Chapter Text
The signs of unrest in the forest have yet to settle. It’s been three days since you Saw Dirk, and you’ve been sleeping or stabilizing your magic, nearly bedridden, for half of that time. A persistent headache throbs at your temples.
“Is she gone from town yet?” you ask Karkat, as he walks beside you with your shopping basket over one of his arms. With the work building up in the last day - sorting the herbs Karkat has been bringing you, along with cutting a few unexpected sachets (you had to have Karkat make some new rabbit leather string for you) – you haven’t had opportunity to visit town. Nor have you had the chance to see where that fiend Aradia ghosted off to.
Karkat snorts out a puff of smoke, softly, shifting the pipe in his lips. The pipe is empty, of course. He knows how you loathe the scent of tobacco. But with the tension lately, it’s harder for him to suppress some of his plumes. It’s been helpful to have him around for a few days, as you recover. Last night he told you that he’ll need to go, soon, claiming he has an appointment set with a Djinn he knows. The Djinn may be able to help with the search as well, the only reason he’s keeping the meeting in his nebulous schedule.
“I know that she’s closed up shop,” he says, and you have to force yourself to unclench your jaw. “But other than that, I know about as much as you.”
You get the feeling he’s intentionally leaving out information, but you don’t press it.
“Well. Hopefully we won’t cross paths,” you mutter, and he huffs like he gets it.
Kanaya hasn’t said that she’s had enough space, yet. That, as well as your horrific problem with mounting guilt, and your proclivity for avoiding others who you’ve wronged, has made you dread seeing her again.
It’s a little difficult for you to ever admit that you’ve done something wrong. The coming apology (or lack thereof) will be mountainous.
You’re only going to town for the exercise, and to deliver a few late spell orders from the locals. One for the butcher, for food rot that has seen a spike in the last several days. Another for Dirk’s family, for calm and safety. Several others as well, for various townsfolk who are going back to superstition with the recent bout of people fallen ill for a few days at a time, and the crack that’s formed in the square fountain, and the water that they swear has run red late in the night, and so on and so forth.
You know the water will not have run red…
Yet…
People will feel safer with protection sachets hung near the door. You will feel safer, as well.
They came after Dirk, to shock you and bring attention from Kanaya’s sharp eyes, you assume. To throw a rock in the wheels. What’s to say they won’t try to kidnap you, next? If you disappear, there will be no one protecting your forest, or the town.
As you cross the bridge into town, a small girl runs up to you. It’s a curious thing; usually the children stay away from you, and you’re grateful for it. But it’s the little English child, you see as she approaches.
“Do you have the spell?” she asks, eagerly. There’s no humor in her voice.
It’s much too serious for a child.
“Yes, I was going to bring it by,” you reply. Gesturing to Karkat prompts him to retrieve the spell from the basket in his arms. A little bundle, a bag, a piece of silver, and an amethyst. “What’s got you glum?”
The girl takes the spell in her hands, frowning down at it.
“Me mam,” she says. “Sick.”
No good feelings come to you from that sentence. “How sick, small one?”
The girl takes a step away, clutching the magic in her palms, near enough to crush the fragile dried twigs inside. You reach out a hand as if to stop her, and she flinches. The motion makes you feel ill.
“She was crying, and bleeding a lot,” she replies. Her brow twitches up in the middle. “She said that the baby was gone.”
You didn’t even know there was a baby. Her, a child? Maude? She was long away from her husband, you thought. Was it out of wedlock? How long had it been since her husband had left? Clearly she was okay, since she was still alive, or the girl would be in tears. Or more than that.
“I’m so sorry,” Karkat says, and before she can move, or you can say anything further, he gets down on his knees. Once he’s at the girl’s level, he places a hand on her forehead, stroking it back through what he can reach of her windblown nest of hair. His palm glows for but a second, and you have no idea what he’s doing. “We’ll be by later to check on her.”
The girl makes a little face of relief, and scampers off with the spell in her hand.
“What did you do?” you ask him.
Karkat makes a face as he stands back up. His hand clenches, as if pained, and he bends over to retrieve the basket.
“I opened her bond to her mother’s comfort,” he says. His feet scuff the ground as he continues along the path. You might never understand quite what his magic does. You know that dragons each have peculiar abilities, but they must be specialized, unlike yours.
“Alright,” you say, instead of asking any more questions. It’s easy to trust Karkat to not tell you some things. Maybe he did that to you, too, but he seems kinder than to manipulate you. Hm.
Catching up with him is easier than any day in the past week, but Karkat yet slows his pace so that you might walk together.
“I think fish might be our best bet this morning,” you say when you’re beside him once more.
“Some to cook for tonight, and some to smoke for the next few days?” Karkat asks.
You hum an affirmative. Grains for bread, some fish, a bit of hard cheese and a container of dried fruit. Maybe a head of cabbage or two, as well.
Karkat begins to talk about the weather, about how it snowed for a few minutes the other day. You reply in kind, and the two of you manage to keep the conversation going for maybe ten more minutes as you cross the streets. Deliver spells first, then get supplies.
It’s sooner than you think it will be, but it happens.
Almost as soon as you get to the main market road, after finishing spell delivery and receiving several payments as well, you see her.
Kanaya stands on the stoop of her shop, directing a young man from the shop next door on how to dismantle her sign. He stands on a short ladder, and she holds it up, to support him, and points.
She’s beautiful today.
Karkat tugs on your arm, but you just can’t drag your eyes away.
Kanaya’s hair is swept up in a tight chignon, but a few curls drape about her face. The rolls of silk behind her only add to her beauty, making her green eyes seem to sparkle in the sunlight, and her dark skirts stand out all lovely and tailored against the color of the grass beside her. A rush of joy and desire and love stifles your breath. Your heart pounds, and your head feels like it might jump off your shoulders.
And you want to kiss her.
Oh, so badly do you want to kiss her back.
She apparently once felt that way. Why? How? How could she think so much of you?
Did she ever gaze at you in the same way you adored her, from afar?
Kanaya’s mouth is smiling, saying some undoubtedly amusing anecdote to the man helping her with the shop. Her chin turns, and you forget to look away before it’s too late.
Your eyes meet, across the bustling street, and you sigh.
Kanaya stares at you, speaking grin gone once more. Her face softens, and half of her mouth twitches back upward in a hesitant smile. For the first time since Karkat said it, you believe, somehow, that you are forgiven. But how? How could it be alright, if you made this lovely girl so unhappy?
Even from this far away, you can make out a soft little bandage around her wrist. Did something happen? For anyone else, you would think that they had injured themself in the moving and packing process. But her? She doesn’t get harmed by simple slips of the hand, or trips and tumbles.
Concern flashes through you, and she must see it, because her smile turns sad, instead of just a little welcoming.
Karkat pulls a little more insistently at your left thumb, digging a claw into the tip to better get your attention. With a hiss and a wince, you whip your hand away from him, fixing him with an annoyed glare.
“Come on. She will still need time,” he says, eyes burning a message of patience into your skull. “There are a lot of things for the Queen of Sidhe to take care of.”
Looking down at the ground, not even bothering to cast around once more, to glimpse her maybe just in the corner of your eye, you sigh.
“Yes, I suppose,” you reply. Standing straight, you decide to shoulder through the market crowd. She needs space, needs to take control of things again. It’s not a world you belong in, at all. A world full of ribbons of light and laughter like fractured stained glass. A world of poise, cruelty, and in her case, sovereignty.