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Imogen hadn’t thought that she’d ever be back in this laboratory. Even when Ashton had asked her to come, the set of their jaw hard, the glint of their eyes guarded, she hadn’t quite realised what it would mean to her to see it again. This is where Laudna reached for their future with both hands, where she banished Delilah Briarwood with the resilience that had always burned inside her.
Laudna didn’t seem to be as affected, giddily trailing after Caleb and Essek as they prepared whatever equipment and protections and spells they needed to go digging around in Ashton’s brain. She was fully getting in the way, bless her, but neither of their hosts seemed willing to dim her spark. Imogen knew that infectious fondness well.
“Thank you,” Ashton said quietly, gruffly, from where they sat on the examination table. Imogen rested next to them, her back pressed to cool metal. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your sickeningly blissful happy ending, just they said they could use someone to facilitate when they went digging around. You’ve been in there before and—“ they stopped, cracked their neck, crossed their arms. “Fuck, look, there’s no one else I’d trust to do it, alright? So thank you for coming.”
“Of course, Ashton,” Imogen smiled. “Kind of exciting, that you might finally figure out what's going on up there. Magically, I mean. The rest of it’s probably a lost cause.”
Ashton laughed, a sharp snort. “Third brain. I think that ship has sailed.” They caught Laudna’s attention as she flitted past. “Hey, I’m glad you’re here.”
“I don’t know how much use I’ll be,” she said, her eyes still on Caleb. “I’ll get you some tea afterwards, anyway. Or something stronger. You’ll probably want something stronger.” She nodded to herself, decisive.
“Yeah, well, moral support,” they said; Imogen could tell they were only half mocking. “I’ll take barman, though. Anyway, I know you two are a package deal. You go where Imogen goes.” This was enough to draw Laudna’s attention. When Laudna smiled at her, crinkling her nose, Imogen’s entire world lit up. Ashton rolled their eyes, said, “Sickening.”
Laudna turned her smile on them and it sharpened to something gleeful. “Time to lie down, Ashton,” she said, widening her eyes. They didn’t quite gulp, but Imogen heard the quiet, slow exhale. They lay back on the table.
“Probably going to want to stay still,” Imogen laughed as they squirmed, fidgeted, a roil of nerves not discomfort.
“I’d like to see you try this,” Ashton growled. Caleb and Essek were still preparing on the other side of the room; Ashton tried to sit up again.
“Ah, ah,” Laudna said playfully, pushing them back down. Videlicet, she put a hand on their shoulder and Ashton capitulated.
“Laudna, come on,” they protested; she kept her hand in place.
“Maybe this is why I’m here,” Laudna said. She dug her hand into the pocket of her skirt, dumped her quarry onto Ashton’s chest. She enthusiastically locked the immovable rod in place, raised her hands. “Ta-da!”
“Real mature. You know I can just click it off.”
“And I’m sure Imogen will stop you if you try. I wouldn’t mess with her, Ashton, she’s capable of scaring divinity from the gods themselves!” Imogen didn’t bother to hide her laugh at the antics, at the self-satisfied grin on her wife’s face.
“I rescind my gratitude to you both, you can fuck off.”
“Nope,” Imogen said, prodding them gently in the hip, “you said you needed us.”
“Sure, shackle me to a table, I bet the interrogation about the childhood I can’t remember and the magic I know nothing about will be more fucking pleasant when I’m horizontal.”
“It’s perfectly natural to not remember things about your life, people make such a big deal of it. There are whole years of my life I have no memory of,” Laudna said cheerily, “and look at me, I’m fine!”
“You’re right,” they said. “Not about being fine, obviously you’re not fucking fine, but you’re interesting, which is so much better.”
“Alright,” Caleb said. “We’re ready to begin.” He crossed the room to stand by them, a tray of spell components floating by his side. “Laudna,” he gestured to her genially, “if you would be so kind.”
Laudna scurried to the other side of the room, tucked herself into the corner. Imogen held her eye, watched as she tried to get out of the way and still see everything that was happening, stretching up onto her tiptoes. Laudna gave her an enthused double thumbs up. You’ve got this, she said along their connection.
Thank you, baby, Imogen said, circling to stand on the other side of the table. Wryly, she added, If I get stuck in Ashton’s head will you come rescue me?
Always. Where you go, I go, even if we have to live forever in their fucked up little brain.
“We could do without the rod, please,” Caleb said, raising an eyebrow.
“Right,” Imogen said sheepishly, clicking it off and tucking it into her pocket. “Sorry.”
“Ashton, are you ready?” he asked, leaning slightly over the table.
“As I’ll ever be. Given that you two fixed this thing in the first place, it’s probably redundant to tell you to fucking be careful, but fucking be careful.”
Caleb smiled, relaxed his shoulders. “We will be gentle. This is just our first exploration, a lay of the land. If I heard correctly, you’ll have a big drink afterwards.” He turned to Imogen, nodded in encouragement. “After you, Ms Temult.”
Imogen reached out her mind, cast telepathic bond between herself, Caleb, and Essek, who had come to stand by Ashton’s head. Can you hear me? she asked them.
Loud and clear, Essek replied. He flexed his hands, hovered one of each side of Ashton’s head, close but not touching.
“Alright, Ash,” she smiled, pushing towards them. “Knock knock.” Imogen brushed her mind against theirs, cast detect thoughts. She felt them fight their natural instinct to resist her, felt them mentally grit their teeth and let her in.
It wasn’t too different to the last time she’d gone digging around in their head, a universe of possibilities reflected before her like as many stars. Last time she’d had FCG with her. She heard them reflected in Ashton’s thoughts too, a sharp hole of loss, worn smooth by time.
Imogen pushed deeper, opened up her mind further, trying to grasp at the disparate pathways that spiralled beyond her view. She placed the image, the feeling, the infectious potential of it into the heads of Caleb and Essek, made herself a conduit. She could hear them cautiously discussing what she showed them in low voices, a poorly hidden vein of excitement running through them both, but she tried to tune it out, tried to focus only on Ashton. She felt something pulse in the air as they began to cast their spells, felt their magic combine and sink into the mindscape before her.
There was a beat of anxiety from Ashton that she didn’t pass on; instead, she took their hand and squeezed gently. Gratitude followed, and embarrassment. She tried to push a feeling of reassurance towards them, and drew her hand back.
“Ashton,” Caleb said, “can you give us some flavour, please? Gently, if you would.” Imogen felt them start to hum with that strange, chaotic energy as the mind surrounding her started to twist. The galaxy started to streak and smudge, the inflection points of change started to flicker red, then blue, an advancement and a recession. She looked down at her hand as she floated in the void and saw the same hysteresis.
She relayed it all to the mages, prompting more excited muttering. “I only had a brief look previously,” Essek was saying, “but this seems— brighter, somehow?”
“Less stable, I think,” Caleb replied. Imogen felt his magic rooting around her, tried to place a more detailed and coherent image in his head. “Thank you, Imogen,” he said, an aside. “A dunamantic source restored by dunamancy?”
“Less anchored in the timeline, perhaps?” The casting of another spell, then another. “A bit more juice, please, Ashton.”
The lag inside Ashton’s head expanded, the stars smearing to nebulae. Imogen tried to push towards them. Something tugged her back.
“Definitely unstable,” she heard Caleb say, though he sounded faint. Then, with disbelief, “It’s the potential, for sure. Is it feeding itself?”
Imogen tried again, and again was blocked. The possibility around her swirled, tumbled as it drew closer. She raised her hand, mired in echoes, red and blue vacillating to her own, glowing purple. One of the specks of light danced close to her hand. It extinguished.
Imogen frowned, dragged her hand towards the next, which faded to nothingness. One after the other, the sparks of potential were drawn towards her. As they approached, they were quenched. Those that remained flared brighter.
“Imogen?” Laudna’s voice, unsure from the corner. “Are you alright?”
She tried to voice her unease and couldn’t. She tried to walk the path back to herself and couldn’t. Imogen? Caleb’s voice in her head.
Something weird is happening, she managed to say. I think we should stop.
“Of course,” he said quickly. “Ashton, pull it back, please.” The stars in front of her started to vibrate, to pulse faster. “Back, Ashton!”
The response came through gritted teeth. “I’m trying.”
“Imogen,” Laudna said, closer now, though Imogen couldn’t see her, could only see the galaxies pouring into her head. “Come back now, my love.”
Working on it, she said into her head. Something pressed into her from behind, from in front, from both sides; a constriction, an immobilisation. I was joking about getting trapped but—
“Why is her hand doing that?” Laudna asked, frantic. “Ashton, what the fuck are you doing? Imogen!”
“It’s not turning off,” they growled. Imogen could hear the pain in their voice, the panic. “What the fuck did you do?” Fear flooded into her mind, knotting with her own; not for themselves, but for her. Something tugged in her chest, tried to yank her away; Imogen held on tighter. The potential shone as it ate the splintered reality from around her. “Imogen,” Ashton pleaded, “get out.” Their mind—though how could this be anyone’s mind—blazed brighter and brighter and brighter, until she couldn’t see anything but that dazzling, stomach-turning chaos. They tried to push her out, but she was too deep.
All at once the stars went out. She was in darkness, but she couldn’t be, because above her blazed a single, burning possibility. Imogen fell towards it, and fell from the world.
Darkness, a void, a tunnel to the centre of nothingness. Imogen fell, and fell, and did nothing but fall as her continuum tried to unravel.
Here she was, standing in the lab, here she was lying in bed, Laudna wrapped around her. Here she was, Predathos subsuming her, here she was, the storm stealing the breath from her lungs. Here was Laudna trapped in the tree, here was Imogen carrying her through the branches. As long as I keep you in the forefront of my brain, I think we'll be alright.
Laudna! she shouted, but Imogen was no longer a person, and therefore could not scream.
Ashton, crumbling again and again; Fearne, on fire, but the fire was her own. Chetney, monstrous, the size of a house; FCG their eyes red, FCG in a corona of arcane light. Orym, bleeding out into the sand; Dorian, their prince, in a crown of stars.
Laudna on the end of a blade, Laudna holding her hands in the temple, Laudna’s lips pressed to hers, Laudna’s body so close that she didn’t want to breathe. Laudna’s voice in her head and too many voices in her head and the quiet of their cottage and being willing to do the unthinkable to make the noise stop.
Imogen didn’t think she had a body anymore but something was trying to steal the tether from her heart, so taut she thought it would snap. Beyond this realm, Laudna said. Beyond this life. Imogen grabbed it and held it fast, wrapped it around whatever tattered parts of her remained.
Darkness and nothingness. Still she fell, and fell, and did nothing but fall.
Hitting the ground was a welcome reprieve. An instant of falling. An eternity of falling.
Her shoulder twisted and her back barely avoided shattering but she had a shoulder, she had a back, she had skin on which the forest floor could graze and gnaw.
Forest floor. Imogen flopped fully onto her back, spread her arms out wide, and tried to remember how to breathe. The moons shone down on her through sparse branches, budding with incipient spring. The midnight darkness was all encompassing.
She didn’t know if she was still alive, but from the pain in her shoulder it felt like it. Her mind, still wide open, sensed no one close by. There was no connection to Laudna, no connection to Caleb or Essek or Ashton. They were gone, or she was gone. She didn’t know how long she had been falling.
Imogen clawed her way onto all fours and promptly threw up. It was only water, and bile, sour at the back of her throat. Imogen closed her eyes, and tried not to collapse. The world around her spun.
She used prestidigitation to clean herself up, going as far as to jam her fingers into her mouth, casting it again to get rid of the taste. The cleansing buzz of magic against her tongue did nothing to offset the clenching of her empty stomach.
She pulled herself to standing with the aid of a nearby tree. She looked at her hands (normal), her legs (normal), pushed out with her stronger magic just to check (normal). Around her the night was chilled, but not cold. She was alive. The trees and brush weren’t completely alien. It was not the first time she had been shunted across the world against her will.
Imogen glanced around, trying to take stock. Nothing was moving in the trees, the undergrowth. She had thought the darkness unbroken yet when she turned, she spotted a glow; warm, hazy, too large for a campfire, too wild for lamplight. Growing. She started to taste smoke in the air, sooty and acrid, heard shouting, quiet due only to distance. Déjà vu swept over her, so sudden and heady that she almost lost her stomach again. It didn’t occur to her to run from the fire, only towards it.
Prescient and unmoored, Imogen slashed a cross in the nearest tree, snapped off a half dislodged crust of bark that she hastily jammed into her pocket, just in case she needed to find her way back. Then she ran.
Imogen darted through the trees towards the commotion, arm braced over her chest to try and limit the throbbing of her abused shoulder. Branches whipped at her and roots tried to trip her, but she continued her unsteady advancement, the crisp night air sharp in her lungs, growing heavier as she approached. The muffled shouts resolved into those of fear, of panic. The light from the blaze banished night from the forest, illuminated her path through the thicket.
A dilapidated hunting lodge was burning, far past the point of return. The thatch of the roof had caught, smoke pouring from shattered windows; the flames lapped from the frames like as many tongues, vicious and uncontrollable. Gathered around the pyre were a scattered group of what looked like farmers, townsfolk; some had torches and some had clubs and all of them had the look of having made a terrible mistake. Amongst the rabble was a wraith, elongated and mantled in shadow.
Imogen’s heart leapt to see her. Laudna was here, in all of her glory, thrown by the same magic that had grabbed Imogen. She wasn’t alone. Laudna was here.
Laudna was casting frantically, pushing the villagers back with a steady stream of eldritch blasts as they tried to surround her. She was quickly losing ground. Imogen couldn’t see her face through the mourning veil, but as she closed the distance between them, quicker now at the sight of the assault, she could hear her.
“Please,” Laudna was saying, “please, I mean you no harm. Please, just let me leave, I’m just trying to leave.” She sounded so weary, so tired; it made Imogen unbearably sad at the same time as enraging her. She hadn't heard Laudna sound like that in such a long time. It was a scene so incongruous that it would have brought Imogen up short if not for the urgency of a scared mob surrounding her wife.
Closer, she could see what had hindered Laudna’s flight; two others flashing steel in the trees at her back, and a deep, bleeding laceration along the length of her torso. Any equilibrium Imogen was pretending to maintain fled her.
Laudna, she said into her head, trying to project a sense of calm, of reassurance, it’s going to be ok. I’m here, alright? Let’s get you out of there. There was no response, no jaunty exclamation at her arrival, only a small tilt to Laudna’s shrouded head. Worry turned and dug inside her like a screw.
Imogen carefully wrapped her mind around her distorted, bleeding body. With overwhelming gentleness, she lifted Laudna high into the air, her telekinesis an embrace. A twinge of glee curled at the edge of her distress; hovering, shadows whipping from her like tattered ribbons, Laudna was magnificent.
The fear from those left behind poisoned the air so potently Imogen could almost taste it. The inferno raged and Imogen held her anger back with only the clawed edge of her restraint. To those clustered below Laudna, Imogen offered a riposte. She sent her magic forth, compressed into a tight singularity, benign until it erupted in a flash of static, a lancing, piercing scream sent directly into their minds. Like marionettes with their strings cut, they crumpled to the ground as one.
Satisfied, Imogen pulled Laudna close, reeled her in like a kite until she was standing before her. Imogen released her with her mind, steadied her with her hands. “Are you alright?” Imogen asked. “Sorry for stealing your thunder.”
“You saved me,” Laudna rasped, her voice like sandpaper. She began to shrink, to soften, her bones cracking back into place. “Why did you save me?”
Imogen tenderly brushed the shadowed veil back from her face; insubstantial, ethereal, yet bending to her will. She expected to see pain, perhaps a teasing smile at the joke, the performative damselhood. Instead, Laudna was looking at her with so much awe that Imogen thought she might still be falling through the void. Awe, and interest, and uncertainty, all devoid of any familiarity. Shakily, Imogen whispered, “Laudna?”
“You spoke into my mind,” Laudna said. It sounded like a question. She swayed, her eyes fluttering closed. The lump in Imogen’s throat tried to choke her; there really was a lot of blood. “You knew my name.” Then, so quietly that Imogen barely heard it, “How did you know my name?” Before Imogen could untangle the ungainly knot of confusion and panic, Laudna lost her fight, and fainted forward into Imogen's arms, unconscious.
By the light of the fire, Imogen slid to the ground, Laudna cradled to her chest. She didn’t think about how lost she was, how confused. She didn’t think about Laudna and her lack of recognition. She even tried not to think about the blood seeping into her shirt. All she did was take the meagre healing potion from her pouch, the only one she had, and tip it into Laudna’s mouth. The bleeding slowed but the wound remained.
Laudna did not wake. Imogen did not cry.
Imogen lay Laudna’s insensible body down on the bed, kindled the hearthfire with a wave of her hand. It had taken two hours of bloody minded determination to find another cabin to rest in, trying not to handle Laudna too roughly, listening only for those slow, rattling breaths. She hadn’t wanted to camp unless she had to, knew that this close to a town there were bound to be other isolated lodgings.
Her magic had given out after half an hour. Trying to carry her, Imogen’s arms and aching shoulder didn’t even last that long. She had to resort to throwing Laudna’s arm over her shoulders and dragging her, hand fisted tightly in her belts. Laudna had mumbled sporadically, had sometimes tried to take her own steps, but she had never woken fully. Imogen tried to bury the worry deep in her chest but only succeeded in pushing all of her other fears back up.
Now, though the thought of moving her arms made her want to revolt, Imogen adjusted Laudna until she was comfortable, wincing at the soft hiss of pain. “Sorry, honey,” Imogen whispered. With slight hesitation, she untucked Laudna’s blouse from her skirt, rolled it up her torso so she could look at the long gash that sliced from her hip across her stomach, curving over her jutting rib cage. Her pale skin was ruddy with dark, crusted blood.
Imogen prestidigitated the blood away, casting again and again and again until Laudna’s skin was clean and unblemished. The wound was still bleeding lightly. Imogen emptied what little she had and came up empty, searched Laudna’s myriad pouches and clasps and pockets in desperation. Eventually she found a rolled up bandage, unused but grubby. She cleaned that too, then wound it around Laudna’s abdomen until the gash was bound.
She hadn’t found any more clothes, so Imogen cleaned the blood from her skirt, her blouse. She cast so many times that she lost track. Casting helped distract from the memory of Laudna’s eyes looking at her in confusion, from Laudna, dreadful in her murderer’s mourning veil, from the smooth skin between her ribs where there should have been a jagged scar.
Imogen didn’t know where she was. She had to focus on the where of it all, couldn’t contemplate the nagging fear that where should not be her greatest concern. She didn’t think about the unstable marvel of Ashton’s brain. She didn’t think about her body moving out of time with itself. To even consider it was impossible.
It was harder to ignore when she removed Laudna’s belts. Pâté was swinging as he used to, head down like the hanged man, dead and inert. Imogen unhooked him and cradled him gently in her palm, ran a fingertip slowly down his beak, stroked down his sleek back. “I think I might be in trouble, buddy,” she whispered.
“Hey, chin up,” he growled in her voice, accent abominable. “You’re still alive, and Laudna’ll help when she wakes up.”
“She doesn’t remember me.” She petted him again, took the comfort it gave Laudna and made it her own.
“I’m pretty sure that’s because you’ve gone back in time, other mum.”
“There’s no such thing as time travel, Pâté.” Maybe if she kept saying it, then it would be true.
“Still might be in Ashton’s head, then. Could be stuck in a spell.”
“Right. Either way, they’ll be looking for me. They’ll figure it out. Laudna will figure it out.” Imogen pressed the crest of his skull to her forehead, let out a long shaky breath. “It’s going to be ok,” she said to herself. “Laudna is going to be ok.”
She wrapped Laudna’s hands around Pâté, tucked him into her chest. Imogen brushed the hair from her eyes. She looked so young. Physically unchanged, of course, but she had seemed so young.
Circlet, robe, staff; Imogen laid out her meagre possessions on the table by the hearth. Immovable rod. Dagger. 12 platinum, 643 gold, 59 silver, 24 copper, which was nothing to complain about and would do her plenty of favours. Bark from the tree. A particularly pretty rock that Laudna had wanted to take home. Most importantly, the vial of her blood mixed with Laudna’s, her red woven bracelet, and her wedding ring, none of which she ever took off. Imogen put the rest back into place.
