Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They woke wrapped in something thick and warm, with the sound of a storm overhead.

The next thing they knew was a surge of panic at the feeling, choking them and cutting off all other thought. They struggled and thrashed against whatever was smothering them, kicking and tearing it aside until suddenly their eyes beheld a dark sky, a shadowed world, and falling rain.

They sat and stared up at the clouds, feeling the rain on their face and a chill wind blowing through them. Then their fingers tightened reflexively in whatever it was they’d been wrapped in – they looked down at it and saw that they’d been shrouded in some sort of thick cloth. They didn’t know why.

…they cast their mind back, and realized with a sickening lurch in the pit of their stomach that they didn’t know much of anything. Not where they were or why, not who they were at all.

They didn’t even know how long they sat there. The rain felt…nice, at least for a little while. Every little icy pinprick seemed to jolt more life and feeling back into their limbs. It was something to focus on besides the fear and the sense of empty, empty, empty. They closed their eyes and tilted their head back a bit further, chasing the feeling, even opening their mouth in search of some relief for their desperately dry throat.

Eventually, they found that they’d recovered their wits enough to try and look around, not that they were sure why it mattered. They were somewhere on the side of a road, in the shadow of two hills. There was nothing very much before them or behind – just rocks and hills and the smell of rain. The only other thing of note was that, for some reason, someone had stuck a tall stick in the ground right next to them, and a small but healthy flower patch was growing around it.

Eventually, they tried to stand. It took a few attempts, it was as if this body they were in didn’t entirely want to obey them. But eventually, they stood, and then they flinched in surprise to hear something rustle as it fell from their shirt. They quickly fumbled to catch it, nearly losing their balance again, but finally closing their hands around the crumpled piece of paper.

Curiosity momentarily overcame them, and they unfolded it to try and see what it was – but only for a moment, only just long enough to see that there was a message written there. Then they realized that it was too dark to read, and the rain might make the ink run anyway. They clumsily folded it back up, searched for some way to keep it safe, and finally found a pocket.

They couldn’t see what lay before them or behind, but the cold was starting to hurt now, starting to return their limbs to the leaden numbness that had overlain them before.

They couldn’t stay here. It was the clearest idea they had of anything right now, and so they weren't about to ignore it.

The rain was cold, but they’d been left bundled in some sort of thick cloth. It had smothered them before, but it could shield them now. So they wrapped it around themself, head to toe – it was long enough to drag on the ground if they weren't careful, so they had plenty to work with. It was already damp from the rain, but still offered them a little shelter and kept their eyes clear. There was a moment where they realized that their horns were getting caught on the cloth. That was the first time they realized they even had horns. Interesting. Not only did they have horns, but they had things affixed to and dangling from those horns, delicate chains and bits of metal that jingled faintly when they ran their hands along them.

But somehow that wasn’t the most pressing matter in their mind. They couldn’t stay here. They didn’t know where else to go, didn’t know if there was anywhere else to go, but anywhere else would be better than here.

So they picked up the stick and used it to help them balance. Then they picked a direction and started half-walking, half-staggering along the road, through the dark and the rain.

There wasn’t much to see, even of what they could see. The area around them was rocky and barren, with the occasional dead tree or large boulder to scare them as it loomed suddenly into visibility. Dimly, they had a thought that they should find somewhere safe, but nothing around here looked any kind of safe, and all they could think about was getting further away from where they’d woken up. Everything else was less important than that.

They didn’t know how long they walked, just that their legs began to ache and their chest hurt and their makeshift cloak was heavy and sodden against them, almost heavy enough to keep them from shivering. They were cold, cold, cold, but at least that was better than being empty.

Even so, when they slipped in the muck and fell to their hands and knees, there was a moment where they wondered if it would be worth it to get back up again. Everything was so big and dark and they’d walked so far but there was nothing and maybe they should just lay down here and wrap themself back up again and go back to sleep…

A roll of thunder and a flash of lightning jolted them back into wakefulness. Their head jerked up reflexively to stare towards where it had come from, and as darkness fell once more it hit them slowly that it wasn’t quite as dark as it had been before. There was a light up ahead, an island in the night.

Safe. They needed to find somewhere safe. Light was safe. They didn’t know how they knew that, but it seemed a truth as inescapable as the rain or the mud or the cloth.

They dragged themself to their feet and kept going.

Eventually, another big rock came abruptly into view at the edges of visibility. The light was shining from behind it. They crept their way clumsily around and saw that it wasn’t just a boulder, it was a big slab of stone that had sunken into the earth enough to form a makeshift overhang and there was a fire burning beneath it and above it was a great, gleaming figure of pure, bright light…

“Hello out there!” a voice called, and they let out a frightened gasp and nearly lost their footing once more. As they recovered themself, they managed to get a glimpse of another figure, sitting by the fire and sheltered by the rock. The other voice laughed, and the sound was somehow as warm as the flames.  “Now, now, none of that. Why don’t you come a little closer, let me get a look at you?”

It was a voice. It was another voice, another life. They couldn’t have turned away even if they’d wanted to. So they didn’t, they crept closer instead, their gaze darting anxiously from flames to figure to gleaming, glowing sentinel and back again. The stranger must have noticed them doing so, because it spoke again: “Nevermind Estelle here, she won’t bother you if you don’t bother me.”

Until at last, they stood at the very edges of the fire’s light, blinking dazedly as their vision adjusted. There was a donkey laying at the very back of the overhang, and only one other person there besides “Estelle”, sitting by the fire – an old man, with dark skin, a billowing cloud of white hair around his face, a neat white beard, and impossibly pale, pupilless eyes.

The man wasn’t looking at them at all, but they still had the sense of being regarded intently. Until at last, the stranger said: “It’s a cold night out there, friend, and there’s room for one more under here if you don’t mind getting to know one another. Why don’t you come in, have a seat and warm up? Got some leftover stew here with your name on it.”

They needed to find somewhere safe. It seemed that, against all odds, they had. They were just barely close enough to feel the heat of the fire on their face, the best feeling in the world. So at the proffered invitation, they moved closer, ducking beneath the overhang and sitting down at last with a grateful sigh in front of the fire.

They were just setting to work unwrapping themself from their makeshift cloak when suddenly there was something in front of their face, quick and darting and humming. They yelped in surprise and fell back onto their hands to try and get away from the thing, to try and see what it was.

“It’s all right, it’s all right.” The man’s voice was deep and soothing as thunder. “Just trying to get a better look at you, now that we’ve got a little light. And…ah. I thought you looked familiar. It’s been a while, but I could never forget a face like yours’.” The man looked towards them at last – not quite at them but at a point just over their shoulder – and he smiled so brightly. “Long time no see. How’ve you been?”

Everything had gotten to be so much so fast. It was to the point where it was almost starting to not feel real anymore. They found that they had to dig their nails into their arm just to make sure they were still really, truly here.

The man was smiling at them. The man was waiting for an answer. I don’t know you. I don’t know me. They opened their mouth to say that but somehow all that emerged was a hoarse croak.

They couldn’t speak at all.

They tried again but the words wouldn’t come, they made it to their throat and just got stuck until they felt like they were choking on them, until they were curled in on themself and clutching at their throat as tears of helpless panic and confusion welled in their eyes.

What’s wrong with me?

“Hey now, hey there, easy does it.” The man was suddenly crouched beside them, they hadn’t noticed him move. The man’s hand was on their back, rubbing big, slow circles. “It’s all right, just take a deep breath, can you do that for me? In like this…” He drew in a long, slow breath, then exhaled just as slowly. “Out like that. Come on, darlin’, just follow along with me.”

The stranger breathed, slow and deep, and eventually they gave up on trying to talk and just breathed with him. It was hard, at first, they almost couldn’t do it and almost panicked all over again, but the man squeezed their hand and they kept trying and eventually, after what felt like a minor, hellish eternity, the tightness in their throat eased and they could get enough air for their head to stop swimming.

Even then, the man stayed beside them, rubbing their back and holding their hand as if he could see the tears still falling from their eyes.

“I don’t know what happened, to leave you so far away from your friends, or leave you with that look in your eyes. But whatever it is, it’s over now. I don’t know what the road ahead holds for you, but right now, you don’t gotta worry about nothing besides eating this stew and drying yourself off. Sound good?”

Nodding was something they could still do, at least, and they nodded gratefully at the suggestion. Their new friend helped them extricate themself from the cloak and then managed to use a few cracks in the wall to hang it up to dry. Then he moved to pull out a spare bowl and dish out something steaming and delicious-smelling from a pot settled over the fire. This he pressed into their hands, along with a spoon, and they needed no further prompting or aid to spoon a healthy serving of meat and broth into their mouth. Even if they could have spoken, there were no words for how good it tasted, for how wonderful it felt to be heated from the inside as well as out.

Their fortunes had changed so quickly, from cold and shivering and alone to warm and in kind company. It was all so overwhelming, but in a better way this time. Even though they kept crying as they ate, they found that they didn’t mind so much. It felt good, in a way, like being scoured of something filthy.

“My name is Shakaste,” said the man as they devoured the food. “I don’t know what name you go by nowadays, but when we last crossed paths, I think it was ‘Molly’.”

They hummed thoughtfully, turning the sound of the name over and over in their mind. Molly. It sounded like a good name. They decided that they wouldn’t mind if it was theirs'.

“And this,” said Shakaste, with some solemnity. “Is Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.” Molly looked up, looked around, and finally noticed the tiny bird perched on Shakaste’s shoulder. It looked back at them with bright, alert eyes, head slightly tilted, and trilled quietly. “Some call her Stacy,” Shakaste continued, smiling faintly. “But that’s not her name.” And then he chuckled quietly at some private joke Molly couldn’t begin to understand. Not that they particularly wanted to, when there was such good food to be eaten. So they waved to the bird and went back to eating.

Shakaste continued to talk as Molly ate, filling the silence, which Molly was profoundly grateful for. “I was just coming down from Shady Creek Run. Do you know it? Used to be a pretty bad place. Still not that great, but it’s getting better. The people there are working hard, but they need a little help every now and then. Everybody does. Every town’s always got a busted leg that needs mending or a sick child that needs healing. Everybody’s got sins they want to confess to any man who looks like he’s got a god’s attention, especially in ol’ Shady Creek. I do what I can. I’m an old man, and I know my traveling days are coming up on their end. But that’s always just made me even more eager to get out and enjoy them while I can. Of course, I haven’t done as much good for that place as you and yours’ have.”

Molly looked up sharply at this, confusion and something else, something unfamiliar, suddenly warring in their head. They tapped their chest and tilted their head, staring at Shakaste in puzzlement.

“That’s right,” Shakaste said, grinning broadly. “The Mighty Nein, wasn’t it? Heard tell they rolled in a few years back, cleared out some of the worst of the worst, gave the folks left room to breathe and remember how to live. Some of ‘em still send money out that way sometimes. It’s still all most anybody wants to talk about over drinks.”

My people? Shakaste had used that phrase before, but the full and true implications only sank in for Molly then, now that they had a full stomach.

They had people.

The memory hit them, hard as a blow to the head. The paper. They set down his bowl and fumbled hastily in their pocket and pulled it out to smooth it flat on the ground, where the words written there lay clear as day in the firelight. They bent closer to read, dimly aware of Duchess Anastasia fluttering over their shoulder.

Your name is Mollymauk Tealeaf. You are a member of the Mighty Nein. If you wake and find this letter, try to make your way to Zadash. It is about two weeks southwest from where you should find yourself. When you arrive, go to a place called The Evening Nip and say these words to the man behind the bar – “while I have no coin, I'd be willing to offer many gifts.” Ask for The Gentleman. He will help you find us.

You have friends, you have a home, and you are missed.

They had friends. They had a home. They were missed.

They had people, and those people had a name. They were a part of something. In this great, big, dark world, there was a place where they were supposed to be and friends who were waiting to see them.

They had a name. They ran his fingers over it, over and over again, trying to somehow hold it in their hand.

“Mollymauk Tealeaf…” They didn’t realize until a second later that they were hearing their own voice, little more than a broken whisper, slowly tracing those letters in sound as well as touch. “Mollymauk Tealeaf…”

Molly to my friends.

The second half of the line came to them as bright and sudden as lightning, and he remembered speaking those words themself at some point in the distant past to their most important people. “Molly to my friends,” they whispered, just to say it aloud, just to know the sound of their own voice and know that this was real.

Mollymauk Tealeaf hugged the paper to their chest, because in that moment he could think of no more precious treasure in all the world. They were crying and somehow laughing at the same time and it was all so much as to leave them trembling faintly. But it was a good feeling, a wonderful feeling, because it left them in no doubt that they were real and here and alive.

“Seems like they knew you might get yourself lost one day,” said Shakaste as Molly slowly got themself back under control. “And they left you a way back to them. Well, isn’t that nice? I’m afraid Zadash might be a little more than two weeks away on foot, but I was just heading in that direction myself. So if you don’t mind keeping pace with an old man and his ass, well, I’d be happy to see you safely home, Mollymauk.”

Molly nodded immediately and emphatically. Their lonely wandering down the road already seemed like a lifetime ago, and not one they were anxious to return to.

“Can you…” They frowned and tried to clear their throat – it was still painfully dry, and they felt as if he’d gone an impossibly long time without speaking at all. They tried not to dwell on the fact that they genuinely couldn’t remember how long it had been.

Shakaste obligingly passed them a waterskin, and Molly took a few grateful gulps before they tried again. “Can you tell me about them? My…’people’? The…” They gestured at the paper. “The Mighty Nein?”

“Well, like I said, it’s been a few years since we last crossed paths. But, you hear stories, especially nowadays. I think I might be able to bring ‘em to mind.” Shakaste tapped his chin and closed his eyes. “Let me see…”

There were six of them, not including Molly themself, or a woman that seemed to have joined up later. That only made eight, which didn’t seem right. Shakaste spoke of a half-orc named Fjord, a little goblin girl named Nott, a red-haired wizard named Caleb, a monk named Beau, and a blue-skinned tiefling named Jester.

They found that they didn’t quite know what a tiefling was, but something about the sound of the word made Molly looked down at their hands – their lavender hands. They ran their hands over their horns, then their tail. A tiefling, it seemed, was them. “Just like you, that’s right,” Shakaste said, clearly seeing the gears turning in Molly’s mind. “’Cept she’s blue and you’re purple. This other one, ‘Yasha’, she wasn’t with you all when I met you. Supposed to be pretty fierce, though. Same with the firbolg. Think his name was Caduceus.”

Yasha. Each and every name but the last had itched at their mind, tugged at something in the hazy gap where their memories should have been and made them yearn to see their faces. But the sound of Yasha’s name made their chest physically ache with longing.

They had a sense that they’d let her down, somehow, and it was suddenly the most important thing in the world to find her and apologize.

Still, even Molly could see that they wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight. When Shakaste somehow noticed them yawning, he tossed Molly a spare blanket. And so Mollymauk Tealeaf bedded down for the night in the warmth of Shakaste’s fire, with the sound of the crackling flames mingling with the murmuring of the rain outside to lull them back to sleep.

*  *  *

Dark and bones and blood and bodies. The child was dying, the man was dead even before it finished ripping through him.

Gnolls with filthy, matted fur and gnolls that were nothing but bones snarled at them. The yelping barks of hyenas echoed off the walls. They carved through them all with blades of light and their friends at their back.

Were they friends yet? They hoped so.

Their blood was singing.

The chamber was vast but they stayed at the edges of it, trying to protect Caleb. “Thank you for being a friend.” And their heart skipped a beat when they heard those words because, well, that seemed to answer that.

They were bleeding but they weren’t scared by that part. Blood traced rivulets down their neck and arms, channeling their power.

Fjord froze up, Nott went down, the manticore was howling in rage and the priest went up in flames. Shakaste ripped one monster’s heart out with a smile while Caleb watched the other one burn with empty empty empty eyes. Molly slapped him to bring him back and then kissed him to ease the sting. “Time for that later.”

Their friends still lived, others still lived, and they all emerged into the sunlight together. They rode back to town quietly, the strangers grappling with the knowledge that they were alive, Molly and their friends sitting quiet and still beneath the weight of the fact that they had all just done a very good thing.

When the town at last became visible on the horizon, when someone called to ask their business, Mollymauk Tealeaf stood up in the cart and Jester stood beside them.

“All hail the conquering heroes!”

“The saviors of Allfield have returned!”

Chapter Text

They set off the next morning together, with Shakaste sitting on the donkey, Molly leading it along, and Duchess Anastasia flittering restlessly around them. A few lingering storm clouds remained in the sky, but the sky visible beyond it was blue and clear and bright, and the sun made everything seem so much easier.

Shakaste was good company who seemed to appreciate the value of not letting things get too quiet. He hummed sometimes, sang aloud other times, and always seemed to have a story to tell. His sense of humor was obvious and terrible. Molly adored it immediately. He taught Molly some word games to play and gave them some riddles to puzzle over.

For their part, Molly was happy to keep the donkey on track, get the waterskins refilled whenever an opportunity presented itself, and learn how to sing along.

They took charge of getting the camp set up, too, whenever night fell. For his part, Shakaste handled cooking and keeping watch with the help of his guardian of faith, who he did indeed affectionately refer to as Estelle. “She’ll keep watch so we don’t have to,” was all he said when Molly tried to ask how that worked, and indeed, nothing bigger than a raccoon bothered them or their supplies at night. “Growing Mollymauks and old men both need all the sleep they can get.”

“What exactly do you think I’m growing?”

“Maybe a third horn, to keep more trinkets hanging. Or another mouth for all that sass.”

As the two of them went along, Molly had time to notice other things about themself in the light of day with nothing much else to look at. For one thing, the shirt they were wearing, the one they’d woken up in, was bloody and torn. The bloodstain itself had dried so long ago that it was nearly black, but it painted such a stark contrast against the white cloth that they couldn’t help but be distracted.

Shakaste noticed them staring down at it at one point and made a concerned sort of sound. “’Fraid I don’t have any spare clothes to offer. You gonna be all right for a couple of days?”

“Oh, absolutely! I’ll be just fine,”  Molly said, hastening to reassure their friend. They were mostly sure they were telling the truth. Even the smell of blood had long since faded. No, the bloodstain itself wasn’t what worried them most – it was what lay beneath it.

They were absolutely covered in scars, all along their chest and arms. Most of them were fine, faintly silvery lines that they found didn’t trouble them too much. They looked at those marks and only saw something that was a part of them, as natural as their horns or their tail. They were Mollymauk Tealeaf, and that meant they had lavender skin and some very nice tattoos and horns and a tail and scars. That was fine.

One mark was different. One was a great, ugly, jagged gash that ran down their chest, just over their heart, right beneath the bloodstained hole in their shirt. This scar did not belong. But they found that they could never force themself to look at it or even consider it long enough to find out why.

That was probably fine. It wasn’t as though they didn’t have enough to think about.

One such matter was the realization that they had no idea what they looked like. It came to them quite suddenly on the second morning. They knew things about their appearance, they knew various bits and pieces, but they didn’t know their own face. Without that, all the little fragments felt like just that. They felt like a disjointed tangle of pieces, held together with only a name, and then only just.

This was one frustration that Shakaste was unable to aid them with. “Seeing through the Duchess’ eyes isn’t a privilege I can pass along, I’m afraid.”

“Just tell me if it’s a nice face and that’ll be enough for me.” That was a lie, but they weren’t about to bother Shakaste over something he could do nothing about.

“Nice enough.” The old man’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “You’ve got honest eyes and a liar’s mouth.”

It was such an unexpected answer that Molly burst out laughing – then, as they had time to mull over the words, they found that those words settled on their shoulders as easily as their cloak. “Very nice! Well said, I like it. You’ve got a bit of a way with words yourself, old timer.”

They were quick enough to dodge the cane as it swung at their head. It was only a half-hearted swipe, but Molly was still delighted to get further confirmation that, among all the other bits and pieces that made them up, one of them was “fast”. They were quick when they had to be, when they didn’t give themself time to think and just let their muscles take over. That was good. Maybe that meant they could avoid getting any more ugly scars.

Maybe that meant they could really use the curved sword they’d woken up with.

“Just don’t go running off on me when we get to Hupperdook just because you want to see how many…paramours you can sweet-talk upstairs.”

“Just the fact that you think me capable of such a feat is more than enough for me.” Molly winked at Shakaste and then, momentarily overcome with joy and validation and self, they let go of the donkey’s rope long enough to twirl on the spot before they kept going.

They absolutely liked the idea of spending an evening sweet talking anyone who looked interesting as soon as they hit a town, just to see if they could. But they also didn’t intend to let anything separate them from Shakaste for long. The old man was their main point of connection to…much of anything, really. Even after just a couple of days on the road, he’d proven himself considerate and kind, willing to share what he had and take care of Molly however he could in exchange for nothing more than company and some help with chores. Molly, in turn, was not at all eager to go far from him for too long.

So they wondered if they should tell Shakaste about the dream they’d had, the dreams they kept having, but it didn’t really seem necessary. After all, Shakaste was present in nearly every one of them, Shakaste must have known the events that Molly was remembering. They wondered if they should at least make sure their restless sleeping wasn’t keeping their friend awake, but was somewhat embarrassed as to what the answer might be. It wasn’t as if they could have done anything about it if it was.

Besides, even if Shakaste had been there, even if Shakaste was important to them, these memories were Molly's – precious and scarce and personal. They found that they wanted to hold them close because of that.

The two of them camped out two days on the road, but as the sun started to set on the third, Shakaste held up a hand when Molly pointed out a likely looking spot on the edges of the trees. “Let’s go a little further in,” he said. “I think I know where we are, and if I’m right, I think I know a much better way to spend the night.”

It wasn’t as if Molly knew enough to argue for any alternative course of action, so they led the way through the trees and deeper into the woods. After a little while, they saw another light, and at Shakaste’s encouragement they angled the donkey towards it and kept going. Eventually, a small campfire became visible, and a few moving shadows around it – though, almost as soon as Molly noticed that much, the shadows noticed them and were gone so quickly he might have imagined them in the first place.

Shakaste didn’t seem to think so, however. “Hello over there!” he called, loud enough to make Molly flinch. “Just a couple of old friends here bearing gifts! Jomda, you still alive in there? How about you, Nila?”

For lack of anything else to do, Molly kept leading the two of them towards the fire, their gaze darting anxiously this way and that as they started to feel the pressure of a great many eyes on him. When they emerged into the clearing, they had just enough time to notice the cauldron over the fire and the two dead trees collapsed against one another and the little house in the shadow of those two trees before suddenly they were surrounded. Molly let out a startled yelp, flinching closer to the donkey and staring around in wide-eyed awe.

They were all so tall.

The shortest of the creatures was a little taller than Molly themself, and that was only because she was a stoop-backed old woman who made her way painstakingly over to them with the help of a cane. Still, when she drew near enough to behold them both, she smiled in welcome and Molly’s heart soared in relief.

“Shakaste,” she said. “It is good to see you. Are you well?”

“Fit as the proverbial fiddle.”

“And…” The old woman turned to face Molly, and Molly thought they saw something…stutter in her expression, a moment of hesitation as she looked them over intently before recovering herself. That was strange, but they didn’t know how to ask about it. Maybe they’d only imagined it. “And your friend?”

“They're doin’ all right, too, best I can tell. Mollymauk here’s a friend of some friends who’s found themself in a bit of a state. Since I’ve finished my business up in Shady Creek for now, I thought I might see them home. We’ve been on the road for a few days now, so I don’t mind saying they're good people. They can probably help with the chores better than I can.”

“I’m a very helpful person,” Molly added, taking their cue. “No guarantees that I can reach the top shelves, of course, but I promise to try my best.”

They grinned when he heard a couple of the creatures chuckle. Shakaste patted them on the shoulder in silent encouragement, before glancing over Molly’s shoulder. “How about you, Nila? Got room for a couple more?”

Molly looked over as well, and saw that another of the creatures – firbolgs, their mind supplied in that way it sometimes did now – had shuffled her way to the front of the crowd to stand beside the old woman.

Unlike the old woman, the strange, hesitant look in her eyes was not a temporary thing, especially when she looked at Molly. But when she noticed Molly looking at her, she forced a smile as well. “Of course,” she said. “Welcome back, Shakaste, and…and welcome, Mollymauk. We would be very glad to have you stay with us.”

And that, it seemed, was that. The crowd of firbolgs dispersed, a few motioning for Molly to follow them. Molly did so, leading the donkey further into the woods. There was a moment where it got too dark to see, but a couple of firbolgs lit lanterns and a couple of others simply summoned glowing orbs of golden light in the palm of their hands, so the way was lit and the path was clear and at last they saw more lights in the middle distance, growing quickly closer.

Then it seemed as if they simply took one more step, and there they were in the village.

It was a place that had not beaten back the wildness of the woods so much as enfolded itself within it. Ramshackle, woody huts lay nestled between the trees or even woven into the canopy of branches above. A few fires were burning in clear patches of ground here and there, providing light, and a few other firbolgs were bustling about their late night business.

