonders,” I said, trailing off.

The core had some real value to us, for sure… But my excitement almost immediately sputtered out—I was just too exhausted and depressed to care. After all, my day yesterday hadn't ended when the traitors were sent packing—I’d also helped pull people out of the rubble. People… and what used to be people.

I sighed. I was also just mentally exhausted. The price of victory had been so high, and it hurt my heart. Aside from people like Steve, who'd died fighting for a real, tangible cause, the vast majority had died senselessly, either to the bird’s last ‘fuck you’ or to the asshole with the shitty god. It felt like some sick cosmic joke.

There was a part of me that was tempted to go after Pastor Thomas and his people— stalk and kill them one by one. In my mind, I relished their hypothetical fear, the way they jumped at every shadow until eventually, one of those shadows was me. Deep down, though, I had to admit that I would lose my nerve, and that I wasn't really capable of cold and calculated murder like that.

A hand came down to rest on my shoulder, and I looked up into April's concerned eyes. “Hey… I can handle all this, yeah? You should go rest. You did a lot yesterday, even if most folks don't know it.”

I gave her a weak smile. “I don't know what to do with myself if I don't… you know, do things.”

“Sleep,” she said, wryly and gently. “Let your unconscious mind sort through it for a bit, it's what it's meant to do…” Her eyes flicked up and past me, towards what was left of our school. “Or, you could go talk to Chloe. She's heading for us now. Maybe she can distract you.”

Flushing despite myself, I said, “Shut up… But fine, I'll go rest—After, uh, after talking to Chloe.”

I turned away before I could see whatever smug grin was on April's face and headed for Chloe. She had Brielle with her, for some reason, which piqued my interest.

We met halfway, and Brielle gave me a little wave. “Hey! It's the expert crossbow crafter! Did you hear the news?”

My eyebrows rose in question. “News?”

“Bandon and Edgewood are gonna make it facebook official,” she chuckled. “Forming an alliance. If someone or something hits one of us, the other sends folk to help. Keon really didn't like standing by while those assholes from yesterday caused their problems. I know we was all thinking about cutting them down, but he really wanted to, you know?”

“That's good news,” I said, catching Chloe's eye. She quickly looked away. Nervous, maybe? Something was up.

Swallowing hard, she met my eyes again. “I um… I was thinking. You know how I was struggling with growing stuff?”

Confused, I nodded for her to continue. “Yeah?”

“Well… I figured maybe it's a good idea if I go see what that horticulture academy thing is like, down at Bandon?” She said, staring at me with an intensity that I couldn't parse.

“Yeah, that seems like a good idea,” I agreed, still very confused. She was acting like this was some big decision. “The gardening thing was frustrating you, so… Plus, we could send some of our farmers there to learn. We'll never be as good as you folks from Bandon, but with the sun coming out, we can start sustaining ourselves properly.”

“Right,” Brielle nodded. “Just like we should send some of our crafters up here to learn from y’all.”

I smiled and nodded. I liked this idea. It was a good one, and I could see it lifting both our communities up higher than before.

“I'd be down in Bandon for… a while,” Chloe said, softly. “But… unless there's a pressing, uh, a pressing matter here in Edgewood… I think… you know, that I want to do it.”

Oh. I tried desperately to keep my expression from slipping. “How long? Couldn't you just go between? Bandon and Edgewood were like two hours walk before the Storm…”

“I don't really know,” she shrugged, breaking our strange, intense eye contact. “A while? After yesterday… the singing and the fight… I mean, I want to get away from Edgewood.”

My heart sank into the pit of my stomach, but with Brielle here, I really didn't… I wasn't comfortable getting emotional. Not that she didn't already suspect something was up, the way she was glancing between us and frowning.

Swallowing a massive lump in my throat, I said, “If you want to get away from here, that makes sense. Especially if it's to learn.”

“You… think?” She asked, looking back up from the pavement. Her dark eyes were absolutely brimming with caged emotion… and although doubt swirled in the back of my mind, I felt like it was probably mirrored in my own eyes.

“Yeah,” I agreed softly.

A scuffing sound twitched my attention away for a heartbeat, and I saw that Brielle had taken a few steps off to the side. She gave me an awkward smile and an even more awkward thumbs up. Oh-kay.

I looked back to my friend. “Um, Chloe?”