Laudna was sleeping peacefully, the fire burned down to embers. Imogen dragged the armchair to the side of the bed, curled herself into it, and kept watch over her wife.
Imogen must have fallen asleep. When she opened her eyes it was to Laudna’s face close to hers, wide eyed and staring. Imogen smiled, softly said, “Hi.”
Laudna tilted her head, pulled back. “Hello,” she said.
“Feeling any better?”
“You saved me,” Laudna said instead. “You brought me here, you healed me. Where is here?” Every word was cautious, confused, tinged with a kind of astonishment that Imogen had only heard once before.
“That’s a damn good question,” Imogen said. “Here is a cabin a little ways from the last place. Outside of that, I’m afraid you have me at a loss. Didn’t do much healing either, that’s a little outside my skill set, just some patching.” It wasn’t hard to mask her fears, her own uncertainty, not when Laudna was so skittish. The calm, placating voice came with no intent at all.
Laudna didn’t seem to know what to say, her dry lips moving minutely as if she was practising her options. Imogen knew what she would hear if she were listening to her thoughts. She had done this once before, after all. “You’re not scared of me,” Laudna finally said, half question, half disbelief.
Imogen lifted an eyebrow, smiled her kindest smile, as easy as breathing. “Should I be?”
“Most are. Especially after—“ Laudna swallowed her own words, tangling anxious hands in her hair. Imogen didn’t reach out to stop her. Relieved of her belts, she had tucked Pâté into the waistband of her skirt.
“Well, what I saw was very impressive,” Imogen said. Laudna ducked her head, her pale cheeks pinking. Imogen was inordinately pleased to make her blush. “Wonderful. Spooky,” she said. Fun scary, she did not.
“Oh,” Laudna said. Imogen heard so many different emotions in that one, soft sound that she lost track of them.
“My name is Imogen,” she said. She saw it all swell in Laudna’s eyes, the same as last time, could remember the overwhelming tenderness and devotion that had flowed from Laudna’s mind to hers. How she had wanted to fold a piece of Imogen inside of herself so she could hold it forever. It felt like reliving a memory with one of her senses muted.
“Imogen,” Laudna said, as if cradling something precious. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Imogen.” Her hand twitched in her hair, as if she wanted to reach out but thought that would be unwanted. Imogen extended her hand towards her, palm up, waited patiently for Laudna to reach back. Cool, delicate fingers wrapped around hers; Imogen gently stroked the back of her hand with her thumb. “I’m Laudna.” Imogen wanted to pull her in, wanted to hold her, envelop her. She kept a hold of her hand instead.
“Laudna,” Imogen repeated, just so she could feel it in her mouth. To this, pink cheeks again, the smothering of a smile. Unbidden, Laudna’s voice in her ear, a surge of memory so sudden that it must have been hovering unmoored; her wife, breathless and teasing, I like the way you say my name, Imogen. Gone as quickly as it came. Imogen tilted her head towards it.
“Yes,” Laudna said, unaware, “but I think you knew that already.” Imogen was still holding her hand, thought maybe she shouldn’t be.
“I did,” she admitted, trying to push away the discomfiting strength of the phantom voice, wanting to hold onto it desperately.
“How?” Laudna asked. She wasn’t angry, or mistrustful, merely curious. Imogen could tell her the truth, could tell her everything; if there was anyone who would take it in stride, it was Laudna. But if this was real, if she had truly found herself in the past, before it was their past, then anything she did could change their future. Imogen thought of the mob, of her interventions, of her choice to go stumbling through the woods with Laudna unconscious in her arms, and hoped that it wasn't already too late.
“I have this— ability. A gift, I guess,” Imogen said instead; the truth, but not the whole truth. “I can hear people’s thoughts. I try not to do it on purpose, try to block it out when I can. It can get real loud, real painful, but last night I was caught a little off guard.”
“You read my mind?” Laudna said, fearful, hopeful. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. What can I—“
“You didn’t,” Imogen interrupted softly, “and I’m not doing it now, promise. Besides, your mind is very peaceful, Laudna. Quiet.” That look again, of wonderment and surprise.
“You lifted me into the air,” Laudna said, voice low and rough. “You stopped them, all at once. You’re very powerful.” Imogen shrugged, aiming for humility, but she could not stop the pleased glow at Laudna’s naked admiration. “Thank you. For what you— For everything you— Thank you.”
“They shouldn’t have done that to you,” Imogen said, trying to gentle the conviction in her voice for fear of startling her. “No one should ever have done that to you, Laudna.” Laudna blinked back a dark sheen of tears, tried to fold in on herself. Imogen was still holding her hand.
“I guess I was lucky you were there,” she said shyly, and everything in Imogen lurched. The undercurrent of fear twisted with something bright; she might have already ruined everything, but maybe her being here was going to allow it to happen in the first place. If she was really here at all, if this wasn’t a strange, cruel illusion.
“Maybe I am exactly where I need to be,” Imogen said gently. Laudna’s smile could have illuminated the entire forest.
Alright, Imogen thought, let’s assume that this is real. If it was real, then she had work to do.
She had to figure out where she was and when she was. She had to get a message to Laudna, her Laudna, and Ashton and Caleb and Essek, tell them what had happened, pass on her location both physical and temporal. She had to figure out how she intersected with Laudna’s timeline and put it right so that they met when they were supposed to, ran away together as they were supposed to. The fact that Laudna knew her now was a sticking point, a deviation that Imogen would deal with at a later date.
Maybe she needed to be here, to have saved Laudna, so that Laudna could find her way to Gelvaan. Maybe she had been here the first time as well. Imogen was no stranger to the intercession of fate, though she had thought herself retired after the Catatheosis.
Exaltant, Godeater, and now time traveller. Well, she had been the Exaltant that crossed the threshold; she had been the vessel for the Godeater and not eaten a single god. She could do this. Laudna’s voice again, cresting from under the surface, a single memory, a dozen of them, a hundred, all overlapping like her cacophonous echoes, You’re very capable.
Sunrise brought an end to Imogen’s scant few hours of sleep, Laudna’s rest marginally better. “I think we should go into town,” Imogen said, knowing the reaction would be poor, suggesting it anyway.
“Oh,” Laudna said, hands directly back into the ends of her hair. “I don’t think that’s— For you, of course, you should absolutely. I just— Historically, that hasn’t really been a good idea. For me.” For Imogen either, not until recently, not when they had been travelling together. Imogen knew every reason, knew every protestation and its validity. She still had to go into town if she wanted to know where she was and she didn’t want to let Laudna out of her sight.
“Ok,” she said, slowly, with an encouraging smile. “Well, I think we need some supplies. There are some— things I need to take care of.” Even with the circlet, she felt the power of that we tug at something inside of Laudna. To withhold from her, to lie to her, rubbed against every natural instinct. “I’d like for you to come with me, but if you think—“
Laudna shook her head, the twist at the side of her mouth pained. Fear, Imogen thought, warring with the instinctive desire to fulfil Imogen’s wants. “Alright. I’ll be back soon, then?” Laudna looked like she wanted to say something; Imogen waited, but was left in silence. Imogen reached for her hand, squeezed it gently, said, “Stay safe.” Laudna watched her go with an unreadable expression.
The path from the cabin towards town wasn’t hard to find, a sign that they should make their stay brief. She wound her way through the trees towards the rising curls of smoke, idyllic against the cloudless sky. Ten minutes, then twenty, through forest and landscape unknown but familiar.
To have called the settlement at the end of the path a town was generous. There were homesteads, farms, a marketplace only just starting the day. Imogen saw a single tavern, a general store that made Gelvaan’s seem extravagant, but she let out a breath when she found what she’d been looking for; an apothecary, and a post office.
She patronised the store first, bought a single pack, two bedrolls, some lightweight crockery, water skins, long lasting rations, the same kind of thing they used to travel with. She also bought a sheaf of parchment, a bundle of envelopes, a pen and some ink, the same black as Laudna’s ichor. At the market she indulged in perishables, bought fresh fruit and vegetables, breads, charmed her way into an extra pastry, sugar dusted and lemony. Laudna’s favourite.
She hovered at a weaver’s stall, haggled the price down on the softest blanket she could find for Laudna, bought herself something more workaday. “Hey,” she said, aiming for casual, tucking her new wears into the pack. “I’m just passing through, got a little turned around. Mind telling me the name of this town?”
“Can’t be too turned around with that accent,” the old woman replied; true enough, that drawl wasn’t too far from her own.
“Taloned Highlands, then? I thought so. I’ve been away from home for a while,” she lied, smile bright.
“Eastern plains, town’s called Marinmarr.” Imogen didn’t know it, but she’d only ever crossed eastward in the north.
“It’s nice, reminds me of being a kid. And the date?” She tried to make her smile affable, approachable, but the old woman furrowed her brow slightly, surprise lost amongst her numerous wrinkles.
“7th Fessuran. Conthsen.”
“Gosh,” Imogen laughed, “I was out there longer than I thought, that’s a whole week off my prediction. Better ask you the year as well, just in case!” The woman smiled politely but Imogen waited, met her gaze and hoped she could not see the urgency with which Imogen needed her to answer.
The frown overcame the lines of the old woman’s face. “836 PD. Girl, what did you say—“
“Thank you so much, ma’am.” Imogen interrupted, her clenched stomach hitting the floor. 836. 836. “The craftsmanship on these blankets is beautiful. You have a smiley day.”
Fuck. 836 was a slippage of over eight years. Laudna was supposed to be wandering the Rumedan Desert right now, wasn’t meant to be in the Taloned Highlands for another five years. What the fuck was going on?
This was good, though. Well, it wasn’t good, it was awful, but she had a place and she had a date, even if the confirmation of her suspicions pooled so much dread in her chest that she thought she might choke.
She paid well over the odds in the apothecary for three paltry healing potions, their entire stock, as well as clean bandages, salves, and tinctures. Then she walked to the edge of the square, sat herself down under a large oak tree, and pulled out her pen.
Laudna, she wrote.
I hope that you get this when you’re supposed to. I hope that you get it at all. I don’t know what happened to me, but all I can do is hope that you’re alright, that this only happened to me, that you’re standing in Caleb’s lab where I left you. That’s a lot of hoping for a girl like me to pin herself to.
This is going to sound crazy, but I think I might be stuck in the past. It felt like I fell through a hole in Ashton's head. My whole body was doing that shifting thing, the way they do when they get especially angry and their head starts lighting up. It was like that cliché of your life flashing before your eyes. I saw a lot of weird shit and it felt like I was going to be ripped apart, that it would never stop. Then I woke up in a forest.
Everyone here seems to think it’s 836 PD and honestly, with what I’ve seen, I believe them. You’re here too, Laudna, but you don’t know me. You seem the way you did when we first met— Scared. Lost. That more than anything tells me that this is real. You were hurt, and I think I might have saved your life.
I don’t know what that means. I don't know if I’ve already changed the future. I have to believe that I haven’t, or that I can fix it. I’m going to try and fix it.
I love you. No matter what happens, I love you.
Yours always,
Imogen
Marinmarr, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
7 Fessuran, 836 PD
She folded the letter carefully, sealed it in an envelope onto which she wrote Caleb’s address and a very specific instruction, then crossed the market to the post office.
The inside was small and dim, pokey and cramped. There was a man not much younger than her half asleep behind the counter. “Morning,” she said, sliding the letter towards him. He startled.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he smiled blankly, blinking the haze away, clearing his throat. “Local?”
“International. Wildemount.” He leaned under the desk, pulled out a large book. When he reached for the letter, Imogen tented her fingers over the top, smiled her most conspiratorial smile. “This one’s a little special, alright?”
“In what way?” he asked, eyes narrowed. “There are restrictions on—“
“Nothing like that,” she said, “cross my heart. I need this to be delivered at a very specific time.”
He looked down at the letter, canted his head to read the address. “I’m afraid I don’t know the schedule of the Rexxentrum postal—“
“Not that either.” She sighed, some of her tightly wound desperation slipping free. She tapped the instructions on the envelope. “I need this letter delivered at this exact time, to this exact address, in eight and a half years, not a moment sooner.”
He looked between Imogen, the letter, and his closed book. “Um,” he swallowed. Without the scowl, she realised that he was much younger than she first thought, with a mop of blonde hair, circular glasses perched over rounded cheeks.
“Don’t have a stamp for that?” she laughed, leaned her hip against the counter. “Yeah, it’s a weird thing to ask, right?”
“Is it important?” She seemed to have piqued his interest, his inoffensive facade falling to intrigue. Imogen softened.
She trailed her thumb over Laudna’s name. “It ain’t hyperbole to say this is the most important letter I’ve ever sent, maybe you too, though I don’t know how exciting it gets for you out here.”
He took the letter from her with great care. Edgeways, he said, “Definitely the most important letter I’ve ever sent, then.” He thumbed through the large leather book, filled with stamps and markings of all different kinds.
Imogen watched as he placed a stamp in the top corner, then a red marking along the bottom left hand side. After a brief hesitation and another glance to her, he slid an ink stamp from the drawer under the desk. She appreciated the effort; she knew the loose, relaxed posture hadn’t reached her eyes. After a sharp thump, leaving behind a green, complex marking, he lifted the letter from the desk and slid it through a high up slot in the back wall. Imogen watched it go wistfully, her best chance out of sight.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “How much are all your fancy stamps going to set me back?” He winced, tilting his head, the glow from the markings on her skin glinting in his glasses. “That much, huh?”
“32 gold?” Imogen caught the curse before it tumbled from her, flicked it away with a jerk of her head. 32 gold to save her life, 32 gold for her future with Laudna. That was nothing at all.
She counted it out in front of him, tried to hand him another gold piece. “For your help,” she said.
“I can’t accept that, ma’am. Legally speaking.” He dropped her considerable pile of gold into a pouch under the counter.
“Alright,” Imogen said. She pulled a pastry from her bag. “Want this instead? Ain’t no harm in that, right?” Even if he shouldn’t have, the spark in his eyes told Imogen he would. She handed it over, asked, “What’s your name?”
Through a full mouth he said, “Arkady.”
“Well, Arkady, if you’ve pulled this off for me, I think it’s fair to say you’ve helped save the world.” He choked. At her crooked smile, she saw him look again at the luminous lightning that danced up her arms, the crackle of power that she had to work to tamp down. She didn’t try now. She raised her head, let her eyes flash a brilliant, blinding white. “Thank you for your help.” She winked, then misty stepped away just for the hell of it.
The trek back to the cabin was more laborious, but Imogen made it in half the time, worried about leaving Laudna for so long. Her fears were well founded; when she opened the door, Laudna was gone.
Imogen almost dropped the bag, panic rushing through her like a river bursting its banks, hands tingling and weak. Absently, she set it down and stepped backwards from the house. She clenched her shaking hands into loose fists, unstoppered the caught breath from her throat.
Laudna wouldn’t leave without her. Laudna would never have left her behind, not from that very first day, that very first moment. Nothing that happened this time around would have changed that.
Imogen turned. Dark eyes were watching her from the tree line. The fight went out of her all at once; Imogen sagged against the doorframe. She didn’t take her eyes from Laudna, who raised a hand in a timid, self conscious wave.
She could not be here without Laudna to ground her, even if this Laudna did not know her. She’d known that, of course, somewhere within the maze of compartmentalisation she’d constructed so she didn’t start screaming. Imogen remembered those cold nights alone in Uthodurn, being unable to hold back the tears; of Moleasmyr and a loneliness so bone deep that she hadn’t been able to breathe. She couldn’t do that again.
Into Laudna’s head Imogen said, as calmly and evenly as she could manage, You worried me for a second, there. Her wife would have been able to handle hearing that she’d scared her, but this was not her wife.
Laudna did not flinch when she heard Imogen in her head, but something in her expression changed. Imogen would have thought it brighter had she not been halfway across a clearing. I didn’t mean to upset you, Laudna replied, unsure, as if she didn’t know if Imogen could hear her.
You didn’t, she said, slinging the pack back over her shoulder. She hopped off the porch, met Laudna at the edge of the woods. “Just didn’t peg you as one to take off without saying anything, not if you didn’t have to. And hey, I was right.”
“I wasn’t leaving,” Laudna said, far too adamantly for Imogen’s lack of accusation. “I just heard someone coming, thought it prudent to—“ There was a flash of something in her eyes, stubbornness, anger, out of step with this new, unprecedented friendship. Imogen read every sharp angle of her with ease; if Laudna was going to tell Delilah to go to hell, if she was going to stay when that bitch told her to run, then Imogen was going to make sure she was worth it.
“Good,” she said plainly. It had always amazed her that eyes so dark could burn as brightly as the sun. “I don’t think sticking around is a good idea, not after last night, but, if it’s alright by you, I’d like to come with you.”
“You’d like to—“ Laudna unfurled, her smile pulling wide, the light of her eyes incandescent.
“If you’d like that, Laudna?” Perhaps it was unfair of her to use everything she knew to her advantage, perhaps it made her no better than Delilah, pulling at Laudna’s strings. But Imogen knew other things as well, knew that Laudna had looked at her, all those years ago, after knowing her for little more than a moment and felt like she was home. All Imogen was asking for was her company.
“Yes, I’d like that very much,” Laudna said, and Imogen started to hear the surety blossom in her rough, disused voice.
“Well then,” Imogen smiled. Bold and riding high on the progress of the morning, she slipped her hand into Laudna’s. “Lead the way.”
They passed a morning of walking in companionable quiet. Imogen kept catching Laudna staring at her out of the corner of her eye; when Imogen glanced over to look, Laudna was always already looking back, either in bewilderment or intense, revealing fascination.
Before they had set off, Imogen had proferred one of the healing potions, had slid it into Laudna’s hand with an encouraging smile. “I can’t take this,” Laudna had rasped, pained. “It’s yours. Please don’t waste your magic on me.”
“It’s not a waste,” Imogen had said, kind but firm. “I bought it for you.”
“Save it? Please,” Laudna had tried to push it back into her hand. “I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you and—“ She had swallowed the rest of her words in regret of her own earnestness.
“I’ve got two more. This one is for now, alright? You’re far from healed.” Imogen stopped playing fair, dipped her head to catch Laudna’s averted eye and smiled sweetly. “Please?” Laudna had nodded shallowly, had dribbled the potion into her mouth as if she didn’t know what to do with it. After that her steps had been surer, more even, and though she still swayed and jerked it was her usual shifting balance rather than that of a hunched, pained animal.
The quiet had become a stranger to Imogen. She missed Laudna’s incessant chatter, irreverent and irrelevant, missed the gentle music of her mind. When they were at home, Imogen always knew where she was, could hear the gentle skittering of her feet or the soft cursing in her mind or the heavy collision of her tools. To walk by her side in silence was disorienting.
She felt as if she could hear every aborted thought that Laudna hastily shoved back down her throat for fear of boring her, or upsetting her, or annoying her. Imogen heard it in every cleared throat, every sharply inhaled breath, as if a tangled knot of words was going to come pouring out of Laudna and she was using all her energy to stop it. Imogen wished she wouldn’t. She knew that once Laudna started talking she would never stop.
When they paused for lunch, a concept as foreign to Laudna as Imogen remembered it being the first time, Laudna found her courage, or fumbled her restraint. “Can you really read my mind?” she asked, holding the gifted pastry like it was a delicate flower in cupped palms.
Imogen smiled at the interest in her voice. “I really can. Not without your permission, though, not now anyway. When we first—“ Imogen said, unguarded, and realised her mistake. Laudna cocked her head like an intrigued crow. “If you’d met me a few years ago,” she said carefully, “then I wouldn’t have been able to help it. I could never stop the voices, before. I’ve got more control now, though, and this,” Imogen tapped the circlet at her temple with two fingers, “this helps block it all out.”
“I’m glad,” Laudna said. “That it’s not hurting you. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“You wouldn’t. I meant what I said last night; your mind is peaceful.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Laudna said quickly, as if she was trying to push all of the words out before she second guessed them. “If you were reading my thoughts. I wouldn’t mind.” She shoved half of a pastry into her mouth to stopper it.
“Thank you, Laudna. That means— Thank you.” Imogen couldn’t stop herself. It was selfish, and dishonest, but she grasped greedily at the kindness anyway. “Actually, would you mind if I took the circlet off? I never thought I’d be saying this, but sometimes it can get a little too quiet, you know?”