Molly and Shakaste and the donkey were shown to an empty hut on the edge of things – there were a couple of pallets inside, and a firepit of their own with dry wood and kindling awaiting them. The floor was covered with a layer of fresh rushes that smelled faintly sweet. It was simple but cozy, and once Molly got a fire going the lingering winter chill didn’t last long. By then, someone had put together a couple of plates of the night’s leftovers for them, which was brought in by the smallest firbolg Molly had seen yet. This one seemed to be a boy, no taller than Molly was.

This one was looking at Molly very intently as well. Unlike the other two, however, he was grinning in what seemed to be genuine delight. That made for a nice change of pace. Molly set their plate aside and smiled back at the child. “Hello there.”

The child smiled wider and motioned Molly nearer. Molly obligingly leaned in closer. Their new friend held up a hand, palm up and fingers closed, before opening them to reveal a flower. “Oh,” Molly murmured, surprised but appreciative – it was a very nice flower. They reached for it, but the boy stepped back, holding up a hand and shaking his head though he kept smiling. Molly obligingly sat back as the child stared pensively at the flower. Then, moving with a sudden, surprising deftness, he closed his fingers and flicked his wrist and twisted his hand like so and when he opened his hand again, a small, delicate charm on the end of a chain was gleaming where the flower had been.

Molly gasped in delight and actually applauded. “Very nice!” they said happily, only to suddenly freeze up as the boy reached for them. They didn’t move one way or the other, uncertain, and finally felt the boy affixing the chain to one of the bands on their horns.

It took them a second to realize that the band must have already had a way to have this chain affixed to it, and it wasn’t too hard to draw the right conclusion from there even if it left them feeling like the world had just been ripped out from under them again.

“Well isn’t that something?” Shakaste mused, not looking up from his plate as the Grand Duchess regarded them both. “Does that mean you’ve been here before, Molly?”

“Seems so.” The boy stepped away, folding his hands behind his back and looking quite pleased with himself. Molly reached up slowly and ran their fingers over the chain. It jingled faintly, just like the others, and the bauble at the end felt fine and familiar. The ever-so-slight weight of it felt right, like another missing piece had just been slotted back into place.

For just a moment, they were back in the clearing where they’d first met the firbolgs, but only Jomda and this boy were there with them and their friends. The boy was younger. The sun was rising, and Molly saw their own hands repeating the trick they’d just been shown, except with a card instead of a flower. They weren’t quite as good at it, but the boy smiled anyway. Molly pressed the bit of jewelry into his hands. That smile alone had made the momentary embarrassment worth it.

When their vision cleared, the boy was still looking at them, but this time he was frowning in undeniable concern. They could feel Shakaste watching them closely. Molly realized they had a hand pressed to their forehead – these flashes of memory could sometimes come as hard as a kick to the head.

They were always grateful for them, though.

In an attempt to make the momentary spasm look natural so as not to worry Ombo, Molly reached over to undo the newly added bauble, then passed it back to their new friend. “I’m betting it looks better on you anyway,” they said, smiling as reassuringly as they could. “Why don’t you teach me how to do that instead? It looks like fun.”

Ombo looked faintly puzzled at the question, which was probably to be expected. But then he smiled and nodded and motioned for Molly to follow him outside.

And so Molly passed the evening sitting around a big, warm fire with a bunch of big, warm firbolgs. Ombo walked them through the little bit of sleight of hand with endless patience, considering his apparently young age. After a little while, they were joined by a younger boy, who introduced himself out loud as Asar and who even had a few sleight of hand tricks of his own that he was happy to teach.

A few other firbolgs, apparently reassured by the sight of the three of them, settled down around Molly enough that they got to chatting, and even if Molly didn’t have much they could offer about themself, they learned quite a bit about the others and their lives in the meantime.

This seemed like a nice, peaceful place full of nice, peaceful people, and even if they knew they’d need to be moving on soon, they loved it already.

Their food was cold when they finally got around to eating it, but it was still good. Shakaste was already asleep by the time Molly collapsed onto the guest hut’s other pallet, which proved comfortable enough that Molly wasn’t long in following after they wrapped themself in their cloak.

*  *  *

The shop was a wonderful, fascinating place staffed by a wonderful, fascinating person that just so happened to have four bodies.

And this time, on their return trip, Molly found themself grappling with the idea that they had money to spend here, and friends who were actually encouraging it. They’d just got done with a job that had paid a truly exorbitant amount of money for work that hadn’t even really been that dangerous, not for the seven of them. They had a place to stay, there was no need to worry about food.

What else were they going to spend it on but this?

“Wound closure?” Nott was saying. “You cut yourself all the time, that would be very useful.”

“They tend to sort of heal themselves, though,” Molly said, not taking their eyes off the locket as it glittered at the end of its chain in Pumat Sol’s grasp. The red gemstone at the heart of the periapt was lustrous and gorgeous and seemed to pulse with an inner light and they wanted it as they had never wanted any physical thing in all the world.

And they could have it, too.

“This is quite nice, oh yeah,” they breathed. “You know what?” They looked down at Nott, as if she could somehow confirm for absolute certainty that this was okay. She grinned up at them, clearly sensing the words they were going to say before they even said them and obviously approving. Molly's heart felt like it skipped a beat from joy. “I think I’m going to treat myself. I’m going to take it. I feel like I’ve earned something, we’ve had a good run of it, and I have never spent this much money on anything in my life.” Now seemed as good a time as any to start.

Even Fjord approved, clapping Molly on the back and adding his reassurances to Nott. And so Mollymauk Tealeaf handed over the gold and took the necklace in trade and didn’t regret the decision for an instant.

“It looks incredible,” Fjord said, as Molly regarded themself happily in a mirror. “It’s found a place.”

And Molly knew that they had, too.  

Chapter Text

Apparently, Shakaste had gotten a sense of a big winter storm coming, and the plan was to stay with the firbolgs until it passed.

In the meantime, the next day they kept Shakaste busy helping Jomda and Nila. They kept Molly busy helping everyone else who would have them. When the morning dawned cold enough for Molly to see their breath, their hosts offered them an actual warm coat instead of the big cloth they’d dragged all this way, as well as a clean shirt. Molly had a sneaking suspicion that both were Ombo’s, or at least some other child’s, but they also didn’t much care. They had a feeling they were little more than a helpful child to some of the firbolgs anyway, but they didn’t mind. It meant their hosts were patient with them and they had a chance to learn a few new things. Besides, Ombo and Asar seemed to have decided they were all friends anyway.

When the sun set, their new friends brought some supplies to the hut, guessing rightly that Molly had been left too exhausted to handle those last minute preparations themself. The boys took three trips to deliver a mound of spare blankets and coats, a pile of logs for the fire, and some dried food for both humanoids and donkey.

“You both are a treasure,” Molly said with feeling, dragging a blanket around their shoulders and dragging themself off his bed to feed the fire. As the sun sank low, their coat – warm as it was – had become increasingly insufficient.

Asar drew himself up proudly. “Granny says you worked very hard. So we must help you, too!”

“One good turn deserves another. Seems fair enough to me.” They ruffled Asar’s fluffy hair, then set to work making a late supper. Ombo and Asar stayed long enough to partake in some of their own supplies before bidding Molly and Shakaste a good night.

The snows started falling not long after, and did not stop all night. The wind blew cold and bitter, battering against the flap of the hut and the shutters on the windows. Molly made sure that Shakaste was comfortable and warm and the donkey was settled and Grand Duchess Anastasia was accounted for. Then they got the fire burning hot and high and bundled themself up for the night.

All together, they settled in to wait out another storm.

 *  *  *

The morning dawned cold, and Molly discovered that this was because the snows had piled up so thickly against the door to have pushed the protective flap aside and spilled in a little onto the floor. Grumbling, they set to work clearing it out, and as they poked their head outside they saw other firbolgs in the distance through the last of the falling snow, cleaning up and clearing paths. The snow came up to Molly's thighs.

“I should probably go and help with that,” they mused, leaning against the doorframe to watch. It was still snowing outside, but nowhere near as fiercely.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Shakaste. “You’ve done more than enough. There’s a fine line between helping out and losing fingers. Even if you’re actually dressed warm, firbolgs are better out in the snow than either of us could be.”

“I’m actually feeling really good this morning.” And they meant that – there had been a strange, clumsy sort of weariness laying on them ever since they'd woken up by the side of the road, and they were only fully appreciating that fact now that they’d woken up to find it gone. “Might as well take advantage of it.”

Shakaste still insisted they eat breakfast, then further insisted that Molly take his coat as well. This they did, as well as tying their cloak back on for good measure, before they headed out into the snow to help the firbolgs tidy up the place.

It was surprisingly hard going – even walking, trying to push their way through the drifts and mounds of snow, was tiring work. But the villagers clearly appreciated that Molly was putting forth the effort. One who introduced himself as Keytor even brought Molly something hot and viciously medicinal to drink after a couple of hours, and it put enough warmth and life back into their limbs for them to keep going for a couple of hours more.

But eventually, their hands and joints hurt too much to ignore, their pants and boots were soaked through completely, and they were shivering hard enough to ache. A couple of firbolgs nearby noticed Molly flagging and insisted, gently but firmly, that they go back inside to rest. This time, they were too tired to protest otherwise. But it was a good sort of tiredness, mixed and mingled with bone deep satisfaction. They’d done well! They’d helped, and they knew they’d sleep better because of it.

Humming tunelessly to themself, Molly stumbled back to the guest hut and they were half-reaching out to push the flap aside when they realized there were voices coming from inside. They recognized one as Shakaste’s. It took a second to place the other as belonging to the firbolg druid named Nila.

“…for days now. They're not…whatever you think they are,” Shakaste was saying, low and insistent.

“They aren't whatever you think they are, either.” Nila sounded like even saying these words caused her a physical pain. “They can’t be.”

“You just said you weren’t there. You didn’t see.”

“The others told me. They were still grieving when they passed this way, it wasn’t even two days after the ritual failed. Of course they were still grieving, and they told me why. I wouldn’t even have recognized your friend if Jester hadn’t shown me pictures.”

“…and you say they…” Shakaste’s voice faltered and failed for a moment. “…they died on the side of Glory Run Road?”

“Yes. I never had the chance to meet them myself, but I think I must have been the first person their friends met after the burial. Caleb even asked me if I could bring them back then and there. He offered to go and dig them back up.”

“That’s where I met up with them. Wandering down the road in the rain.” Shakaste drew in a long, shuddering breath and let it out as a tired sigh. “So…someone else must have brought them back.”

“That shouldn’t be possible. Once a resurrection fails, a soul’s bond to the physical world is broken forever.”

“Be that as it may, they're still standing here. They're remembering the way things were, they know who their friends are. They...they want to see them again, Nila, what exactly do you want me to do? If that child really did die, they died much too young, and I’m not about to shed any tears over a well-deserved miracle.”

“There are…worse ways of bringing someone back from the dead. Darker ways.”

“They're not undead.”

“Then what are they? Whoever brought them back, why didn’t they stay with them and explain? Why did they leave them alone to find you? Someone could be planning to, to use them against the others.”

They’re talking about me. The thought, the reality of the situation, was finally inescapable. Molly felt so, so cold. They’re saying I died.

Except that was impossible, ridiculous! They weren’t dead, they were standing right here, with aching limbs and sodden clothes. People had been looking at them, smiling and talking to them! Ombo had taught them magic tricks, Asar had asked to braid their hair. You didn’t do any of that with dead things. They were here, they were real, they were Mollymauk.

Except…

Molly raised a hand and pressed it against their heart, against the long, jagged scar that ran across it. Some strange, phantom ache lanced through them as they did so. They tried to remember how they’d gotten this scar. They tried to remember what had led to them waking up by the side of the road at all.

They couldn’t. When they tried, they felt a sense of leaden terror knotting in the pit of their stomach and a headache building behind their eyes, like something in the back of their mind was trying to shield them from the memory.

But they could remember the long stick that had been planted in the ground. They could remember the flowers that had probably already died in the snow. They could remember the old bloodstain that had marred their shirt.

They buried me.

Their friends had buried them and left them behind and and and oh god.

Molly stared down at themself, at the ragged, stained, heavy blue cloth they’d tied around themself for warmth. Their breath was coming in long, whimpering gasps as they tried to breath around the taste of bile. They’d spent the last several days happily bundled up in and sleeping beneath their own funeral shroud.

The realization, the inescapable truth of it, made a hysterical, broken giggle bubble up in their throat and tears gather in their eyes. Their hands moved as if they belonged to someone else, tearing and tugging at the shroud, trying to rend it off of them and cast it aside.

The voices inside stopped abruptly. After a second, Shakaste’s voice called out hesitantly: “Molly?”

They finally got it over their head, tearing it savagely where it caught on their horns again, and tossed the entire sodden bundle aside into the snow. Molly stared at it, panting raggedly, hating the sight of it and wishing they could burn it with their thoughts alone…

“Molly?”

Their head whipped round, a half-snarl forming in their throat, but it died just as quickly. Shakaste had moved the leather curtain aside and was staring towards them as the Grand Duchess fluttered beside him, and Nila stood behind them both with an expression of such unfathomable sadness.

Shakaste took a few steps outside, unsteady in the snow but heedless of it, reaching out to Molly. “Mollymauk…”

The sound of the name felt like it was burning them. Dead things didn’t have names. Molly stumbled back from the old man, shaking their head desperately. They couldn’t be here. They couldn’t bear to see the worry on Shakaste’s face or the doubt in Nila’s eyes.

Nila stepped forward as well, more sure footed in the snow. “Mollymauk, please, listen to me, I didn’t…”

“Don’t come any closer!” The words came from their mouth but didn’t sound like their voice and Nila stopped dead with a gasp of pain, her expression screwed up tight and a hand pressed to her forehead and Molly realized with a dizzy lurch that they’d just hurt her, they didn’t know how but they’d hurt her.

I’m sorry, they tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come. Don’t leave me, they tried to say, but they felt like they were choking and Shakaste was saying something but Molly couldn’t hear him, Molly had just proven that they were someone dangerous and Shakaste was going to hurt them…

They didn’t even feel themself turn and run, they barely heard Shakaste and Nila trying to call after them. It was like they were watching from behind their own eyes as their body acted on its own, fleeing through the cleared pathways of the village until they were stumbling and staggering through snowdrifts, away from the warm little haven of the Gauitao tribe and into the depths of the woods.

They should have felt exhausted, they should have felt the ache in their weary limbs as they pushed themself on and on and on, but it was a long time before Molly was in any fit state to feel anything at all.

*  *  *

When they finally came back to themself, they were surrounded by nothing but snow and bare, empty trees. They were still walking, and still didn’t care enough to stop.

A very large deer was following them. It was staying at a fair distance, but it was following them, stopping every time they stopped, moving every time they moved, staring back at them with bright, guileless eyes every time they looked back at it.

They considered trying to chase it off, but…no, they couldn’t do that. This was the deer’s place more than it was theirs'. Besides, it was nice not to be entirely alone, at least for a little while longer.

They didn’t know where they were in relation to the village, but it probably didn’t matter. They couldn’t go back there. They would only be chased away again, now that probably everyone knew they were dangerous, now that Nila would have told everyone that they were nothing more than some twisted mistake. Even if they’d known how to get to Zadash from here, even if they could have stood to make such a journey alone, they couldn’t keep going – not if they would just bring something dangerous to their friends, not if their friends would look at them with that same fear.

There was only this. Only quiet and solitude, and everyone else would be safer that way. It didn’t matter what they felt, because they weren’t real. They were just some broken dead thing that had forgotten how to stop.

Molly stumbled over something, some protruding root or fallen branch in the snow, and fell to their hands and knees. Behind them, they heard the deer stop walking. They lifted their head, staring at the way ahead of them, but unlike before they could see no light, no island of safety. There was nothing before them or behind.

So they didn’t even bother getting up, just dragged themself beneath a tree to finally give their aching legs some rest. Molly curled up there, drawing their knees up to their chin, cradling their stinging hands against their chest. As they did so, they heard something rustle against their chest, and – moving without any kind of conscious thought – they drew out the letter. They’d remembered to tuck it into their inner coat earlier, they’d remembered to try and keep it safe from the snow and the damp. They might have left it with their things, but the letter had become a talisman to them over the past few days, something to hold on to whenever they felt themself going distant or slipping away in their own head.

Now, when they unfolded it and read the words there, Molly felt nothing besides a yawning loneliness. They’d assumed this was a message their friends had left for them, but why would they have done such a thing if they thought Molly dead forever? What if someone else had written it, someone worse, someone who’d wanted to use them as a tool to hurt the others? They didn’t know their own face, how had they ever deluded themself into thinking they knew someone else’s handwriting?

They'd only been alive again for a handful of days, but as their memories had returned they’d imagined seeing their friends again so many times. They’d imagined how overjoyed everyone would be to have them back, all the things they’d say, how they’d hug Molly and hold on to them and promise to never let them be lost again.

Now they imagined everyone looking at them with fear, pushing them away, calling them a fake, because Mollymauk Tealeaf was dead despite all their best efforts and so anything that was up and walking and wearing that face now had to be some kind of fake, some kind of monster or trap.

The words blurred as tears gathered in their eyes. The note crumpled as their grip tightened, as they braced themself to rip because it was just a useless piece of paper now…

…but at the last minute, their nerve failed. Molly hugged the letter to their chest again, though it gave no comfort this time. They curled up even tighter as if to protect it from the wind and the snow and finally let themself sob, because they were just some broken dead thing that was still so scared to die.

There was only the deer to hear them. They were only dimly aware of it coming closer, slow and patient, before it crossed around to the other side of the tree and settled itself down. Even now, the fact that it was so willing to get close to them was strange. Yet at the same time, it was something good and comforting, too. They couldn’t help but turn to look back at it, at the placid calm of the creature, and even found themself reaching out with a shaking hand.

It didn’t so much as twitch when they ran their fingers along its neck. It just let out a soft, gentle sigh, and they smiled faintly despite themself. The deer felt warm and real beneath their fingers, and for a moment they could pretend that they were, too.

So it took Molly a moment to realize that they were hearing singing. When they did, when the high, clear notes reached them across the distance, they looked around wildly for the source of it. The deer, apparently sensing their distress, snorted and got hurriedly to its feet. It would probably run, and maybe that was best. The singing was strangely, hauntingly beautiful, but something about the sound made the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, made their blood itch with a sense of overwhelming wrongness. The presence it heralded was wrong, they knew that as surely as they knew their own name and maybe even moreso.

Molly got slowly to their feet and realized that, without conscious thought, their hand had gone to their sword.

Don’t think too hard about it, they told themself sternly, and drew it out. The weight of it was familiar in their hands, and they took some comfort from that as well as they stared about the silent, snowy wood. Their other hand should not have been empty, they had the sense that they were used to having another, equal weight there. But they didn't have that now, no point in worrying when trouble was drawing near

Their gaze drifted right past it at first before their wits caught up with them. There, through the trees not far off, was a tattered, glowing green figure, drifting slowly closer.

A large hand suddenly dropped heavily onto their shoulder. Molly let out a startled yelp and half-whirled, bringing their sword around, but Nila was quick to step back. “Sorry!” she whispered. “I’m sorry. But you, you have to go, Mollymauk, you have to go now.” Her gaze darted over their shoulder, towards the specter. “That thing is dangerous.”

What are you doing here? Why do you care? But when they opened their mouth, only a hoarse croak emerged. Even so, she was telling them to run? They didn’t know how far they were from the village. If it was dangerous to them it was dangerous to her and Ombo and Ashar and Shakaste. They couldn’t just leave it here to cause harm.

This thing was wrong and evil and they needed to see it put down, that was what they were for and they weren’t about to surrender that certainty.

So Molly shook their head and motioned towards it with their sword. Together. They hoped she could understand their intentions well enough.

Unfortunately, she did. She smiled, so gently and so sadly, and laid her big, warm hands on Molly's shoulders. Then she shook her head and whispered a few words that hummed with strange power, and all their muscles locked into place. They couldn’t move an inch.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, though her voice was trembling a little. “But you…”

Whatever she was going to say, either her nerve failed her or she ran out of time. Her gaze snapped to the ghostly figure over their shoulder and she moved around them to hurry to meet it. They couldn’t even turn to see what was happening, they would have screamed with frustration if magic hadn’t stolen their voice as well.

They heard unearthly screeching, a roar of flame and thunder. They heard the sound of flesh being cut and Nila grunt in pain and the thing, whatever it was, crying out in wordless grief and muttering unintelligible curses.

Then Molly heard a scream, a loud long sound of utter agony and horror that resonated through their bones and froze their heart for just a moment. For just a moment, they felt like he would willingly claw their way out of their own skin to escape the pain of that sound…

…then the moment passed. They heard a body hit the ground and in the next instant, life and warmth and control returned to their limbs.

They didn’t let themself think too hard about what that might mean. Mollymauk Tealeaf simply whirled and charged the monster as it loomed over Nila’s fallen form.

The first cut left a gash in it that let them see clear through it to the forest beyond and they didn’t let himself think about how that worked, they just brought their sword around again and again and they shouldn’t have been able to hurt it but they knew they were - not much, but enough for what they wanted. It was wounded and angry as it rounded on them and focused the full extent of its malevolent attention on them.

Its hands were curled into gnarled claws, and it slashed down at them, passing straight through their arm and into their chest. Molly felt an instant of utter lifeless cold, a moment where they couldn’t breathe because they were choking on gravesoil and the panic nearly doomed them. But something in their blood, something even older than that fear, reacted to the feeling as well. When the ghost tried to claw at them again, the glowing green pits of its eyes were suddenly black, and they saw shadows of red on its face as if it were weeping tears of blood. Whatever had happened, it was momentarily blinded, and Molly was able to dance aside before it could touch them again.

Dimly, they were aware of a thin ribbon of blood dripping from their arm. Somehow, they knew it wasn’t anything to worry about. This was good. This was right.

The certainty lasted only a moment. Then Molly made the mistake of looking at its eyes as they cleared of the malediction.

This time, there was no resisting the terror. They looked at it and they saw death itself, it had caught up them him again and it would drag them back into the grave. Briefly mad with fear, Molly tried to turn and run, forgetting everything else. They barely got a few feet before it caught them, however, before it bore them to the ground beneath the weight of its raw, limitless malice.

They rolled over onto their back, trying desperately to struggle to their feet or at least bring their swords to bear but it was clawing at their chest, drawing blood this time

Mollymauk felt, rather than saw, their sword explode into bright, radiant light. They didn’t let themself wonder any further – when their chance came, they jammed the blade into its chest and twisted. It reared back for a moment. The pressure on their chest eased and they made it up to their knees, managed to slash at it once and twice and again, and the light encompassing the sword tore long and ragged gashes through its ghostly form. They were hurting it, they were causing it pain and soon they would remove its wrongness from this world like they were meant to do, and for a moment everything else - the blood, the pain, the fear for Nila and themself - ceased to matter in light of that. Then the monster screamed once more.

They realized that it was a sound of triumph because it knew that no matter how they struggled it had them cornered and helpless. The horror of it all, the sight of its dead, demented face and the feeling of being sliced open and the sound of its voice was all too much to bear. Molly's heart stuttered and stopped and they felt himself going somewhere else just to get away as the world went dark…

*  *  *

They woke to the sound of someone calling their name.

That was all they had time to realize before the pain caught up with them again.

Molly felt their entire body spasm as they tried to sit up. The arms holding them tensed and held them fast. The voice spoke again, tearful, pleading: “Mollymauk, please, you have to stay still!”

They couldn’t, they couldn’t, they could feel blood seeping from their chest and they were dying and they had to do something. They didn’t want to die again.

“Not again,” they heard themself whimpering, as if from very far away. “Not again, oh gods please, please…”

“It’s all right, I can help you, you just have to lay still or you’re going to make it worse!”

“I don’t want to die, please don’t let me die,” they heard themself begging. They wanted to live, they knew they didn’t deserve it but they were here and even the pain was better than the dirt and the nothing and the emptiness…

They could feel their own blood on their chest, hot as fire, just like the tears on their cheeks as they struggled desperately to do something to save themself. But their strength was failing as they bled so that Nila was able to pin them down with one hand and press the other to their chest. The air between the two of them glowed with a soft white light and the pain started to fade.

But by then Molly's mind was spinning sick, drunken circles, cracked and mad with terror and echoes of memory they were in no fit state to understand. So they didn’t know what it meant that the pain was gone. Was that good? Or did that mean they were dead again?

They stared at the cold grey sky without seeing and trembled helplessly in the snow and every breath hurt.

“It’s all right,” they heard Nila whispering. Her voice was the only real thing in the world and so they clung to it, tried to believe in it. Doing so grew easier as the pain faded. “It’s all right, there we go. Shh, shh, just breathe, I’m here…” The hand that had been holding them down moved to stroke their hair with firm but gentle pressure before brushing against their cheeks and wiping away the tears. A shadow swam into view in their field of vision, a shadow that slowly resolved itself into Nila’s face. She was smiling even as she cried. Why was she crying?

She took her other hand away and their stomach lurched in terror but even without the pressure, they didn’t feel any more blood pouring forth. They’d been hyperaware of their own heartbeat moments before and now they felt it thudding against their ribs, against their newly healed flesh.