“Hmm?” Her eyes were still full to bursting with meaning.

“When you come back… No, I mean, you have to come back, okay?” I said, my hand twitching as I just barely intercepted an impulse to take her hand.

“I have to?” She asked, and I could have danced for joy seeing that little smirk and her raised eyebrow.

“Yeah,” I nodded earnestly. “You're pretty great, and… you know… I want you to come back. I think this will be a good thing for you, but I want you to come back.”

“You said you want me to come back, twice,” she said with a tiny giggle. “Fine, I'll come back.”

“I said it three times, actually,” I corrected her, before I realised how dumb it was to point that out.

“If we're counting the previous sentence, then it's four times,” she grinned. “Goofus.”

My heart lifted from its position in my stomach when she smiled, and my face followed her lead without my say-so. “One of those was actually an assumption rather than a request like the others, so three point five?”

“Request?” She asked, giving me a look. “Sounded more like an order.”

“If that's what it takes to get you back— I mean, get you to come back,” I said, hastily correcting my mistake. Oh, my cheeks were going so red.

Her eyes got that big, soulful look in them again, and she just whispered, “Goofus.”

 

A day later, with Chloe gone already, Ollie found me crying in Silver’s house, which was at least a tolerable temperature now. I was crying for the obvious reason, of course—Chloe was going away for a while, and in the same conversation she told me that, I realised that yeah, she might actually, truly, possibly, maybe, be feeling the same things for me that I was for her.

“Whoa,” she said, alarmed.

I was on the sofa with a blanket over me and my knees up to my chest.

“H-hey,” I mumbled.

She sat heavily beside me, bouncing me slightly as she put her arm around my shoulder. “What's wrong, cutie?”

“Chloe is going to live in Bandon for a while,” I sniffled. “She's gone.”

“Oh… oh no,” she said, her voice filled with empathy. “Why?”

Through gross, sniffling tears, I explained the whole conversation to Ollie, including the subtext around feelings and everything.

“Man…” Ollie sighed, shaking her head. “That girl might be cool, and pretty, and definitely badass, but she is drama.”

“I think she's the best,” I said, then frowned at my friend. “And she isn't drama, she's just… operating on a different social wavelength to everyone else.”

Ollie let out a soft laugh. “Okay, that's a good way of describing. Still, you know, I think that she's drama on top of that. Not saying it's necessarily a bad thing either, because like, fuck knows you probably need someone who's a bit drama—To keep your attention. You'd probably get bored otherwise.”

I scoffed at her and opened my mouth to defend both Chloe and myself… but then I thought about it. “Fuck you. Fuck you for being kinda right,” I pouted.

Ollie whooped happily and squeezed me tight to her side. “Plus, when y'all finally fuck, it's going to be amazing! All that pent up yearning and angst? Gives me the goosebumps!”

“Ollie!” I squealed, hitting her on the leg with my tiny fist.

“Ow!” She laughed, bopping my leg in retaliation. Then she shoved me affectionately with her hip. “Anyway, I came to find you because fuckin’ everyone has been crying and moping and counting the dead like they're the ones who killed ‘em. So, me and some of the others decided to organise a… a celebration. We hunted a big monster-cow and grabbed some of that corn we saw on the quarry trip. There's gonna be a damn feast, and you're coming whether you like it or not.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, shaking her thigh to stop her. “I'm not going to say no, and plus—”

There was a sudden, almost comical pop sound. There, on the windowsill of the living room, was a cat. It'd just squeezed through the infinitely small gap around the edge of the closed window like it was an octopus squeezing through the tightest hole. Oh, and not just the window, but it also got through the wards somehow.

“Mrreaow!” It chirped happily.

Ollie, eyes wide, turned and looked sidelong at me. “That's the cat! That's the cat we saw that day in the woods, when the mountain lion attacked us! It must've followed my hunting party home!”

Both of us jumped to our feet and checked out the windows as paranoia set in… but there was no larger, angrier cat outside. Just a happy little baby, doing its best to trip us up.

“Do we take the cat to the celebration?” I asked, staring down at it.

Ollie, grinning her usual big toothy grin, nodded. “We're taking both the cat and you to the celebration. The time for moping is over. Chloe will be back, we will rebuild, and by Cynath, we're going to celebrate our dead, because if we're in some crazy fantasy video game apocalypse, we may as well party like it!”