Laudna nodded, encouraging. Imogen took off the circlet.
It was like sinking into a warm bath, like curling up in front of the fire after a day in the rain. Laudna’s mind brushed against hers, low and gentle and thrumming. It was so comforting, so familiar, that Imogen almost sobbed. Is this alright? she asked.
Laudna's smile was tentative, complicated, but honest. It’s nice, she said. To have a kind voice in my head, to have your voice— It’s nice.
“Let me know if you want me to put the circlet back on, ok?”
“I will,” Laudna said, but even with only the lightest entanglement in her mind, Imogen knew that she never would.
The afternoon was livelier, Laudna’s thoughts lightly dancing with hers in accompaniment to the calling birds, the rustling leaves. “What am I thinking about now?” Laudna asked.
“Cat,” Imogen smiled, indulgent and enamoured.
“And now?”
“Rat.” Imogen helped her over a fallen tree. “Goats with too many horns. Chocolate croissants. My— my freckles; thank you, Laudna, that’s very sweet of you. A— Laudna, that can’t be a real animal, I know you made that up.” Her laugh was bright, and clear, and Imogen would play this game forever if it made Laudna sound so joyous.
Nothing brought home the reality of her situation as much as making camp with Laudna in the pinking sunset. This had been her life for over two years, rain or shine, apart from the rare nights at an inn, interspersed with abbreviated stays in abandoned shacks. She automatically slipped into their routine until she realised that Laudna was lurking like a spare part.
With the instruction to build them a small fire, and the scant few items she’d bought back in Marinmarr, it didn’t take long to set up for the night. Laudna sat crossed legged on her bedroll like it was a plush bed, pressing her fingers into the mat just to feel the softness. “How long have you been in the Taloned Highlands?” Imogen asked her.
“Is that where we are?” When she looked up the fire glinted in the black of her eyes. It was so striking that Imogen had to force herself not to look away, even though looking was revealing. “I’m not sure. A week, maybe two? I was in the desert for a long time. I don't know. What about you?”
What a question. “Well I’m from here, originally, little bit further west. I also live here, normally.” At this Laudna frowned. “Not here here. Quite a way from here, actually.” Imogen sighed and pulled her knees to her chest, tried to swallow back the helplessness. It caught in her throat instead, forced her words out in a rough whisper. “Laudna, I’m lost.”
She didn’t mean to cry. All of the fear that she had tried to bury, of being stuck, of what she could lose, clawed and tore its way from inside her. Imogen didn’t manage to choke back the sob, which spilled from her along with her tears. She dropped her forehead to her knees and wept for the life she might have already lost.
A cold hand covered hers, tentative, soothing. It only made her cry harder, but she grasped it anyway, held on tightly enough that she felt bones clack together. Laudna held her tighter. She made a calming noise, something like a hum, unpractised but so affectionate that Imogen couldn’t help but smile. She raised her head, let Laudna see her wet eyes, her tear stained cheeks.
“Sorry,” she rasped, only able to muster mild embarrassment in the face of Laudna’s gentle smile. It distressed her to see Imogen cry, she could feel the edge of it brushing against her mind.
“Please don’t be,” Laudna said. “You can cry as much as you want, I don’t mind.” Her thumb stroked over the back of Imogen’s hand, back and forth, familiar and intimate. She didn’t know she was doing it, Imogen could tell. Imogen didn’t stop her. “What do you mean you’re lost?”
“I mean that yesterday I was in Wildemount. That I got trapped in some magic that I don’t understand at all, that it tried to pull me apart and I was falling and then I woke up here.” Laudna’s eyes widened dramatically enough that Imogen laughed, a sad, broken sound, but a laugh regardless. “Yeah. And I don’t know how to get home. It wasn’t a teleportation, or— anything like that, I can’t just walk down the valley to my little cottage. I’m lost, and I think I might be stuck.” Imogen brushed her cheeks dry with the back of her hand.
“Imogen,” Laudna said kindly, voice wrapped delicately around her name, “it’s going to be alright. You’ll figure it out, and I’ll help you figure it out, in whatever way I can. I promise.”
“Laudna, I don’t know what I’d do without you here,” she said, bare and honest. Laudna didn’t hear the certainty behind her words, didn’t understand the years of support and care and love that Imogen had come to rely on, but it didn’t matter.
“I don’t think I’d be here at all if you hadn’t saved me, Imogen. We can both help each other, I think, and look out for each other.” Her tone was questioning, unaccustomed to such a suggestion, and Imogen nodded eagerly.
There was something different in the way Laudna was looking at her; not the love of her wife, of course not, but something more than the surprised wonder of the previous night, something warmer. Imogen felt the realisation like a physical blow. She had been so caught up in the similarities of experiencing this all again, of meeting Laudna for the first time again, of knowing what she was thinking and feeling and gawking at how different she was to the woman that Laudna had become, that she’d forgotten about the ways that she’d changed alongside her.
When they had met, Imogen had been a stranger to herself, lost and out of control and desperately, cripplingly lonely. She’d had magic, had power, but she’d been so scared of it, of herself and the harm she could do, that all she’d wanted was to be rid of it. All she’d wanted was to be normal, and if she couldn’t be normal then she’d wanted it to stop. She hadn’t worn her power on her skin like this, hadn’t been confident and sure of herself. She hadn’t known what it was to live with love and support, what it was for her power to evoke admiration and attraction.
Imogen realised what that look meant, realised that with her tears she had kicked away her own pedestal, or at least shaved a few inches from it. She needed it, this even footing, this reciprocal care. It was the way it had always been; Imogen saved Laudna and Laudna saved Imogen. They had always been balanced. They hadn't been, not here, with Laudna hurt and scared, Imogen having wrenched control, the power of a broken moon at her beck and call. Well, Imogen would spill much more into the dirt than a few tears if it meant restoring that balance.
“It’ll be alright, Imogen. We’ll find out what happened to you, and you’ll be able to go home.” She was calm, and reassuring, but a wave of disappointment flowed from her mind into Imogen’s.
This wasn’t fair to Laudna. She needed to know that Imogen going home was not goodbye, that they were always going to be together. “Laudna, I have to tell you something.” Without thinking, Imogen reached out and tucked a lightless lock of hair behind Laudna’s ear. Laudna looked so surprised by the slightest touch that Imogen remembered where she was, remembered when she was. She remembered with a sharp chill down her spine that Laudna was not the only one listening.
Laudna tilted her head, eyes open and trusting. “What is it?”
“I’m just—“ Laudna trusted her. She would think this was the right decision. “I’m just so glad that I found you.” Imogen let Laudna’s smile climb inside her and tried to convince herself she wasn’t lying.
The next night, by a different fire, Laudna asked about the cottage.
The thought of home was a rock on Imogen’s chest, at once heavy and comforting but with such a press of homesickness that she felt it in her bones. “It’s quiet,” she said. “I mean, there are the horses and the birds and—“ Pâté, who was not quiet. “But for me, it’s quiet.
“It’s tucked away in the forest, in the trees, in a small clearing, a little ways from the nearest village. It’s got a little stable. The house itself is— Laudna, it’s beautiful.” Laudna had made it so beautiful for them. “It’s bright, with these big windows, airy in the summer and warm in the winter. Probably too many blankets and cushions, it takes me too damn long to set them all straight at night. Even the doors have these little carved animals on them, real tasteful. It’s full of books, and weird little trinkets and it’s got this big kitchen and—“
Imogen’s wistful longing faded when she glanced at Laudna and caught her trying to hide her upset behind a smile rictus and pained. How cruel, Imogen realised, to describe the perfect home to a woman perpetually deprived of it.
“It sounds lovely,” Laudna said brightly, as if such falseness could ever fool Imogen, as if she didn’t feel that envious yearning brushing against her mind. She had tangled her hands into the softness of her new blanket, knuckles blanched in constriction.
“It is,” Imogen smiled. “You would love it, I think.” It would be her favourite place in the world.
“Maybe,” Laudna said, her thoughts twisting with nerves, premature self abashment butting against indefatigable hope, “once we manage to get you home, I could come and visit?” She ducked her head before Imogen could respond, her fingers wringing together so obscenely they resembled nothing as much as a briar.
“Laudna,” Imogen said, so delicately that Laudna looked up hesitantly through her lashes, “I would love nothing more than for you to be there.”
“Oh,” she said, half of her mouth pulling up in a surprised grin. Her joy erupted against Imogen’s mind like so many sparks, bright and explosive. “Well I can’t wait to see it!” Her thoughts tumbled to what she should bring as a gift, what Imogen would like best, what Laudna could make to add to her collection of trinkets, because of course Laudna must make something worthy of Imogen and—
“You don’t need to give me anything,” Imogen laughed. “As long as you bring yourself, alright?”
“And,” Laudna said tentatively, her tanglewood of fingers creeping perilously close to her hair, “you live there alone?”
A simple question with an answer more complicated than she could fathom. “I’m not alone,” Imogen said truthfully. “I always thought I would be, never thought that— but no. I’m not alone.” She didn’t say I have a wife who is my entire world, didn’t say a part of my wife lives inside me, as my soul lives in her. She didn’t want Laudna to think that any part of Imogen was unavailable to her, that any part of her belonged to someone else. “Especially not if you’re coming too.”
“You should know,” Laudna said forcefully, something jubilant buried deeply in the crevices of her mind before she knew to look for it, “that horses don’t like me.” Something was kicked loose in Imogen’s head, her wife saying the same thing when she told her she wanted to buy Flora from Faramore, the voice in her ear overlapping with the Laudna in front of her.
The flashes of memory were growing less frequent. She did not know if that was a bad sign.
“These horses will, I think.” Laudna looked skeptical. Imogen resisted the urge to push a memory towards her, Laudna riding behind her on Flora, arms wrapped tightly around Imogen’s waist. “And hey, if they don’t, there’s a mule I think you’d take to like—“
“Oh a mule!” Laudna exclaimed, hands brought quickly to her cheeks. “I’ve always wanted to be friends with a mule. What’s it called?”
Imogen sighed, a sound so fond that Laudna’s eyes widened in excitement. “Her name is Pemmican.”
“Pemmican.” The rough, excited hiss was almost a growl. Strings of black ichor began to spill from the tips of her fingers. Imogen watched in anticipation, relieved that this was one less thing she had to pretend not to know about. The sinewy strings lashed themselves to the furred body dangling from her belt. “Oh, Pâté,” Laudna sang as he jerkily righted himself at her command, as she pulled the skull of his head up to look at Imogen, “did you hear that?”
“What’d you say?” he rasped, and oh, Imogen had forgotten what he sounded like when it was Laudna at the reins, when it wasn’t an undead rat-bird with free will shouting in her ear when she was trying to sleep.
“Imogen has a mule, a new friend for us to meet. I’m sure you and Pemmican are going to get on swimmingly.” Pâté and Pemmican did not get on swimmingly. Imogen spent too much of her time trying to keep Pâté out of the stables. Laudna had eventually just warded the doors against him.
“Oh ho, I’m always happy to make new friends!” he said. Laudna tilted his head. “And who is this?” Laudna’s eyes were apprehensive; she’d been worried the first time as well.
“Hi there,” she smiled, and Laudna relaxed her jaw. “I’m Imogen, it’s nice to meet you. Pâté, was it?” She reached out, took his curled paw between finger and thumb, and shook his hand. Laudna looked at her like she’d painted the stars in the sky. Imogen had to look away before she did something foolish.
“Pâté de Rolo, at your service,” he said, dipping his head, Laudna’s voice noticeably rougher.
“Oh wow, de Rolo, that’s fancy.”
“I live to impress, especially pretty girls like you.” His beak knocked against the back of her hand in a strange facsimile of a kiss. It only nipped a little. Imogen was inexplicably charmed.
“Pâté!” Laudna scolded. “Don’t be rude!” She yanked him into the palm of her hand with a jerking retraction of his strings.
“I don’t mind, really,” Imogen said.
“Yes, well,” Laudna mumbled, face hidden behind her hair as she hooked him back into her belt, “he needs to learn better manners. It’s only been him and me for so long and—“ she stopped, as if realising her words were a lie. She didn’t raise her head.
“Well then, I’m glad you had such a good friend,” Imogen said gently, using her mage hand to tilt Pâté’s head back up so he was looking Laudna in the eye. This, at least, made her smile.
“Is Pemmican your only mule?” Laudna asked. Imogen allowed her the non-sequitur.
“She is. Her and three horses.”
“And the others, they don’t pick on her because she’s different, do they?” Such empathy for an animal she had never met. Imogen hadn’t thought it possible for her to soften further.
“Flora, she’s my best girl. She’s queen in those stables. If the boys were mean to Pemmy, they’d answer to Flora.” Lightly, conspiratorially, she whispered, “No one is mean to Pemmy.”
“Good,” Laudna said. “That’s good.”
As Laudna busied herself by the light of the fire, a first draft, Imogen gathered, at a gift for when she visited, Imogen worked up the courage to attempt something she’d been too scared to try.
Caleb, she said silently, casting sending, pushing her thoughts towards him, you don’t know me, I’m a friend. I’ve travelled to the past. Was with you when it happened. Dunamancy gone awry. Can you help? Imogen waited. Every person she met in the past was a deviation from the future that she would have to fix. Not making an attempt to get home might be just as bad. She waited, and waited, but there was nothing. Disappointment and relief fought a war in her chest.
Her second attempt was more fraught. She thought of Laudna, her Laudna, thought of snakes entwined around ruby, of cold lips pressed to hers. She wrapped her hand around the vial of their blood, and cast sending again. Laudna, she said, can you hear me, honey?
Across the fire, Laudna raised her head, eyes bright. Yes! Hello! She waved. You sound different this time. Why?
“Just practicing, trying something out,” Imogen smiled, trying not to let the disappointment infect her voice. Laudna threw her shoulders around in an accepting shrug, reaching for the scissors on her belt. Imogen took out her pen.
Laudna, she wrote,
It wasn’t safe to stay put, so we’ve started walking. I don’t think I need to tell you why, I’m sure you remember. It’s so strange, walking by your side through the forest, hearing your thoughts tangling with mine without the past four years between us. I don’t know how to describe it, being a stranger to you when my soul knows yours like it’s a part of me. She’s just like I remember you being, even when I’m different. I don’t know what I’d do without you here.
Maybe leaving the place where I landed was stupid, maybe it’s the only path back, but I couldn’t leave her, and she couldn’t stay. I think I can get back if I need to.
I don’t know whether you got my last letter. I hope you did. Hope, again. I tried to reach out to Caleb, but he couldn’t hear me. I have this feeling that it’s probably a good thing, I don’t know why, because I have no idea how to get home. I tried to reach out to you, the you of the present, but could only connect to you here, to her.
Without a better plan, I’m going to keep sending letters. At least then you’ll know I’m alright if one of them gets through. I’m ok, Laudna. I’ll be home soon.
I love you.
Imogen.
The next morning, when she took a diversion into town, alone again, she added to the bottom:
Tredwaar, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
9 Fessuran, 836 PD
She attempted to have it delivered half an hour after her first letter, which should have arrived five minutes after she left. She wished it didn’t feel so much like screaming into the void.
Imogen wet the comb in the stream, ran it gently through Laudna’s midnight hair, trying to work out the tangles. Imogen had found her here alone, trying to brush out five years worth of sand, weeks of forest detritus. Laudna had been shy when she’d offered to help. At some point between a kiss in the market and a cottage in the woods, Laudna had lost her shyness. She wouldn’t say she missed it, exactly, but there was a peculiar nostalgia in marvelling at a Laudna who blushed when Imogen smiled.
Attempting to give Laudna some privacy in an unambiguously intimate moment, Imogen had pulled back from her mind. She didn't know how Laudna felt when, into the quiet of babbling water, she said, “I can’t remember the last time someone did this for me.” Imogen’s hands stilled. “My mother, I think. A long time ago.”
Imogen undid a knot with her fingers. “I like doing it,” she said softly. “I like looking after you.” She couldn’t see Laudna’s face, sat on a tree trunk behind her as she was, Laudna on the ground between her legs, couldn’t see the look her words had prompted. It was not a confession for Imogen, not really. For Laudna though, maybe it was.
“Has anyone ever washed your hair for you?” she asked, voice unreadable. “It’s a nice feeling.”
Laudna had, in their travels together, just like this, by rivers and streams and creeks. She had done it at home as well, tangled together in the large bath she had insisted on. Instead, Imogen said, “My mama left before I could remember, but she must have done. My dad tried his hardest when I was little, though he always refused to braid it the way I wanted. Turns out I’m the spitting image of the wife who abandoned him, and that’s how she likes to wear it, so in hindsight I get it. But he’d wash it for me, and splash around with the toys I wanted. He’d be so gentle trying to brush it out but he’s a big guy, strong; only so delicate he can be with hands like that. He’d always help me tie it back before I could do it myself, though I don’t think I ever had a ponytail that wasn’t off centre, or pigtails that weren’t wonky.” She was not surprised by the fondness in her own voice, but the lack of melancholy caught her off guard. To have a relationship with her father, with both of her parents, that wasn’t buckling under the strain of hurt unspoken was still very new.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Laudna said, her hand cautiously wrapping around Imogen’s ankle.
“Thank you, Laudna.” Gently, with her fingers running through her hair, Imogen asked, “You remember your mother doing this?”
“Yes,” she said haltingly. “Yes, I think so. They have been— gone, for a long time, my parents. Both of them. They were—“ Laudna fell abruptly into silence, her words lost to the breeze. Her shoulders between Imogen’s legs were rigid, a sharp, unbreakable line. Imogen cursed herself for pushing, for not letting Laudna’s mind brush against hers just to check before she was so careless.
“Laudna?” she asked, trying to pull her back. Laudna didn’t answer. Imogen lowered her defenses and could hear nothing at all, no distress, no humming mind, just a singular drone of nothingness. “Laudna,” she whispered, her breath pulled from her in alarm.
“—good people,” Laudna said, as if she had never frozen, as if she had never gotten lost. “Kind people. My mother used to braid it before bed.” Imogen felt the expected distress now, delayed or dredged from deeply within. “You’re not going to braid it are you, I—“
“Don’t worry, darlin’,” Imogen managed to say, unable to unhear the absence. “I’m not braiding it. Happy to leave it down around your shoulders?” she asked, settling it for her with hands that wanted to shake. “It looks real pretty.”
“Oh,” she murmured, bashfulness smothering the panic. “Yes, please, if you think— Thank you, Imogen.” Laudna rested her head against Imogen's thigh, an innocent gesture of comfort. Imogen buried her fingers in her hair, scraped her nails gently against her scalp and Laudna hummed quietly. She tried not to think about the familiar weight of Laudna’s head resting on the inside of her thigh and how her body responded without thought, tried to think instead of Laudna dissociating, her mind stalled, and why it brought a feeling of incipient dread.
“Shall we crack open that jam?” Imogen asked, clutching for a sense of normality.
Laudna laughed, rolling her head backwards to look up at her. “We’ve only just had breakfast!”
Imogen shrugged. “I’m still hungry.”
Laudna unfolded herself to standing, pulled Imogen up by the hand. “Come on, then.”
Laudna,
I’m assuming you’re still in Wildemount, that you would have stayed with the others, but it still feels strange to be walking away from our cottage, like I’m moving further from you. We’re heading north, back the way you came but not as far inland. I don’t know whether she’s realised that we’re walking in a big circle. I don’t know whether she minds.
I haven’t tried to reach out to anyone else, haven’t tried to talk to Caleb again. I’m not sure what good it would do, anyway. I can’t tell whether it’s cowardice to shy from it, or the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I’m kind of pinning all my hopes on one of these letters getting through, of you being able to find me. If it’s putting my trust in you, then I think it’s the smart decision.
Unless you’ve been keeping a massive secret, baby, either this didn’t happen the first time, or you can’t remember it. I’m not sure which one I believe most, it depends on the day. If it didn’t happen then I may have changed the future and, not to brag, but we had a pretty big fucking impact on saving the world. If this has caused another Calamity, I’m blaming Ashton.
If you just don’t remember this happening, if I needed to be here to save you, then keeping my impact here minimal, as I’ve been doing, should be the correct path. That means there’s a reason you don’t remember and, I’m not going to lie, in the harder moments, that’s hard to square.