“There we are,” Nila whispered again. She wrapped her arms around them and helped them sit up enough so that they could collapse against her chest instead, rather than the snow. Molly was more than happy to do so. They sat and she held them, safe and warm, in a silent promise that they would not be lost again. 

“I’m alive?” they whispered, because some part of them still couldn’t believe it.

They felt her nod. “You’re alive.” Even she sounded a little disbelieving. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, because she drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and spoke again with more conviction. “You are alive. And so am I, because you saved me, you, you did so well…”

Every inch of them felt heavy and exhausted, but when they tried to move their arms, they were able to. They were able to wrap them around her and cling. She froze for a moment, and then held them tighter, pressing her face against the top of their head. Whatever she’d done to them, however she’d healed them, it was enough that nothing hurt when she did.

“I’m sorry,” they heard Nila whisper. “For…I…” Words seemed to fail her – it was strange to realize that could happen to others, too. Instead, she just let out a long, exhausted sigh, and started to try and help them stand. “There’s so much I have to tell you. Later. Can it be later? I should get you back. You’re frozen solid, and Shakaste was already worried sick.”

Their heart warmed a little at her words. Shakaste was still worried about them? The old man still wanted to see them even though Molly had lied to him? They hadn’t meant to, but they had. Nila had no reason to lie to them, though. So they would cling to the hope that she was right.

Nila managed to get them up to their feet, but then it quickly became apparent that Molly was too exhausted to put any weight on their legs. So she moved to help them settle onto her back instead. In the moments before she managed it, however, Molly finally risked a look down at their chest.

If they’d had anything in their stomach, they would have lost it. Their clothes were bloodied and torn, and their blood shone red and wet against their skin, smeared all down their chest. This wasn’t like when they chose to bleed, this was worse and wrong.

They hoped so, so fiercely that, whatever Nila had done, they wouldn’t be left with a scar like before.

But then it seemed like they blinked, and they were slumping against Nila’s back, held safely off the ground by her arms, and they opened their mouth to warn her about the blood but all that emerged was a whimper. “Hold on to me,” she urged them, and they could do that much at least.

They felt her start to walk, steady and surefooted, back towards the village. They felt but did not see, because they couldn’t keep their eyes open a moment longer.

Molly's last thought for a long time was to hope that the deer had gotten away safely.

*  *  *

Toya was light as a feather in their arms as they walked them both quickly away from the site of the battle. Maybe they should have stayed to help, lent their blades to the gruesome task at hand, but…no. No, they couldn’t. Whatever else Kylre had become, he had also been Molly’s friend for a while. Whatever else had happened since, they couldn’t forget that.

Especially not with Toya here.

She stirred weakly in their arms. They looked down to see her eyes fluttering open, though she still had to take a moment of visible effort to focus on them. “Molly?” she asked in her weak, faint voice. She sounded like talking hurt even worse than it normally did, maybe from whatever that awful woman with the stick had done to make her stop singing. There was already a bruise blooming on her face. Molly was going to have to make Beauregard’s life properly miserable for a bit in penance for that.

But that didn’t matter just now. “I know, dear,” they murmured sadly. She tried to look around – they rested a hand gently on the unbruised side of her face and guided her to keep focusing on them. “You’ve been through a lot. There’s been some bad business.”

“What happened?”

Where to even begin? They sighed, long and tired, and tried not to think too far ahead. Tried to keep focusing on here, now, and her. “A friend turned on us,” they said carefully. “But it’s going to be all right. I’m going to get you home, all right?”

They weren't careful enough. Her eyes went wide with horror. They could see her mind spinning faster, trying to put the pieces together. “Wait, where’s Kylre?” When they didn’t answer right away, she started trying to worm her way out of their grasp. There was a bad moment where she almost escaped them – it had been such a long night and Molly was so very tired – but she was still just a child in the end, and they managed to hold her fast. After a moment’s futile struggle, she went limp in their grasp.

“I’m scared,” she whispered. She didn’t say it, but they could tell she knew what must have happened, even if neither of them wanted to think about what would happen next.

Me too, they wanted to say. Their heart ached in sympathy for her and nameless, boundless grief for the lives they’d both been living. Hard lives, but good and happy as well. “I know,” they said instead, trying to keep their voice soft and soothing, because Toya was their friend and it would do no good to scare her further. “It’s going to be a bit rough, but it was for the best. I’m so sorry. Some people just turn, I’m so sorry.” It was a minor miracle that they kept their voice from breaking, too.

“What happened?” she asked, and they could hear the tears in her voice even as she curled up small and miserable in their arms.

“He got sick," Molly said helplessly. "There was something inside him. There was something that made him do some bad things, but it had to be taken care of. You’re going to be all right.” Maybe if they told the lie well enough, it would become true.

She didn’t answer, which was perhaps just as well because they had nothing more to say. Up ahead, they could see the reflection of moonlight on water, and the deeper shadow of the boat waiting to take them all back.

Molly quickened their pace, trying to get there ahead of the others and the severed head they’d be dragging with them that heralded the end of everything good and familiar that Molly and Toya had ever known.

Chapter Text

Firelight was dancing on the inside of their eyes as Molly came slowly back to consciousness.

Details filtered in slowly after that. They were warm, and it felt like they were remembering what it was to be warm for the first time in a lifetime. They'd been stripped out of their clothes and covered with a heavy pile of blankets and furs instead. The weight might have made them panic, but their head was free so that they could breathe without difficulty. They were in a different bed than the one where they’d slept the past couple of days – bigger, softer.

They could hear voices. Shakaste. Nila. When curiosity drove them to force their eyes half-open, Molly could see them silhouetted by the firepit, sitting with their backs to the bed. They could see that they were all in a different house.

“It's already comin’ along real nice.”

“Thank you. It’s a bit of a project, but if Asar and Keytor help me, it shouldn’t take long. Do you think they’ll like it?”

“I think they’ll like it a lot. Think it’ll really help them feel more like themself.”

“I, I’m really sorry about what happened.”

“I know. You’re gonna tell them that, though, right?”

“Of course.”

“’Atta girl.”

It seemed as though they blinked, and then suddenly there were hands carding gently through their hair. The light was dimmer. The fingers were worn and gnarled. There was someone sitting on the bed beside them, but it was the faint humming of the Grand Duchess nearby that led to them recognizing the figure as Shakaste.

The old man’s hand stilled in their hair. “Molly? You alive in there?”

They managed a soft hum. They found that they didn’t have it in them for much else – they were still too tired, and everything around them felt too soft and nice, for them to be able to muster much effort. It was enough for Shakaste, or at least enough that he resumed stroking Molly’s hair. The soft, repetitive pressure felt blissfully good. They found that they could make themself tilt their head to hopefully indicate the spots where their horns met their skull.

“Oh, my friend, my not-at-all-bright friend,” Shakaste murmured, but he moved to do as he’d been silently bidden all the same. “If you’re trying to make me go old and grey, I’m afraid you’re much too late for that. But you put in a damn good effort today.”

The worry in their friend’s voice was impossible to ignore, not even in a soft bed with furs and thick blankets. Molly forced their eyes open. Even in the dim light, they were able to make out Shakaste’s form, sitting beside them, staring straight ahead. Even in the dim light, the tension in the old man’s shoulders was unmistakable.

“Sorry,” Molly whispered.

Some of Shakaste’s tension eased. He patted Molly’s head. “Nothing’s changed. Not if you don’t want it to. You remember what I told you, that first night you came stumbling into my camp? I don’t know what happened to leave you so far away from your people, and I don’t have to know. If you still want to see them again, then we’ll keep right on our way for Zadash.”

“I want to.” The words left them before they could put any conscious thought into them. That left Molly certain of how true they were.

“Then that’s that. We’ll be here another couple of days – give the snows time to melt a little, give Nila time to get some affairs in order. Then we’ll hit the road again. Sound good?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

“All right. You think you’re ready to eat something?”

This was a surprisingly difficult question to consider. Molly found after a moment or two of thought that they still felt too light and floaty and distant to even contemplate hunger. They shrugged before they remembered that the Grand Duchess didn’t see as well in dim light. “I could try.”

“Good enough. I’ll see about hunting you up something. In the meantime, try to close your eyes a while longer. You’ve had a long day.”

In this, Molly was eager to obey. It felt like they’d only closed their eyes for a blink, however, and suddenly there was a heavier weight on the bed beside them, and the smell of something savory and good was mixing with the smell of woodsmoke. “Molly?” Nila whispered softly. “Are you awake?”

It was easier to answer this time, even if only as a more definite grunt. It was easier to open their eyes, tempted by the smell of the food. Beneath the blankets, they even felt their tail twitch a bit in anticipation.

Nila helped them sit up, then passed them a plate. As they took it, it occurred to Molly to take stock of their bare chest, their earlier fears returning to them briefly.

But those proved to be baseless. They looked down at themself and saw no other scars beyond what had been there before. Relief flooded through them, warm as the fire, as well as gratitude for whatever Nila had done.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.

“Better,” they mumbled around a mouthful of vegetables.

“Good. That’s good, I’m really glad.” Out of the corner of their eye, they saw her expression twist up just slightly. They heard her take a deep breath, like she was bracing herself for a blow, and the thought made their chest hurt. “I’m really sorry.”

Their fork froze halfway to their mouth. Molly’s thoughts flashed back to however long ago it had been. They remembered the feeling of their new and fragile word breaking into shards around them as they heard what she’d said to Shakaste. They remembered the fear, the rejection, the loneliness.

Then they remembered that she’d followed them, saved them. They remembered her holding them, trying so hard to soothe their fears even as she’d broken down, too.

So the words they said next came very easily. “Don’t be.” And then they shoved more food in their mouth so as not to risk saying anything else.

Molly kept their gaze on their plate, but they heard her smile. “That’s very kind of you.” She took another deep breath. The trembling in it was barely perceptible. “I would still like to tell you why I acted the way I did, why I felt the way I did. Is that okay?”

Molly hesitated for only a second or two before nodding. They didn’t want to hear, but they didn’t want to live with this uncertainty any longer, either. Their memories were precious and theirs', one of the only things that truly belonged to them in all the world. Maybe that even included the bad ones. Maybe a bad memory should be like that monster – they had to turn and face it if they had any hope of fighting it.

Nila reached out and squeezed their shoulder, maybe sensing their hesitance, maybe admitting to some of her own. Either way, Molly moved to sit properly beside her instead. When they leaned against her, she made a relieved sort of sound and wrapped an arm around their shoulders, as together they stared into the flames.

“The man who, um, who killed you,” Nila whispered. Molly flinched at the words and she tightened her grip protectively. “He also took my son from me. My son and my mate. He killed so many of my people and he took Asar and Keytor away to be sold.”

They'd known Asar was Nila’s son, but they hadn’t known Keytor was her husband. Molly thought of the bright little boy, so proud to show off his strength and his magic tricks. They thought of the older man who had brought them a drink when he’d seen Molly flagging in the snow.

Molly thought of them being hurt, and rage burned hot and bright enough to banish the horror, even if only for an instant.

They reached over and held Nila’s hand, squeezing once, trying to offer what support they could. Her breath hitched, then steadied, as she gripped their hand fiercely in turn.

“Of course, I went to get them back. I was, um, I was alone but I was ready to bury them for what they’d done. I was ready to call down all the power nature would grant me. And on the road I met your friends, and they were ready to do the same. Because they’d had people taken, too. Except they’d caught up before the Shepherds reached Shady Creek. They tried to ambush them on the road.”

“…you mean ‘we’ tried,” Molly said, a heavy note of finality weighing on their chest. They didn’t remember what had happened, but it wasn’t a hard conclusion to draw.

“Yes. And, and it was so good of you, and so brave, but it all went wrong and you--”

“I know.” Even if they’d agreed to hear this story, they found that they didn’t have it in them to hear those words again. Not yet, not tonight. “I know.”

Nila understood. Even so, her voice broke as she hastened on to add, the words pouring forth from her like water. “Shakaste said you don’t remember very much, Mollymauk, but I want you to know that they loved you. They loved you so much, they wanted you back, they were trying to find a way as soon as they finished burying you. They tried. I want you to know that. They never wanted to leave you or lose you.”

Even if they could have thought what to say in reply to that, they couldn’t speak, they could barely breathe with how tight their throat was all of a sudden. Nila heard them struggling to try, heard the way the breath caught painfully in their throat. Moving slowly and carefully, obviously giving them time to pull away if they wanted to, she pulled them close in a hug again.

Molly clung back to her without hesitation, burying their face against her shoulder and bracing to ride out the rest of the storm.

They had friends. They had a home. They were missed.

They would try to hold on to that.

“They helped me find my family. Without them, I don’t know if I could have before…before the worst. I didn’t stay with them until the end. Sometimes I wish I had but then I look at Asar, and…well, it doesn’t matter. But they won without me, they killed those awful people and left Shady Creek Run better than it had been. They left us better than we had been. So the Mighty Nein are very important to me. They are my very dear friends and I want to keep them safe. I owe them that. So when I saw you, I found myself remembering that awful time in my life, and since I didn’t know what was going on I was worried about them, and…”

She pressed a kiss to the top of their head. “…and I’m sorry. If there is someone out there who wants to hurt them, then they deserve protection from that, but so do you. Because you are alive, and you are one of them. And that makes you my very dear friend, too. I mean, if you want to be.”

Finally, an easy answer that it didn’t hurt to give. They grinned against her shoulder. “One thing I do remember? Friends are pretty great. Not about to turn down more.”

She laughed in what sounded like equal parts surprise and happiness, and gods, Nila’s laugh was one of the most beautiful sounds Molly had ever heard. It was like if you could hear sunlight. “They are! Friends are wonderful. So I am very happy that we can be friends, Mollymauk. And I would be happy to accompany you safely to Zadash.”

Shocked jolted through them at her words, enough that Molly pulled away to stare up at her, sure they must have misheard. Nila’s smile faltered somewhat at the incredulity on their face. “I mean, if you want me to,” she mumbled hastily, looking away.

“But what about…” Words failed them, so they gestured helplessly in an attempt to encompass everything. What about her son and her husband and the busy, necessary, worthwhile life she had here with her people? Why would she set all that aside, even for a couple of weeks, just to walk them home?

“It won’t be the first time I’ve had to go away for a little while,” Nila said gently, apparently taking their meaning well enough. “Sometimes that is necessary. We have to know at least something of what goes on outside these woods so that we can be safe from it. And, as an elder druid of the Guaitao tribe, finding out what I can of the world beyond is my responsibility. Asar will understand. He has before.” She still looked hesitant for a moment, but only a moment. “Besides, there is someone in Zadash I also need to see, on behalf of all of us. But it can wait, if you don’t want me to come with you.”

Maybe she was lying about that – it seemed strange that someone from such a sheltered tribe would have real business with someone so far away, in a big city like Zadash was supposed to be. But maybe she wasn’t lying, and even if she was, the lie eased the guilt and uncertainty Molly felt about nodding. “We’d love to have you.”

“Wonderful!” She clapped her hands, beaming fit to burst. “I’m afraid that means you’ll be here another couple of days – I have some things to finish up – but you should really rest another day anyway, and that will give you some time to say your farewells.” Her expression softened, her eyes were so kind. “I think Ombo and Asar are going to miss you already.”

“Ah, I think I’m gonna miss them, too. They’re good kids.”

And they proved that to Molly, after Nila left them a while later to finish their meal and settle back into bed. Molly found that it was harder to fall back asleep this time, however – they still ached physically with exhaustion, but their mind was more awake, chasing itself in circles over the events of the past day, the past several days, straining at memories that still weren’t quite in reach.

So it was a genuine relief when they opened their eyes at one point to see Asar, crouching on the floor and peeking up at them over the edge of the bed with big, curious eyes.

The two of them stared at each other for a few silent seconds, until:

“Deer,” whispered Asar.

Molly smiled. This was a simple game, hence why it hadn't taken them very long to learn it on their first night here, but a simple game was about what they felt up to.

“Rock,” they answered.

“Kite.”

They opened their mouth, then closed it again and frowned. “What’s a kite?”

“It’s like pretty cloth that flies up in the air!”

“That does sound nice. Can you show me one tomorrow?”

Asar nodded eagerly, then added: “Still your turn.”

“Oh, right. Ah…egg?”

“Grass.”

And on and on and on, as Molly felt their mind settling and growing quiet in the gentle back-and-forth rhythm. They were pretty sure Asar let them get away with a couple of stumbles at some points. He really was a good kid.

*  *  *

The next morning, they woke to find that someone had set out clothes for them. Their pants and boots were dry, and they’d been provided with another shirt. Molly felt a little guilty about that as they tugged it on. They had a feeling they should do something to make up for getting the first one shredded, but they didn’t have any money and they knew less than nothing about how to make or fix clothes. At least the coat they’d given them had survived in mostly one piece.

Shakaste was sitting outside on a bench, enjoying some tea and the sunlight peeking through the treetops overhead. “Mornin’,” he said, almost before Molly had finished stepping outside.

“Morning.” It was still cold out, but quite pleasant compared to yesterday. Molly stretched, long and languid, yawning so hard it made their jaw creak.

“We’re heading out tomorrow. You still feeling up for that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Anything else you want to do today, then?”

“Actually, yes.” The idea had come to them in a half-asleep haze earlier, but had stayed with them as they woke up properly. The very prospect and promise of it had helped get them out of bed in the first place – now that they the idea fixed in their mind, their body itched for it. “I’m not even sure if there’s time for it, but do you know if there’s anyone here that does something like this?” They rolled up their sleeve to better show the snake tattoo that wound all down their arm.

Shakaste raised an eyebrow. “Tattoos, you mean? Sure, there’s a couple. Want me to introduce you?”

“Please.”

They'd only known Shakaste for a few days, but Molly knew better than to offer a hand up from the bench. Shakaste got up with the help of his cane and nothing else, as the Grand Duchess took up her usual position buzzing around his head.

“What were you thinking of getting?” the old man asked, as they set off together at a slow, easy pace. Molly could feel grass under their feet in places where the snow had been largely cleared away, but their haphazard trip through the woods had also taught them more than enough about how sneaky patches of ice could be. Shakaste clearly knew as much as well.

“Not sure. And I’m honestly not sure if I care.” They pulled up their shirt and indicated the scar that did not belong. “This. I want this gone. I don’t want to have to look at it anymore. That’s about all that matters to me right now.”

Shakaste nodded somberly. “Fair enough. Should have enough time to get that covered up.”

He led Molly up to one of the huts that had been woven into the branches of a few different trees. Then he made introductions between Molly and an older firbolg named Jadar, along with his younger daughter Ayilu. Jadar apparently handled most of the tattooing for the tribe, though he was training up Ayilu to take over for him.

“She can practice on me, then,” said Molly, as Shakaste removed three gold from a pouch and passed the payment over to Jadar. Ayilu looked delighted to have a willing volunteer.

Jadar built up the fire so that Molly wouldn’t be too cold with their shirt off, then the two older men went outside to talk while Ayilu got her inks together and retrieved a clean needle. “What sort of tattoo do you want?” she asked, as she gave her needle a final wipe down.

“I honestly hadn’t thought that far,” Molly admitted. They gestured at the scar over their heart. “Just, something to cover this. Something pretty, something nice, that’s all I want.” They grinned easily at her and even threw in a wink. “You look trustworthy enough, I think I can leave the rest to you.”

“O-Oh, if you’re certain!” But she looked pleased at the prospect of a little creative freedom as well. Molly could certainly respect that.

They knew as soon as she first started to tap the needle into their skin that they’d made the right choice, this was exactly what they’d needed after all the shock and fear and sadness of the past day or so. They still didn’t understand their own muscle memory enough to trust it, but this...their body remembered this. Some distant sense memory bloomed in the back of their mind and suddenly Molly was so relaxed as to be nearly boneless.

It hurt, yes, they could rationally appreciate that, but they also knew that they’d felt worse by far. What was more important was that every twinge was a tangible mark that they were one step closer to getting away from what had happened to them. Every stab of the needle was a choice they had made for themself, a thing they could control about themself and their appearance.

So it was easy to sit still and easy to chat with her as she worked. Molly made sure not to look, instead leaning back on their hands and keeping their head tipped back towards the ceiling. After a few hours they both took a break for lunch, and then she went right back to work with no sign of hesitation or weariness.

The light was only starting to fade by the time she sat back, set down her needle, and wiped some sweat from her forehead. Somehow it still felt like Molly had only just sat down.

“Can I look yet?” they asked hopefully.

She shook her head, then took up a small clay pot and unscrewed it. “Tomorrow. Keep the bandages and this ointment on until tomorrow morning. That will help it look its very best.”

Molly grumbled a little but acquiesced, as she started to rub the cream into their chest. After a moment, they asked: “Then at least tell me how it looks to you. As the expert, of course.”

Ayilu blushed faintly at the question, but her eyes were practically glittering with triumph despite her shy smile. “I don’t like to brag, but I think it looks nice.”

“Well, I look forward to seeing for myself.” She wrapped a bandage around their chest, then passed them their shirt and coat. Molly pulled both on and thanked her profusely, wishing all the while that they had something more concrete than words to offer in gratitude. At least she seemed happy with her work – she was smiling and humming to herself as she put her materials away and set to work cleaning her needle anew.

They left her to her work and headed out to rejoin Shakaste. A pleasant fizzle of excitement and anticipation added a slight spring to their step as they went along, and a snatch of song drifted through their hazy memory as the crickets and evening birds sounded their own voices.

"I saw the moon in old, in the darkness..."

*  *  *

Nila found them the next morning as Molly was dragging themself out of bed. They were anxious to get back on the road, but gods, they were going to miss beds – especially this one.

“Ready to go?” she asked brightly.

“More or less. Except for one thing.” As they came more awake, their curiosity continued to itch at them with evermore insistence. Molly pulled up their shirt to reveal the bandage. “Can you help me with this, and do you maybe have a mirror lying around?” If at all possible, they didn’t want their first glimpse of their new tattoo to be upside-down.

Nila’s grin actually grew wider at the question. “Actually, I do! I was just about to go and get it. Um, do you mind closing your eyes? For a few minutes. That might sound strange, but I was hoping this would be a surprise!”

They raised an eyebrow at her. She looked a touch embarrassed. “It’s a nice surprise! Or at least I think it is. I hope it is. We worked hard on it, Keytor and I, and, and the boys helped, too!”

Ah. She was absolutely trying to play on their better nature by mentioning Ombo and Asar. It absolutely worked, too. Molly sighed theatrically in defeat but obligingly closed their eyes, standing still as Nila stepped forward to unwind the bandages from their chest, then stepped away to call the two boys inside.

Molly heard their muffled laughter, drawing nearer to them until they could feel one standing on either side of them. Molly felt the boys take hold of their arms, guiding them carefully into what they realized were the sleeves of a coat.

Except something was different. They frowned thoughtfully as Ombo fussily straightened the garment out. This wasn’t the same coat they’d lent Molly before, or the one they’d lent Shakaste. The fabric was different and yet somehow familiar. 

“Okay,” said Nila from in front of them, excitement palpable in her voice. “You can open your eyes!”

They did. Their opened their eyes and saw themself.

It wasn’t a large mirror, but it was brightly polished and clear and it let them see their face for the first time they could remember. That alone was enough to briefly distract Molly from everything else in the world, because it turned out that they had pure red eyes and a peacock tattoo going up their neck to the side of their face, almost curling into their hair. They had high cheekbones and a mouth that looked made for smiling and and and…

They'd been so distracted by the sight of their face that they’d almost forgotten the gifts they’d been given. Molly let their gaze drift down, and Nila obligingly tilted the mirror to let them get a proper look at their chest. They actually gasped softly at the sight that met their eyes – Ayilu had covered up the mark of their death in a riot of white and pink and yellow flowers, with whippy green leaves curling across their ribs. She’d turned the ugly twists and puckering of the scar into shadows and depths that made the colors shine all the brighter. The blooms themselves were beautiful and eye catching, so that no one would ever look at Molly and see that wound before they saw this tattoo ever again, and maybe one day even Molly would forget the scar was there.

And then there was the coat.

It took Molly a second to recognize it, but Nila and her mate and the children had definitely made them a coat out of their funeral shroud.

Except they’d washed the dirt stains out of it and patched up the holes and tears with colorful ribbons and fabric scraps. Molly turned to look at the back of it and saw that they’d even managed to get the curling silver dragon that had dominated the shroud to fit right on the back. The sleeves were long and loose, the coat itself hung a bit past their knees and it flared a little as they turned this way and that in a way that looked so very nice, so very them.

The added weight on their shoulders, the faint pressure on their back, it hit them in the same place the feeling of being tattooed had. They needed a coat like this, it was a part of them, and now they had it. One more missing piece, precious as memory.

Mollymauk Tealeaf looked in the mirror and saw a real, living person looking back at them, a person who was beaming as big as they could and whose eyes were overbright with joy.

Asar, who so far had demonstrated enormous patience for a child, finally ran out of it. “Do you like it?” he asked eagerly, bouncing down on the balls of his feet, tugging on the hem of the coat. “Do you, do you?”

Words were sometimes still so very hard, and there wasn’t enough room inside of Molly to ever hold enough words to express how much they loved this coat and this tattoo and this body they had all helped piece a little more back together.

Instead, by way of answer, Molly dropped to their knees and pulled both boys to them in a hug. Ombo gasped, Asar let out a delighted shriek, and they both flung their arms around Molly in turn and then Nila was scooping them all up and they were all hugging and laughing together, there on the floor.

Molly could not ever remember feeling this happy or this alive. They tried to fix this moment in their mind and memory, tried to paint it across their thoughts in all the colors they knew, because if memories of their past were important than the memories they made going forward had to mean just as much or more.

*  *  *

In the end, Molly and Shakaste gave Nila some privacy to say farewell to her husband and son. They waited together at the edge of the village, Shakaste seated on the donkey and Molly holding on to the reigns, and they wondered if Nila would change her mind at the last minute. They wouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest if she had. This village was a good place and she had a good life, and if they didn’t have people waiting for them and missing them, Molly thought they might have been content to stay here forever.

“Nice coat,” Shakaste said, smiling faintly.

“Thanks,” said Molly happily. “I like it.”

“Looks warm, too. Road’s only gonna get colder from here.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage.”

“Absolutely!” declared Nila from right behind them.

Molly’s heart almost stopped then and there. Shakaste only let out a burst of loud, raucous laughter. Nila immediately started apologizing profusely, but Molly couldn’t hear her right away as they struggled to get their breathing under control.

Of course, when they looked back at her, they got the very definite sense from the impish note in her expression that she was maybe a bit pleased at herself for being so sneaky.

Yeah. Molly had a feeling they were going to be really great friends.

And with that comforting thought in mind, he set off together with his two friends, back towards the road and on towards Zadash.

Chapter Text

Nila was a good traveling companion in her own way. She was cheerful and easygoing, with a lovely singing voice, as well as being an endless font of knowledge about the world around them. She was able to tell Molly that their new tattoo was of jasmine flowers and about what was safe to eat. The two of them took advantage of any lingering light remaining after setting up camp for her to teach them the basics of sewing as well. “I’m sorry I didn’t have enough time to put a lining in it,” she said, referring to their coat. “But this way, if you find some nice pattern later, you can do it yourself!”

“I don’t see how I can improve on perfection,” they said, frowning down at the fabric scrap she had them practicing on. “But I’m certainly willing to give it a go.”

Their apparently naturally-high pain tolerance was enough that they barely even noticed whenever they pricked their fingers on the needle, which occasionally led to them not noticing their fingers were bleeding until later. Whenever that happened, Nila had a spell she could cast on some berries. All they had to do was eat one and any minor cuts or bruises they’d picked up along the road would fade immediately, as well as leaving them with a full stomach.

She otherwise spent her evenings meditating with the help of her “stink pouch”, which proved to be exactly what it was described to be. She extended an invitation for Molly and Shakaste to join her in this. She insisted it was quite relaxing and, indeed, once you let the smell clobber you upside the head for a few minutes, it really did have a way of clearing the mind. So they both took her up on her offer, and Molly soon found that if they sat quietly with the pouch open nearby for a few minutes, their dreams were rather less sharp and tended more towards pleasant memories.

One time they overheard her talking into her cupped hands, whispering a short message. They couldn’t hear the words but they recognized the tone of her voice and knew that she must have been talking somehow to her family.

Nila could also turn into animals, which about killed Molly all over again from shock the first time they saw her turn into a mouse as easily as they might take off a shirt.

“Yeah, sometimes people can do that,” Shakaste said easily, as the two of them watched Nila scurry up a tree to get a closer look at the ruined house. “Be a funny old world if we were all alike, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d say it’s a funny enough world already. So is what she does like what you do?”

“It can be. But I can do what I do because I got a god’s attention. She does what she does because she knows how nature works better than most of us.”

“I can make people go blind and turn my swords into light. Do you know why that works?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. Not like any magic I’ve ever come across before.”

“I’m just special, I suppose.”

Nila called out to get their attention, and they looked over to see her hurrying to join them in her normal shape. “I saw some signs of ankheg infestation!” she said, once she was close enough to not have to shout. “I think we should move further up the road to camp. Oh, but look!” She opened one of the many pockets in her robe and pulled out a mushroom. “Their dung is very good for mushrooms. We can have these with supper!”

“Thank god,” Shakaste said with feeling, reaching out to clap her on the shoulder. “I was about at my limit with these damn rations.”

And indeed, a healthy serving of stewed chantarelles really did a lot to make the meal something special.

The next morning, Molly asked Shakaste and Nila about the gods, and that kept them both talking enough to see them until evening. As well as learning what gods existed at all, Molly learned a bit more about the land they watched over. Apparently, a lot more people were talking about gods nowadays, because a lot more people were free to. Up until very recently, worship in the Dwendalian Empire had been restricted to only a few chosen deities, but the new queen had lifted that restriction upon taking the throne.

“Did they do that, too? The Mighty Nein?” they asked eagerly.

“Wasn’t there, couldn’t tell you. But that’s what the stories say.” And Shakaste was smiling in a decidedly knowing fashion.

The day after that, Molly could think of nothing to talk about besides the city growing slowly larger on the horizon.

“That is not a real place.”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“No place needs to be that big.”

“Hupperdook does.”

Molly was gratified to see that even Nila was looking a touch overwhelmed. “I’ve had to pass through here on my way to Zadash before,” she confided. “But it never stops being so much.”

“It never stops being a little too rich for my blood, either,” Shakaste said, as the city loomed ever larger ahead of them. “We need to stock up on some rations, but I’d like to be out of the city by sundown.”

Nila nodded. “Me, too. You can see the fireworks for miles anyway.”

Molly wanted to ask what fireworks were, but there seemed a more pressing issue to address. “What happens after dark?”

“Everybody throws a big party!” Nila said.

“‘Party’ doesn’t even begin,” Shakaste added. “The whole damn place goes mad for a night, and then they go right back to work the next day.”

“It’s kind of fun the first couple of times. But I’d much rather have my sleep.”

Molly watched the two of them chatting easily back and forth, until the obvious seemed to occur to them, and they turned to stare at Molly thoughtfully. Molly stared back, trying not to seem too obviously hopeful.

Shakaste, for once, was the one to break first. With a sigh, he turned back to face the road, more for the look of it than anything else. “First things first, and what comes first is supplies. Whatever comes next, well, we can talk about it then.”

“Of course!” Molly agreed gratefully.

It wasn’t as if Hupperdook by day didn’t provide more than enough in the way of distraction. Even when they were walking down its streets with Shakaste and Nila and the donkey, Molly couldn’t shake the idea that no building should be able to be as tall as some of the ones in this city were. It was a city built in levels, rising high into the sky like it was chasing after the mountains it adjoined.

The lower level couldn’t have been more unlike Nila’s village – it was a place of long, barren stretches of ground and the buildings were either low and flat or tall and stark, billowing black smoke against the sky. Scattered in those empty fields were the occasional grand creation of twisted metal and wood that they didn’t recognize the purpose of, but which Shakaste identified as cannons and siege towers.

“Most of ‘em are still waiting to be turned into scrap, though,” he said. “Now that the war’s over.”

“And good riddance,” Nila said, with a vicious sort of satisfaction that Molly had never heard in her voice before.

Once they got higher up into the city, the scenery grew more pleasant but still strange in its own way. For all the vastness of this city, there was hardly anyone out and about. Even when they were walking down streets dotted with nice gardens and interesting looking shops, those few people they saw outside were hurrying briskly to their destinations, gazes fixed on the road ahead. Up here, it was even easier to see the waterfall as it tumbled in a glittering silvery veil down from the clouded peaks and through the city. It was a gentle, everpresent rush on the edge of hearing. Molly didn’t know how anyone could get used to living next to something like that.

Shakaste led them all to a shop filled with assorted useful things. Molly kept themself amused by examining the shelves as their friend negotiated for rations at the counter. They didn’t have any money and wouldn’t have known where to start if they had – Shakaste and Nila were more experienced travelers, so they’d trust in them that everything really necessary was accounted for.

Shakaste called Molly over after a few minutes, as the shopkeeper was bundling up their rations in wax paper. “So,” he said, staring fixedly towards Molly. “You think you might want to give a night in Hupperdook a try, then?”

Somewhat embarrassed at being so easily caught out, Molly nevertheless nodded. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”

“It can be, for some people. I’m just worried about you getting overwhelmed. I don’t know everything you’ve remembered but I know what you’ve seen since you’ve been with me, and Hupperdook’s nothing like it.”

“I know. You’ve said as much. And that’s sort of why I want to see it.” They shrugged helplessly. “It’s been a few days since I last went…” And here they frowned and found that they could only gesture helplessly at themself before settling on “…strange, but the last time it happened, I was overhearing a very quiet conversation in the woods. By that logic, an incredibly noisy party in the biggest city in the world might actually be the best place for me! I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. I want to take this trip to learn things so I’m not still a completely helpless disaster by the time we get to Zadash.”

“You’re not helpless,” said Nila, sounding shocked at the very idea, coming over to give their shoulder a squeeze to punctuate the point.

“No, you’re not,” added Shakaste sternly, before his expression softened. “I hear what you’re saying, and I respect your determination, but trying to test your social acuity in Hupperdook is like…” Shakaste paused, momentarily struggling for the right turn of phrase.

“Like jumping down a waterfall to learn how to swim,” Nila piped up.

“Thank you, dear. Yes, exactly. Molly, I enjoy our time together, but I cannot spend a night in this place. So if something happens, we’re gonna be a while in getting to you.”

Nila half-raised a hand. “I could stay and keep an eye on him.”

“No.” Molly was mildly surprised at how sure of themself they felt in that moment, though they offered Nila an apologetic smile all the same. “I want to spend a night because it sounds like fun, and it won’t be any fun if you two are here and miserable. And if that means I have to spend the night alone and meet up with you tomorrow, then fine.” They swallowed, reminding themself sternly that it would be fine. “Have to find out if I can do it sometime, right? Besides, what are the odds of me meeting some other reminder of my gruesome horrible death when I died a week that way?” They pointed vaguely in the direction of the way they’d come, proud of themself that their voice hadn’t shaken that badly when speaking those words out loud. That alone reassured them that they could maybe probably do this.

It seemed to reassure Shakaste as well. “Hold out your hands.”

Molly did so. Shakaste proceeded to count out ten gold pieces for them. “This should be enough to get you a room for the night and enjoy some of the festivities. Take my advice? Sort out the room first. This is an expensive town for travelers. You probably won’t be able to do everything you want in a night, but, well, that’s why you come back later. If it turns out you like that sort of thing, that is. Now, I’ll be checking in on you a few hours after sundown. Yes, with magic. It’ll feel like a really bad itch on the back of your head for a minute. Don’t scratch it, that’s just me. I’ll be able to see if you’re doing all right. If you are, we’ll see you in the morning at the gate by the Iron Lot. If not, Nila will come and get you, quick as her wings can carry her. You got all that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Repeat it back to me, then.”

Molly was able to do so, with minimal prompting from Nila as she stood strategically behind the old man. He probably heard her there anyway, but didn’t comment. He simply moved on to giving Molly directions to the Iron Lot and to a couple of likely inns.

“All right,” said Shakaste at last, seemingly satisfied, reaching out to pat Molly on the back. “Guess we’ll see you in the morning, then. Watch your pockets and try not to have too much fun. Every day you spend sleeping off a hangover is another day it’ll take us to get to Zadash.”

“But I really hope you do have fun, Molly!” Nila said, moving to give them a kiss on the top of the head. Then they all left the shop together and Shakaste and Nila went one way and Molly went the other, more for the look of the thing than because they had any idea of where to go.

Eventually, they decided to angle towards the waterfall. It was the most visibly interesting thing in sight, and they still had a few hours before sundown.

They were aware as they went that this would be the longest period they’d be alone in their entire new life, but that really didn’t seem as terrifying as it had out in the woods. There was an energy in this place – they’d been able to feel it from the moment they’d stepped beneath the grand iron gate, and even moreso once they’d gotten up to the Idlework Shelf. It seemed to thrum through the buildings around them and the streets beneath their feet, something alive and caged that was waiting for its chance to get out. It couldn’t have been more different than the quiet peace of the Crisp Vale Thicket – not better, not necessarily, but different in a way that left Molly feeling strangely cocooned. It was a feeling they’d wanted to chase and explore further. Now they had the chance, and they felt at least reasonably confident that whatever else came of tonight, the thrumming sense of life in this city would shield them from getting lost in their own head again.

They wondered if Zadash was as big as this place.

Molly got distracted a couple of times on the way to the waterfall, as interesting looking shops occasionally grabbed their attention. There was one that sold books and one that sold chairs and one that sold beautiful glass things. They considered buying a book, maybe to keep notes in, but Shakaste’s words soon proved to be far from an exaggeration here. Molly didn’t know how expensive things were supposed to be, but they knew that they were compared to the ten gold they had in their pockets.

Nevermind – they had been told to get a room first, after all.

And when they finally got to the waterfall, it proved more than worth the trip.

The roar was much louder now, and on top of that there was a faint, fine mist hanging in the air as they went along. It was enough to make them draw their coat a little tighter around themself. This part of the city was mostly taken up by tall, thin towers that were dotted with balconies and small windows all along their length.

The waterfall tumbled down into a vast pool at the other end of the district, and now the endless rush of water was mingling with the clatter and clang of metal. Molly shaded their eyes and stared up to see that several massive intricate, metal contraption had been built into the cliff face along the waterfall, and the water turned gears and made the machinery move as it roared past. Columns of steam rose from the water – they risked reaching a hand in and felt a gentle heat against their skin.

Well, why not? They’d been walking for days now. Molly sat down, tugged off their boots, and stuck their feet in the pool for a rest as they let the natural background tumult clear their head. Off to the right, out of the corner of their eye, they could see a small gaggle of kids skipping rocks.

The peace was broken abruptly and noisily after a while by a voice crying out:

“Welcome to the Mighty Nein!”

The words made them start with surprise, their spine going rigid, and before Molly knew it they were looking around for the source of the call, looking for the Mighty Nein and their friends, and so they didn’t even notice the little creature charging them until they collided with them, wrapping feathery arms around them. The impact was enough to make them sway and almost fall flat with an ungainly “oof”, but the newcomer did not relinquish their grip in the slightest, swaying with him and chirping noisily.

As Molly recovered themself, they saw a pair of beetle-black eyes looking up at them from a bird’s face. They was being hugged by an enormous black bird – or at least, it was enormous by bird standards, it was about the size of what they supposed a “normal” child might be otherwise, probably barely coming up Molly's chest if they were standing up.

“Ah...hi?” Molly said.

The bird opened their beak. “I am Kiri!” they said, in a completely different voice.

“Hello there, Kiri. I am Mollymauk. I take it we’ve met before? This sort of thing keeps happening to me.”

It was hard to tell, but the bird looked somehow saddened at the question. “Glad we understand one another.” Then Molly’s heart skipped a beat because the bird had spoken back to them in Molly's own voice. That, they supposed, answered that.

“I don’t know if I’d say that. I’m having a bit of trouble understanding much of anything, lately,” they replied apologetically, because the child really did seem upset. For lack of anything better to do, Molly patted them on the head. The feathers around their neck rustled and fluffed up in reply. They were pretty sure that was a good sign. “Shame you don’t seem to speak the language.” Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they were speaking too many.

Still, the explanation seemed to help, poor as it was. The bird – Kiri – nodded, then stepped back and ruffled their feathers in the same way that some might clear their throat.

“Molly isn’t here anymore, Kiri.”

Understanding hit them like a knife in the chest. Molly’s heart was suddenly thudding painfully hard against their ribcage. Their breath had frozen in their throat and their head was swimming a bit, because as their wits returned they suddenly realized that they knew that voice, that was Beau’s voice.

“But they love you very much.” Jester’s voice, except it was wrong, it was shaky and tremulous like she was struggling not to cry.

Kiri closed her beak and looked to them, somehow expectantly. Molly wasn’t remotely sure what she was expecting, because after getting a glimpse of their friend’s sorrow over their own demise, they weren’t sure they had any words left to offer. Something of that must have shown on their face, because she let out a sad sort of chirp and held Molly's hand to give it a gentle pat, before reaching out to scrub a finger fussily over their cheek, and Molly only realized then that they’d started tearing up again. Damn it.

“Well, I’m here now,” they said, wiping the tears away themself. “Trying to make my way back to them, as it happens. I don’t suppose they're here on a visit?”

She shook her head.

“Well, I’ll...tell them you said hello? We’re on our way to Zadash, me and a couple of others. Still about two weeks that way.” They gestured vaguely in the direction Shakaste had said the Iron Lot was in. “Just staying here for the night, heard there were a lot of sights to see.”

Kiri immediately took hold of their hand again. “We’ll be there soon, dear.” They didn’t know this voice, but it didn’t take much to guess at her meaning.

“Oh, no.” They very pointedly took their hand away, then got hastily to their feet and held it out of reach when she tried to grab it again. “It’s very nice to be making so many friends, but I am not taking a kid with us all the way to Zadash. Where the hell are your parents, anyway?”

“Go fuck yourself,” said Kiri, folding her arms and clacking her beak in agitation.

“Did we teach you that? We did, didn’t we, that was Jester’s voice. Gods, who the hell let us look after a small child?” Said small child tried to clamber up onto their back – Molly only barely managed to pry her off and set her back on her own two feet, where she grabbed their hand again and they decided to temporarily give up this specific fight. At least this way they could keep her in sight as they wandered around in search of any other big birds.

Unfortunately, the streets remained largely empty, and everyone they did see was a gnome or a dwarf. Anyone who’s eye they caught would give them a strange look before hurrying on their own way. That alone left Molly fairly certain that knocking on doors wouldn’t get them very far and might actually lead to trouble.

In the meantime, Kiri proved herself a surprisingly useful tour guide despite not having a voice of her own. To make up for it, she apparently had the ability to mimic any sound she’d ever heard. So while she couldn’t identify the shops they passed verbally, she made the sound of rustling paper for the bookshop, chewing noises for a café, scissors and whispering fabric for a tailor’s. When Molly pointed out a particularly large and elaborate building to her, she chirped: “It’s time for school!” in a voice they didn’t know. She didn’t look like she belonged in this place but she clearly knew it like the back of her wing. They were genuinely impressed.

At last, for lack of anything better to do, and because the sun was starting to get low, Molly retraced their steps back to the lake and, from there, was able to work their way towards one of the inns Shakaste had mentioned. The elaborately carved sign over the door red “The Bountiful Bower”.

A room for the night was one gold, meals extra. Molly paid for it, keeping half an eye on Kiri as they saw her chatting to the other bartender. They were determined to at least not be such a terrible birdsitter as to let her get drunk.

But in fact, it was paper and a pen that she brought to their table. The place was empty, so they had their pick of places to sit. She scribbled on the paper with every sign of contentment, and Molly busied themself making sure they still remembered Shakaste’s instructions and directions.

Kiri set down her pen as food was brought to their table and held a sheet of paper up to Molly’s face. Molly set down the fork they’d grabbed for, took the paper instead, and scanned the lines of surprisingly neat handwriting.

I told my brothers and sisters that I wanted to spend time with you today. They will tell my mother and father. You won’t get into trouble. They know who you are.

I know we never spoke very much before but I am still very glad to see you. I hope you are well. I will make sure you don’t get lost if you don’t remember where you are.

Love,

Kiri

They lowered the paper to see her staring intently at them, her wings folded primly before her. Seeing that they were done reading, she tilted her head and let out an inquisitive sort of coo. Molly felt their earlier uncertainty and hesitation towards her easing like a weight off their chest. Though that was partly due to her assurance that they weren’t about to get into trouble for accidental kidnapping, the fact that she’d still thought to make the assurance counted for a lot. They also felt somewhat foolish for thinking she’d wanted to go as far as Zadash when she’d really only been offering to show them around for a day.

“Well, I certainly don’t remember why we never talked very much,” they said, resting their chin in their hand and smiling easily at her. “You seem like a very polite, metaphorically well-spoken child.”

“Yes, I am very sweet.”

“So, you do have family in town?”

“Okay,” Kiri said, nodding.

“If you’ll actually tell me where they live, I can drop you off with them on my way to the Iron Lot tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“It’s…very kind of you to worry about me. I wish you didn’t have to, but it’s been a strange time.”

It wasn’t possible for a bird to smile, but her general atmosphere shifted so that it seemed like she should have been smiling. “This means we are friends.” Caleb’s voice, this time.

“I’ll drink to that.” She clacked her mug of cider against their mug of ale and they both took a swallow before digging into their food.

They were getting a sense of what Kiri was capable of, what sorts of snippets of phrase and sound she had tucked away in her memory. If you kept all of that in mind and also sort of tilted your mind sideways, it was surprisingly possible to carry on a conversation with her. After all, this wasn’t the first time Molly had found themself in the company of a child that didn’t communicate the way most people expected – first Toya, then Ombo, now Kiri.

They learned that she had four siblings, along with a mother and a father who worked as butchers. They were pretty sure that the Mighty Nein were the reason this small bird child lived with a family of gnomes, and also that it was an improvement over the situation they’d found her in.

In turn, Molly told her an abbreviated version of how they’d woken up with no memories. Telling a child that they’d been dead not even two weeks ago seemed wrong, somehow, especially when that child had known them before. They told her about Shakaste, Nila, and the Guatiao tribe, and maybe a few creatively embellished stories from the road so far. Just because they weren’t strong enough to do anything interesting yet didn’t mean they shouldn’t tell an interesting story. All the while, the sky grew darker outside the windows.

The food was good – different and richer than anything they’d eaten on the road so far. So Molly found that they still had to take it slow, though Kiri devoured her portion with gusto, including the hunk of bread and the remainder of the meat that Molly scraped onto her plate.

As Molly was working their way through the last of the vegetables, the comfortable silence was broken by an impossibly loud, echoing whistle from outside, shortly followed by what sounded like several controlled explosions. Molly nearly fell off their chair in shock. “What in all the…?!”

“Get into trouble,” said Kiri happily, as they righted themself and stared towards the windows. Outside, Molly could see a tide of movement outside as people surged into the streets all at once. Every so often, a flash of colored light would illuminate the scene, illuminate innumerable joyful faces as the people of Hupperdook set out to celebrate. The distant rush of chatter and laughter could be heard even over the periodic explosions.

“That sounds like a fine idea,” they said, a little breathlessly. They shoved the rest of their food into their mouth all at once, swallowed with some difficulty, and got up from their seat. Kiri hopped down as well and held out her hand. Molly took it without hesitation, and together they headed for the door.

They’d barely taken two steps outside before they had to brace themself against all the people trying to shove their way past them into the inn. Kiri tugged their hand one way and they didn't hesitate to follow her, so she led them carefully into the mouth of an alleyway where they could at least look around without being stepped on.

Hupperdook had transformed itself in moments. The streets were filled with laughing, chatting people, and someone somewhere had even started to play music. The empty booths they’d seen scattered around had people starting to man them, and up in the sky…

Molly stared as a shower of blue light exploded overhead, painting the world for a moment before it faded. It was followed by others, green and red and then purple, carving halos and flowers and stars in the sky.

It was the single most beautiful thing they had ever seen.

Kiri patted their back to get their attention again. Molly looked down at her, tearing their gaze away with some difficulty.

“Have a good time,” she said, and their heart ached as they recognized Yasha’s voice. They swallowed past the sudden dryness in their throat, nodded their agreement, and gripped her hand a little tighter.

“Yeah,” they said. “That’s the plan.”

Together, Molly and Kiri headed out to see what Hupperdook had to offer.

Chapter Text

When Molly found the booth selling silk flowers, they nearly spent their remaining gold then and there. But in the end, they managed to stick to buying two strands for themself and two for Kiri and a bouquet of single flowers that they were sure they’d think of something interesting to do with later. In the meantime, they draped one strand of flowers around their neck and wrapped the other around their horns until they had a passable crown.

They were grateful to themself for showing restraint once they found the booth selling small fireworks. They got a pack of sparklers and poppers for themself and a pack of each for Kiri and a few larger fireworks for good measure. She said she’d handled them before, and they had no reason not to believe her. They each lit a sparkler then and there in front of the booth and then raced off together, tracing brilliant trails and spirals of light through the night air. When the two of them found a gaggle of children shooting off fireworks in the middle of the street, they both joined without a second’s thought and no question, and together they made a brilliant, nonsense cacophony of light and noise in the air.

To hold a firework in their hand was the most power Molly had ever felt in their new, short life. To know that they had the capacity to light up the world with color and noise on a whim was the most incredible rush.

When Kiri noticed their disappointment over the fact that their pack was half-empty inside of a couple of hours, she held out her sizzling sparkler without hesitation. They took it happily and twirled on the spot, spinning and scything the sparklers through the air until they could see the lights on the inside of their eyelids whenever they blinked.

There were a couple of points where they almost got so distracted by the noise and the laughter and the music and the fantastically beautiful celebration going on all around them that Molly almost lost track of Kiri in the throngs of people. The second time this happened, they got an idea.