I’ve been sending a letter in every town we pass. Our supplies have dwindled quicker than I remember, so it’s been handy for stocking up. She won’t come with me, which I understand. It’s the main difference between then and now; having to go into town used to be horrific for us both, I used to have to cling to you. I’m not sure I like the separation, as much as I welcome the ease. You know how much I like to cling to you.
Last night, Laudna asked what I was writing, and I told her the truth, that I was trying to get a message through to the friends I left behind in hope they would be able to find me and help me get home. She was very supportive and told me I was very clever, so I’m taking it as your endorsement of the plan.
Laudna says hi.
I love you. I miss you.
Yours always,
Imogen
Limuur, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
14 Fessuran, 836 PD
Imogen was committed to her plan of non-interference, but it would be a lie to say she wasn’t aware of a potential resource she had, one with a great deal of arcane knowledge. She could reach for her, knew that she was watching. Imogen was desperate, but she was not quite that desperate. Under no circumstances could she let Delilah Briarwood know about the existence of time travel.
When Imogen opened her eyes it was to the roar of the storm. The ruddy sand whipped at her dress, scoured her cheeks. She was in the maelstrom, at the mercy of the tempest, no gently reddening sky, no promise of safety just out of reach. No voice in her ear, begging her to run.
Her body reacted though her mind was calm; the hammering of her heart was a march to the gallows, the catch of her breath the last before she was dragged under. Imogen knew it wasn’t a death sentence. It still felt like one.
Imogen raised her hand, glowing in the shadow of the storm, her usual purple darkening to a deep, pulsing red. She let the dust bite her. There was a pull in her chest; insistent, deep. It was bigger than anything she could possibly imagine. It was so warm, so comforting. It wanted her to come home, to sink into the depths and be enveloped.
Imogen already had a home. “Really?” she called into the wind. “Really? You want to do this now?”
Her feet lifted from the ground, air crackling around her, eyes a burning, electric white. She ascended through the storm, pushing the debris from her, bending the wind to her will.
Cresting through the upper stormfront, Imogen emerged into dim light, calm and steady. The blue promise of Exandria eclipsed the darkness above her. The red of Ruidus swirled below her feet, begging her to come home.
Predathos called to her. She could almost hear it beckoning, pushing into her mind. It was so hungry. It had been hungry for millennia. Imogen knew what it was to bear that hunger.
She let herself fall. Down, through the storm, down, the wind powerless to move her. The ground approached rapidly, red and craggy and unforgiving but Imogen did not touch it, instead fell through it, down through the tunnels and down through the lakes, down until the embrace of Predathos cradled her, the corpus singing to her, the glass alight with her presence.
The petrified veins wrapped around her, walked her easily to the heart of the Godeater, the glow of the stone blinding. At the boundary of the Hallowed Cage she pulled back, stopped. She placed her hand against the glowing god wrought prison but she did not break it, did not step through, though she could feel how easily it would yield.
The draw was stronger here, the hunger ravenous in her chest. Imogen wanted to devour. “Not yet,” she said quietly. “I will come soon.”
Now, the starvation demanded. I’m so hungry.
“You’ll be free soon. Then you can chase that light until you are satiated. Be careful what you wish for.”
Now, it pulsed. Now, now, now.
“Patience,” she said, not unsympathetic but angry also, angry that she would face another seven years of this until finally, finally it was banished. “You’re mine.”
She pulled back from the gate, back from the cage, from the core and the glass and from Ruidus itself, forcing herself awake with a tight, sharp gasp.
Laudna was hovering over her, concerned, her hand stroking Imogen’s hair. “Shh,” she was saying, the noise soothing but unpractised. “Shh, it’s alright, it’s just me, just a dream.” She was a shadowed silhouette in the crimson glow of the Ruidian flare but Imogen could still make out the waterfall of her hair, the worry in her dark eyes. She was so beautiful it made Imogen ache.
“Sorry, Laudna,” she said, voice rough from fractured sleep. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Laudna made a strange tutting noise into the darkness. “Sleep is more of a courtesy for me, at this point, and even then it’s light.” She would learn to sleep more deeply in time, Imogen knew, when she felt safer, when she could tuck her head between Imogen’s shoulder blades. “Are you alright?” Her hand continued to smooth the hair back from Imogen’s face.
“Yeah, I’m alright. I just get these nightmares.” Or at least she used to. Imogen looked to Ruidus, bright over Laudna’s shoulder. Cut it out! she hissed. Predathos did not listen.
“Here,” Laudna said, scrambling away. She reached for her water skin, folded it into Imogen’s hands, a gesture so familiar that Imogen had to close her eyes against the gratitude, the yearning for home.
“Thank you, Laudna.” She drank greedily, Ruidus shining down on them.
“Imogen,” Laudna said with a frown, “why are you glaring at the moon?”
Imogen was so tired of lying to her, of trampling her good graces. “Because the entity trapped in that moon is the one giving me nightmares.” It was an objectively insane thing to say, but Laudna only nodded slowly at her irascible tone, eyebrows slightly raised.
“Fuck the moon, then.” This startled a laugh from Imogen so bright, so fond that Laudna glowed with radiance enough to eclipse the flare.
“Fuck the moon.” Laudna reached up with a nervous hand to wipe a tear from Imogen’s cheek; she hadn’t even known it was there. It took more to unknot a decade’s worth of terror than knowing it was over. “You know, one day, the nightmares will stop.” Imogen said it lightly, like a fairytale, a promise whispered into the trusting night. “One day, I won’t think I’m going to die whenever I go to sleep. One day, I’ll wake up, and I won’t even realise that I haven’t thought about that fucking red moon in weeks.”
“One day,” Laudna echoed. “What survives the winter revives again in spring.”
“Yeah,” she smiled softly, knowing what those words meant to Laudna. “You’d know that better than anyone.” Laudna was sitting close, so close that Imogen could distinguish every eyelash, could feel the edge of a breath against her cheek. To not lean in and kiss her was agonising.
“You’ll do it,” Laudna said, not pulling back, oblivious to Imogen’s fraying willpower. “There’s something special about you, Imogen, I just know it. You’re so powerful, so—“ She groped in the darkness for her words. “So capable.” She took Imogen’s hand as if she was unsure it was allowed. “You’ll get back home, you’ll deal with all the weird moon shit. You have your friends in Wildemount, I’m sure they’re looking for you. And for what it’s worth, you have me.”
“That’s worth everything to me, Laudna,” she whispered, too honest, too sincere. “I hope you know that.” She was pleased, Imogen could tell, but something about the intimacy in her voice inspired a curiosity in Laudna that Imogen needed to be wary of. “I’m going to try and get some more sleep, I think,” she said, forcing the break of a tension only she felt.
“Alright. Well, I’ll be here. Probably not sleeping.” She absently plucked at the blankets around Imogen’s legs, tucking her in without thinking.
“Hey, if the moon starts acting up, will you tell it to fuck off again?”
Laudna smiled. “Promise. Sweet dreams, Imogen.”
Laudna,
What does it cost for you to wear your kindness so openly? I’m practically a stranger but she touches me so gently, as if she’s afraid she might break me, as if I’m a mirage. Do you know how that kindness has saved me? Since the day we met, it has been the most precious, most vital thing. You have lived in a world that should have made you brittle, made you cruel. That it has only made you kinder is a wonder. You are a wonder, and you are everything to me.
Predathos is misbehaving. I thought I was done with the nightmares but here I’m a bright, shining beacon. When I woke up she was stroking my hair. She got me some water. She told me I was very capable.
I hadn’t thought to dreamwalk until now. I don’t know how it would help, other than maybe getting through to Caleb if it became necessary. It would be risky. To be blunt, I’m scared it would attract Otohan’s attention. I’d rather be stuck here than have her anywhere near you. If she followed me and found my younger self instead, I’m worried about the things I would do to try and control the voices. I am relying on these letters. Anything else has too high a price.
I miss home like it’s a hole in my heart but I’m starting to worry about leaving her behind. How am I supposed to abandon her?
I love you with every part of me.
Imogen
Gennele, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
21 Fessuran, 836 PD
Imogen returned from collecting firewood to find Laudna arguing with herself. That’s what it sounded like, at least; Imogen knew better. She slowed her steps, lingered between the trees in the waning light. Shame curdled at the unabashed eavesdropping, but it wasn’t strangling enough to stop her.
“Shut up,” Laudna hissed. “Shut up. Must you insist on doing this whenever I find something that makes me happy?”
Delilah’s response was hidden from her. She had never been able to find that voice, lurking amidst Laudna’s thoughts.
“Yes, yes it’s very clear that you don’t like her, I’m sure the feeling would be mutual. I don’t care what you think. I like her.” How strange, for Imogen to feel butterflies.
“I can't tell whether you are losing your edge after all these years or whether you are simply paranoid. She’s a telepath, of course she knows more—“ Imogen felt a swarm of guilt at Laudna’s defence. It made her sick to admit it, but Delilah wasn’t wrong; Imogen did know more than she should.
Laudna’s voice hardened. Imogen had tasted that anger before, the sharp, angular core of her, but it was the first time she had seen it here. It made Laudna seem less like a dream, brought her into sharper focus. “I am going where Imogen goes.”
There was a tense silence.
“Yes, and I will help her. I am under no illusion that she wants to go home.” Laudna balled her delicate fingers into fists, clenched her jaw hard enough to shatter teeth.
“Even if it was just politeness, I don’t care. Imogen saved me, she looked after me. She’s my friend. She’s entitled to her secrets.”
Whatever Delilah said turned Laudna cold. “You’ve never saved me, Delilah. You’ve only ever saved yourself.”
When nothing else was forthcoming, Imogen walked slowly towards the dwindling fire and used her mage hand to place the extra wood, kindling it and shaping it so it would last them the evening. Laudna was quiet.
Imogen had decimated their supply of peanuts and was starting on the raisins by the time Laudna said, without taking her eyes from the fire, “Can you hear another voice in my head?”
“No,” Imogen said honestly, plainly. “No, I can only hear you.”
“You’re not surprised by the question, though.” Laudna’s eyes were fathomless when she turned to look. Not suspicious, not angry. Interested. Imogen shook her head. Laudna was still, the unflinching rigidity of a prey animal. “There is a voice inside my head,” she said, though she did not sound like herself, far away and monotonous. “It is the voice of the woman who murdered me.”
Imogen knew, of course. She knew everything of Delilah Briarwood that Laudna did, knew all the monstrous things she had done that night in Whitestone, knew all the hissing, purring, goading poison she had whispered in Laudna’s ear for thirty years. She knew how much of a comfort the voice had been to her, before Laudna remembered her murder, and sometimes after. Imogen had spoken to Delilah. She had fought her. None of that knowledge stopped the catch of her breath at the revelation.
“That’s what this is,” Laudna gestured to herself, to the grey tinge of her skin, the pallor and chill, her sharp bones and ichorous tears. All things that Imogen had fallen in love with. “It’s death. Death undone, if only partially. I am dead.” It would be impressive for her to sound both bitter and flippant if the despair of her thoughts hadn’t crept over Imogen’s defences to break her heart. She had never forgotten Laudna calling herself a dead end, convinced that there was no future for her.
The first time, when Laudna had told her about Delilah, it had been quiet, on the tearstained wings of a nightmare, the rope tight around her crushed throat. Imogen had lost control of herself, had been incapable of separating Laudna’s mind from her own, had felt every buried mote of terror and grief as if they belonged to her. She had cried alongside her, had raged, livid and exposed at the unthinkable turned on the kindest soul she had ever met. Laudna had comforted her, had wiped her tears, had held her hand. It had been risible, the selfishness, however unintentional. Laudna had tried to tell her that Imogen’s empathy, her outrage, were a comfort. Imogen had been given a second chance, an opportunity to do it right.
“I think you might be the most alive person I’ve ever met,” Imogen said softly. “Undead or not.”
“She won’t leave me alone,” Laudna hissed. “I haven’t had a moment of solitude for over twenty fucking years and yet I am so lonely. She just makes me feel lonelier.” Laudna pressed the heels of her hands harshly into her eyes, pressed down as hard as she could. Only because she already knew could Imogen understand her when she said, “Her guards beat me to death. They stole my father’s face. She was my only friend for so long. She wrapped a noose around my neck and hanged me from a tree. She has been the only person I could talk to for decades.”
Slowly, inexorable, like the advancement of a mountain, Imogen knelt in front of her. She wrapped her hands around Laudna’s wrists, tugged gently until she acquiesced. She would not let Laudna hurt herself. Revealed, Laudna’s eyes were wet, a dark sheen that rendered them as black as the void. “I don’t feel alone when I’m with you, Imogen,” Laudna said, so quietly her words were almost lost, a confession from deep within the labyrinth. “I don’t feel alone at all.”
“Good,” Imogen said, holding Laudna’s shaking hands steady in her own. “I don’t want you to be lonely, Laudna.”
“I don’t feel alone when I’m with you, Imogen. I don’t feel alone at all.” Imogen tilted her head, frowning. “She cut my ears,” Laudna said, unaware, a self-conscious twist to her mouth. “Dressed me up to look like someone else. Had you noticed?”
“Your ears?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a challenge, though there was an edge to it. Imogen wasn’t sure whether it was for her. Every small pause felt like a well, decades of pain lurking in the depths. She could not parse the way Laudna was gazing down at her. It was unsettling, the ground unsteady under her feet for the first time in years. Imogen reached up and, when Laudna did not object, unclasped the intricate cuffs that covered the scarred tips of her ears. Laudna’s knees pressed against her stomach as she leaned in.
“Yeah, I noticed them. You don't have to cover the scars if you don’t want to, but the cuffs are beautiful.” Imogen knew that Laudna had made them herself. It had taken her a long time. Laudna was watching her closely, expression inscrutable.
Imogen didn’t touch her ears, knew that wouldn’t be welcome, not right now, but she knew what they felt like. She had touched them before, had kissed them. “Laudna, you have the biggest spark I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t mind?” Laudna asked, her words falling out as if they’d escaped her clutches. She was looking at all the places they were touching. “I mean it when I say I’m dead, I—“ Imogen kissed her on the cheek, lingering, and Laudna fell silent.
It was a foolish thing to do, to put her lips against Laudna’s skin. It would have been easier to not touch her at all. Laudna smiled a disbelieving smile and Imogen knew she would have done it again, just for the chance to see it. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for trusting me with this. You’re not alone, Laudna. I promise.”
The nights are harder, Laudna. I can’t sleep without you wrapped around me. It feels like I can’t breathe.
If I close my eyes I can imagine your hands on me. I can imagine your mouth. I’ve stopped hearing your voice; I’d give anything to hear you against my ear. I want to hear you whisper my name.
I want her to kiss me. I want her to slide under the blanket next to me and kiss me, to take my hands and put them on her hips, on her chest. I want her to put her hands in my hair. I want her to climb on top of me and press me into the forest floor until it bites.
She ran her fingers along the lightning on the inside of my wrist tonight and I almost grabbed her. She touched my scars so lightly, so slowly. I wanted to beg her to keep going, wanted her to know how far they spread, the places they would lead her. I wanted to tell her how the hum of them against her tongue would make her wet.
It should feel wrong. It should feel like a betrayal, but I say you and I say her only as a marker of time. There is no her that is not you, there only Laudna, my Laudna, and I am yours as I have always been.
It doesn’t help that I know what you would say. Imogen, you’d say, and gods, Laudna, the way you say my name, why would I ever be upset with you for loving me?
Our first kiss, and that perfect, gentle night, are sacred to me, Laudna, but if she keeps touching me like that I’m not sure what I’ll do. If she kisses me I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.
Yours. Only yours, forever yours.
Bayfield, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
26 Fessuran, 836 PD
One night, when Imogen could not sleep, she made a non-exhaustive list of all the things that she could change if she was stuck here.
Orym, his kindness and stoicism buckling under the weight of his grief, him and Keyleth both. Beware, she could say to the Voice of the Tempest, an attack is coming that will scar Zephrah for life, though for them it is only a trial. They seek to use you to bind your champion. You need to save Will and Derrig, there is no return for those touched by her blade.
It was already too late for Lord Eshteross and his Mistress Prudaj, but she could warn him about Otohan too, could make sure that he stopped Paragon’s Call from getting a foothold in Jrusar, make sure that he knew that when she came for him he needed to be prepared.
Her mother— Gods, the things she could do for her mother. Imogen could take her hands, as scarred as her own, and walk her down a better path. I know you’re doing this for me, she could say, but this is not what I want. This will not help anyone but Ludinus. She could tell her how much she loved her, could show her the relationship they could have, hard won but worth the struggle. Please, Mama.
She could find Ludinus Da’leth and show him an Exaltant capable of holding Predathos. She could earn his trust and his favour, and when he least expected it she could shatter his staff and slit his throat, in one fell swoop save all the Ruidusborn that he yoked to his revenge, the thousands of people that he slaughtered on his bloodied path to the Hallowed Cage. Here she faltered; she hated him more than she hated most, but she didn’t think she had it in her to murder a man in cold blood, even if it was Ludinus.
She could save herself. She could slip into her bedroom in Gelvaan and place the circlet on her own head. This will make it stop, she could say. This will help you bear it.
Imogen turned to Laudna, asleep on the bedroll that crept closer to hers every night, thought of the sharp knife edge of fate and chance that they walked to a future together, and did nothing but take her hand.
There was something wrong with Laudna.
Never one for an overtly linear demeanour, both in her thoughts and her words, sometimes a haze descended on Laudna that blurred her edges. She would stop in the middle of a sentence, though not in the mile-a-minute way that Imogen was used to, where her tongue could not accommodate the quickness of her mind nor its hairpin turns, but in a way that halted her, until she staggered back to where she had left off, none the wiser to her arrestment.
She would forget what she had already said. She would repeat herself verbatim, then tilt her head as if Imogen was imagining things when she pointed it out. Of course, she never said anything, contented in the belief that their experience of the world could be entirely incommensurate.
Her worry for Laudna would have been all consuming if not for the fear that there was something wrong with her too.
Imogen was burning through their supplies at an alarming rate. She was ravenous. Yet she’d had to fasten her corset tighter that morning, poke a new hole in the thigh holster of her dagger.
Last week, she’d eaten through their reserves a day out from the nearest town. It had happened before, the first time around, when they were less sure of their surroundings and had misjudged the time it took to traverse the foothills, and they had been fine. A little hungry, a little grumpy, but fine. This time, with a devouring hollowness that Imogen had only felt once before, her magic had come to her sluggishly, any amassment of power greater than the most basic of spells like pulling on a cloak snagged in the bramble; reluctant, unravelling, likely to tear.
Maybe there was a reason that travelling through time was anathema. Maybe she should have screamed and clawed and poured her power into the dirt the second that she landed here, should have expended herself trying to get home. Maybe her inaction was not the clever, timeline saving strategy she was relying on, but rather something foolish, a choice that would only bring her harm.
Something inside her needed to be fed.
Laudna,
I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend that you can hear me. I think being stuck here might have a price. I’m staying the course; some instinctive part of me is sure that this is the best way, that the more I interfere, the harder it will be to get home, the further from the path I’ll stray. If it gets any worse, though, I’m going to go find Caleb. I’m not going to martyr myself on a stupid sunk cost fallacy.
After weeks of roughing it by the campfire in the woods, we’ve found a little shack to stay in. It’s a classic, Laudna, everything we used to delight in: broken windows, leaky roof, mildewed furnishings. She’s in her element and the lightness it brings her makes the fear of not getting home bearable.
There’s a bed, just the one, and neither of us will let the other sleep on the floor. It’s the closest we’ve come to an argument, and by that I mean she looked at me with those goddamn eyes and said please and I gave her exactly what she wanted. That I asked her not to fight me on this and she yanked out a chunk of hair when I smiled.
I know that she’s falling in love with me. She may not understand what that look means, but I do. She watches me when she thinks I’m not looking, and keeps touching me even when she doesn’t mean to. When she thought I was asleep last night, she brushed the hair from my eyes, lay next to me and agonised over whether I would mind if she took my hand to help her sleep. I don’t know if she’s aware that I know she can see in the dark, that I can’t see her but she is not hidden. When I woke up, my arms were around her waist. It was the first time I’d seen her sleep soundly since I found her.