“So would you happen to have a really loud noise in your back pocket? Just obnoxiously noisy, something I could hear even over these assholes?”

Kiri considered the question, then tipped her head back, opened her beak, and let out the most raucously loud and awful sound he’d ever heard, loud enough that Molly had to clap their hands over their ears and a good two dozen revelers stopped dead in their tracks to stare at the two of them. Then she closed her beak and looked up at Molly inquisitively.

“Yeah,” Molly said, once they risked taking their hands away. “Yeah, that’ll do it. Did we teach you that?”

“Welcome to the Mighty Nein!”

“We really were the worst influences.”

It gave them even more incentive to keep half an eye on her, though, so they never had to hear that again.

More than anything, though, when they looked back on that night, there were two things that Mollymauk Tealeaf remembered best.

The first was the dancing. They and Kiri spent hours on end chasing music from square to square. There were musicians playing all throughout the city, setting up anywhere there was room for them and a crowd of people and sometimes where there wasn't. At first, Molly was hesitant to join in – they didn’t know the steps and they were so much taller than the vast majority of the other partygoers. They were afraid of kicking someone in the face. But Kiri noticed the way the music made Molly’s feet tap and their tail twitch and their body sway on the spot. Kiri solved Molly’s hesitation for them at the first moment it arose by shoving them forcibly into a crowd of dancers from behind. After that, they found that no one was too bothered if they knew the steps as long as they did their best, and no one was too worried about kicking them in the shins, and they laughed it off the few times Molly did accidentally kick someone back.

Once their hesitations were dealt with, Molly discovered that dancing was the most sublime thing in all the world.

Heart racing, lungs expanding, muscles moving – they had never been more aware of themself and their body and how good it felt to use it. They had died, they’d been buried in the ground and left behind and now they were alive and hearing music and moving for no other reason than the sake of it, because it was there. They danced and twirled and leapt, trading partner after partner for song after song, hand-in-hand with strangers, laughing as they collided with other revelers when someone lost the beat. When one band broke up, when a new song didn’t get their blood fizzling as it should, they went chasing off after another with Kiri racing along beside them.

When they found the right music, there was no thought, no doubts, no hesitations about past or future – there was only the act of letting themself be carried away on a tide of thoughtless motion, knowing nothing but the rhythm and the press of others who were similarly, blissfully lost.

They soon found that this hunger for music and motion suited the people of Hupperdook perfectly. A few pulled Molly down for sudden, swift kisses or bought them sticky, sweet drinks from carts along the roads that came in as many colors as the fireworks and hit their senses just as forcibly. They were happy to accept all of that and more – it felt like a welcome with arms thrown out wide, like the city itself was embracing them. No one here knew who Mollymauk Tealeaf was or that they’d died on the side of a lonely road and no one cared to know. All the people of Hupperdook cared about was that Molly was here and willing to laugh and try their hand at whatever dance was before them. All they cared about was that Molly was willing to join in. This they were, still, always, and forever, as the night turned on and on in a blur of joy.

But eventually, the body weakened even though the spirit remained willing. During a point when Molly stumbled particularly badly and got a knee in the stomach for it, Kiri stepped up and let out her raucously noisy alarm noise and brought everyone, band and dancers alike, stumbling to a stop. Then, without giving anyone time to process what had happened or what they’d heard, she darted forward to grab Molly’s hand and tow them forcibly out of the crowd. Once again, they were happy to let her lead the way.

She brought them to sit at the mouth of another alley, then hurried away to grab a drink that turned out to actually be water. They gulped it down gratefully in a few swallows. When Kiri caught them eyeing up the crowd again after that, she tilted her head and stared fixedly at them and said: “I don’t know if it’s smart” in a sing-song imitation of Jester.

Molly frowned, but when they couldn’t even get their thoughts in order enough for a proper retort, they sighed in defeat. “You’re probably right and I hate it.” But as their wits slowly returned, they realized that every inch of them was aching from exertion and there were absolutely a few previously unregarded bruises blooming on their skin. Maybe at least a short rest was called for. After all, Shakaste had warned them that they probably wouldn’t be able to do everything they wanted tonight, and it felt like Molly would never be able to do as much dancing as they wanted to, so with that in mind they supposed they might as well rest and stop Kiri looking so concerned.

Besides, Shakaste had also said they could always come back later. Later could still be a thing that existed for them. They had until they were as old and grey as Shakaste himself to fit in all the dancing they wanted to do, and tonight they’d made a good start of that.

In the meantime, the closest safe place to rest that wasn't an alleyway was a collection of benches arranged in a circle. Molly wormed their way into a spot, let Kiri get comfortable on their lap because there was nowhere else to sit, and settled down to watch the free show, whatever it happened to be.

That was the second thing they remembered best about that night – the dwarf.

The free show was a drinking contest, with one trestle table, one combatant on either side of it, and a long line of mugs that both sides were drinking down as fast as they could. When one passed out or threw up, someone else would step forward to take their place and try to topple the reigning champion.

Said reigning champion was a grizzled dwarf, with brown eyes and brown hair and a line of stubble and the most muscles Molly had ever seen on a single person. They were corded all down her arms and she seemed to have foregone sleeves on her shirt for the sake of showing them off. Molly could absolutely respect that. They found themself appreciating the view immensely. More muscles strained against her pants and bulged in her neck as she drank tankard after tankard like there was nothing but water inside. Even while they sat and watched, the dwarf drank two challengers under the table with barely a burp.

That was about as long as it took for Molly to pick out the name the crowd was chanting, louder and louder as she lasted longer and longer. “Keg! Keg! Keg!”

They were happy to chant along, and so was Kiri in about five different voices at once. “Come on, Keg!” Molly cheered, applauding as loud as they could in encouragement. “Take ‘em out!”

When the fourth challenger fell, Keg – apparently flush with victory – leaped onto the increasingly empty table and turned in a circle to face the crowd. She punched her fists into the air and roared in wordless triumph, and the crowd roared back to her with equal enthusiasm. Molly was cheering themself hoarse, punching the air and stamping their feet as the crowd’s energy surged through them, and as Keg did her circuit to survey her fans her eyes met Molly’s by what could only have been sheer chance.

It was a second that seemed to last a minor eternity when Molly played it back in their mind later. Keg’s expression changed from drunken joy to shock to horror. As Molly watched, she swayed and then slumped, doubling over to be sick over the edge of the table,  and she’d barely let herself finish emptying the contents of her stomach before she was stumbling and falling off of it. The crowd let out a not unsympathetic groan. A couple of gnomes moved in to try and help her but she shoved them away, shaking her head. She looked up, looked around as if seeking an escape route, and her eyes lit on Molly once more where they were standing now with Kiri beside them. They’d half risen to go and try to help as well, but as Keg looked at them again, they found themself freezing up in turn under the desperate, searching force of her gaze. The mere sight of them had made her go pale with something very much like fear.

Then all at once she turned and stumbled her way towards the crowd to shove her way out and back into the street. Molly watched her go, torn between whether to follow or forget. They had a very definite feeling that they knew why she’d run at the sight of them, that the shock had also been mixed with recognition. The suspicion was a cold, tight knot in the pit of their stomach. Did that mean it would be kinder to go and follow her, or kinder to stay away and maybe let her talk herself later into thinking that Molly had been a drunken hallucination?

They found themself looking to Kiri for any indication of what to do, and only felt a little foolish in doing so. She’d been their guide so far, after all.

“I don’t suppose you recognized her at all?” they asked.

Kiri shook her head.

“She certainly seemed to recognize me, though.”

Kiri nodded.

“Do you think we should follow her? Maybe I cheated her at cards or mugged her or something. Something I could apologize for.” But Molly had their doubts. A woman like that didn’t seem like she’d get all pale and shaky over some lost coin. Saying any more might have meant admitting to Kiri where Molly had been for the past few years, however, and so they didn’t.

Kiri gave the question some due consideration, then shrugged. “I’ve never done this before!”

“I have,” Molly sighed. “Unfortunately.” Maybe that meant it would be easier the second time. They reminded themself sternly that bad memories were like monsters – you had to turn and face them if you were going to have a hope of winning. Tonight was supposed to be a night of learning things, and even if they hadn’t intended that to include their past, that was how the cards had fallen now.

So, Molly and Kiri set off together to follow Keg. Fortunately, she hadn't gone far, and Molly's own experiences in Hupperdook so far meant that it didn't take long before they thought to check the alleyways. Those seemed to be the most obvious places to go if you wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle for a time.

On the third one they checked, Molly found Keg as a huddled, groaning shape at the alley's opposite end, tucked behind a barrel. They tried to approach cautiously, but Keg noticed them after only a few steps, and her groan became rather more heartfelt. "Fuck, I'm still seeing shit."

"Nothing special about that," said Molly, resting their free hand on their hip and regarding her cautiously. Something about her tone of voice had them on edge, even more than the look in her eyes earlier. "We're all seeing a lot of shit tonight. I thought that was the point."

Keg buried her face in her hands. Molly had never had much trouble seeing in the dark, and they were able to see the way her knuckles stood out stark against the back of her hands. "Shut up. Just, just be a good hallucination and fuck off already."

"Not a hallucination, not about to fuck off. It's is a free alley, I can skulk around here if I want." They risked taking a few steps nearer, and were relieved when Kiri hung back this time. The barrel was thankfully able to support Molly's weight when they took a seat on it. "And I've already had this conversation once this week, so let me cut right to the chase. No, I don't know how I'm alive, and whatever the explanation is, I honestly don't much care."

They saw her flinch, saw her half-lift her head. After a long, breathless moment, she reached out a hand. After a moment's hesitation, Molly bridged the distance between them and took it in theirs'.

Keg's breathing hitched, and her eyes were shining in the light of the fireworks still exploding overhead. "Fuck," she breathed. "Fuck. Molly, it's really you?" 

They mustered a smile for her, feeling their hackles settling slightly as she apparently moved from disbelief to joy. Whoever they'd been before, at least it seemed they had been someone well-liked. "So they tell me. Still having some trouble remembering everything, but it's all coming back pretty fast. I'm sure I'll remember you, come tomorrow. It usually seems to happen in dreams." 

"Keeps happening to me," Kiri piped up in Molly's voice, poking their head around the barrel to stare at Keg. Keg flinched violently at her presence, staring wildly at the girl. 

"What she said," Molly said, jabbing a thumb at the girl. "Meet my tour guide, by the way. She's nice."

Keg cautiously stuck out a hand as if Kiri might bite. Kiri shook it heartily. "Welcome to the Mighty Nein!" 

Keg seemed to brighten up noticeably at this declaration. "Already there, kid." 

"Do you know Nila, then?" Molly asked. "Because when I mentioned I'd had this conversation once already, it was with her." Sort of, they added, in the privacy of their own mind.

"Sure I do. Nila's fucking great. So, uh, she knows you're back, too?"

"Her and Shakaste. Do you--?"

"I know Shakaste. Also fucking great, for the record."

"I am Kiri."

"Still seems like I've got one up on you, socially speaking," Molly said, smiling wryly and briefly. 

She laughed, and even she sounded surprised by the sound. "Shut up!" But Molly found themself laughing with her, relief bubbling up in their chest as the earlier tension snapped like a popper's fuse with Kiri's aid. When they cautiously got down off the barrel to sit beside her, she let them, and she even let Kiri worm her way in between the two of them. 

"So, uh..." Keg said, and now that she seemed to have accepted what was before her eyes she was having some trouble looking at Molly again. On some level, it was funny watching her look everywhere but at them. On another, it made their chest hurt, wondering what she saw when she looked at them that was so awful, what memories she was trying to avoid facing. "You're alive? Since when?"

"A little over a week ago."

"And you, what, woke up in your own grave?" They saw her go pale as more fireworks went off. "Fuck."

"Next to it. Alone."

"Okay, good, but...no, fuck, that still sounds freaky."

"It wasn't especially pleasant, no. But I met Shakaste that night. He's made things easier." The thought of the old man made Molly smile so fondly. "So has Nila."

"But you don't remember what happened?"

"I'm remembering a lot of things. Mostly as bits and pieces, scattered all over the place. Not you, not yet. Stuff seem to come back not long after I see something to jog my memory, though, and I imagine you're going to qualify."

"Then I'm sorry to hear that," Keg said, with a sudden and worrying solemnity. For lack of anything better to say in response, they patted her on the shoulder. The offer of reassurance seemed to galvanize her, because she took a deep breath and carried on, all in a rush: "Because I was there when you died."

On some level, they'd been expecting it, but Molly still froze to hear the words spoken aloud. Keg noticed it - out of the corner of their eye, they saw her worrying at her bottom lip before she plunged on: "And, and it's not like it's the first time I've seen people I've fucked over in the middle of a bender, so when I saw you in the crowd--"

"I know."

"And I'm sorry, I never got the chance to say that before but if you're really--"

Molly was on their feet before they properly realized it, but once they did, they knew there had been no other choice to make. "You know," they said, stretching languidly, deliberately casual. "I don't want to hear this right now. This is supposed to be my night off. I do not want to think about weird magic or tragic deaths or really much of anything besides getting more fireworks and drinks. This is a conversation we can have later. We're staying at the Bountiful Bower."

"For how long?" Keg asked, and it was strange to hear such a visibly powerful dwarf sound so anxious. 

"Just until tomorrow. Then we're back on our way to Zadash. I can't promise this is a conversation I'll want to have tomorrow, by the way, but I can at least buy you a drink for old time's sake. Whatever that turns out to be. That is..." Molly hastily checked their pockets, and found that their gold was still there. "That is if this place hasn't bled me dry by then."

"Hupperdook's good at that," Keg said, getting to her feet and dusting herself off and grinning weakly. "But I'll try to swing by tomorrow. For old time's sake. And, er, Molly? It's really good to see you again."

"Good to be seen." Now that the unpleasant prospect of an unpleasant conversations seemed to be safely behind them, Molly offered Keg a jaunty salute and turned away. They'd almost gotten back out into the street when Keg called out to them again. Molly glanced back in time to catch a heavy coin purse as it was tossed at their head. Muscle memory saved them again - maybe one day their real memories would follow suit.

"Almost forgot," Keg said, and they heard the grin in her voice. "Payment for services rendered. With interest. Since it's coming kinda late and al." 

The pouch had a genuine weight to it. There was obviously a lot more than ten gold within. Molly didn't even know what they’d do with this much money, but if a night in Hupperdook had taught them anything, it was that money was a very good thing to have. So they pocketed the pouch without further hesitation "I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'll take it. Pleasure doing business with you."

"You too. I mean it. And, and if you do turn out to be a drunken hallucination in the morning, Molly, I really am sorry. For what happened.”

Molly didn’t know what would be best to say to that, but they had a good idea of what Keg was hoping to hear. Fortunately, the words were still easy to offer. “It’s okay,” they said, and meant it. “See you around,” they added, and then they took Kiri’s hand and plunged back into the crowds without a backwards glance.  

“Don’t eat humans, okay?” Kiri called over her shoulder, waving back at Keg.

Unfortunately, Molly’s assorted aches and bruises had not eased up at all since they’d last gone dancing. In fact, the pause seemed to have given their body time to remember a few others for good measure. Instead, Molly bought themself more fireworks, spent a while hunting for a clear space to set them off all at once, and then set off to find somewhere with good drinks and people that might be willing to tell good stories in exchange.

Thankfully, there were no shortage of such places in Hupperdook at night. And there were no shortage of people willing to regale any and all nearby listeners with grand stories of the Mighty Nein in exchange for a drink or five. A fair few of the stories were probably exaggerated, but if even half were true…

The Mighty Nein. King killers, dragonslayers, grand explorers, defenders of the downtrodden. The lot of them almost seemed too fantastical to be real. And Molly had been a part of them, once.

I still am, they reminded themself sternly. They pressed a hand over their chest where the letter was still tucked away safely, to reassure themself that this was true. It said so right there on the paper. You are a member of the Mighty Nein. They wouldn’t have written that if it wasn’t true. They’d wanted Molly to know this as much as they’d wanted them to know their own name.

Even so…

“It’s not really going to be the same, isn’t it?” they asked Kiri as they wended their weary way together back to the inn. Molly was dimly aware that their voice was rather slurred from drink or exhaustion or more likely both. “They’ll ask me, ‘Oh, Molly, what have you been doing with yourself these past few years?’ And all I’ll be able to tell them is that I grew flowers out of myself, woke up, shoveled some snow, fought a ghost, then spent a night getting fantastically drunk and shooting off fireworks. And all they’ll be able to tell me is shit like that.” They waived their free hand back towards the chattering cluster of tables they’d left. “It really isn’t fair, you know?”

Kiri didn’t answer right away, to the point that Molly looked anxiously down at her. The little girl was so exhausted that she was staggering somewhat, staring at the ground like that was the only way she could trust it would still be there. Molly felt a stab of anxiety as they wondered how well they’d really kept an eye on her, if she’d drunk something she shouldn’t have, if she’d even had fun tonight at all.

“They love you very much,” Kiri finally said, staring sleepily up at Molly.

They didn’t understand what she was getting at, not at first, and then maybe it was only that getting drunk made them especially emotional, but Molly felt tears gathering in their eyes as the sheer, simple sincerity of her words, offered up in Jester’s voice, cut them to the quick.

I know, Molly thought, and it didn’t even feel like they were lying to themself to think so. On a wild, grateful whim, they stopped walking, knelt down beside Kiri, and helped her get settled onto their back. Kiri was happy to do so, happy to cling to Molly and rest her head against their shoulder with a long, contented coo. She turned out to weigh almost nothing so that, when they got back to their feet, it was easy to keep going towards the inn. Dimly, they were aware that they should maybe be trying to bring Kiri back home instead, wherever home was, that she had her own bed to return to. But they were both exhausted and the prospect of sleep was so close.

Their room turned out to be big and luxurious, well worth the money. There was even a table and chairs, made out of some gleaming, polished wood. There were even paintings on the walls. The bed was as big as both the pallets in the guest hut, and so soft that when Molly settled down onto it, they found themself flailing for a moment at the sensation of almost sinking into it. Even once they recovered, once they stretched out fully on one side, they had the wild thought that maybe this was what clouds felt like.

Despite the size of the bed, Kiri pressed close to them once more. When they pulled away a little to stare curiously at her, she suddenly looked as anxious as they’d ever seen her. “It’s time for bed, dear,” she chirped, in a voice that Molly was starting to suspect might be her mother’s.

Even considering how weary they were, her meaning was easy to take, and it made their heart ache with too many emotions to name. “Yeah,” said Molly gently. “It is.” And then they held open their arms and Kiri’s relief was palpable as she took the offered invitation.

“Hold the bird down,” she added in Yasha’s voice, as she cuddled close and Molly wrapped their arms around her. It was surprisingly comfortable – Kiri could tuck her beak quite snugly against her chest, with a wing folded over it for good measure. So all they really felt were her feathers, which rustled and floofed until they were soft as snow’s kiss beneath Molly’s fingers in apparent preparation for sleep.

Molly dragged the blankets over them both, rested their chin against the top of her head and kept their eyes open just long enough to feel her breathing settling into the gentle rhythm of sleep. Then they closed their eyes and weren’t long in following.

*  *  *

They’d managed to set the tents up facing one another, the better to let them all fit inside, because it was the coldest night so far and the warmth of one another wouldn’t be enough to see them through it.

The warmth of one another was helping, though. Molly was tucked in between everyone else – Beau was a solid line against their back, with Keg on her other side. Beau had one of her legs hooked over Molly’s, no doubt so she’d know if they moved or were taken. Molly had an arm draped around Caleb’s waist, who was himself curled protectively around Nott. The others had all finally settled into an uncomfortable, uneasy sleep a while ago, but Molly wasn’t finding themself so lucky.

The thought of what tomorrow might bring made their heart thud feverishly fast against their ribs. So much was riding on them tomorrow, so much had to go right or their friends would pay the price for it. Everything had to go perfectly, people were counting on them, good people and friends who never should have been in this kind of danger in the first place.

But they did not leave people behind. Not anymore. Despite the danger, Molly’s resolve in this had not wavered.

Things were dire enough that they’d done a reading, a couple of nights ago, the first night after finding the others gone and taking up with Keg. Molly didn’t normally place much stock in the cards for their own purposes, they’d had too much practice at bending them to suit someone else’s wishes. But occasionally, they got a tickle in the back of their mind, an itch that was impossible to ignore, and occasionally they could let themself believe that there was something to this.

The  most important question Molly had been seeking answers for was “will we save the other three?” Under the circumstances, the results had been promising. The general sense the cards had given was “disaster, then success”. It wouldn’t be an easy job to get that far, they’d face hardships along the way – they had already – but in the end, the lot of them were on the right path to accomplish their shared goal.

Just to be sure, they’d pushed their luck enough to try a second reading – “will we all be together again?” It would do no good to save Jester if they got Beau killed in the bargain, after all. The results on that front had been reassuringly definite. It would be a struggle, but as long as they stayed on this path, there would be a time when they were all together again.

Nott grumbled something in her sleep. Beau was snoring gently. Molly could feel Caleb’s heartbeat beneath their fingers. As they closed their eyes and breathed in these minute little details, their heart was warm as fire and full as possible. Sometimes they thought about how they hadn’t even known these people existed two months ago, and laughed aloud at how delightfully nonsensical the world could be sometimes. Because now these people were everything to them, these friends were the entire world and everything good within it.

Losing the carnival should have been the end of them, but the Mighty Nein had made it a glorious new beginning.

Joy could fill a lot in a person’s life, and these people, these friends, had given them so much of it. They were determined to protect who they had left and see the ones they’d lost safely home. Mollymauk Tealeaf was quite finished with losing people, thank you very much.

I love you all, they thought, with a fierceness that still surprised them. Molly loved these three who were curled up against them to shelter from the snow and they loved the three who were much too far away.

When they were all together again, when everything was okay again, Molly was resolved that they would say this out loud more often. Each and every one of these assholes deserved to hear it.

Newly resolved, they pressed a soft kiss to the top of Caleb’s head and curled their tail around Beau’s ankle. Then Mollymauk Tealeaf closed their eyes and tried to get what sleep they could before the dawn came.

Chapter Text

Molly awoke to a pounding at the door that wasn’t quite as loud as the pounding in their head.

“Molly? Hey, Molly! Get the fuck up!”

Molly groaned and pulled one of the pillows over their ears. “Fuck off!”

“Go fuck yourself!”

It was only then that Molly realized that Kiri was no longer in bed with them. When they pushed themself up into a sitting position to stare blearily around the room, they saw that the little girl was no longer in the room at all. That probably should have been obvious from the moment she’d called out from the other side of the door, but right now Molly’s head felt like someone had stuffed it full of fuzz.

Keg hadn’t stopped knocking. Molly winced in pain and pressed their palms against their eyes as if to force the pressure out of their head. “Oh, just leave me here to die.”

“Nothin’ doin’, man! Kiri says you’ve got a date at the Iron Lot and I’m here to make sure you keep it. Get the fuck up or she says she’ll pick the lock!”

Molly opened their mouth to question the possibility of Kiri picking a lock, and then closed it again. Of course she could.

They got out of bed, nearly fell back into bed as the world spun and pitched around them, but finally, finally managed to stumble to the door and open it and stare blearily down at Keg and Kiri.

Keg stared up at them, her fist still half-raised to keep knocking, and then she grinned weakly. “You look like shit.”

“Likewise,” Molly croaked. She absolutely did – her eyes were bloodshot and she was leaning on a giant warhammer like it was a walking stick. “And good morning to you, too.” They frowned, as they remembered they’d wanted to say something to Keg. They’d woken up in a half-asleep haze late last night and it had occurred to them to say this and now it had slipped their…ah, yes.

“The deal was for twenty gold split four ways.” They patted their belt where the overfull coin purse jingled. “You vastly overestimated my share and the amount of help I actually offered.”

Keg looked confused for a moment, but only for a moment, then her grin grew rather more pronounced. “What can I say? I’m a generous drunk. You might as well take advantage.”

Molly still felt too groggy to argue, so when Kiri tried to push their hand back towards the loop on their belt, they let her and reattached the pouch. Keg nodded her approval.

“Anyway,” the dwarf carried on. “They’ve got a bathhouse next door and the breakfasts are big and greasy. Good for what ails you even if you did it to yourself. C’mon.” She motioned for Molly to follow her downstairs, and Molly did so, though rather reluctantly and not entirely gracefully. It didn’t feel like anything in the world could help them right now, but they were prepared to let Keg prove them wrong.

They felt Kiri take hold of their hand again. Molly gave her long, fine fingers a soft squeeze. “Good morning, dear.”

“Good morning, dear.”

“I suppose I should thank you for saving me from myself, on…fairly certain it was multiple occasions last night.”

“Yes, I am very sweet.”

“We’ll take you back as soon as I think I can go outside without falling on my face. Is that okay?”

“Momma and dad.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll try not to be too long in feeling human again. Well.” Molly thumped their tail against the wall as they all went downstairs together. “You know what I mean.”

Kiri nodded and chirped happily.

Keg went to the bar once they got downstairs and ordered two “hangover specials” and “whatever normal people eat” for Kiri. She stepped on Molly’s foot when they went to grab for their coinpurse and had already paid by the time they finished shaking life back into it.

So they all retired to a table together and were eventually served up a large breakfast apiece. Kiri got eggs, toast with honey, apples, and a sliced pile of something that, when she offered Molly a piece to try, turned out to be a sort of fish. Molly and Keg got eggs and toast with honey and steaks with a pile of vegetables, both glistening in grease. It was around about the time that they finished working their way through the toast that Molly remembered that they hadn’t eaten much of anything last night, and by the time they made their way through the toast the rest of them was able to appreciate how hungry they were and how good the food was. They were also pretty sure they’d be able to keep it down, which was the greatest victory of the morning. This time, it was Kiri who scraped the last of her fish onto Molly’s plate for them to mop up the last of the grease with.

Keg was good company, in her own way. There was a surprising sort of gentleness to her – ragged and torn at the edges, but no less real for it. Molly had known a great deal of kind people in their new, short life, but this wasn’t like with Shakaste and Nila, who were kind the same way most people breathed. Keg’s was a goodness pieced together from scorched scraps and tatters, and she wore it as proudly as an ill-fitting patchwork coat she’d stitched with her own bloody fingers.

So they liked her even more in the still-rather-harsh light of day. Once they had some food in their stomach, the light wasn’t so harsh that they couldn’t follow Keg and Kiri next door to the bathhouse.

The Guaitao tribe had had a designated spot in the river for bathing, but the water had been so bitterly, icily cold during Molly and Shakaste’s visit that Molly had indulged once and briefly. So they were delighted to discover that, due to some quirk of the machinery that powered the city, the baths here were always hot and steaming. They even had soaps with interesting, flowery smells to try and things you could add to the water to make bubbles in it, though Keg didn’t let them use very much of that.

Kiri did not join them in the bath itself – she somehow requested a bucket from one of the attendants, which she filled up with soapy water. Then she sat herself in a corner of the tiny chamber to splash herself with it, rustling her feathers as she did so. Molly barely had time to look and confirm that she was fine over there before Keg finished undressing and moved to join Molly in the bigger tub. And Keg without her clothes on proved to be a very distracting sight.

Yeah. They had never seen that many muscles on one person before, and even if they had, Molly had absolutely no doubt that Keg would still have looked the best.

Keg noticed them staring and, to be fair, Molly wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. “Enjoying the view?” she asked, grinning, as she slipped into the water.

“Am I that obvious?”

“Really obvious. It’s fine, it’s fine – I don’t mind you looking, but no touching. I’ve, uh, I’ve kinda got someone already.”

“Really? Good for you.”

“Thanks. It’s kinda weird, having someone, like, long-term and for real and all of that, but it’s nice. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“I wouldn’t either, in your shoes.”

“Actually,” Keg said thoughtfully, as Molly started to work the scrubbing rag over themself. “You might know her? Or I guess, she might know you. I think she met you guys before I did, so you would have still been, uh...”

“Alive?”

“Yeah.”

Silence fell between them all for a while after that, but for the sound of Kiri splashing herself and Keg pointing out to Molly which soaps did what.

“Is she in town?” Molly finally thought to ask, as they worked some sort of flowery-smelling oil through their hair.

“Nah. She was on her way, though. Actually, if we’re heading to Zadash by the Amber road, we might run into her.”

“If we do, would you mind telling her the whole…” Molly found that they couldn’t quite put the past couple of weeks into words, and so simply wound up gesturing at themself. “You know? It gets kind of old after the first couple of times.”

“I get ya. Yeah, I can do that. So, woke up a couple of weeks ago, didn’t remember anything, no idea how you’re alive. Met up with Shakaste and Nila, remembered enough that you’re heading to see your friends in Zadash?”

“In roughly that order, sure. Helps that I found a letter in my shirt.”

“Oh! Yeah, they did leave you that, didn’t they? Glad it helped. Hell, glad it survived this long. Hey, pass me the rock, I want to see if I can get some feeling back in my feet.” Molly obligingly passed the pumice stone over, and Keg hauled a foot up from the water. “But yeah, I got you covered.”

“Thank you.”

A few more minutes passed in silence. Molly decided that they couldn’t decide which of the three soaps before them they liked better, so they decided to use all of them.

Wait a minute.

“Did you just say ‘we’ might meet up with her?” Molly asked.

“Did I?” Keg looked startled, then guilty. “Sorry. I, er, I meant to ask first. Guess I’m still a little fucked up.”

“It’s fine. Totally understandable. So, did you want to come with us? Can you?”

“Sure can. I don’t live here, I was just hanging out for a few days until Cali caught up. But I think she said she’d be coming by the Amber Road for the last few days, so we’ll probably run into her anyway.”

 “Okay, so you can, but you never said if you wanted to? You don’t have to. I mean, Nila said she needed to stop by Zadash anyway, and Shakaste…” Molly frowned thoughtfully. “Fair enough, I don’t know why Shakaste’s doing any of this. But you don’t have to. The three of us will be fine.”

“Trust me, I know. If you’ve got Nila and Shakaste with you, you’ve got better bodyguards than I could ever be.” Keg’s face was lit by a warm, soft smile, that transformed the worn and jagged edges of her into something more. “But I’m still not used to being the kind of person that brings good news. So I want to be a part of bringing you back to them. Honestly, I just really want to see the looks on their faces when they see you again. I want to feel like I had something to do with that, you know?”

There was something she wasn’t saying, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was Molly’s business to ask. That didn’t change the fact that the sincerity and hope in her voice were genuinely touching, both as it related to them and their friends. And that didn’t change the fact that she seemed like she’d be good company on the road.

“We’d love to have you,” Molly declared, and Keg beamed in relief. It was an assertion they felt reasonably confident in making – if Shakaste could put up with Molly, he could put up with Keg.

“Want to come with us,” Kiri chirped from her corner. Molly glanced back at her curiously, and Kiri stared fixedly at them, and something about the gleam in her beetle-black eyes conveyed what she was thinking better than any echoed words could.

“Kiri, no,” Molly said gently, shaking their head.

“Yes?” They had never seen a bird scowl before, but she was managing it somehow. However, seeing that Molly was unmoved, she opened her beak and a few different sounds came out – half-formed words, cat meows, the sound of something growling. Then, apparently giving up, she threw up her hands and went to her little satchel where she’d left it by the door, pausing only to dry her hands off on a towel. She’d apparently retrieved more paper and a pen since last night, probably while Molly had been passed out. They left her to her writing and spared a glance at Keg, who was looking as uncomfortable and uncertain as Molly felt in that moment.

Finally, Kiri came over to the larger tub, her feet making faint plap noises on the damp floor, and then she held a piece of paper in front of Molly’s face.

You helped me find my family. I want to help you find yours’.

Then, seeing that they’d finished reading, she folded her wings and nodded resolutely.

“Kiddo…” said Keg, sounding so sad in that moment.

“But you have helped with that,” Molly said, smiling as reassuringly as they could, reaching out to pat Kiri on the head. She let them do it, though she still looked faintly suspicious. “You showed me around, kept me safe, and helped me run into this one.” They jabbed a finger at Keg. “You saw that hammer she drags around, right? It’s almost as big as you. I’ll be fine, dear. You’ve set me up quite nicely.”

Kiri looked to Keg, giving the dwarf a visible and searching once-over, probably assessing her capacity as a bodyguard compared to Kiri herself. What she saw seemed to prove satisfactory, which perversely made Kiri deflate slightly, shoulders slumping, cooing sadly. She cast an anxious glance at Molly before suddenly sitting down once more, carefully balancing the paper on her knees, and writing out another message.

I don’t want to say goodbye already. I didn’t think I would ever see you again.

“And now you know you will,” said Molly resolutely. “Honestly, I’ll be back to visit so often you get sick of me. Here, I’ll prove it to you.” Acting on a wild whim, they reached up to undo one of their earrings – one of the larger ones, that ended in a dangling blue stone. “Here. This one’s my favorite, so don’t lose it. I’ll want it back the next time I pass this way, all right?”

They pressed it into her free hand, and she immediately curled her fingers tightly around it. Kiri drew herself up proudly, and now her eyes were bright with resolution rather than tears. “Okay.” She started to turn away, and then something seemed to occur to her, something that led to her reaching down towards the base of her wings and plucking out three long black feathers, moving fast enough that Molly didn’t even have time to be alarmed until it was already done. Then she turned back to face them and held out the feathers. When Molly shook their head, uncomprehending, she tapped her fingers on her beak thoughtfully, and then she finally mimed something that they recognized after a few seconds as braiding.

Even then, Molly found that they still couldn’t muster the words to reply, because what she was asking was too intimate and sweet for words. But when Kiri pushed impatiently on their shoulder, Molly obligingly turned back around in the bath, and Kiri sat down behind them to braid her feathers into their hair.

It was Nila’s voice, impossibly enough, that broke the still and somber silence that had fallen over the bathing chamber. Being Nila, she cleared her throat politely before she spoke out of thin air. “Good morning, Mollymauk. I hope you are well. We're waiting at the Iron Lot. If you need us to come get you, please say so.”

Molly glanced around the room anyway, realized that Keg and Kiri were both staring at them blankly, and only then did their wits catch up with them. They cleared their throat and replied uncertainly: “Good morning, Nila. Doing very well. Ran into some friends, got distracted, will be on our  way shortly. Thank you for your patience.”

“Nila’s wondering where the fuck you’re at?” Keg asked.

“I think so.”

“Then we should probably get a move on.”

“It’s very nice in here, though.”

“I mean, I think we’ve still got another ten minutes we’ve paid for. Might as well get our gold’s worth, yeah?”

“Absolutely.”

Kiri fussily finished her work on the braids, then tapped Molly on the shoulder. When they looked back at her, opening their mouth to thank her for the work, she tapped a newly-added message.

Can I walk you to the Iron Lot?

Molly read the words and then looked up at Kiri and she absolutely had to be putting forth a deliberate effort into looking as hopeful and sad as she did in that moment, which did nothing to change the fact that it was very, very effective. So they smiled at her and said, “I would be honored.”

Kiri’s response was to delicately fold up her paper, set it aside along with the pen, and then lean down to wrap her arms around their shoulders in an awkward but heartfelt hug that Molly  was happy to return. Behind them, they heard Keg struggling to stay stoic and not entirely succeeding.  

They all got out of the bath not long after that, got dried off and dressed and together they headed back out into Hupperdook. When Molly started off towards where they remembered Shakaste indicating the Iron Lot to be, Keg and Kiri each grabbed a hand and gently redirected them in what was apparently the right direction.

Molly only let themself get distracted once, as they passed into a more industrial part of town, as the shops shifted from selling books and chairs and beautiful glass things to shops selling machinery and weapons. They slowed in front of one such shop, their gaze wandering over the displays in the window.

“Molly?” Keg asked, slowing down and glancing back at them.

It took Molly a second to think of what to say – they felt faintly unbalanced, all of a sudden, and they were trying to remember the reason why. “I used to have two swords,” they finally said, a little distantly. They were fairly sure they were right about this, enough of their regained memories involved fighting with two swords. Keg seemed like she would have reason to know for certain, however, so they looked to her for confirmation. “Didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did,” Keg said. “One of them was, like, magic or something? But, uh, I think your friends took it off your…after you…” She shrugged helplessly and looked away. “You know.”

“I know.” Molly took a deep breath and shoved that particular memory back into the shadows before it could jump them. Not here, not now. “Well, I want two swords again. And I seem to have just gotten paid. Excuse me for just a moment, please.”

Then they stepped inside the shop and absolutely should not have felt as proud of themself as they did when they successfully exchanged thirty gold for a gleaming steel scimitar. It was slightly heavier than their other sword, but having the weight on their other hip still felt right. They felt balanced again and it was good. Keg, for her part, seemed as at home in a weapons shop as she had drinking hapless competitors under the table. Kiri, well, there might have been a couple of minutes where they lost track of Kiri, but she was unharmed when Molly went and found her eyeing up a barrel of arrows.

But otherwise, Hupperdook in daylight was desperately boring. It soon became apparent for Molly as they all resumed their walk that they’d seen everything interesting the city had to offer in sunlight. They had tasted a bit of the nightlife and felt good about getting on their way.

Eventually, the brighter shop district gave way once again to the more barren landscapes and dark, utilitarian buildings, with the occasional siege weapon scattered around the blasted earth and waiting for disassembly. The upside of this grimmer terrain was that it was flat and clear enough for Molly to see the gate ahead, and see Shakaste and Nila waiting there for them. Molly waved and, in the distance, Nila waved back.

As they all came together under the gate out of town, Molly saw an expression of surprise come over Shakaste’s face. Nila gasped in recognition. “Keg, hello! It’s been much too long.”

“How’ve you been?” Shakaste asked.

“Been way too long, and I’ve been doing all right,” Keg answered easily. “Not gonna lie, my night took a trip for the weird when I ran into this one.” She jabbed a finger at Molly.

“Morning, by the way,” Molly added.

“Mornin’, Molly. Have fun last night?”

Molly beamed happily. “Very much.”

“Good, I’m glad. You sure seemed like you were wringing all you could out of this town when I checked in last night. And I can respect that, even if it’s not really my scene anymore.”

“I am Kiri!” Kiri declared, waving at the firbolg and the old man.

Nila smiled warmly and knelt down to address her. “Hello, Kiri. I am Nila.”

“Shakaste,” declared Molly, with some solemnity. “Do you remember yesterday afternoon, when I said something to you…I believe it was something along the lines of ‘what are the odds of me encountering yet another reminder of my gruesome horrible death when I died a week that way’?”

The old man grinned, faint but amused. “I seem to recall some words to that effect, yeah.”

Molly gestured at Keg, gestured at Kiri, and then executed a theatrical bow. “Ta-da!”

Shakaste laughed, loud and deep, then reached over to clap them on the back. “Mollymauk Tealeaf, beating the odds all over again.”

“Forever and always,” Molly declared, straightening up and returning their friend’s smile.

“On that note,” Keg said. “Molly already gave me the go-ahead to come with you guys, but, like, is that still okay with you two?”

“Fine by me,” said Shakaste.

“And me,” Nila added, glancing up from where she’d been somehow deep in conversation with Kiri. “But Molly, this one…”

“Was just walking me out,” Molly added hastily. “This is Kiri. Who graciously agreed to show me around yesterday, but has her own family to get back to.”

Nila looked relieved and, though Kiri still looked a touch glum at the prospect, she nodded her agreement. Still, the sight of her tugged at Molly’s heart, and so they found themself kneeling down beside Nila as well, rummaging around in their bag, and pulling out the slightly-crumpled bouquet of silk flowers from the night before. They picked out three of the nicer ones and offered them to the girl. “Thank you again, Kiri. It was very good to see you again.”

Kiri seemed to cheer up somewhat at the offered gift. She took the flowers in one hand, rummaged around in her bag with the other, pulled out a knife, and set to work tying the flower stems around the hilt. Molly found that they could only stare, and was dimly aware of the others staring as well.

When she was done, Kiri held out the knife to Molly – hilt-first, of course – apparently so they could inspect her work.

“Very nice,” Molly said, because it genuinely was, in a way. It was a very distinct look and they had to respect that. “Charming. Very you, I like it. Might try that on mine as well.”

Kiri puffed out her chest in pride, returned the knife to her bag, and suddenly surged forward to wrap her arms around Molly once more. “Protect,” she said, and then: “I’m so proud of you.” And then: “This means we are friends.”

And what could Molly do but hug her in turn? “’Course we are. We’re both a part of the Mighty Nein, aren’t we?”

They felt Kiri nod emphatically, and though she did so a touch reluctantly, she finally pulled away and stepped back. As Molly straightened up and watched, she drew herself up straight, tilted her head up a bit, and turned to regard Molly’s traveling companions, sizing them up. Whatever she saw there led to her drawing her knife again and pointing it at each of them in turn.

“Take care of them,” she said, in Molly’s own voice.

And for a moment Molly was standing with their friends outside another house, small but warm with lights pouring forth in welcome for the newest member of this little family. Kiri was moving to each of them in turn to say her farewells. Jester and Beau were crying, Caleb was holding Nott against his side like she’d break if she went too far, and Fjord looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

Molly, for their part, felt a pang of bittersweet loss, but mostly felt relieved as Kiri stood before them and offered her parting words. It was better this way. They’d all done a good thing.

“We will,” said Shakaste, solemn and sincere, drawing Molly out of their recollections. While all eyes were on Kiri, they hastily ducked their head to scrub the beginnings of tears from their eyes.

“I’ll send you a message as soon as we get to Zadash,” Nila added.

This seemed to satisfy Kiri, who swiped the blade through the air in what seemed to be a salute before returning it carefully to her bag. She nodded, and just like that, Molly felt that they had been given permission to go.

As the party proceeded down the road together, Molly looked back several times, and each time they did so, they saw Kiri standing and watching, a bundle of black feathers against the blasted, barren earth. Until at last, just before they passed out of earshot, they were barely able to see Kiri cup her hands around her beak and call out, one last time: “Welcome to the Mighty Nein!”

Molly turned back fully to face her, cupped their hands around their mouth, and called back: “Welcome to the Mighty Nein!”

They thought they saw Kiri nod. They hoped the parting words had made her happy. Either way, she turned at last and started heading for home.

Mollymauk Tealeaf turned their back on Hupperdook and did the same.  

Chapter Text

The shock of the glaive being driven down into their chest was the worst, most painful thing Molly had ever known and it tore them back to consciousness with a scream.

Details filtered in fast and fragmented after that, because on some level, Molly knew these were the last things they would ever know. There was no living through pain like this, there was no living when the big bastard who'd caused it was still standing over them and grinning. Beau and Keg were screaming but their voices were so far away and please, please let them get further, please at least let them get away.

Grass beneath their back, the sun rising on a new day that they'd never see, but the last thing they would truly see would be this slaving tattooed arsehole and his giant glaive staring down at Molly like a cat might regard a bleeding rat.

"Any last words?"

There were none, there was no point and they couldn't have spoken anyway, the blood had risen too thick and hot in their throat. Instead, Mollymauk Tealeaf took their last shallow breath and spat that blood in Lorenzo's face. 

Lorenzo deliberately, almost fussily, wiped it away. He gave a nod, and hefted the glaive high, so that its blade glinted in the light.

Yasha, I'm sorry.

"Respect," Lorenzo said, and brought the blade down hard, and all Molly knew was a tremendous impact slamming into their chest and then there was nothing anymore. 

*  *  *

"Molly! Molly! Wake the fuck up before you roll into the fire!"

Their eyes flew open and they stared in a panic at the shadowy figure looming over them, backlit by flames, clutching their shoulders in a bruising grip. They didn't know this person and they didn't know the shouting voice and so they shoved themself away, hard, only to get tangled up in blankets and land heavily on their side with a groan. As soon as the world stopped spinning, though, they tried to struggle to their feet and get away, to follow the others, because Beau had been calling for them and Caleb was in trouble and Yasha was in a cage, and...

Their pursuer grabbed them, spun them around, and slapped them hard across the face. Their head jerked to the side, ears ringing, vision swimming, and as it cleared it was like the rest of the world was sliding slowly back into place as well.

Molly looked again, and this time it wasn't a shadowy monster or a tattooed slaver who was holding them in place, it was Keg. Keg, sweaty and wild-eyed and panting like she'd just run a mile, or woken from a nightmare herself, staring at Molly in worry and fear. 

"Okay," she whispered, seeing them focusing on her. Her grip slowly eased. "Okay, are, are we good now? Are you awake?"

Molly looked down at themself, at their shaking hands. They tried to focus, tried to be here and not there, but they couldn't they couldn't, not when they saw that face on the inside of their eyelids every time they blinked.

"What happened to him?" they asked. They didn't entirely mean to, the words slipped out, but as soon as they did, it was suddenly the most vitally important thing in the world to know.

"What happened to who?" Keg asked blankly.

"The one who murdered me!" Molly snapped, their fragile composure fraying further, so that the words slipped out louder than they'd meant to but there was no stopping that, no hiding it, no pretending like their heart wasn't racing fast enough to hurt and their fingers felt numb and everything was simultaneously too much and too far. A tide of hopeless rage and useless fear blotted out all sense as they rounded on her, pressing their hands to their chest. "Big bastard! Awful tattoos! With a giant glaive, that he shoved into my chest! What happened to him?" An awful, awful thought came to them like a bolt from the blue. Molly's throat went instantly, painfully dry. "He is dead, isn't he?"

It seemed to take forever for Keg to realize what they were talking about, even if she'd been there, even if they knew now that she'd remembered that day as well the second she'd laid eyes on them again. But then she did, and she grinned, and that fierce, almost feral expression was somehow the most beautiful sight in the world.

"Hey," she said. "You want a drink?" Molly nodded without hesitation, so Keg pulled her flask off her belt and passed it over. They took a swallow, found it to be full of a passably good brandy, and took a few more until it felt like their head was full of buzzing pink fog and less full of adrenaline and terror.

"Lorenzo didn't live three days after he killed you," Keg said, as Molly drank themself calm. "We hunted them all down to their hideout and killed them in a night. But Lorenzo got the worst of it. Caleb blew the back of his head out with fire. Motherfucker burned alive from the inside out. He lived long enough to try to crawl for the door, even when he started falling to pieces. Literally." She chuckled, low and dark. "He lived long enough to know he wasn't going to make it."

Molly took a deep, shuddering breath, closed their eyes, and imagined.

"Oh," they finally murmured. "Oh, that is a beautiful mental image. I wish I could have been there to see it, but just imagining it...that is going to keep me warm on cold nights for a long time to come."

"I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I think back to it when I'm like, y'know." Keg made a couple of awkward but nevertheless very suggestive hand motions.

"I'll drink to that." And Molly did so, before giving the flask a cautious shake. "This isn't running out, is it?"

"Nope." Keg sounded quite proud of herself.

"Did Nott finally hook you up?"

"First time I came to visit everybody in Zadash. 

"Good for her. And for you." Molly passed the flask back. Keg took it and replaced it on her belt.

"You feeling any better?" she asked.

"A bit," Molly said, which was true and about all they felt like committing to. "But I think that's about all the sleep I'm going to be getting tonight. I can take over for you on watch, if you need it."

"Like I'm going back to sleep after any of that." Some of Molly's guilt must have shown on their face, because Keg clapped them on the back hard enough to make them sway but in what still managed to be a reassuring gesture. "Nah, c'mon. I'll sit up with you. Maybe I can catch you up on some more stuff you missed. So you don't have to dream it for a change."

"That would make for a fine change of pace," Molly admitted, smiling weakly back at her in turn.

So they settled down together before the fire, and Molly stoked it higher as Keg started talking. Most of what she had to say was more of how the Iron Shepherds had ultimately come to die. Molly was honestly a little in awe by the time her story was done. From what they remembered of the Mighty Nein, of Beau and Caleb and Nott specifically, they'd all been a bunch of erratic disasters. They almost hadn't even discovered that Jester and Fjord and Yasha had been taken in the night. But for the four of them to have done all of that, and maybe have done it in part because of him...

Eventually, Keg moved on into more of what Molly had missed, what she and the Mighty Nein had gotten up to whenever they'd crossed paths in the intervening years, and that was always good to hear more of, too.

*  *  *

Molly remembered now that they’d fought by Keg’s side, and in rather better lit environments than crowded, dim gnoll tunnels, so when everyone set off the next morning they matched their pace to hers’.

“You’ve seen me fight before.”

“Yeah?”

“So you’ve seen…” They hummed thoughtfully, wondering how best to describe this. “How I can do the things I can do?”

Keg frowned in puzzlement. “I guess?”

“So you can tell me how I can do the things I can do!”

She stared straight ahead for a moment longer, and then groaned softly and massaged her temple. “Molly, I am just hungover enough for it to be annoying. Can you use smaller words? Wait.” Her frown grew rather more pronounced, thoughtful. “Beau said you could fix hangovers. Like, every time we get drunk together and wake up in the morning, she talks about how you could fix hangovers.”

It was Molly’s turn to groan as the memory of their first hangover returned with a vengeance. “Gods, that would have been nice to know a few days ago.”

“No shit.”

“I have no idea how to fix a hangover.”

“Fuck. Worth a shot. Well, most of what I saw you do had to do with these.” She reached down to tap the hilt of one of their scimitars. “You’d, like, cut yourself? Not a lot. I think it only had to be enough so you’d bleed. And then these would ice over or start glowing with this really bright light, and—”

Molly snapped their fingers as comprehension dawned, nearly a week late. “So that’s what happened.”

“How do you mean?”

“I was attacked, by a ghost. It was clawing my chest open?” They found themself miming the motion unconsciously. “And then suddenly my swords were glowing, and I could hurt it better than before.”

“Yeah, that’d do it. Blood tends to, uh, spray.”