Her thoughts are what keep me sane. I wasn’t scared that you wouldn’t love me, Laudna, I trust in what’s between us too much to even imagine you not loving me, but to hear it, to feel it, keeps me steady. She loves me. I want to get home more than anything, but if I have catastrophically fucked this up, at least I’ll still be in a world where you love me. That it may take you a few years to realise what that means doesn’t change what’s between us.
I’m not being defeatist. I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t want to leave her either. I want to come home, Laudna. I just need to know there’s a home to come back to.
All my love,
Imogen
P.S. It only occurred to me after I sent the letter that you might not be the only one reading them. Please tell me the others did not read my last letter, Laudna.
Aurinnes, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
3 Quen’pillar 836 PD
By this point, Imogen had her routine at the post office down to a fine art. She was charming, she was forlorn, she was flirtatious when she needed to be. She was starting to get a little worried about the weight of her coin pouch.
The gnome behind the counter took her excessively stamped letter and her gold. Imogen was planning her route through the market when he sighed, like wind down a chimney, too old and too tired for whatever chicanery he suspected, and cleared his throat. He said, “Your name Imogen Temult?”
Her surprise stilled to a dreadful calm, but Imogen was a storm, and she knew what that portended. “Yes,” she said, though her voice was not her own, small and reedy.
He sighed again. “I don’t know how the hell this got in here, but it’s for you.” Unceremoniously, he extended an envelope; unstamped, unaddressed, unremarkable.
Imogen lifted it from him with shaking hands, as if holding her death warrant, or her pardon. To have hope felt perilous, her tender heart held precariously over the fire. Imogen was almost too scared to look.
Almost. The storm arrived in the ringing of her ears, the unnerving thunder of her heart. Written on the envelope was only her name, in the curving, slanting hand of her wife.
Imogen did not remember leaving the post office. She did not recall running through the town square. All she remembered was the letter clutched in her hand.
That she had not torn it open where she stood was a restraint which surprised her. When she reached the tree line, and the solitude she had unknowingly been seeking, Imogen came back herself. Her back pressed sharply into the craggy bark of an old yew tree as she slid to the ground, her knees pulled to her chest.
She ran her fingers over her name. She had thought the envelope unadorned but she could feel the magic steeped into the parchment, could make out the fine sheen of runes scribed around the borders if she flexed her power. There was almost a taste in the air, molten and sharp. It tasted like possibility.
Imogen gently cracked the wax seal. She removed the letter, then started to read. Her eyes flicked automatically to her name before they jumped back to the top corner, where Laudna had written a blunt, galvanising, Attempt 37.
Dearest Imogen,
Essek has attempted a different method for the attunement array, trying to align it with my resonance rather than Ashton’s. He seems hopeful, but frustration has become somewhat of a despised entity between us, and I do not want to be dashed further.
What do you mean when you say you are paying a price? My love, are you in danger? Imogen, you must do whatever it takes to protect yourself, and to maintain yourself. Caleb has warned of energy gradients this far from your anchorage point. If this is what is happening, you can try to mitigate it by surrendering any excess magic (though you must not leave yourself undefended). Ask your Laudna to help you in whatever way she can. Her magic may be complementary enough to fill a gap. Take from her what you need. Do not argue with me, Imogen.
As you have not responded to any of my previous letters, I am assuming they have not found you, so I will tell you again. We are going to get you home. We know where you are. If this letter has found you then we have solved the problem of connection. We just need to figure out how to maintain stability for long enough to reach in and pull you back. Continue to mitigate your influence, you brilliant, clever girl. Then we will figure out how to deal with the Laudna problem.
Things here are a little bit tense. I still cannot stray from the portal. Given this means I cannot be further than sixty feet from Ashton, do not be alarmed if you return to find I have murdered them and built you a doorway of their corpse.
Caleb continues to look at me like I have spat ichor in his spell book. He maintains that, with his knowledge of dunamantic time travel (apparently there is precedent for this, who would have known), you should have left behind an imprint, a residue, some part of yourself as an echo. He says this functions as an anchor, so that you do not get lost, and seems distressed that there is not a shadow of you here with us.
There is a piece of you here, though, isn’t there? That warmth in my chest is a piece of you, a fragment of your soul. We are tethered, you and I. It’s not the first time you have called me your anchor.
It is why I know you are still alive. Not to cast any aspersions on Lieve’tel, obviously she did us a great service and I am forever in her debt etc. etc. but you have to admit, darling, that her wording when she bound us was slightly ambiguous, and there is a not insignificant chance that if you died I would simply keel over. It’s not an end I am averse to, for obvious reasons, but this canary is very much still singing.
I know that this all might have already happened for you, that you will send letters until you cannot any more with no influence from us. I am scared that you are going to walk through the door, eight years older, and I will know that we have failed. I am scared that you won’t, no matter how sure I am of your survival.
There is one thing I know for sure; she will protect you with her life and more. I am still alive, so you are still alive.
I will see you soon. I love you more than anything.
Yours in every time,
Laudna
P.S. I didn’t show the others your last letter, but the fact I didn’t tipped them off to what was in it. I’m not sure how we win this one, love. Sorry.
Attempted 43 minutes after delivery of Aurinnes letter.
Imogen pressed the letter to her forehead, sighed against the parchment like a prayer. It worked. It worked. All of her second guessing and worrying and inaction, and it had worked. She had tried not to stray from the timeline and it had been the right call, whether by intuition or some unknown outside influence. They were telling her to stay the course. They had been trying to contact her the whole time. 37 times.
Laudna, she thought, and the words of her wife against her lips tasted like salvation. Laudna was coming to bring her home.
A tear fell from her eye, wetting the parchment and smudging the ink of her name. Imogen hastily pulled the letter away; she would not lose a word, not if she could help it. After a month of uncertainty, of fear buried so deeply that all she felt was a perpetual stitch behind her ribs, Imogen allowed herself the indulgence. She let herself cry.
It wasn’t loud, nor effortful. There were no heaving sobs, no great wracking of her body. The tears simply spilled from her, wetting her cheeks, dripping from her jaw. She let them come; she could not have stopped them.
When there was nothing left to fall, when she had hollowed herself and her baleful worries both, Imogen tucked the letter into her pocket and pulled out her pen. On the inside of the rune suffused envelope, she wrote,
It worked, Laudna. Attempt 37. Baby, I’m here— tell me what I need to do. I love you. I love you.
She retraced her steps across the town, unable to move at anything other than a clip. When he saw her, the gnome in the post office pulled a face she would have been insulted by had she been able to pull herself down from the clouds. She said, “I gotta append this to my letter. It’s gotta go through the door 45 minutes after the first one.”
“It’s already in the bag,” he replied bluntly. “You can send another.”
Imogen scowled, unwilling to heed; the mage hand stretched from her own, an extension of her will and desperation, unseen to all but her. It dove through the slot, down into a sea of parchment. The hand scrounged and dug until it found affinity, then returned her letter to her hand with the speed and certainty of a loyal hound.
Imogen slapped it atop the envelope where she had crossed out her own name. “45 minutes,” she said, tossing a platinum chit atop the small stack of paper. The old man met her eye and held it. Imogen was not deterred. She’d had a lot of practice dealing with crotchety old gnomes.
With a sigh as obvious as a mountain, he drew the envelopes together, affixing them with a small metal clasp. He scrawled in shorthand she did not recognise on the second note. He very pointedly slid it back into the mail bag. He put the platinum in his pocket.
Stitched onto the breast of his tunic was a name; Acanthus. “Suits you,” she said wryly, but in a strange way it did, that his contrariness would extend to his name.
“Are you done?” he asked, palms flat on the counter.
“I am, but I’ll be back to do it all again in the morning.” Imogen smiled at his scowl, and if it was gleeful then she deserved it today of all days.
“Can’t wait,” he drawled, so evenly that Imogen couldn’t help but laugh. She could have sworn the edge of his mouth twitched.
“Have a good afternoon, Acanthus.”
Imogen left with a lightness to her step she hadn’t felt since Rexxentrum. It was only halfway back to the cabin that she realised her letter had been delivered on the third day after her disappearance. Imogen had been in the past for a month.
When she got back, Laudna was scowling at the ceiling. “What’d it do to you?” Imogen asked with a laugh.
“Oh!” Laudna exclaimed, startled from her silent argument. “Imogen! There’s something stuck up there.” Laudna glanced at her quickly then up to her quarry, before her head snapped back with a sound so sharp it could only telegraph the unsettling of bones. Her gaze widened at Imogen’s reddened eyes, her easy smile. Worry and fear and dread played in concert across her mind.
Too tender to explain, Imogen said, “You didn’t want to just—“ She made a spider of her hand, skittered it through the air with the clacking of her tongue. Laudna only tilted her head, and Imogen remembered they hadn’t always been able to disobey gravity. “Throw something at it?” she added, pathetically.
“Yes, well,” Laudna tutted, understanding the deflection to be a kind one, a plea for time not a rejection. She gestured her hand towards the rest of the room, an assortment of knickknacks discarded on the floor. “My arms are not quite up to the throwing part, I’m afraid.”
“Definitely on the spindlier side,” Imogen agreed. “Very cute, though.” Laudna’s blush was light against the dove of her cheeks but she expressed her abashment with a violent shrug of her entire body, turning her back to hide her face. Imogen, her lingering joy a wave, pulsing from her in an uncontrollable frisson, rested her hands on narrow hips, leaned in to whisper teasingly, “Up you go, then.” She wrapped her magic around Laudna, and let her fly.
Laudna yelped something unintelligible as her feet lifted from the floor, as she began to hover. She grasped at Imogen’s hands, turning frantically in the air, her nails sharp points against the delicate skin of Imogen’s wrists. “Imogen!”
With a low laugh, Imogen held her in place. “You’re in control of it, honey, I’m not the one moving you.”
“What? What?” She began to rise, Imogen’s hold stretching over her head. “How are you even doing this!” With more effort than it should have taken, Imogen realised, and tucked the thought away to consider later.
“Well, I’m very powerful,” she said, smirking, and raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you just dying to know what’s stuck up there?”
“Obviously! Don’t tease me, Imogen.”
“I thought you liked it when I teased you.” She did not mean for it to be so flirtatious, so low and overt. The tightening of Laudna’s hands around her wrists did nothing to help.
“Yes, fine, alright,” Laudna muttered, oblivious, “but if I crack my head on the ceiling and fall dramatically to a second death, I quite literally lay it at your feet.”
“Don’t worry,” she said as Laudna let go, as she floated up in a tangle of limbs. “I promise I’ll catch you if you fall, but I won’t let you fall.”
Laudna attached herself to the rafters with a hooked leg that should not have articulated at that angle. She beamed down at Imogen like an overgrown spider. “I know.”
Laudna shimmied along the beam until she reached whatever was wedged against the roof. When she peeled back the cloth her gasp was that of a child who’d had their every wish granted. She reached out and plucked it from its refuge with both hands, cradled it like it was a vestige.
“Is that a fucking human skull,” Imogen said, high enough that she was embarrassed.
“Hmm, could be elven,” Laudna hummed, turning it this way and that in the light.
“You know what I meant. Laudna, is there a goddamn dead body up there watching us sleep?”
“Just the head, unfortunately! The only corpse watching you sleep is me.” She held it in front of her face, tilted it to look down at Imogen. “Not to worry, young lady” she said, cut glass and aristocratic, for all the world sounding exactly like Lady de Rolo. “You’re just as pretty when you’re asleep. No drool at all!”
Less unnerved by a skull in the rafters than most, and fairly inured to a random assortment of bones by this point in her marriage, Imogen was, unsurprisingly, deeply charmed. She did not duck her head to hide the pleased smile, but planted her hands on her hips and let Laudna see her clearly.
“Maybe they’re a lucky charm, Imogen,” she said, holding the skull out to face her like it was a conversationalist. Only Laudna would think an unexpected skeleton lucky. Imogen let her own feet lift from the ground as she flew up to join her, pushed through the juddering lag, the worrying sluggishness of her magic.
“Maybe,” she smiled, resting her elbows on the beam as she floated. “Gonna give them a name?”
“Hmm. Names are important.” She set the skull back in its resting place, but left it uncovered. “They’ll watch over us.”
“Great. Fantastic.”
“That’s a very sarcastic tone, Imogen, I’m not sure we appreciate it.” She arched an eyebrow, teasingly scolding; everything about her was buoyant.
“No, no, by all means, darlin’, leave the creepy skull over the bed.” Laudna pushed at her gently and Imogen lost her brace, bobbing gently into midair. “Laudna!” She let her mouth fall open in mock outrage. “Did you just push me?” Imogen flew towards her slowly, giving her a chance to protest.
“Imogen,” she warned, but every thought burst brightly against Imogen’s mind. Imogen pulled her gently from the beam, less a telekinetic shove than a cradle. She caught her from behind, Laudna’s back pressed firmly against her chest. Laudna yelped as scarred arms clamped tightly around her waist, as Imogen spun them in a tight pirouette until she shrieked in delight.
Imogen flew backwards around the room in a wide loop, dragging Laudna with her, circling like it was a procession. Laudna’s laugh was bright and joyous, almost a cackle, and she let Imogen lead her in a dizzying dance, let her head fall back against Imogen’s shoulder. Imogen buried her face in dark hair and grinned.
She wasn’t leaving this, not really. This is what she was going home to, and at home it would end with Laudna’s mouth against hers, Laudna leading her upstairs, though the thought of home was faint with the laugh ringing so brilliantly in her ear.
Laudna,
It feels different to write to you when I know for certain you’re going to read it. I want to ask you everything. Are you alright? Are the others? What’s happening there, is there anything I need to be doing to help? Has anything changed, would you even know if it had?
Do you miss me as much as I miss you?
I realised that, if we’re both experiencing time normally, then you’re getting these letters about three days after everything went to shit. For me it’s been weeks. Is that right? Is that even possible? I’ve been trying to figure it out in my head and honestly, I feel pretty clueless. Three days isn’t so long.
I’m not going to argue with you, Laudna, because there is no argument to be had. I will not take your magic from you. I will not feed on your magic. You knew that I would refuse, and so you also know that you cannot change my mind.
The hunger is getting worse. It’s draining my magic too, but I can manage. I’m more worried about Laudna. Is there any way that me being here could be affecting her? That being around me could be, I don’t know— interfering with her? Sometimes it feels like she gets stuck in a moment, or that she relives it? Honestly it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how to describe it, but it isn’t normal, even for you.
I need to know if me being here is hurting her. I need to know if leaving would make it stop. I don’t want to leave her unless it’s to come home, but I can’t come home without knowing she’ll be alright.
It feels like I could reach out and touch you. Knowing that it’s you holding me steady, that it’s you on the other side of whatever this is, keeping me safe? It feels like your hand pressed against my heart. What have I got to worry about, baby, when I know you’ll get me home?
All my love, yours always,
Imogen
Aurinnes, Taloned Highlands, Marquet
4 Quen’pillar 836 PD
Later, lying close together in the dark, Laudna said, “You were crying.” Her words were low and rasping, had been turning on a spit inside her all day. “When you came back from town, you had been crying. Was it— Did something happen?”
Imogen felt the apprehension spill into her guarded mind, the lightest brush of Laudna’s thoughts leaking through her walls. Laudna wanted it to be bad news and the guilt was wearing her like a mask. “My friends in Wildemount,” Imogen said carefully and Laudna tensed, expecting a blow, “they managed to break through whatever was keeping them away. They’ve been getting my letters. They— They managed to send one back.”
“Oh,” Laudna said. Imogen could feel the pull of her lips tight over a rictus she could not see, false and forced. “That’s wonderful. That they— For you, I mean— That’s wonderful.”
“Yeah,” Imogen agreed, because it was. She just wished it didn’t make Laudna sound like she was about to shatter. “They know where I am. They know what happened, I guess, how I got here.”
“And,” Laudna swallowed loudly enough for Imogen to hear. Her voice was a spider’s web. “They’ve figured out how to send you home?”
Imogen, in a heartsore slip of cowardice, thought about putting the circlet back on, allowing Laudna the privacy of her cracking inkwell of grief, already seeping and starting to stain. “Not yet,” she whispered, “but soon, I think.” A soft exhalation, then nothing. Imogen waited, but there was only silence.
Laudna was so still in the bed next to her that Imogen sparked a dancing light above them on the ceiling, a single, crackling bead of purple lightning. Dim light spilled across them, huddled close but not touching. Laudna was on her back, eyes fixed unblinkingly on the roof. She didn’t flinch from the light, didn’t react at all. Imogen brushed against her mind and heard only the held precipice from which Laudna was about to fall.
Pushing up on her elbow, Imogen looked down at Laudna, stuck in a stasis she didn’t understand. It must have been her fault. It had to be; it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. If she was sensible, she would leave, would travel as far away from Laudna as she could in hope that it was her proximity that was the problem. If it wasn’t, she would be leaving Laudna alone when she was at her most vulnerable, and that was unconscionable. It wouldn’t matter for much longer anyway.
Imogen ghosted her fingers across the smooth skin of her brow, the cut of her cheekbones, the sharp line of her jaw. She gently cupped her cheek. “Come back,” she coaxed, trying not to beg. “Come back now, love.” Laudna remained insensate.
Imogen sank back into the flat pillows, extinguished the light. She counted thirty seconds, then another, and another, unable to move her eyes from Laudna next to her, unseen and unmoving, until there was a catch of breath and Laudna whispered, “Good. That’s— That’s good.”
Laudna’s mind tumbled from the edge, a premonition of loss, of loneliness, a dread of going back to the way things used to be. The emptiness of a life without Imogen. She pulled back, let the facsimile of happiness that Laudna was frantically trying to push towards her stand unchallenged. “I’m still here, Laudna.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I—“ Imogen stayed her hand. “Laudna, can I hold you? Would that be alright?” The stillness now was different, taut. She could hear Laudna breathing into the space between them, jagged and nervous, could feel eyes raking her face in the dark.
“Alright. Yes, I—“ Laudna caught her breath on a gasp as Imogen grasped her hand, tugged her gently closer. She lay Laudna’s head on her chest, over her heart. Imogen tangled her hand into Laudna’s hair, stroked lightly through it. “Imogen,” she whispered, but nothing more was forthcoming. Imogen rested her other hand flat on the small of her back.
“It’s ok, Laudna,” Imogen said softly, kissing the crown of her head. “Hold on tight, ok?” Laudna’s arm snaked tentatively around her waist. “I’m here.”
Laudna did not relax for a long time. Imogen would have thought her uncomfortable but for the clutching grasp around her waist. Laudna did not cry, though Imogen could almost taste the effort to remain dry eyed. Eventually, Laudna drifted off. Imogen followed her.
Sunrise brought a gentle awakening and an empty bed. “Baby?” Imogen murmured, hand fumbling in the sheets next to her. Bleary eyed, she blinked the sleep away, unworried; she could feel the steady thrum of Laudna’s mind close by.
Laudna was watching her from the desk, legs crossed primly in front of her. When Imogen smiled at her the warmth reflected in Laudna’s eyes outshone the morning sun. “Morning,” Imogen said, and couldn’t quite understand why she felt shy.
“Good morning,” Laudna smiled, only a little tight around the eyes. She clasped her hands together, tucked them into the folds of her skirt. Imogen’s eyes flicked to the desk, Pâté propped atop her stack of parchment, her letter by his feet, envelope waiting to be sealed and addressed. “Are you going into town this morning?” Laudna asked lightly, her hand reaching out to stroke down Pâté’s beak.
“Yeah,” Imogen said, rolling the kinks from her shoulders. “I gotta post that letter, need to get some more food.”
“I would like to come with you, if you wouldn’t mind,” Laudna said, other hand fully swallowed by her skirt.
Imogen rose to the offer like the dawn. “I would love that, Laudna.”
Walking through the forest towards Aurinnes, Imogen almost felt content, if not for the painful emptiness of her stomach. Laudna’s hand was tucked into hers. Her letter was safely folded in her pocket. It felt like old times, her and Laudna emerging from their hermitage to brave the masses, even if the masses were a half dozen townsfolk. Laudna was nervous to be in public,
Imogen didn’t need to be nestled into her mind to know that, the hand in hers slightly clammy, the chatter slightly stumbling.
“You know, this forest will be beautiful in the autumn, when the leaves turn,” Laudna said, skimming her hand over the bark of the trees lining their path.