Molly drew one of the swords, and yes, they could feel muscle memory taking over again. Moving the blade to their arm and nicking their flesh felt like just another dance they’d forgotten the steps to and so they didn’t even feel the slightest flicker of surprise when the blade was suddenly encased in a coat of ice, cold enough to steam. When they repeated the process with the other sword, they had to focus a little harder, twist their will a little differently, and in the end what they focused on was the fight with the banshee, and above all the wrongness of the creature. Even in the midst of their own fear, they had known instinctively that this was an abomination that needed to be destroyed.

And with that thought, with that resolution, the second sword was lit with a radiant glow that warmed their heart and hands.

“There you go!” Keg said encouragingly, slapping them on the back hard enough to make Molly stagger a step. “Good job!”

“Thank you.” Feeling decidedly pleased with themself, Molly found that it was the easiest thing in the world to dismiss the auras of energy and replace the swords in their sheathes. After all, the ice and the light were born of their blood, and their blood was a part of them. Of course it was easy to control, how had they ever thought it would be difficult. “I have no idea how this applies to hangovers.”

“I mean, hey, the day is young.”

Molly looked out at the road ahead, stretching on and on under a warm afternoon sun. They looked back to where Nila and Shakaste were ambling along a few feet behind, Nila leading the donkey for a change, both chatting amiably.

“Yeah,” they murmured. The day was young and beautiful and they were so happy to be alive. Turning back to Keg, Molly carried on: “So I think there’s this thing I can do with my voice…”

*  *  *

The Crossroads Market was visible on the horizon as Molly fell back to the rear of the procession to speak with Shakaste.

"So I was talking to Keg a couple of nights back..."

"Mm?"

"You never told me you were with the others when they took out those slaving arseholes who just so happened to murder me."

Shakaste frowned, but didn't answer right away. That was fine, Molly was content to let him think.

"I really didn't think it mattered," said the old man at last, cautiously. "Not at the time. When you came stumbling into my camp, I realized you were having enough trouble remembering what you'd been there for and, well, you weren't there for that. I didn't know why, not at the time. I honestly didn't put two and two together until Nila told me last week. When I met up with your friends, they were missing other people, not just you. I suppose I assumed at the time that you were in a cage, like the rest. By the time I met up with them all again, it had been enough time that it honestly never came up." He reached over to pat Molly on the shoulder, maybe in reassurance or apology or both. Molly appreciated the gesture, and the explanation.

They took a deep breath, and it came easier than it had all day. “I admit, I don’t know why this was so important to me to clear up, but it was, so thank you.”

“Molly, you’ve still got a lot of missing pieces up in there and Zadash is getting closer every day. Of course you’re going to try to chase down any that you can. I understand.” Silence fell between them for a few pensive moments, before Shakaste added: “I should have known. Back then. That look in their eyes…that’s not just from having people missing. That look only comes when you’ve lost someone, for good and all. They loved you, Molly. I know Nila told you that, but it bears saying again and again.”

Molly kept walking, which they were dimly aware was a minor miracle, but it was an act of inertia rather than one of conscious thought. By rights, it felt like the weight of Shakaste’s words should have made their knees buckle beneath it.

The things Molly wanted to say and ask and understand were much too big for them and maybe always had been and maybe always would be. But in the end, they were able to distill it down to two words. “Why, though?” They remembered the accounting Keg had given of the Iron Shepherd’s destruction, of Lorenzo’s grisly death. It squared perfectly with Shakaste’s telling of events. Which meant that, according to two very trustworthy people, at least some of that carnage and vengeance had been on Molly’s behalf, as well as for their kidnapped friends. And yet, that made no sense. There were still so many missing pieces in their head and none of them explained this revelation. After all: “They knew me for a month.”

He would have expected them to carry on without him, had hoped they would, for the sake of Fjord and Jester and Yasha. But to know that they had carried on because of Molly, too, it was overwhelming, dizzying, a thought too big for their skull and chest. Everything was too new and fresh and raw for them to accept the idea of such all-encompassing emotion, such loving rage.

Shakaste chuckled, deep and warm. “Nothin’ strange about that. I knew you for a night, and that was long enough for me to know I liked you just fine. You make yourself very easy to like, Mollymauk.”

“That’s not the same thing. Is it?”

“It can be. Why not?”

Molly must have looked as lost as they felt, because Shakaste reached over to pat them on the shoulder. “Not much longer before you can ask them yourself. So come on, now, no need to worry about any of that anymore. The Market’s coming up, and you’ve got some spending money left over. Why don’t you buy yourself something nice, take your mind off of all of this? The day’s far too nice to get this heavy.”

They smiled in grateful agreement, shading their eyes to regard the way ahead. Sure enough, the cluster of carts and booths had grown closer and closer all while they and Shakaste had been talking. It was all a little ways down the hill from them now, and they were able to distract themself nicely from thoughts of the distant past and future by wondering what interesting things they might find and learn about here.

Nila, with the air of a mother corralling two rowdy children, told them both Molly and Keg to listen out for an eagle’s call, because that would be her signal that it was time to move on. Shakaste, meanwhile, knew exactly what he was here to get, and so made a beeline for the booths selling  dried rations, blankets, tools, and other necessities. That left the rest of the Market at their disposal for a couple of hours. Keg went one way and Molly went the other, with only a glance back to wave at one another.  

Beyond that, the Market more than lived up to Molly’s hopes. It was a place of people selling fascinating jewelry and beautiful books and clothes made of many different styles and fabrics and foods with all sorts of smells. They bought themself a carved bone bracelet, a new chain to replace the ones that were missing, a silvery ring set with a pretty blue stone, and a small bag of jerky that tasted heavily of pepper and garlic to eat.

After a while, they got the idea to look for things the others might like as gifts. For Shakaste, they found a thick woolen blanket dyed in some nice patterns that could hopefully help cushion his seat on the donkey a little more. For Nila, they bought her a book about a hero from a place called Tal’Dorei – after all, she had said part of her mission as a druid was to learn new things.

Finding a gift for Keg turned out to be harder for two reasons. The first was that, when they laid eyes on the spiked leather gloves, another hand reached for them at the same moment so that their fingers brushed. Molly pulled away quickly, and so did the stranger, with a soft gasp of alarm. “I’m sorry!”

Molly glanced over reflexively, and…she had the single most interesting face they had ever seen, and that said a very great deal. The right side of it was the face of a pale, pretty elven woman with a green eye. But the left side was the face of a ferocious black lizard, with a mouth twisted in a half-snarl to bear needle-like teeth and a gleaming, reptilian yellow eye.

As they looked at her, both eyes widened in a now-familiar look of dumbfounded recognition. “Mister Mollymauk?!” she gasped.

And they would have answered her, except the second difficulty arose at that exact moment, in the form of a flaming arrow thudding into the canvas of the tent, shortly followed by the sounds of shouts and screaming from outside.

Molly looked back and then looked at her with a frustrated sigh. “Talk later?”

She nodded resolutely and raced from the tent, apparently trusting Molly to get the stunned shopkeeper out of there, which they hastened to do so.

The bandits had ridden up on the camp hard and fast, most of them on horseback. By the time Molly stumbled outside there were several already rampaging through the area, firing bows and swinging blades. They couldn’t see anyone else, not Keg or Nila or Shakaste or Calianna, but had to believe that they were all right. From the glances they were able to get at the faces riding by through the smoke and tumult, the men looked ordinary enough. If they had magic or other powers Molly needed to worry about, they had to believe they wouldn’t have been swinging swords and firing burning arrows.

With steady hands, Molly drew their swords and coated them in ice, and then raced into the fray to help however they could.

They blinded one man who was about to shoot a fleeing woman in the back, then rounded on another they heard sneaking up on them and snarled at them in a voice that made him double over and fall off his horse. Molly dimly heard the sound of lightning crashing and thunder roaring over the screaming and then something thudded into their shoulder hard enough to make them stagger. They rounded on the archer, closed in at a run, and cut them down with two quick slices before the man even seemed to properly realize what was happening, knocked another man off his horse before he could ride a fleeing man down, and took another arrow in the arm. Someone else stumbled through the smoke to swing a sword at Molly’s neck – they blocked it easily with their uninjured arm and drove their other scimitar through the man’s stomach to let him fall. As he did, they heard someone else screaming, this time for help, and their gaze snapped to a large tent that was well and truly on fire.

But the sight of the flames didn’t fill them with any sort of fear, it was the easiest thing in the world to charge right on, shouldering the burning canvas aside, to find the shopkeeper huddling under a table, paralyzed with terror. Molly dragged them up, dragged them out, and found themself facing down an arrow to the face before the archer went down screaming in a spray of viscous green acid.

The girl with half a dragon’s face was transformed – backlit by smoke and flames, her yellow eye seeming to glow with an inner malice, she made for a terrifying sight as she charged forward, snarling, her black hair streaming behind her like a war banner, to tear at the fallen archer with a hand tipped in gleaming dragon’s claws. “I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you!”

She heard Molly take a step forward to try and lead the shopkeeper away, then her gaze snapped up, nostrils flaring, only to recognize them after a moment, so that the rage faded to an apologetic smile. “S-Sorry! Are you okay?”

“Under the circumstances, sure!” they called back. The arrows were hurting, but it didn’t feel like they’d hit anything important.

“Great! We’ll talk later!” And then she was gone, darting through the smoke in search of more raiders to incinerate. Molly turned, picked a direction at random to keep looking for more people in trouble, and almost barreled into Keg. She caught them before they could trip over her. She was beaming.

“That’s my girlfriend!” she said, pointing in the direction the black-haired woman had gone. “Pretty great, isn’t she?”

“She sure knows how to make an impression!”

“I’ll introduce you later! Come on, follow me, Nila’s got their leader pinned down!”

Really, all the two of them needed to do was watch Nila’s back while she battered the leader and his three honor guards with lightning and ice. But there were still a couple of chancers who tried to catch her from behind, and Molly took great pleasure in briefly showing them the error of their ways.

By the time the last bodies hit the ground and no one stepped up to replace them, Molly was aware that the smoke was clearing. Merchants and figures in uniform were working busily to douse the flames with dirt and water and sand and, as visibility was restored, Molly was surprised and gratified to realize that the bandit attack hadn’t actually done that much damage to the marketplace as a whole. It had hit one corner of the whole, if that, and while them and their friends had fought back against the attackers, the ones who actually took up temporary residence here had acted with practiced familiarity to contain the collateral damage. The situation had seemed worse when Molly was in the thick of it – maybe that had simply been a matter of getting turned around in the smoke.

“Mister Mollymauk!”

They were too tired to flinch this time as the elf with a dragon’s face – or maybe a dragon with an elf’s face – called out their name. They simply looked over to grin wearily at her as she jogged over to meet them, lifting the skirts of her robes daintily as she did so. She beamed at them in turn. “It really is you!”

“So they tell me. Listen, do you know Keg? I have a feeling you must be Cali, which means you know Keg.”

“I do!” Cali actually started looking around for the dwarf. Molly reached out to pat her companionably on the shoulder.

“Keg will tell you what’s going on. And while she’s doing that, I am going to go find Shakaste and ask him to pull these out of me.” Molly gestured at the arrows still sticking out of them, front and back. “Fair enough?”

Her eyes went wide with concern. “Oh, of course! Sorry to bother you! I hope Mister Shakaste can fix you up!”

“He’s done it before.” And with that, Molly staggered off in search of the cleric, trusting that Keg would catch her girlfriend up to speed.

Sure enough, as Shakaste was working the last arrow out of Molly’s shoulder, Keg and her girlfriend came out of the bustling chaos to join them. At some point during their talk, Cali had retied her hair behind her head, to keep it out of her face where in the fight it had been a tangled black curtain. Both women were smiling and, when they were close enough for a conversation, Cali offered Molly a simple curtsy.

“Mister Mollymauk. My name is Calianna, but you can call me Cali if you want to. We met once before, and I was very sorry to hear that you’d died, and I’m very happy that you’re alive again! If it’s all right with you, I would love to come with you to Zadash to see everyone and make sure you get home okay!”

It was the fourth time someone had made that offer to them, or something similar to it. And yet, especially in light of their conversation with Shakaste earlier that day, it wasn’t any less baffling for it.

“I mean, the more the merrier, obviously,” they said, massaging their aching shoulder now that the flesh had closed back over. “But I don’t want to take you away from anything you were doing.”

“Oh, don’t be silly!” Calianna chirped. “Zadash isn’t really out of the way at all! I was only going to meet up with Keg and, well, here she is.” And she gestured at her girlfriend, who waved in acknowledgement. “And then we were going to go grab a ship in Port Damali.”

“The biggest threat to our plans isn’t the destination, it’s that none of you idiots have horses,” Keg added wryly.

“Shakaste is very attached to the donkey,” Molly said, glancing over at the old man. “And so am I, but it is not a fast donkey.”

“It gets me where I need to go,” said Shakaste serenely. “We’re not in any hurry. The Mighty Nein will still be there by the time we come knocking on their door. If you ladies are in a hurry, Nila and I can take care of this one ourselves.” He patted Molly carefully on the back.

“Oh, Keg, don’t be silly!” Cali gave Keg a playful shove that was nevertheless hard enough to make the armored dwarf stagger a step. “There’ll always be another ship in Port Damali! But how many times will we get to do something like this?”

“Not enough,” Keg admitted, before gesturing up at the elf. “Anyway, Molly, you don’t remember this yet, but Cali can pull her weight. Don’t even worry about that.”

“I noticed,” Molly said weakly, remembering the acid and the claws.

“And, besides that, I think you will find that she is a treasure and a delight.”

Cali giggled, then bent down as Keg stood on tiptoes for a kiss.

“Welcome aboard, Cali,” Molly said, smiling fondly at the sight of the two of them. “I wish I could remember where I knew you from, but I’m sure it will come back to me soon.”

“I hope it does, too! We had a very exciting adventure together. Oh! We’ll be passing through the Labenda Swamp soon, won’t we? That was where we met. Maybe that will help!”

“And if not, the crocodiles will distract you nicely from your amnesia,” Keg grumbled, glancing around. “Where’s Nila, anyway?”

They found her in the shape of a horse, helping to haul away wreckage and rubble. The first thing Molly did when she came back to rejoin them was present her with the miraculously-intact book. She was overjoyed by the thought and the gift, vowing to start reading it at camp that very night. Shakaste, meanwhile, declared that the new blanket made the donkey look “very stylish” indeed.

But Molly let Cali present the studded leather gloves to Keg. Girlfriends, it seemed, should take precedence there.

Then they all set out together, meaning to get another few hours of travel in before dark.

Chapter Text

Zadash was looming on the horizon, and with every step, Molly was realizing that they weren’t ready.

The others didn’t seem to have realized that, which was good. In fact, when the city first became visible in the distance, they all set up a cheer, Keg and Calianna patted Molly on the back and congratulated them for making it this far, Nila asked if they were excited to be home at last.

Molly was reasonably confident they’d put up a convincing appearance of excitement rather than fear. Or at least, no one had questioned them further. No one had noticed their hands shaking. There were many other travelers on the road, this close to Zadash, to the point that they got stuck behind an errant cart or knot of people periodically. It was, perversely, comforting. Molly felt as if they could hide in this drifting tide of people, let the chatter of strangers and the neighing of horses and the lowing of ox block out all their thoughts for a few minutes at a time, drown out the increasingly inescapable reality that they were not ready.

With the roads immediately around Zadash proving to be so much more crowded than the road so far, the going got slower as they got nearer to the city, so that it was close to sunset by the time they made their way through the gates.

“I don’t know what kind of hours they keep on a normal day,” Shakaste mused, as they moved down a main street together. Molly dragged their focus back to him with an effort of will. There was so much in Zadash to be distracted by. They were pretty sure that Hupperdook had been a larger town, but it had been so much more organized – even in the midst of its nightly celebrations, the streets were easier to navigate and more free of debris than here in Zadash. “But I’m thinking we should grab a room, stop by tomorrow. That’d be polite.”

Moving almost without thinking, Molly pulled out the note and unfolded it yet again, shifting their gaze away from their surroundings with difficulty to look down at it. “It says I need to find someone called ‘The Gentleman’.”

“That was back before they had a house in town,” Keg said helpfully. “We know where they are. Hell, I don’t know if the Gentleman would even know you, nowadays. The title sort of got…passed along. It’s not the blue-skinned sweaty guy anymore.”

“Well, we could stop by anyway,” Nila suggested. “Just to see if they’re in town. If not, we might need to consider a different sort of lodging.”

“That’s right!” Calianna gasped. “If they’re off traveling, we could be waiting for weeks!”

Molly felt like their heart actually stopped for a few beats. Shakaste replied firmly. “Either way, I don’t see how it’s any more polite to go calling on a crime boss late at night instead of calling on some old friends,” the old man said. “We’ll grab a room for tonight, and if we need something a little more long-term, we’ll figure that out tomorrow. Sound good to you, Molly?”

“Sounds great!” Molly said, and if their voice sounded bright and false to their ears, the others didn’t seem to notice.

Weeks, she said. No, that was not acceptable, and yet Molly couldn’t see any other way. These people had all put their lives on hold for Molly already. It had already been weeks, in Shakaste’s case. Molly could not ask them all to wait any longer, not when Keg and Calianna had their own business, not when Nila had a family she needed to get back to. The alternative as far as they could see, however, was to be left alone for weeks to wait for the Nein to return, and that prospect was terrifying beyond words.

Molly had never had to be alone a day in their new life, for more than a few hours. They could barely remember ever being alone in their life before, not really. Beyond that night where they’d woken up on the side of the road or that day when they’d run into the woods before Nila had found them as a deer, there had always been someone there to talk to, someone to explain, someone to help them.

They didn’t want that to change, but everyone had already done so much for them for no discernible reason and it would be indecently selfish to ask more of them.

Even so, Molly still didn’t know which prospect scared them more – the idea that the Mighty Nein were gone from Zadash, off one some new adventure that would keep them away for weeks, or the idea that they were here and that Molly would see them tomorrow.

Calianna led the way to an inn she apparently knew in one of the nicer parts of town. “And they live in the Tri-spires too!” she chirped, as she showed some paperwork to yet more guards at yet another gate. “So we won’t have to go very far tomorrow at all.”

Keg groaned. “Babe, I love you, but that place makes me fucking anxious. I hate getting the sheets dirty, they cost more than my last horse.”

“No need to worry, Keg! We have just as much right to be there as anyone. And we should celebrate!”

Molly found that they sympathized with Keg, to some degree. They’d thought the Bountiful Bower was as fancy as an inn could get, but the Pillow Trove was above and beyond. Everything was red and gold and spindly and delicate – very pretty to look at, nervewracking to touch for fear of breaking anything. They still had what they considered to be a ridiculous amount of money, even after paying for guides through the Labenda Swamp, but they didn’t know how far that would stretch.

Calianna and Keg both seemed fairly flush, however, and so paid for three rooms – one for the two of them, one for Nila and Molly, one for Shakaste alone. When Nila heard there was fruit on offer, she ordered two platters for them all to share. They all gathered in Keg and Calianna’s room to enjoy their takings, all except Shakaste, who declared his intention to retire early that night.

Molly was struck by a sudden, fierce wish as they looked at Nila reading her new book, looked at Keg and Calianna laughing and feeding one another on the bed, as they remembered Shakaste probably already asleep next door. They wished this could go on forever – not even just this night or this moment, but this journey. Their entire new life had been this journey to Zadash and the friends they’d made along the way, and tomorrow, it might just come to an end.

And that was terrifying, because they had absolutely no idea what would happen next. 

By the time the five all retired to their own separate rooms for the evening, they were no closer to knowing, no closer to untangling the nest of thorns in their head, and certainly no close to feeling any better. Molly stayed awake for a long while, laying in an impossibly soft bed with silk sheets, listening to Nila snoring gently in the room’s other bed.

What a blessed thing it seemed, to have never known true loneliness a day in their life. What a miraculous thing, to never have had to try and sleep without knowing there was someone you trusted close by and to be able to hear their breathing as you drifted off.

But it was not a blessing worth asking four damn good people to put their lives on hold any longer for.

If all went well, tomorrow would be the end of this. If all didn’t go well, then tomorrow would be the start of another phase in their new life, one they would have to work out alone, and they would do their damndest to do so because they owed that to the ones who had gotten them this far.

This was happening. Molly was really going to do this.

Except...should they really be doing this?

They fumbled in their pocket and pulled out the letter, which they’d folded and unfolded countless times on this journey. A letter, inviting them home if they ever woke up again, except that had been years ago. It all seemed like weeks ago for Molly but for everyone else in the world they’d been dead in the ground for years, and there was no way anyone was still expecting them after all this time. Their friends tried to bring them back and they’d failed and according to anyone who knew anything about that sort of thing, that should have been the end of it.

So their friends had moved on. Molly didn’t doubt that they had grieved and mourned in doing so, just as Nila and Keg said they had, but then they’d moved on and gone on to do great things and be heroes, well known and beloved by so many. This group of sullen, shifty strangers Molly had met in a tavern in Trostenwald had made the entire Dwendalian Empire better.

And meanwhile, they were still simply Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to their friends, a tiefling with more gaps in their memory than cheesecloth and a borrowed shirt and powers they still didn’t understand and two swords they still weren’t sure they really knew how to use. Molly was no older or different or stronger than the day they’d been beaten back on Glory Run Road and let the Iron Shepherds get away with their friends again.

What if Molly was nothing but a reminder of those times to them? What if the others, grand heroes that they were now, didn’t care to have them back?

There was no doubt that they’d be kind, they’d try to pretend otherwise for Molly’s sake, but the fact of the matter was that they’d moved on. And that was good and that was right but Molly should have been there to move on with them. They should have been there for all these stories they’d been told, they should have been there to see their family grow and get better, but they’d been left behind and the rest had gone on to be so much better without them.

What right did Molly have to drag them back? What exactly were they hoping to gain by turning up on the doorstep of the house they all apparently had now? What did they think would happen? Things couldn’t be like they were, things shouldn’t be like they were, no matter how much Molly wanted them to be. After all, before Glory Run Road, the Mighty Nein had just been a ragtag bunch of disasters working for a criminal overlord and without Molly they’d gone on to be heroes and Molly would never be a part of that.

They sounded like they were so much better, now. Better than Molly, certainly.

They wished so much that they’d never died. They wondered what sort of person they’d be now if they hadn’t, what kind of hero they could have been if Lorenzo hadn’t stabbed them in the heart and twisted.

Molly flung their arm across their eyes and pressed it in until they saw sparks on the inside of their eyelids. Too late to back out now, they reminded themself firmly, trying to drag their racing thoughts back to stillness. Too many people had come this far with them under the expectation that they’d be reuniting Molly with the Mighty Nein. People had taken time out of their own lives to do this for him. Molly couldn’t just throw that effort away.

They just had to make it through tomorrow. At least then they’d know for certain what the rest of their life would hold.

Tomorrow seemed impossibly far away when they were just laying here in bed, tossing and turning and not enjoying these incredibly expensive sheets at all. Acting on a wild whim, moving as quietly as they could when they felt the overwhelming urge to itch out of their skin, Molly got up, pulled on their coat and boots, left the room, and then went to the door of the inn, meaning to leave altogether and go on a walk.

For a moment, however, just before they opened the doors, they found themself hesitating, frozen with fear. Zadash was a long way away from the woods of the Guaitao clan in so many ways. There probably weren’t howling, bloody ghosts drifting around. And yet, there was no telling what was out there. It would be so easy to get lost.

The thought of going back to bed was intolerable, however. Besides, if they couldn’t handle a night’s walk alone, how could they ever manage to stay alone in Zadash for weeks to wait for their friends? And so Molly took a deep, steadying breath to try and steel themself. As they did so, the briefest flash of memory returned to them – a phrase, words they’d spoken in a better time, a happier time, here in this very inn, to the sight of Beauregard rolling her eyes.

“Long may I reign,” they whispered, and – as ridiculous as the words were – they made Molly feel a bit better. It was enough that they were able to push the door open and step out into the brisk winter night. Once their feet were moving, once they felt fresh air on their face and could see a brilliantly silver crescent moon overhead, they felt even better still.

Molly tugged their gifted coat a little tighter about themself and wandered through the dark, quiet streets. Eventually, their aimless steps took them within sight of a garden. They saw as they drew closer that “garden” was probably a terribly insufficient word, actually, but it wasn’t quite big enough to be a forest in its own right. The trees lined the green space in neat rows, impossibly neat hedges divided the space, flowers bloomed in a place where Molly didn’t doubt they had been carefully placed to bloom. Even so, as they stepped beneath the deeper shadows of the trees, Molly felt their tension slowly bleeding out of them. There were crickets chirping, a few hidden birds trilling. It wasn’t anywhere close to the level of clamor they’d heard on the road into town, but it was still easy to let the sounds drift through their mind and drown out the anxiety and whirling doubts.

It shouldn’t have been surprising that they weren’t the only ones enjoying the moonlit garden, but coming out into a small clearing and seeing a firbolg kneeling in the grass still nearly made Molly’s heart leap up into their throat.

As they caught their breath, their mind hastened to take in details. The firbolg was tall and stout, dressed in emerald-green armor speckled with pinks and blues. Where Nila’s fur ranged from brown to black, this one had fur the same silvery color as the moon overhead. He also had a shock of pink hair that hung down one side of his face, and, as he glanced curiously back at Molly, equally pink eyes.