“Oh yeah, it’ll be gorgeous. Mountains in the distance, wide open skies. Ain’t nothing like the smell of fallen leaves,” she smiled, squeezing Laudna’s hand. “Reminds me of you.”
Laudna wriggled in delight, a pleased squeak partially swallowed down. Shyly, she said, “Maybe we can come back to see it?”
“I would love that.” She and Laudna could come back here when they were home. It was almost autumn.
“Later in the year. You know, this forest will be beautiful in the autumn, when the leaves turn.”
Imogen bit back her sigh, clenched her jaw against it. She swiped her thumb over the back of Laudna’s hand, a gesture of comfort for herself more than anything. “I think you said that already, honey.”
“Did I? Oh, well the point still stands.” Laudna shrugged, blasé. “Would you like to come back?”
“Yeah, Laudna. We’ll come back.”
“Maybe in the autumn. You know, this forest will be beautiful in the autumn, when the leaves turn.”
It took seven attempts to break her from the loop, but by the time the town became visible through the trees, Laudna had fallen into apprehensive silence. She drew the hood of her cloak over her head, shadowing her face. She tried to hide her hands in her sleeves but neither she nor Imogen were willing to part. I've got you, Imogen said softly in her head.
They might not take kindly to my presence, Laudna replied, tugging at her hood.
Then they’ll answer to me, Imogen bumped their shoulders together. “I’ve got you.”
There were the expected suspicious glances as they wandered through the market. Imogen stared them down, maintained a pulsing psychic aura of nothing to see, harmless, though she didn’t know if it did much good. Laudna kept her head bowed, but she was still a cloaked stranger in a small town.
Imogen dropped too much of her remaining gold on breads and cheese, preserves and honey. Two weeks worth of food that would be gone in a matter of days. She caught Laudna pining over a skein of deep red wool and ignored her many protestations that Imogen should not be wasting her money. Imogen bought a second, a bright lilac that reminded her of the flowers that grew around Gelvaan, if only to bask in Laudna’s stammering pleasure.
Imogen led her to the small post office; the tension that she had coaxed from Laudna with reassuring smiles and deft touches reared its head with a vengeance. Laudna lingered by the door as Imogen slid the letter from her pocket, realising too late that Laudna could not be party the very specific instructions required for her letter to find its destination.
Asking her to leave would break Laudna’s heart, especially after she’d plucked up her courage to come, but Laudna could not hear, because Delilah could not hear. Imogen, suppressing her hatred with limited success, shamefacedly greeted the waiting frown with a, “Morning, Acanthus,” in lilting Marquesian. A raised eyebrow broke ranks from his disdain. “What? I told you I’d be back in the morning.”
“You did,” he sighed, and her affection for him blossomed when he spoke in kind. “Another unnecessary complicated delivery?”
“The same absolutely necessary requirements, yes.” Imogen handed him the letter. She risked a glance back at Laudna, who smiled blankly at the conversation, but twisted her hands when her eyes found the letter. “Same place, same date, an hour later than the last one. Specifics are on the front.”
Imogen watched quietly as he applied his stamps and all the other markings that Imogen knew like the back of her hand. Corner stamp for international delivery. Red stripe for highest priority. The green sigil, slightly different in every town, telling the postmaster in Rexxentrum that the letter was legitimate, that the instructions must be followed. After Arkady in Marinmarr, she’d had to ask for it every time, cajole them into marking it.
Laudna’s eyes were wide at the extensive ritual, wider still at the pile of gold Imogen stacked in front of the old gnome. “That’s—“ She silenced herself.
“Yeah,” Imogen said, small laugh not entirely pleased. “Getting through has been— tricky.”
Acanthus looked between them, lingering on Laudna; her hood had fallen back, revealing pale grey skin, dark lips and eyes, all the other visual markers of her undeath. Laudna shrank. “Thank you for your help, Acanthus,” Imogen said pointedly and added, in his head, She’s not hurting anyone. She’s just trying to live her life. Go to the market. Help out a friend who’s a little lost. He flinched, his stony demeanour faltering with her voice in his mind, the steel of her tone. Are we going to have a problem?
“It’s a very pretty flower. I knew a boy called Asphodel, once,” Laudna said quickly, chipper, excessively friendly. Her fingers knotted in the end of her hair. “He was a baker, though not a very good one. He liked to be called Del, do you—“
“Acanthus is the name my mama gave me,” he said, clipped, though not unkind.
“Names are important,” Imogen murmured, eyes on Laudna.
“Yours still Temult?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.” He held another letter out towards her between two fingers, starkly bare to her practically desecrated envelope.
In Marquesian, he said, “Tell your damn friends so start using the postal system rather than teleporting shit onto my desk. It's disrespectful.”
“I would if I could, and if I could we wouldn’t be going through the rigmarole.” She slid the letter into her pocket, Laudna’s unread words burning against her leg.
“We gonna have to do this again?”
“Probably. Have a nice day.” She grinned, obnoxiously rapping a knuckle against the wood of the counter. She held a hand out to Laudna and it was taken eagerly.
Imogen led her back towards the woods. When they were alone in the trees, Imogen said, “I’m sorry about that. I just—“
“It’s alright,” Laudna said quietly, raising her face towards the sun.
“It’s not. It was so rude, I—“
“Imogen,” she said, with a small, twisting smile, “I understand that there are things about your— situation, that you cannot tell me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Laudna.”
“I know that as well.” She tucked Imogen’s hand into the crook of her jagged elbow, let the rustle of the leaves calm the quiet between them. “It’s a beautiful language.”
“Maybe I can teach you?”
“I’d like that. It might take a while, though,” Laudna said, hope cresting in her voice like a wave.
“That’s alright,” she smiled. “We’ll have plenty of time.”
Imogen didn’t open the letter until they were safely back in the cabin, though with every step of their walk she felt the weight of it like a hand on her thigh. Sliding the letter from the envelope, she hesitated. There was a second note; smaller, sealed. It was addressed to Laudna.
The urge to tear it open was almost overwhelming, but once she recovered from her surprise, Imogen simply smoothed her thumb over the dark wax of the seal, trying not to imagine all of the horrible eventualities that forced her wife to write to her younger self. Imogen held the note out to Laudna. “This one’s for you.”
Her brow furrowed like a ravine. “How did—“ she stuttered, reaching out to take it with uncertain hands. She looked at her name on the parchment, frowned at the seal, in which there was the imprint of a tiny paw. “I—“ Imogen was not reading her thoughts, but she could hear every gear turning. “Imogen, I think I need to take a walk?” Laudna’s eyes were dark, pleading.
“Of course, honey. Take all the time you need.” Watching her go, Imogen realised that reliving this life with Laudna had felt like a bubble, a shield from the upset of how lost she was, a solace amidst her desperation to get home. The walls had been breached.
Dearest Imogen,
Of course I miss you. Not having you here feels like something has been carved from beneath my ribs. Three days is an eternity when you are so far from me.
You’re right, it has been mere days for us, regardless of your month of walking. Caleb suspects that you’ve passed through a condensed point of space-time, that the density of the well is causing some sort of time dilation. He says it’s an incongruity, that it’s relativistic. Whatever the arcana behind it, once again we do not walk in concert. Do not try to align with us, my love. Keep doing what you are doing.
We are getting closer to opening a gate. That you got our last letter— Imogen, it feels like a step towards you after days of shouting into nothingness. I’m not ashamed to say that your note, the small one, made me cry. The others were similarly affected, and I think the catharsis has mutated our frenetic scramble into a determination so potent you’d struggle to fathom it. We will be there soon and we will bring you home. We are so close, darling.
I’m not quite sure how it will work just yet. Please don’t be alarmed if you’re pulled back without warning, it may be that we have to grab you, drag you back through the singularity. If we do, be prepared for a lot of magic to be thrown at you; dispellments, abjurations, healing. I suspect it will be loud.
I can hear you arguing even while writing this, telling me you can’t just leave your Laudna, and I understand, really I do. But if it is a choice between bringing you home when we can and letting her down gently, then it is not a choice at all. She will survive it. I will survive it.
I will be honest. We don't know what’s happening to her. You are there, and obviously you can interact with your surroundings, but there is no precedent of the magic lingering; it has acted upon you, it is not emanating from you, so it should not be touching her. The fact that your hunger is growing, that your magic continues to weaken, is also cause for concern. If it was an energy gradient, as Caleb suggested, then it should be fairly constant, as you are no longer moving in time.
Frankly, I’m livid with how little we know. These men are meant to be some of the foremost experts on dunamancy, it’s why Ashton was here in the first place. Logically, I understand that they are doing their best, and I cannot fault them in the effort they are putting into bringing you home. I just wish we didn’t know so little when it is you that will pay the price for our ignorance. Though, to his credit, Caleb seems more pissed off by our lack of knowledge than anyone. He is taking it as a personal offence.
As to whether this has happened or whether you might have changed the future, I’m afraid it is another matter on which we are as unsure as you. General consensus amongst those who know more than I do is that, as there has been no indication, it may take closing the loop for it to come to fruition. That you might get home and there will be a shift for us all. That you might get home and I will remember.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think either option holds weight as a theory. Surely things would already have changed. Surely I would remember. Imogen, in what world could I ever forget you?
I hope you know how vital your letters have been. Without them we would have been lost. I am so proud of you, my clever, capable wife. You are the reason any of this is possible.
Caduceus is here now. At the start, when we were trying to get our bearings, figuring out whether you had really travelled in time or whether the letters were only a manifestation of whatever magic had trapped you, Caleb asked him to come, asked him to scry on you. Obviously, he was unsuccessful, but we were all aware that could have been because of your circlet.
He has been very helpful. The death ward that comes barrelling at you will be his. He is a very kind man and, circumstances aside, it has been good to get to know him. I have found him calming, at a time when calm feels out of reach. He’s a grave cleric, did you know? Not to brag, but I think he finds me very interesting.
I had Fearne scry on you too, hopeful that the connection you share as Ruidusborn would aid her, but it was to no avail. I asked her to return to the Feywild, to search the threads of fate for you, sure that something so monumental would leave an imprint, but she says neither she nor Nana Morri can see you.
To be candid, I mainly sent her home because Ashton did not want her here. I don’t think they wanted her to see them, didn’t want to see the look on her face knowing that it was their fault you might be in danger. Ashton and I both know how much she loves you. Ashton has not forgotten what happened with Fearne after they tried to take the shard.
Ashton is— To say they are not doing well may be an understatement. Imogen, it has been three days and they will not stop raging. They have not slept. They refuse to stop in case it closes the door and you are lost. Tethered to you as I am, I must remain close and therefore there are three Ashtons within my eyeline at all times. Cad is doing what he can to mitigate the exhaustion but he is burning through significant—
I am so angry with them. I have never been more grateful to someone in my whole life.
In their desperation they might have done something foolish. I can no longer beat around the bush: I asked your mother for her aid. Please do not be angry with me. I had her dream to you but she could not find you. I had her search for you in Ashton’s head, with significantly more protections lest she tumble in after you. She could find no trace of you, Imogen, but she did find the hole through which we believe you have fallen.
Darling, she is not a patient woman. I’m afraid in her pacing I snapped at her somewhat, told her that I was stuck here but rather than chewing at the walls maybe she could go and be bloody useful somewhere else. I fear she may have gone to Xhoras to treatise with the Bright Queen, as the authority on dunamancy. The only thing she has to bargain with is Ashton. I would be furious but I am almost certain they were the one to suggest it to her. I am hoping to get you back before your mother agrees to something we cannot undo.
Writing to you is not the same as having you here with me, Imogen. It is not the same as seeing you smile, or hearing you laugh, or the warmth of your hand in mine. But even knowing my letters to you were lost, it has helped me feel like a part of you is still here. It has stopped me from losing my mind.
I’m glad that you have had your Laudna. I am glad that she has been a comfort to you. You were right, my love, to say that I would not be upset had you given the whole of yourself to her. I could never be upset with you for loving me, for wanting me, whatever that looks like.
I remember those first few weeks travelling together. I remember how it felt like I had been brought back to life. I am glad that she has been given the gift of you. I hope she will get to do it all again in a few years. You make her feel like she is home, Imogen, and that is something new and inexplicable for her. It is no longer new for me, but I still feel it every morning when I wake up next to you.
Hold on, my love. We’ll both be home soon.
Laudna
Attempted 56 minutes after delivery of Aurinnes letter #3.
“Is it disrespectful to string someone up by the orbital cavity?”
Imogen choked on her tea. “What?”
“Just for Angharad, you know?” Laudna held the skull in considering hands. Imogen hadn’t known she’d decided to name it. “If I wanted to hang them up, so they’re not abandoned in the rafters. I’m thinking through my options.”
“We’re, uh, hanging them up now?” Imogen asked. “Why?”
“Ambience,” Laudna shrugged, as if it was obvious. “I’m thinking over there.”
“Hanging smack bang in the middle of the room?”
“Well it was their house first. Maybe. Or maybe they were violently murdered here. It seems wrong that they should be hidden. I’m very grateful to them for letting us stay.” Laudna smoothed her thumbs over the parietals.
Imogen sighed fondly; she had accepted this without dissent many times before. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you could prop it on the rod.”
“What rod?” Laudna asked, looking up as if she’d missed something obvious.
“The immovable rod,” she laughed, holding her hand out, making a deeply unhelpful clicking sound.
Laudna tilted her head. “The what?” Instinct buffeted Imogen before her brain could catch up; something jolted in her stomach, numbed the end of her fingers.
“Laudna,” Imogen said, the ground suddenly unsteady beneath her. “Do you have an immovable rod?” Laudna blinked, face blank. “Locks into place anywhere, even in thin air?” Imogen reached into her pouch, surprised that her hands were not shaking. “Looks like this?”
The rod held flat in the palm of Imogen’s hand, Laudna leaned in close. She lifted her gaze with an unreadable expression. “I— No? Am I supposed to?”
Imogen didn’t know. “That’s alright,” she said, forcing a smile. “We can use mine.”
With her hands low on Laudna’s hips, as familiar to her as the hum of her mind, Imogen lifted her scant frame into the air and allowed her to affix the rod in place. Laudna gave her the honour of raising the skull into place with her mage hand.
Imogen could see it clearly, tucked in bed; the smooth edge of the cranium, the base of the mandible. The bevelled end of the rod.
She had brought that rod into the past with her. Laudna had never seen it before. Imogen didn’t know if that meant anything, if she just hadn’t found it yet, if Imogen had inspired her to seek it out. If Imogen was supposed to give it to her when she left. The hope that had steadily dwindled to embers was too tender to take it as proof that this was always meant to happen.
“Even if it’s only for a little longer,” Laudna said wistfully, unprompted. Imogen rolled to face her.
“What do you mean, honey?”
Laudna was blinking rapidly at the ceiling, stiff in repose. “A nice checked pattern, I think. It feels different to do it with you.”
“Laudna?” Imogen said worriedly, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“Regardless, we really should invest in some curtains.” A strange grief wound itself through her fear. It was getting worse. Laudna was losing herself and Imogen didn’t know how to stop it. She didn’t know if leaving would do a damn bit of good or whether her presence had rewritten Laudna forever. Whether it was already too late.
“Curtains,” Imogen said, then cleared her throat of the roughness. “Curtains sound great. Checked, you said?”
“It feels different to do it with you. I’ve patched up many abandoned houses, and cabins, and shacks. It feels different to do it with you.” Laudna was too still, her mind running through a maze with her body locked away.
“In what way?”
“Regardless. A nice checked pattern.” Imogen took her hand, rested her cheek on a bony shoulder.
“I promise, I’ll hang them the way you want. And we can store the mugs rim up, even if they collect dust.”
“It— It makes it feel more like making a home,” Laudna said, clutching Imogen’s hand so tightly that the points of her nails almost broke the skin. She clung to her as if it were a lifeline. For the first time, Imogen wondered whether Laudna knew that something was wrong, even if it was only an itch at the edge of her awareness. She cupped their clasped hands so that Laudna was enveloped.
“Well, we are. Even if it only lasts for a little bit. Even if the roof still leaks.”
“It feels different to do it with you. I think we should invest in some curtains.”
“We’re making a home together,” Imogen whispered.
“Even if it’s only for a little longer,” Laudna said, so plaintive that Imogen knew she was mourning their time together already.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not home. It just means it's home for now. There’ll be others,” she said. Laudna’s head canted to rest against hers, her body staggering from incapacitation with an audible groan.
“Would you honestly store mugs rim down?” she asked, smilingly scandalised; the abrupt shift in tone lashed at them both. “Imogen, that’s disgusting.”
“It’ll be dusty tea for us both, then,” Imogen said, unable to muster the levity to match.
“Well, you’ve promised now.” Laudna squirmed against her, shaking out the rigidity she seemed unaware of. “Can’t take it back.”
Imogen nudged her onto her side, tucked their knees together. “Wouldn’t want to,” she said softly, her arm draping around a narrow waist.
At some point, Imogen realised, sensibility was eroded by fear. Imogen needed to know what was happening to Laudna, and her friends were clueless. She still had that last, terrible option. If there was one thing she could count on, it was the self-preservation of someone who broke the backs of others in the pursuit of their desires.
When Laudna’s breathing slowed to stillness, Imogen rested her forehead against the back of her head, failed to steady her twisting heart, and let herself into Laudna’s mind. Down she sank, through the familiar cadence, down, through the knotted tangle at the centre of her, down, until a jagged landscape started to coalesce before her, until she was standing with her feet firmly on the ground at the base of a dead, corrupted tree.
She was no more comfortable than the first time she had been here, or the second. Annoyed by the thundering of her pulse, Imogen placed a hand flat against the sickly bark, cast a petty shocking grasp into the tree, the only response a groaning of branches.
A smooth, bored voice behind her said, “This is certainly presumptuous.”
Imogen turned. “I thought it was about time we had a chat.”
“Did you,” said Delilah Briarwood, and it was not a question. She was mostly shade, the shape of her a shadowed suggestion, the cold heart of her a deep purple, but Imogen could still see the anger in her eyes, the cruel twist of her mouth. She would have been lovely if not for the thing inside that wore the beautiful face. “Enlighten me as to what we have to chat about.”
If Imogen had her way, she would never even think about Delilah, let alone talk to her. Imogen had rarely gotten her way. “I want to know what’s happening to Laudna.” Delilah hummed, far from thoughtful. “Is it happening to you too? You’re connected.”
“Laudna and I experience the world somewhat… differently.” That was not an answer, which meant that she was feeling it too; if she wasn’t she would have been bragging.
“Do you know what’s causing it?” Imogen asked. It felt like rolling over, like showing her underbelly to the monster in the dark. To ask Delilah Briarwood for anything made her want to cut out her own tongue.
The side of her mouth pulling up, Delilah took a step closer. She was a being of shadow but Imogen still heard the gallant swish of skirts against the ground, courtly in this hellscape of dread. “You already know what’s causing it, darling. You just want me to tell you it’s not true.”
“I don’t—“
“I don’t trade in lies,” Delilah lied. “It envelops you. Whatever transmutation you meddled with, you burn with it.”
“But that’s not possible,” Imogen said, forgetting in her desperation that showing anything true to Delilah was a mistake.
“Oh, it’s more than possible. I don’t know what fool's errand you and your little friends were attempting, whether you tried to permanently hasten yourself, or tried something amateur with a time stop. I would say that you should know better, but you clearly don’t.” Relief sparked at the edges of her confusion. Delilah might be able to sense the magic that suffused her, but she did not know of dunamancy. She did not know that travelling to the past was a possibility.
Delilah had gotten closer. Imogen had lost her focus. “Why would that affect Laudna?”
“There’s a dead thing in your heart, little girl,” Delilah purred. Imogen inhaled to snap back at her, to rail against the denigration, but the breath caught in her throat when she realised that it was not an insult, that Delilah had tilted her head in unmistakable interest. She was right, though the acknowledgement was galling. The little piece of Laudna that Imogen kept safe within herself was technically dead. A necromancer of Delilah’s calibre, especially one who had yoked herself to the source, would be able to sense it. “Like attracts like.
“Laudna is drawn to it, like a moth to flame,” she continued, low and superior. “She is a hungry thing, isn’t she? Always wanting more.” Delilah smiled at the naked clenching of fists as Imogen effortfully bit back her argument. “She’s trying to take it from you.”
“She’s drawing on it,” Imogen said softly to herself, though of course Delilah heard.
“I’d be proud of her if she knew she was doing it,” she huffed, but Imogen was too lost in her own understanding to fight back.
Laudna, unaware and unintentionally, was trying to pull back the fragment of her soul. That’s why Imogen felt empty, why she was insatiable, because Laudna was sucking the life from her. That wasn’t what happened when they were at home together, but Laudna didn’t have the reciprocal piece of Imogen yet. She didn’t know whether her Laudna pulled from her, or whether she didn’t need to. Imogen didn’t know if she replenished herself from the warmth in Laudna’s chest.
They were tethered, Lieve’tel had given them a shared lifespan. Imogen hadn’t realised it meant a shared life force. Symbiosis; a mutual, entwined existence. The other half of her was missing. The fragment in her heart had turned Laudna into a parasite, but Imogen was tainted. Laudna had siphoned a dunamantic poison alongside her essence and it was unravelling her.
“How do I stop it?” Imogen asked, knowing what the answer would be.
“That’s simple. You leave.” Delilah resisted something as base a shrug, but she regally lifted a shadowed shoulder. Imogen didn’t think that distance would make a difference; souls were not bound by the realms of mortals, but Delilah didn’t know that Laudna was seeking herself. “You were always going to leave her, were you not?”
“I—“
“You’ve been so desperate to get home, scribbling your letters in the evening as she watches.” A pitying smile. “Poor Laudna. It’s going to break her heart.”
“Don’t pretend you care about Laudna’s heart.”
“I care for Laudna a great deal.” Imogen scoffed, only a sliver of her scorn able to fit into such an inadequate sound. “You think me incapable of love.”
“No. No, I think you love that pile of ashes you call a husband.”
Delilah reared like a snake and closed the distance between them before Imogen could blink. “You don’t talk about—“
“About Sylas?” Imogen bared her teeth. “His end was too good for him, but at least you’re both dead now. At least the world no longer has to suffer the consequences of your love.”
“Now that is rich, coming from you.” Delilah folded her rage back inside her mouth, lips pulled into a smile that would have been charming had it not been so devoid of warmth. “You look at sweet Laudna with your heart in your eyes and the ring of another woman on your finger. Are you writing to your wife?” A tilt of her head, a pout, all in aid to the gleeful pity of her voice. “You promised Laudna you’d protect her, yet you’re disintegrating her very tenuous sense of self with the consequences of your foolishness. What an effective weapon you turned out to be.”
Delilah was right and the sheer anger of it shattered Imogen’s calm facade. “She is going to sunder you.”
“She cannot,” Delilah said, matter-of-fact. “We are intertwined.”
“Well, that can be undone,” Imogen vowed. “Your soul is a slippery thing, Delilah. Isn't it already claimed? You sold it to the Whispered One and have absolutely jack shit to show for it.”
“My, if only Laudna knew how thoroughly you’d violated her mind. The Whispered One—“
“The Whispered One is barely a god and he’s going to fall in the blink of an immortal eye.” She could feel it still, the hunger of Predathos, the ghost of it that remained. She had her own hunger now.
“What’s this? Piety? Why Imogen, I didn’t think you had it in you.” Delilah smiled. “A wannabe exemplar. Laudna will love that.”
“I’m pretty far from pious, but I’ve met them, the gods. Yours too.” Imogen leaned in, met that cruel smile with one of her own. “They trembled before me.”
Delilah laughed, mocking, but Imogen only let the truth of her shine through, the starving chasm that Predathos had left behind. Faced with the confident twist of Imogen’s mouth and that utterly alien gaze, Delilah narrowed her eyes. “What are you?” she asked. It was not fear in her voice, nor confusion, only deep, greedy curiosity.
Imogen’s eyes flashed a violent, ominous red. “I’m the storm,” she hissed, and brought the might of Ruidus down on them both.
“Imogen?” Laudna murmured as she pulled back into herself with a gasp, sharp spike of pain lancing through her head. Laudna tried to roll over but Imogen held her tighter, pressed her head more fully into her hair, and screwed her eyes shut. “Another nightmare? Let me—“
“No, nothing like that. I’m fine, Laudna, I just need a second.” The throbbing behind her eyes began to ebb, but the weakness did not. She had overextended herself with magic that should have been second nature. She whispered, though to whom she did not know, “Just give me a second.”
Her hand was spread wide over Laudna’s stomach; chilled fingers covered hers. Imogen took a deep breath, then another. “I’m sorry, Laudna.” She searched for it now, that connection between them, felt the fragment of her wife that was bound to her soul. It was holding her steady and hollowing her both.
“Hush, I’ve told you, there’s nothing to apologise for.”
Imogen blinked the tears from her eyes and said it again anyway. “I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t wake until well after lunch the next day, her exhaustion an endless shackle. Imogen was not alone in her deterioration; Laudna lost herself for a full twenty five minutes, Imogen trying to coax her back with her heart lodged firmly in her throat.
Purposely feeding the yawning pit with her magic would abate her symptoms, she knew, but she also knew that all it would do was refresh Laudna’s supply. She tried to starve it out instead and succeeded only in making herself sick with hunger.
Dusk was approaching by the time she managed to get away. Imogen knew it might be too late, but she hurried towards Aurinnes anyway, a slow and shambling run, but a run nonetheless.
The post office windows were dark by the time she arrived. “No, no, no,” she muttered under her breath. “Fuck.” She rapped on the door with no hope at all.
The sparking of a lantern kindled her hope with it. A distorted shock of grey bobbed through the small window as an unnecessary number of locks were turned, followed by the drawing of bolts.
Acanthus seemed unsurprised to find his nemesis banging on the door after hours, though she imagined very little surprised him anymore. “I know you’re closed, I’m sorry, I know you are.” Imogen held up her envelope, sealed and thin. “Please.”
Beady eyes traced her wan face, her limp curls. The desperation that bled from her gaze was matched by the blanched clench of her fists, the undeniable tightness of her plea. He pulled the door back sparingly enough that she had to sidle in, but he did pull it back. With a familiar sigh, he held out a hand.
Wordlessly, Imogen surrendered her letter. The postmaster marked it, and stamped it. Imogen reached for her coin pouch and could not find it. “Not now,” she begged. “Please, not now.”
“Everything alright?” he asked, her distress call secure in his hands. He was direct, but not confrontational. Imogen reevaluated the severity of her disarray.
“I need to go back for my money, I— I’m sorry, will you wait?” The lump in her throat roughened her words to gravel. “I know I’m crossing all sorts of lines here, and I know saying it’s an emergency probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but—“
The old gnome dropped her letter into the post bag and the surprise compelled her silent. “I’m off the clock,” he grumbled. The familiarity was stark; Imogen missed Chetney so suddenly it felt like a slap.
“Thank you,” she said. The unobscured gratitude runkled his shoulders with discomfort.
“Back in the morning?” Imogen realised that she had started to wear him down only in time to leave.
“I don’t think so,” she admitted, tone indecipherable even to her.
Acanthus only grunted. “Better take this, then.” He pulled an unstamped letter from the pocket of his cardigan. Her name was still the only thing on the front.
“My friend,” Imogen hedged, knowing she was asking for an awful lot, “the one who was here with me the other day.”
“The terrifying—“
“The kind woman who happens to look a little scary,” she interrupted, trying not to eject the entirety of the civility from her words. “She isn’t able to come with me. Just— Sometimes folks don’t take too kindly to her. Can you just tell them she’s harmless? If you hear something stirring, give her a warning? We’ve been staying in an old cabin, to the north. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Acanthus did not agree, but he didn’t argue either. Imogen thought that was probably as much as she was going to get, that insisting would be severely pushing her luck.
“Thank you for all of your help,” Imogen said at the door. “I won’t forget it.”
Laudna, you need to bring me home, right now. Things are falling apart. I don’t care if it’s not safe. I need to leave. 6 Quen’Pillar.
We’re coming, my love. I need you to go back to where you first came through. I know you can get there. You’re very capable. After midnight tonight, before sunrise.
Like the falling night, an imperceptible slide then all at once inescapable, Imogen understood why Laudna didn’t remember and Imogen understood what she had to do.
Once, in a quiet voice, fervent but intimate, Laudna had confided that she would do it all again if it led her to their cottage. That she would walk willingly into Delilah’s embrace, fall on Otohan’s blade a thousand times over. That she would spend thirty years in darkness with only her tormentor for company and the ghost of a rope around her neck, as long it led her to Imogen.
Laudna was going to get her wish. Imogen was going to condemn her to years of isolation, and fear, and pain, to save their future. This was what Laudna would want, Imogen knew it as she knew the touch of her hand, the taste of her kiss. It would be the cruelest thing she had ever done.
Laudna was waiting for her when she returned, perched precariously on the end of the bed. Imogen gingerly closed the front door and turned to her with such a melange of dread and relief that Laudna inhaled sharply. “You’re going home, aren’t you?” she said. “It’s happening.”
“Yeah,” Imogen said, barely more than a breath. Everything in Laudna’s face plummeted before she caught it by the very edge, smoothed it into a placid mask. Imogen would have rather had the devastation. “We’re out of time.”
“Alright,” Laudna said, her smile fragile. “Do you need— Are they coming here?” Imogen shook her head. Laudna fisted her hand into the sheets. “What can I do?”
Like approaching a startled animal, Imogen slowly closed the distance between them. Laudna looked up, helpless, and Imogen went to her knees before her. She held Laudna’s gaze and did the unforgivable. “All of those doors you have in your head, all of those sealed and locked rooms,” she said. “I need you to make a new one for me.”
Laudna frowned, confusion writ large. Those eyes could never hide anything. Then, all at once, with something close enough to horror that Imogen felt it like a punch, she understood. “No,” Laudna whispered, a reflexive denial. “I don’t want to forget. Please, I’ve forgotten so much.”
“Laudna,” Imogen said, a cracking whisper of her name.
“Imogen,” she begged, “I don’t want to forget you.”
“I’m sorry.” Imogen reached out, shaking hands gripping Laudna’s knees. Her voice was not her own, rough and wet and broken. “I’m so sorry. Me being here is hurting you, I didn’t realise—“
“It’s not,” Laudna protested. “It’s not, I’m fine!”
“Laudna, it's making you sick, the magic that sent me here. You know what I’m talking about, I know you do.” She reached for Laudna’s hands, tangled in the sheets. Whether it was to ground herself or Laudna she didn’t know. “It’ll only be for a little while, ok? This is the only way to keep you safe.” Laudna held her hand so tightly that it ached. “I promised that I would keep you safe.”
“I don’t understand.” It was an awful thing to ask, but Laudna sounded so young, so innocent, that it curdled into monstrosity. “I know that you need to go, I’ve always known that you’d— Once you’ve gone, then that magic will be gone too.”
“It’s more complicated than that, honey. I barely understand it.” Imogen lifted their joined hands, held them close to her chest. “I promise, one day, you and I are going to unseal this door together.”
“But I love you,” Laudna said, and Imogen’s heart shattered like the fragile thing it was. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
The broken shards pierced whatever paltry defenses she had left. There was no tempering when she whimpered, “I love you, too. I love you so much.” Imogen wanted to kiss her, kiss the sadness from her, kiss the useless apologies and reasoning and selfishness into her until all she knew was the depth to which Imogen loved her. Imogen would not change their first kiss. She would not unwrite their future in the attempt to save it.
Instead, she pressed her lips to Laudna’s forehead, the ridge of her brow, the sharp cut of her cheekbone. She kissed the freckle under her eye, beloved and beautiful, unashamedly lingering. Anyone could have looked at her in all the time she had been here and known that the entirety of her was Laudna’s. If Laudna had been capable of seeing the love that tied them together, the drag of her mouth over cool skin would have been undeniable.
“I can’t do this,” Imogen whispered against her temple. She pulled away, fell back on her heels, the tremor of her hands unmistakable. She didn’t know who the plea was for. “I can’t, it’s too awful.” Imogen dropped her head to Laudna’s knees, everything about her voice wretched. She held back her sob in denial of selfishness, but the sheen of tears spilled over to wet the skirt pressed to her face.
Laudna let her cry. Cold, spindly fingers carded through her hair, intimate and comforting. “It’s alright,” Laudna said, words forced around a constriction in her throat. “If this is what is needed to keep y— us safe, then you must.” Imogen raised her head, stared up at Laudna. “It’s alright, Imogen.”
“You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.”
“No.” She smiled, tremulous. “But I trust you.” Laudna said it simply, as if her trust were something Imogen was worthy of, even when it was causing her pain. It was a gift so necessary, so undeserved, that Imogen was forced to let Laudna go so she could brush the tears from her own cheeks. Laudna gently nudged her hands aside, smoothed them away herself.
Imogen, offering very little in the face of Laudna’s grace, said, “You’ll see me soon, I promise.”
“How soon?”
“Not soon enough for either of our likings, but not too long.” It felt like a lie, but there was nothing else she could say. “Soon enough that it’s bearable.”
“So tomorrow, then?” Laudna said. It would have been a joke if not for the thickness of her voice, her piercing gaze on Imogen’s face, as if looking closely enough would stop her forgetting. “When we met, you looked at me like you knew me. I don’t remember everything about that night, but I remember you were upset. It— It was because I didn’t recognise you,” she said, and Imogen’s world was upended.
She should not have been surprised; she’d never really been able to hide anything from Laudna. Imogen had been so focused on concealing all of the things that she knew, she had lost sight of the fact that Laudna was usually the smartest person in any room.
Laudna would not remember this. Relieved of the burden of secrecy, Imogen said, “I’m not meant to be here yet, Laudna. I’m early. I’m sorry, there are things I can’t—“
“Just one. Will we still be together? I know that it won’t be like this, that you have— But will we still—“ Imogen did not answer, not in words. Instead, she brushed her mind against Laudna’s and gently pressed the image of the cottage towards her. Their safe haven in the woods. Laudna’s breath hitched as Imogen let the peace of their life together weave with the comfort of home; no details, no great revelations about the love they shared, but an all encompassing serenity.
“It’s ours,” she said simply. “I’m not alone because it’s ours, yours and mine. It’s our home.”
“Our home,” Laudna whispered.
“We just have to get there.” An invocation and a vow. “You’re so strong, Laudna. I’ve never met anyone as resilient as you.” Imogen took Laudna’s hands into hers, held them as she had in the temple, souls bound together. “Trust yourself, alright? Don’t listen to Delilah. You just gotta hold onto that light inside you. That hope that no one has ever managed to extinguish, not fully.”
Imogen raised Laudna’s hands to her mouth, kissed the knuckles of one hand, then the other. She pressed her lips to a bare finger where one day there would be a ring, unmoving and immutable. “I’ll still be with you. You’ll still feel me, I promise.” Imogen rested her hand over Laudna’s chest, fingers spread wide. Laudna didn't let go, only allowed Imogen to guide her, and laid her hand atop the one on her heart. “If you feel a pull in your chest, a tether, hold onto it. You’ll find me again. We won’t know each other, but we will.” In a promise that sounded like an incantation, she said, “Beyond this realm, beyond this life.”
Two fingers tapped gently against Laudna’s sternum. “I’ll still be here.” With the other hand, Imogen slowly unwound a length of deep, red wool from the spool hitched to Laudna’s belt. She gestured to Laudna, let her sever the string with a snip of her scissors. Like threading a needle, Imogen clinched the end of the thread with her mind. Her red woven bracelet had become a totem, a lasting symbol that Imogen was not alone, that she was loved. It had become emblematic of her love for Laudna. Imogen lifted her arcane needle and threaded a new strand through the middle of the weave. It was not the same red, darker and thinner, a different skein from a different time. It twisted through the wool like an artery. “You'll be here with me, braided with me.”
Laudna did not speak, only let the barest tips of her fingers stroke along the bracelet. Her eyes darkened with tears but they did not fall, held back with a stubborn force of will. “Alright,” she said. Laudna took a deep breath, let the rise of her chest press against Imogen’s hand. “I— I’m ready.”
“Ok,” Imogen rasped, though she was far from ready, didn’t think she would ever be ready. “Lie down for me, Laudna.”
Lying together like hands pressed in prayer, Imogen gently cradled the face of the woman she loved. “I love you,” Laudna whispered, so close that Imogen felt it against her lips.
“I love you.” Imogen wished it didn’t feel so much like saying goodbye.
Hesitation overcome only by necessity, Imogen reached out her mind. She asked for permission and Laudna opened the door. A wave of grief tried to push her back, threaded with love and trust and an incandescent spark that might have been hope. Imogen almost let herself be carried away but in the enormity of the pulse there was no doubt. Apprehension, yes, and not a small amount of fear, but certainty.
Imogen let Laudna’s mind flow into hers, let herself find the labyrinthine twist of her memories. There was so much, too much, decades of lonlineness and longing and anger repurposed to bloody-minded kindness. It was a beautiful mind, twisted and complex, with shadows and traps and a slight shimmer that was like nothing Imogen had ever experienced. Parsing through the whole of her would have been impossible, would have taken the rest of her life, so instead Imogen looked for traces of herself.
A flash of lilac at the edge of her awareness, the crunch of lavender in the spring sun. Imogen reached towards it and was pulled into a hall of light.
The feeling of home that she had pushed towards Laudna was reflected back at her, a calmness and a comfort that shone at the edges with an aura of wonder. There was nothing that Imogen could see, nothing more than disjointed abstraction, but she had the sense of standing in a bright room, with a warm fire, and could only think ours.
The mindscape around her was far from static, ebbing and flowing as she reached towards it. It was all angles and turns and cleverly hidden pockets; it felt so much like the bare essence of Laudna that even in one of her most shameful moments, Imogen could not help but smile. She could sense Laudna trying to help, feel her trying to corral her memories into some semblance of coherence. Imogen pulled the slightest edge of awareness back into her body, only so she could smooth her thumbs along the sharp ridges of Laudna’s cheekbones in gratitude.
Imogen asserted her desires within Laudna’s mind, co-opted her sense of architecture and solidified it. Within the walls of a cottage-shaped corner, hidden in the forest of her consciousness, Imogen executed her perfidy.
Like a lure dropped into a lake, a tangled web spun in the darkness, Imogen snagged the edges of herself within Laudna’s memory and pulled them in. A month of light and joy, memories fresh and vibrant; Imogen tempted them into her domain, unable to leave anything but a dull smear in their wake.
When they brushed against her, Imogen felt them anew, her perspective altered, her view inverted. Awareness hazy but for warm hands pulling her though the brush of the forest, gentle fingers combing through her damp hair, radiant arms locked tightly around her waist as she flew and flew and flew. The sheen of tears in striking eyes and soft lips pressed to her cheek and a smile that took the bottom from her world.
Imogen touched them, guided them, slotted them together until they were a swirling cloud, buffeting gently against the walls of her cage. Then, denying the encroaching detachment that tried to protect her, she closed the door.
Imogen was not finished. Something else was here with her, the oil slick of tendrils proliferating through the shadows of Laudna’s mind. With levelled thought, Imogen grasped it in the vice of her mind. She yanked on the scheming, branching filaments, and rode the infection all the way down to the taproot.
Delilah was screaming bloody murder, Imogen could feel it echoing in every corner of Laudna’s mind. She had never really been able to hear her, even entwined with Laudna, but here, this deep, Imogen could feel her like a noose. Anger; so much rage, so much hubris. So clever, so ambitious. So full of a grief that Imogen had once tasted, would have made her bedfellow had Laudna been unable to deny the grave a second time. Aware of the knowledge that Imogen was about to sever, Delilah Briarwood screamed for her husband.
Were it anyone else, Imogen might have felt pity, maybe even regret. For Delilah she provided only extraction. She gave her none of the care she had shown Laudna, none of the assurances of rescindment. Imogen simply pried her will down the connection and excised the past month from her awareness with the precision of a scalpel, the excavation of an ill omen from the world. Imogen rended her memory to dust and scattered it to the wind. The screaming stopped with a snap.
Imogen painted Laudna’s mind with a sense of peace, a sense of calm. With delicate hands she slowed the whirring of her thoughts until Laudna fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Only for now, she thought. Let me unlock it. Imogen pressed the flat of her hand to the ephemeral manifestation of a door, and sealed it with a desperate, pleading wish.
There was one last thing to do. Imogen drifted back towards the surface and planted a single idea; that Laudna should walk back into the desert, that it was no longer safe to stay here. The manipulation made her sick; it didn’t help to know that she had already done it, that Laudna would walk in the Rumedan for another five years. She paused, let the gentle melody of Laudna hum inside her mind. Imogen would never forgive herself.
When she pulled back and opened her eyes, she was met with the sight of Laudna’s face close to hers, eyes closed in repose. Imogen reluctantly let go of her face, wiped a dark smudge from under her eye. Imogen did not fight the urge to place a light, glancing kiss between her eyebrows.
With less precision but equal fastidiousness, Imogen set about cleansing herself from the cabin. Parchment and envelopes went into the hearthfire, her pen tucked into her pocket. She left the rations for Laudna, one of the remaining healing potions, and any collected firewood, tucking them into a cupboard to be found by industrious hands. She emptied her coin pouch too, little of it that remained, left Laudna to find more money than she’d had in decades sealed away in a wooden box on the mantelpiece. She hadn’t had much when they first met; Imogen hoped it was through expenditure rather than an uncharacteristic deference to ownership.
With regret, she lifted the skull from its batten with her mage hand, tucked it back into the rafters where they had found it. She unlocked the immovable rod and let it fall into her waiting hands. The expenditure of the slightest wisps of magic was staggering, blurring her vision in a dizzying burst of lightheadedness. She could not linger.
She unclasped the gifted spool of wool from Laudna’s belt, unearthed its matching sister from her pocket. They went in the desk drawer. In a move both reckless and prudent, Imogen slipped the immovable rod into the pocket of Laudna’s skirt. Just in case.
The back of her hand brushed against a soft, folded note. Imogen brought it into the open, the parchment thinning, the popped wax seal imprinted with a tiny, familiar paw print. She brought it towards the fire, intending to chase the rest of the paper. By the scant light, approaching embers if not for her destructive feeding, she could see the care with which Laudna had beheld it, the fraying of the corners from multiple readings.
Imogen knew she was going to open it as sure as she knew it was the wrong thing to do. She told herself that there might be something else she needed to put right, but she did not quite believe it. Delicately, Imogen unfolded the letter. It read,
I vow, I swear, I make covenant with you, that Imogen is under my protection and no harm will come to her.
I need to be honest. Imogen has been sent to you by unstable magics and if she stays she will die. Being so far from her anchor point is draining her. She will wither. I am sure you have seen her hunger, the growing unreliability of her magic. She needs to come home.
She does not want to leave you. She refuses to abandon you. She has written as much to me and plainly. I promise you this is not goodbye. She will come home and she will come to you.
I need you to do one thing only, and that is to do as Imogen asks. Even if it hurts you. Even if it hurts her. All I ask is that you trust her. If you and I are anything alike, and believe me, darling, when I say that we are, then trusting Imogen should be easier than breathing.
She loves you. You will see her soon.
I am your servant, and hopefully soon your friend.
Imogen pressed the note to her chest, looked back towards the sleeping form of her wife, tucked into the bed that they had only shared for a handful of nights. Oh, Laudna, she thought, though she did not know which one of them she meant. It didn’t matter; there was still only one of her and Imogen ached for her no matter the year. She folded the note into her pocket, next to her own letters. She would return it when she got home.
Aware that she could dally here until it was too late if only to avoid the pain of leaving, Imogen glanced around the room one last time. Crossing to the side of the bed, she reached down and brushed dark hair behind a gilded ear, then leaned down. “Come find me,” she whispered.
Imogen closed the door silently behind her, stepping out into the dark forest. Through the break in the canopy she could see both moons shining down on her, the stars bright against a clear, spring sky. It was time to go home.
Imogen drew the shard of bark from her pocket and grasped the Staff of Dark Odyssey, primed since the day after she arrived for good measure. There would be nothing to see if she turned back, so Imogen did not. She activated the staff, focused in on the bark, and teleported away.
She must have been destined to fall in this copse; the only reason Imogen did not crumple to her knees was a desperate clutch at the tree in front of her. She staggered, arms wrapping around the trunk like a grapple, cheek scouring the bark, and only just managed to hold herself up. The world spun and blurred as the feedback from the staff knocked against what little life force was left in her, bleeding her dry and laying her out. That she was not flat on her back was a miracle.
Breathing heavily, the shiver that wracked her almost sent her to the ground. Her teeth chattered so violently that she worried about cracking a tooth, but nothing felt cold other than the soul shard in her chest. If this was punishment for rewriting Laudna’s memories, then it was well deserved.
Imogen slowly lowered herself to sitting with a steadiness only someone excessively kind would call purposeful. Legs akimbo on the forest floor, Imogen did what she should have done earlier, and listened to the warnings of her wife; with her teeth, she pulled the stopper from her last remaining healing potion, and poured it down her throat. It barely made a dent in the empty reservoir of her energy, but at least the shivering stopped.
Without instructions other than destination, Imogen was unsure what to do. She didn’t know if there was something they needed from her on this end, something she should be doing, or not doing. Laudna would have told her, she finally decided, and allowed herself to close her eyes.
Imogen drifted, dreamless, whether on the verge of sleep or unconsciousness she did not know. The dark blackened around her, deep night of the forest falling proper. Sunrise seemed like an impossibility when the air around her began to hum with a low, inaudible charge. It was small at first, a bite at the points of her jaw, a discomfort in her ears, before it began to meld with her own static, coruscating over the marked skin of her arms.
Imogen was yanked to awareness by a hook in her chest, an invisible barb trying to drag her from rest. It jerked, and pulled, but there was nothing for her to see, to grasp. Her short breath tasted sharp, a strange metallic tinge at the back of her throat; undoubtedly magical, overwhelmingly foreign.
Overcoming fatigue with desperate anticipation, Imogen scrambled to standing, tree by her back an aid and prop. She reached out a hand to the magic shimmering through the air like a haze, the markings on her hand flaring. Imogen tried to let the relief drown out the fear, though with her life at stake the tangle was inextricable.
With a crack so violent that the silence of it was antithetical, a fissure was torn through the world. The hook in her chest pulled and pulled and pulled, the other half of her trying to guide her home by force. Imogen surrendered herself to Laudna’s will and her wife dragged her into nothingness.
Laudna had been right; landing in the lab was loud.
Imogen’s knees cracked against the stone floor, the defined lines of a great working of magic glowing a deep purple underneath her. She was deafened, a cacophony of shouts and thoughts all cascading through her after a month of solitude in the woods. There was a burst of amber light in the corner of her vision, a breeze that smelled like the depths of the forest.
Magic pulsed in her veins, ran her through, warded and shielded and healed her. A gentle hand patted her shoulder, gone before she could clutch at it. Imogen pushed against the ground with a strength she did not have, staggered to her feet in the runic glow.
There weren’t that many people in the lab, but all of them burned with a power that made it feel cramped. Caleb and Essek, each on the diagonal in front of her, hands raised, fear and determination in the rigidity of their shoulders; Caduceus closest, by her side on the periphery of the rune, hand still outstretched from the warding touch; Ashton, three of them, racing and lagging until they finally collapsed into one, staggering against the back wall, at last allowed to rest.
In the middle of it all was Laudna, her Laudna, hands clenched by her side, a reassuring smile on her face. It did not quite reach her eyes, but she was the calmest of them all, the most assured. Imogen sometimes worried that Laudna’s faith in her strayed into delusion, but Laudna liked to argue that she hadn’t yet been proven wrong. Heart in her throat, Imogen couldn’t quite stop the small uptick at the side of her mouth. Laudna’s smile blossomed into something wondrous, fierce and proud and radiant. Imogen couldn’t look at anything else.
Imogen had been with her, but it had still been a month without her wife. She could see now, would have been able to see even with the barest of glances, all of the ways that Laudna had changed, had grown. Untouched by the near decade, there was nothing in her face that showed the path that she had walked; no lines by her eyes, in the crinkle of her smile. In her baring though, there was surety; confident, comfortable, content to do the haunting, her own ghosts banished. The love that spilled from her was understood, embraced; it had always been there, but now it was married with intent.
Laudna smiled at her, relieved, understanding, and Imogen’s guilt tried to eat her alive. Gone was the twist of her mouth; she didn’t deserve the comfort, not after what she had done.
The magic thrown towards her wound to a halt, the mages tense as if they were waiting for it to fall apart. “She’s still here,” Caleb said, and there was surprise in his voice. “Stay where you are, Imogen.”
“I’m not sensing anything that indicates instability,” Essek added, though not to her. “She’s solid, complete.”
“Worse for wear,” Caduceus said softly, “but not in any danger.”
A smirk twisted the edges of Laudna’s smile, inviting Imogen to conspiracy. “I told you so.”
“Alright,” Caleb sighed. “Imogen, we’re going to go slowly, take down the protections one by one.”
Without taking her eyes from Laudna, with a thickness to her voice that Imogen could not control, she said, “Hi, by the way.” A sly laugh from her wife that did nothing to soften the sickness in her core.
She at least made Caleb smile. “Hello, Imogen. It’s very good to have you back. Let’s make sure we keep it that way, ja?” The rune below her did not dim as Caleb spread his hands and drew a burning sigil in the air.
They had been right to be worried. The second the first ward dropped, Imogen felt a surge of energy, a rush of vitality that thundered in her chest like a heartbeat. Laudna gasped and doubled over like she had been punched. “Laudna!” Imogen cried, starting towards her.
“Don't move!” Essek shouted. Imogen ignored him, tried to run towards Laudna, but in the field of the rune taking a step was like moving through molasses. “It’s not safe!”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Laudna hissed, straightening. She almost growled in frustration. “Imogen, are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she said, though only her body felt so; gone was the headache she hadn’t realised had been pulsing steadily behind her eyes, sharper was her vision without the haze around the rim. “It's a feedback loop. That’s why— It’s what was making me sick. Laudna, we’re sharing a life force. Right now, there ain’t enough to go around.”
Laudna’s eyes sharpened, darted. Imogen could see her trying to make sense of it, that shard of lightning in her chest, a divine tethering. Ashton silently crossed to her side, held out their hand. Laudna, who did not need support, her back already straightened in indignation, stared at it, then directly into their face. “Absolutely not.”
“Laudna—“
She snapped, “I will not—“
“Laudna, look at her.” Laudna was already looking, had not taken her eyes from Imogen for more than a moment. Sudden influx of life aside, Imogen knew she was not exactly rosy cheeked and bright eyed. To call her haggard would have been generous. Still, Imogen shook her head.
“Essek,” Imogen said, aiming for steadiness and finding only rough pleading, “get me off this fucking platform.”
“We need to make sure—“
“Right now, Essek!” He looked to his partner, who beheld Imogen with an assessing gaze, though not one lacking in warmth.
Caleb sighed. “All of this is so far from anything that we understand.” He looked between Imogen and Laudna, in defiance of all his knowledge, unable to see anything but each other, and nodded. With a flick of Essek’s hand, the rune faded.
Imogen was already moving. She stumbled from the edge of the circle and Laudna was there to catch her. Laudna did not have the strength to hold her up but she did so anyway, spindly arms clamped tightly around her waist. “I’m sorry,” Imogen whispered, no tears left in her to make it a sob. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Shh,” Laudna mumbled, her chilled lips against Imogen’s temple. “My love, it’s alright.”
After a month of holding herself back, when Imogen turned her head to kiss her, something in her hesitated. But Laudna smiled, understanding, and closed the distance between them. A kiss of home, of reassurance, closed mouthed and chaste, and Imogen realised she had a few tears left after all. I love you, she said into Laudna’s head. I’m so sorry, I love you so much.
You’re here, Laudna said softly, steady and reassuring. That’s all that matters. Whatever else happened, it doesn’t matter now. Imogen buried her face into Laudna’s hair and held on as tightly as she could.
The rest of the room had averted their eyes in politeness. Apart from Ashton: she could see them over Laudna’s shoulder, staring at her, jaw as hard as diamond. The wet sheen to their voice matched their eyes when they rasped, “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m really fucking sorry.”
Disentangling herself from Laudna with reluctance, Imogen struggled through the few steps it took to stand in front of them. Ashton was exhausted, only held up by the wall behind them. Together they made a striking pair. Ashton set their shoulders, unable to stop themselves bracing for a blow. They seemed surprised when Imogen instead wrapped her arms around their shoulders for a weak, tired embrace. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know what that must have cost you, how much it hurt. Thank you.”
“If I’d—“
“It’s alright, Ashton.” They wrapped a single arm around her waist, jade and familiar. Is she alright? Imogen asked in their head.
She will be now. Imogen turned back to her wife, who was pretending that she hadn’t been looking at her with worry in her eyes.
Caduceus insisted on tea. It didn’t do much to fill the gaping hole that Imogen and Laudna needed to replenish, but it was warming, and comforting, and Laudna did not remove her hand from Imogen’s thigh the entire time, which did more to revive her than anything. When Caduceus graciously lifted the empty teacup from her grasp, his fingers brushed gently along the back of her hand; the magic that filled her felt wild, full of moss and fungi and vines. He smiled down at her and Imogen understood how Laudna would have found him calming in her time of need. She reevaluated her certainty that there hadn’t been something special about the tea.
Caleb wanted her to stay for further observation. Imogen made it very clear to him that she was going home with or without his help.”This happened on my watch, Ms Temult,” he said. “I am deeply sorry for it.”
”This was always going to happen, Caleb,” Imogen smiled. “Hell, I’m pretty sure this needed to happen. So thanks, for the apology, and for helping bring me home. And, you know, for the opportunity, I guess.”
He handed Laudna a small, green sending stone. “If something happens once you are home, you call me immediately, and we will come.”
“Right,” Laudna said, tucking it into the pockets of her skirt.
“Laudna, it is for emergencies only,” he said, and Imogen could not imagine what had passed between them when she was lost for him to speak to her with such suspicious understanding.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” she tutted, taking Imogen’s hand.
“Trying to remove important safeguards within your study of abjuration does not count as an emergency.”
”If you say so,” she said, rolling her eyes, and Imogen knew that she would be misusing the stone with abandon. “Home?”
“Home,” Imogen agreed, and let Caleb’s magic envelop her.
The cottage was exactly as she remembered. Unsurprising, given that she had thought of it in every quiet moment, every night when sleep evaded her. Imogen ran her fingertips over the mantle of the hearth, the smooth carpentry of the doors and banister, the armchair and the bookcase and the blankets.
Laudna kindly harried her to the sofa, her worry almost another presence in the room. Imogen caught her gently by the wrist, trailed her touch down the palm of her hand until they were entwined. “Stay with me?” she asked.
“Of course, of course,” she said, but did not sit down. “Just let me get— You need to—“
“Laudna,” Imogen smiled, and it was only a little shaky, “all I need is to be with you.” This steadied her, and she sank into the cushions by Imogen’s side.
Imogen kissed her, once, twice, the thing she had missed most in the world. Laudna was more than willing but only soft, tender. She pulled back and studied every element of Imogen’s face. She smoothed a thumb over her brow, cupped the line of her jaw, sharper than it should have been. “What happened?” she asked, lightly enough that Imogen knew she could have refused and Laudna would only kiss her again.
Imogen ghosted a touch over her temple, pale and chilled and familiar. “You already know,” she whispered. Imogen brushed her mind against Laudna’s, was granted permission without asking. She slid down to that hidden little corner, took a deep breath, and unsealed the door.
There was no great revelation, no great rewriting of their timeline. Laudna simply closed her eyes and sighed. “Oh,” she said, little more than a flutter of air against Imogen’s cheek. When she opened her eyes they were so bright, so overflowing with love, that Imogen could do nothing but kiss her. “You were there,” Laudna said, breathless, voice wide in wonder. “You’ve always been there.”
Laudna rested her hand over her own heart. “One morning I woke up and there was something in my chest, something warm. I hadn’t been warm for such a long time.” Her eyes clouded in recollection, two sets of memories joining and jostling. If anyone could hold multiple realities in their head, it was Laudna. “It felt like the dawn. It felt like purpose. It kept me going.” She lifted her other hand to Imogen’s chest, mirrored the hold. A shared life. A tether. “I followed it all the way home to you. Thank you for keeping your promise.”
“Laudna,” Imogen said, tremulous, and Laudna took her shaking hands in her own, “what I did. I—“
“You said we’d unseal it together. You said you’d come home to me.” Laudna kissed her and it was a statement. “We are home and we are together.”
“Thank you for saving me. There and here, over and over again. Everyday.” Imogen swept the hair back from her face, revelled in touching her without restraint after so lengthy a denial. “I missed you so much.”
”You saved me too, Imogen. It doesn’t matter when we meet, you have always saved me. This life, the most important thing to me, is only possible because of your heart.” She should have known that Laudna would offer reciprocity and then some.
Imogen lost herself in the aching comfort of Laudna’s hands touching her with intent, Laudna’s lips soft against hers. Then, quietly, with Laudna held close, “It ain’t just a shared life, baby. It’s a shared life force. We’re tied, connected in ways that we didn’t realise.”
Laudna merely appraised her, openly, covetously. “Good,” she said.
Imogen laughed, light and unencumbered for the first time since her return. “Presumptuous,” she smirked.
Laudna lifted their hands, pointedly gestured to their wedding rings. “It wasn’t presumptuous for you to give me this ring?”
Imogen blushed. “You don’t think it was romantic?”
”I think it was very romantic, but you were also staking a claim, darling.” Laudna seemed delighted when Imogen pouted. Laudna kissed her pinking cheek. “It was a wonderful gift.”
”Yeah, I actually have something for you,’ Imogen said sheepishly, gracelessly fumbling in her pocket. Imogen returned the letter to its rightful owner.
”Oh,” Laudna said, stroking her thumb over the soft, folded edges. “I thought you would have burned it.”
Imogen shook her head. “Why’d you write to— Gods, I don’t even know how to fucking talk about it. Her? Yourself?” Laudna smiled apologetically and, with some rummaging, withdrew another piece of parchment from her skirt.
The writing inside was rough, childlike, penmanship that hadn’t yet been improved through four years of stubborn practice. Imogen caught her breath. It read,
I need you to swear that nothing bad will happen to Imogen when you come to take her back. Please, she is what I love most in this world. I know she has to go, but I need her to be safe.
Promise me. I could not bear it if anything were to happen to her. Please.
“Baby,” Imogen whispered, but couldn’t say anything else.
”She wrote me first. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
”Never really understood why you were being a little shifty,” she murmured.
Laudna cleared her throat of embarrassment. “Yes, well, at the time I thought you might be angry.” At Imogen’s incredulity, Laudna fondly rolled her eyes. “Obviously I realise with eight years of hindsight how absurd that sounds.” Laudna watched as Imogen traced her words with the tips of her fingers, as she committed them to memory.
Reaching out, Laudna hooked a delicate finger underneath Imogen’s bracelet. “She’s with you, still.” Laudna said softly.
”You’re with me still. Always.” Imogen watched in silence as Laudna cast mending, as she bound the frayed ends of the new string permanently into the weave.
Then, as if broaching the secrets of the universe, “Imogen,” she said, “where did the immovable rod come from, if you gave it to me and I gave it to you?”
“Please don’t ask me that, honey,” Imogen pleaded, and she had never meant anything more. “My brain is already broken.”
”Yes, but a magical object can't just—“
”Laudna, I am literally begging you.” Laudna acquiesced, though the crinkling between her eyebrows betrayed her very obvious thoughts. Imogen smoothed it with her thumb, and Laudna’s smile lit up the room. With great sincerity, Imogen said, “I’m sorry. Laudna, messing with your mind, that's unforgivable—“
”Hush, none of that. It was a great kindness.” Laudna took Imogen’s face in her hand, cupped her jaw tenderly. “You did the right thing, Imogen. Such a hard thing, my darling.”
”I’m still sorry.” Laudna kissed her softly, filled her world with kindness and understanding and love.
“I forgive you,” she said, though it was clearly an indulgence. “There is nothing to forgive, but if it will help you, I forgive you. How many times did we say that all we wanted was this life together, in this cottage? How many times was it the thing that got us through the hardest days? Thank you for doing what had to be done, even though it hurt. Come here, Imogen.” Laudna pulled Imogen into her arms and held her until time meant nothing at all.