“Hi,” he said, in a deep, gravelly sort of voice. “Am I in your way?”

Momentarily at a loss for words, Molly shook their head. They had seen a lot of impressive and interesting things along their journey, but this figure was probably one of the most singularly striking of them all. It was briefly but embarrassingly hard to think.

“That’s good. I mean, it’s a pretty small park, so I could have been in your way. Depending on what you’re here for.”

They swallowed with difficulty and, when they tried to speak again, their voice had returned to them. “I have no idea what I’m here for, honestly.” Whether that was here in this garden or here for their life in general, but there was no need to burden this rather handsome fellow with all of that. “I just…went for a walk and tripped over this place, I suppose.”

Their new friend smiled in an impossibly old, gentle sort of way that put Molly wildly in mind of oak trees with far-reaching branches. “S’a good place to trip over. If you don’t mind my asking, are you new in town? Only you look kind of spooked, and I looked kind of spooked when I was first new in town, or so they tell me.”

Molly chuckled wearily. “I’ve been here before, but it was a long while ago.”

“What’s brought you back?”

“Family.” The word came surprisingly easy, here in this space to this friendly, gentle firbolg, and Molly felt some of the weight ease off their shoulders to have it out and said.

His smile grew big and brilliant and approving. “That’s nice. Been a while since you’ve visited?”

“You might say that.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you. I’m actually off to visit some family myself. I like to drop by every season or so, make sure they’re all doing all right, see how home’s ticking along.”

“Where’s home for you?” Despite how tall the firbolg was, it felt increasingly awkward to keep standing here when he hadn’t gotten up from his kneeling position on the ground. And so, moving gingerly, Molly closed the distance between them to kneel down beside him instead. He didn’t seem to mind, didn’t so much as twitch, just stared happily up at the starry sky.

“Up north. Just outside the Empire.”

“Hah. We actually just came down from that way. We might have passed one another on the road if the snows had lasted much longer.”

“So we passed each other here, instead. That’s nice.”

“I would agree. What’s here for you, then?”

“Family. Sometimes it works that way.”

“Really? Well, no reason why it shouldn’t, I suppose. Good for you! I hope it’s a good visit for you coming and going, then.” Momentarily overcome with fond feelings, Molly reached out to clap their friend on the shoulder.

“Well, thank you.” The stranger nodded amiably and returned the gesture. “And I hope the same for you.” Something of Molly’s feelings must have shown on their face in a flash as brief as lightning, or else perhaps the man had felt the brief spasm of tension lance through them against his hand. Either way, he stared fixedly at them for a moment, before making a soft, sympathetic sort of noise. “You’ve got reason to think it won’t be?”

Molly made a pathetic, noncommittal sort of noise as their mind raced to try and guess at how much to say. It was tempting to say everything, but they’d told this story enough times to people who knew what had happened. They were already so tired, the thought of confessing it again weighed on them. So instead, all they said was: “We didn’t part under the best company last time. And it was…” They sighed, long and tired, feeling so much older than a tiefling who’d only been alive for a little over a month. “It was such a long time ago.”

Their gaze fell to their lap, and so they saw it when the stranger reached out slowly to take their hand, obviously giving Molly time to pull away if they wanted to. But his grip proved to be gentle and warm and grounding, and so Molly absolutely did not want to.

“So what are you afraid is going to happen?” he asked quietly.

Now there was a question they knew they couldn’t even begin to be capable of answering. Molly tried to answer anyway, staring down at their joined hands. “I’m scared…” It took them aback how good it felt to have those words out and said, so much so that Molly laughed weakly even as their eyes stung with exhausted tears. Pressing their free hand to their face, they plunged on: “I am so damn scared I’m not going to be able to fix what broke that day. I miss them so much but I don’t know if they’re even still the same people I miss.”

“Probably not,” he said, not unkindly. “But you’re probably not the same person they miss, either.”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve had a desperately uneventful few years, compared to them.” They chuckled darkly, thinking of a grave dotted with colorful snapdragons that had probably long since died in the snow.

“But I mean, even just a trip down from the north. That’s not nothing. That’s a long and winding road. I should know, I’ve walked it quite a bit. But that means you’ve seen and done things that they weren’t there for. And that’s enough to change people. People change in big ways, small ways, ways they never even notice until it’s long over. Little differences are still differences.”

“See, that’s not actually as reassuring as I think you think it is. I appreciate the effort. I really, honestly do. But I don’t want things to be different. I want…” And then Molly realized that what they were going to say wasn’t true, not really, and they did so very much want to be honest with this stranger who was being so kind. It wasn’t that they wanted things to be the same, not really. “I want for things to have never changed in the first place,” they finished wistfully.

The firbolg took his hand away, and Molly felt a pang of loss at the apparent denial, only to slump with relief as he started to rub their back instead. “A lot of people want that,” he said, not unkindly. “But…here, listen. See that tree, over there?”

He gestured vaguely at the trees around them. Molly squinted, trying to follow his gaze. “Which one are we looking at?”

He made a thoughtful sort of sound. “Any of them, I guess. I mean, I guess we’re not looking at them, because I’m talking about tree roots. You know how tree roots work?”

“Vaguely.” It wasn’t a topic they’d ever really had cause to remember, but when they cast their thoughts back, Molly was fairly certain that yes, they knew how tree roots worked. Like so many things, they didn’t remember where they knew it from, they just knew that they did.

“Good, that’s good.” He nodded encouragingly, still staring off into the woods around them. “You see, tree roots can twist in a lot of different directions. And it’s good when they do. Helps the tree stay fed and strong. But no matter how far they spread, they still all come from the same place. They’re still connected in a big, big way. And sometimes one root splits into two, but sometimes two roots merge back into one. Maybe it doesn’t happen often, but it’s a big, weird world out there. Anything that can happen is going to, at least once. And maybe you and your friends won’t be the same as you were, but that’s good. I really think that’s good. Because it means you had the chance to grow deeper and spread out and that’s going to make the tree stronger. And it doesn’t mean you’re not all still connected.”

Molly nodded slowly, making a faint sound of agreement. They still weren’t sure they understood everything that was being said, not really, but they understood what he was getting at better than they had before. And when he put it that way, it was sort of reassuring, this idea that no matter much they had all changed, it would never be enough to separate them entirely.

For the first time all day, their heart felt truly settled, and the prospect of maybe possibly meeting the Mighty Nein tomorrow didn’t seem so terrifying.

“Home is a place you outgrow. Home isn’t a place that outgrows you.”  

Molly was about to protest that they weren’t sure they’d ever had a home, but closed their mouth. Because no, they’d remembered enough of their life before to know that wasn’t true at all. They had always had a home. It had just always been people.

And they’d never outgrown the Mighty Nein.

Whatever else happened. they should know that Molly was alive. Whatever else had changed, they wanted to do that for their friends. They could face tomorrow or weeks from now if it meant they could do that.

“That was a very profound thing you just said,” they said, nodding up at the firbolg, who looked pleased with himself.

“Thank you. I’m not good at a lot of things, honestly. But I like to think I know people.”

Moving by some sort of unspoken agreement, they both got to their feet. Molly’s heart felt calm and, though they knew sunrise must be approaching soon, they thought they might finally be able to get at least a couple of hours of sleep if they headed back to the Pillow Trove now.

“Hey,” he said, as they walked out of the garden together. “Why don’t you let me know how things go with your family once I’m back in town? If you’re here that long, I mean, I’ll probably be gone for about a month.”

“I’d love to.”

“Great. I actually live in this part of the city.” He glanced around, obviously trying to get his bearings, then pointed off down the street, in the opposite direction Molly had come. “Just look for the house with the ivy on the fences and the moss on the walls. I, uh, I like to garden.”

Molly nodded easily. “Even I shouldn’t be able to miss a house like that.”

“That’s good, that’s good. Just ask for Caduceus. But I should really hit the road now, before it gets much lighter out.”

“Absolutely, the roads around this city are a terror in the daylight. Take care, Caduceus.” Molly smiled up at him. “And thank you again.”

Caduceus smiled back and held out a hand to shake. Molly was happy to accept the offer. “Least I could do. You take care as well.”

And so they parted, each going their own way. Molly was so focused on trying to remember the way back to the inn that they were halfway there before one more memory hit them as hard as a kick to the head, stopping them cold there in the middle of the darkened, empty street.

“Same with the firbolg. Think his name was Caduceus.”

Molly glanced back the way they’d come, but of course, Caduceus was long gone, starting off on his own journey.

They hoped it would be a safe one. If nothing else, their first meeting with a member of the Nein had gone better than they ever could have hoped.

With that small comfort in mind, they found their way back to the inn, slipped into the room they were sharing with Nila as quietly as they could, and managed to get a couple of hours of restless sleep before morning.

*  *  *

“Shakaste?”

“Mm?”

“If this doesn’t work, can I stay with you?”

After all, it always paid to keep your options open. Tree roots should be free to grow in a lot of different directions, shouldn’t they?

It was the next morning and everyone, even Molly, had agreed on getting an early start. So they made their way down the Tri-Spire streets, with Keg and Calianna leading the way and Nila hanging back to observe the sights with wide, curious eyes. Shakaste was, as always, taking up the rear of the procession, and Molly was keeping pace. They’d hung back specifically to have this conversation, though someone usually tried to stay with Shakaste as a matter of course to keep an eye on the road for obstacles to his walking stick. With as quick as Duchess Anastasia darted through the air, sometimes she missed details and through her eyes so did he.

The old man frowned in apparent puzzlement, tilting his head, though at least he kept his voice low as he replied. “If what doesn’t work, Molly?”

Molly made a faintly frustrated sound. It wasn’t any easier to talk about this in the light of day, and they didn’t really want to dig into the full extent of their feelings a second time. Not even with Shakaste. “Me. Them! Me reuniting with them.”

“Why wouldn’t that ‘work’?”

“Humor me. It’s…it’s been such a long time, Shakaste.” Molly’s shoulders slumped, and they sighed. The couple of hours where they’d been able to turn their brain off and stop worrying had been such a good couple of hours. “More for them than it has been for me.”

Shakaste did not reply right away, and that was fine. Molly knew that meant he was giving the problem laid before him all due consideration, and they appreciated that. They simply kept walking for a few blocks, watching Nila trilling at a couple of birds on a walltop, listening to Keg and Calianna chatter.

Finally, Shakaste took Molly entirely by surprise when he chuckled in amusement. “And if this doesn’t ‘work’, why would you want to stay with an old man like me, Mollymauk?”

“Because--”

Because it felt like Shakaste had always been there, he had been the first real and good and safe thing in the world, he had taken care of Molly even before they remembered how to speak and come the longest way with them for no discernible reason that Molly could understand and they knew they had imprinted on him like a colorful duckling and that did absolutely nothing to change the fact of the matter.

But it turned out that the question had been rhetorical. Shakaste did not wait for an answer before carrying on. “If this plan of ours’ doesn’t work then, hell, Molly, you could go anywhere in the world. What if you went back to the Crispvale Thicket and became an honorary firbolg? Nila’s people liked you just fine, you pulled your weight and made plenty of friends. They’d be glad to have you back. Or, hell, you seemed to take to Hupperduke like a duck to water. We could set you up with enough to get yourself a booth and you could sell silk flowers and party yourself sick every night from now until the end of days with that little girl to keep you honest. Or Keg and Miss Calianna would take you across the sea with them, if you asked. I know they would. Make some new memories somewhere far away, don’t just retread the old ones.”

Through the eyes of his hummingbird, Shakaste must have seen on Molly’s face how overwhelmed they felt by the possibilities being suddenly laid before them. He reached down to take Molly’s hand, squeezing gently, adding softly: “Or you could stick with me, if that’s what you really wanted. I’m between jobs at the moment, and I get a lot less of them than I used to since your people kicked that old bastard Dwendel off the throne. But it’s still a job that needs doing sometimes. Could be it’s about time I trained someone up to help, if I found someone who wanted to.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what exactly it is that you do, that let you come all this way with me in the meantime?”

“Maybe someday. We’ll see how today goes.” Shakaste smiled, then turned his head towards Molly, catching his gaze and holding it as they walked along together with only the Grand Duchess to guide them in that moment.

“Mollymauk Tealeaf. You are a good person who does their damndest to do their share and put people at ease and I don’t know how to make you see that that’s still a rare and precious thing in this world. You came out of the ground not even two months ago and you’re already a dab hand at making friends and making folks like you and the best part is that I know that’s all you ever want out of the bargain. You don’t need a reason to help a good person in trouble, Molly, or help a lost soul find their way home. No matter how long it’s been. I don’t need a reason to be here besides the fact that I like you just fine and I want to make sure you get to where you need to be. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Molly found themself echoing, scarcely daring to believe it. Yet Shakaste looked so pleased with himself that Molly couldn’t believe he was lying and wouldn’t have even if he could because he trusted the old man utterly. From the first night they had woken up in their second chance at life, Shakaste had been there to explain what Molly needed explained.

So maybe the world really could be that simple, sometimes. Maybe it should be.

And maybe if it wasn’t, that just meant it was up to them to make it so.

“We’re here!” Calianna called back, drawing Molly out of their thoughts, but not out of their resolve. Molly looked ahead to where Keg and Calianna and Nila stood waiting, the half-elf waving them on towards the front gate of a large manor home.

Molly was not at all surprised, as they drew nearer alongside Shakaste, to see that it was a house with so much ivy choking its iron fence that it was practically a shrubbery, and that there was multicolored moss climbing halfway up the walls.

On some level, they weren’t even surprised to see glimpses of movement through the windows where curtains stood open. Someone, at least, was home.

Chapter Text

There were no guards on the gate. Of course not, Molly thought to themself, a touch giddily. That wouldn’t be like us at all. Instead, there was a bell and pullcord hanging by the gate that ran, through a complicated system of pulleys and string, through the gate and towards the mansion and inside the front door.

“Are you ready?” Nila started to ask Molly, but Calianna had already pulled the cord by the time Molly had finished examining the setup. They thought to themself about how ingenious it was, in an attempt to keep from panicking as a bright, silvery chime rang out. Maybe Nott had designed it.

They seemed to wait for an eternity and an instant. Then door opened and Beauregard stepped outside, grumbling and yawning as she headed for the gate. But as the yawn faded, she looked up and saw them standing there beyond it and her expression lit up. “Hey, damn!” she said, looking from face to face. “What’s the occasion, its...”

Molly had been bracing themself for the moment she realized they were  there. It still wasn’t nearly enough. She looked right past them at first but then her gaze snapped back to theirs’, suddenly, the smile draining from her face and leaving pale, wordless shock in its wake.

She looked them over once, twice. Whether she was trying to convince herself to believe what she was seeing or convincing herself that it could not be happening, they couldn’t tell. They just took the opportunity to look her over as well, finding themself strangely hungry just to see her. She hadn’t changed much – she’d gotten a nicer coat at some point, and dyed a violet streak through her hair. There was a scar on her temple and going up into her hair like something had tried to claw her in the face and that was about all they had time to notice because Beau was running at the gate.

She didn’t bother to open it, she simply leaped up to the top in a single, graceful bound and then dropped onto the other side and then she was in front of Molly in a blur of movement that made them flinch back. When they did, Beau’s hands lashed out to grab their arms with vice-like strength, as if to hold them upright or else just hold them here in front of her.

As the rush and blur of movement faded, as their mind started working again, Molly realized that she wasn’t just holding them in place. Her fingers were curling and uncurling, testing the fabric of their coat, testing that they were real beneath her hands.

She looked like she was about to cry. It was about the most heartbreaking and unnatural expression they’d ever seen on Beau’s face.

They had imagined this moment so many times, thought about all the things they’d say, but somehow the only words that escaped them were: “Please say something.” And there was a note of desperation in their voice; the silence and the staring and the sheer, raw weight of years and words unsaid was making them want to itch out of their skin and never stop running.

Something broke in her expression. Tears gathered in her eyes and she hiccuped faintly. “Molly?”

They forced a smile even as their eyes started to sting and their vision started to blur. “Anyone ever tell you that crying is just a terrible look on you?”

She drew back as if they’d shoved her, but then she grinned and laughed and suddenly she was hugging them fiercely and crying into their shoulder.

“Fuck,” she said, with feeling, punctuating the word by thumping them on the back. “Fuck, you asshole. You’re alive, how are you alive, when did you...” She pulled away, rubbing stubbornly at her eyes, staring at them. “Wait, do you even know me? Am I just some weird crying woman to you right now?”

“You’ve changed your hair since I saw you last – that does look nice, by the way.” The smile was starting to hurt less. “But yes, oh most obnoxious Beauregard, I remember you.”

She hugged them again, and this time they were able and happy to hug her back. She had a nice coat, too, and it was a shame to get it wet, but fair was fair.

When she pulled away again, it was for the sake of turning to the others, giving proper greetings, and tossing the key to Keg to let them in so that she and Molly could have some time alone. She kept a hand on Molly’s arm the entire time, as if afraid they’d fade away if she let go of them.

Molly didn’t mind. They were maybe a little bit afraid of that, too.

Their new friends were let into the big, ivy-covered house, and Molly took a walk with their old one. Beau kept her arm slung around their shoulders as they went. That arm had a tattoo of a black dragon curling down it, its open jaws painted across her fist. It was a good look on her.

“Okay,” she said, sounding a touch steadier. “So I guess the obvious question is how?”

They shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest. Was hoping one of you might be able to fill in the blanks, especially since...” And here they pulled out the letter and passed it to her. “I woke up with this.”

Beau took the letter in her free hand, scanning it at a glance. Her expression went fond and faintly distant. “Caleb.” She passed the note back as something seemed to occur to her.

“So Caleb at least thought this might happen,” he said, watching her intently.

“We all did. I mean, it’s not the first time you came back to life. But it didn’t take you years last time. At least, not as far as I know from what you told us. We left you that in case whatever happened before happened again, but...it never did.” Her shoulders slumped. “How long have you been back, anyway?”

“Oh, I can’t keep track of days worth a damn. A month? Probably a little more. Shakaste said it would take us a month to get here but we got sidetracked along the way, once or twice.

“...there was a big storm about a month back. I mean, just fuckin’ massive.”

“I know, I woke up in it.”

That seemed to satisfy her – they could see her mentally putting pieces together, before she gave a small nod as she apparently came up with the correct answer. “I don’t know how you’re back, but I think I know who does.”

“Excellent! Who is it?” Molly felt their heart starting to race with anticipation.

“I’m thinking I’d rather wait until I can tell everyone about this, so they can tell me if I’m insane.”

“Tease.” They gave her a small shove.

“Bastard.” She gave them a rather harder shove, but then pulled them closer without missing a blink, and on they walked. “So you remember us? You didn’t remember anything, last time this happened.”

“More or less.” They waggled a hand uncertainly, frowning thoughtfully. “I didn’t remember anything when I first woke up, and there’s still a lot of gaps, but things are coming back pretty easily as long as I see something to jog it.”

She snorted. “Well, you’ll for sure have plenty of that once we get you back to the house.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve been counting on it.”

Something in her expression seemed to break. “That’s good. That’s…that’s great.” She tightened her arm around them, adding in a voice that was little more than a whisper: “I missed you. You asshole.”

The Beauregard they remembered would have eaten broken glass rather than admitted that to them. Hell, the Beauregard they remembered hadn’t even liked them that much. But when she cast them a sidelong glance and smiled so warmly, they smiled back without hesitation.

Maybe it wasn’t always a bad thing when things were different.

But when her grin took on a sharper edge, their heart ached with the familiarity of it. It was an expression of hers' they’d seen in so many dreams. “Hey,” she said, gesturing at them, their clothes and their coat in particular. “Nice coat.”

“Thank you. Nila made it for me and I happen to adore it.”

“She made it out of your tapestry, right? Yeah, awesome job. By any chance, would you happen to have remembered how you got that thing in the first place?”

“No?”

She burst out laughing, even as she guided them in a slow pivot back towards the house. “Oh man have I got a story for you.”

Molly felt a stutter of dread in their heart when they realized where they were going, but it faded quickly as Beauregard told the story, and by the time they stood before the gates once more they were mostly feeling frustrated with themself that they hadn’t thought to ask after their old friends at the Pillow Trove.

Then they were distracted again by the state of the house and the grounds as Beauregard let them in through the gate. Caduceus hadn’t been kidding – most of the space on one side of the house was taken up by a small greenhouse, and they could see other, wildly overgrown plots of various plants dotted around as well. The air was rich with the smell of loam and mold. The house itself was big and old, fronted with innumerable large windows and graced with wide front steps.

“Nice place, huh? Took a bit to get used to,” Beau was saying, chatting easily now, as she tested the front door to find that the others had left it unlocked. She opened it and motioned Molly inside, down a short hallway and into a wide and tidily appointed foyer. “I was kind of iffy on the place when we first got it – I mean, it was a gift, we sure as hell weren’t gonna spend money on a house. But it’s been kinda nice. Caleb’s got his invisible servants so it’s not like we need to keep track of actual people to pay. We’ve just got, like a chore wheel for who needs to get food, stuff like that.”

Sure enough, Molly could guess that most of the furniture they could see dotted around seemed like it might have come with the place and was tolerated for it – not anything my friends would pick out they thought to themself, giddy with certainty. There were lighter patches on the wall where portraits might have once hung. Someone, and Molly had a very good idea as to who, had tried to fill up the empty space with swirls of paint in bright, aimless patterns and designs. 

Their ears pricked at the sound of laughter to their right. Molly glanced over to see a door standing just slightly ajar, and to hear the sound of familiar voices coming from inside – some more familiar than others. Beau saw where they were looking and came over to sling an arm around their shoulders again.

“You ready?” she asked, and they could hear the grin in her voice. They could only hear it, because they couldn’t tear their gaze away from that door and the thought of what, of who lay beyond.

“No,” Molly said, swallowing past a painfully dry throat. Once upon a time, they would have torn one of their own teeth out rather than any kind of weakness aloud to her when drugs weren’t involved. But a lot had changed, since then.

Wonder of wonders, she seemed to understand. They heard her make a soft, apparently genuinely sympathetic noise. She moved around to face them, blocking their line of sight on the door, and squeezed their shoulders firmly. “Hey,” she said softly, her gaze intent on their face. “You remember how this all started? You remember…fuck, all the way back in Trosenwald, when you and the carnival rolled into town? And you and Yasha just rolled on up into that tavern to pass out tickets and you saw five weirdo sad sacks sitting at the same table sniping at each other and you apparently thought to yourself ‘those are the people who need to have a good time’?”

A little girl shrouded head to toe, a man with the most startlingly blue eyes, a half-orc, a fellow tiefling, and a woman in blue who looked like she was ready and willing to fight the world.

They didn’t look like they had money and they didn’t even really look like they wouldn’t cause trouble, and those were usually Molly’s only two criteria for who to give their pitch to. But these five looked interesting. They looked like fun.

Sometimes they got just a bit of an itch in the back of their mind and following it had always served them well. There was a story to tell here, and Molly was never one to turn down a good story. Sometimes

And besides, Yasha was at their back, as always, faithfully keeping an eye out for trouble. What was the worst that could happen?

So they swanned their way over to the table, to the five fascinating strangers, who all looked up at their approach with wary, curious eyes.

" Well. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a group of people more in need of a good time in my entire life. Mollymauk Tealeaf of the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities. If there was ever a group of people that needed a good time to go out, have a laugh, see things that you have never seen before…and my god, take my word for it. One month’s time, people will be buying your ale to hear the tale of what you saw at the Traveling Carnival of Curiosities this night.”

Beau beamed in encouragement, her eyes overbright. She could clearly see the recollection on their face. She was clearly remembering, too. “Be that Molly,” she said. “Be that Molly and you’ll be fine.”

Molly took a deep breath, then nodded their agreement. “Right.” They smiled back, and it wasn’t even painful. Apparently reassured, or else just willing to move forward anyway, Beau turned to the door and laid a hand on it. “On three, okay? One, two...”

And, because apparently she was still so utterly, fundamentally Beauregard at heart, she shoved the door open on two and dragged Molly forward into the crowded sitting room on the other side, crowing for them all to hear: “Hey guys, look who I found!”

Silence fell instantly. Eight pairs of eyes, one of them belonging to a hummingbird, moved to stare at Molly with varying degrees of shock. For a long moment, Molly could do nothing but stare back at them, utterly at a loss.

Jester moved first. Yasha moved faster.

She seemed to blur before suddenly she was right in front of them, looming tall as ever, with wide-eyes and a mouth drawn into a thin, tight, trembling line. Molly stared up into her eyes, so familiar, blue and violet both, and at her hair – a long, tangled mane of dreads, mostly white, except for a section of black that went as far down as her jawline, as if someone careless had dumped a pot of ink on her head.

And that meant something, that meant something so important, and it was briefly as if the Molly of three years ago was alive and well in their mind and heart. They let out a delighted gasp, reaching out to seize her hands in theirs’. “Look at you!” they breathed. “Oh, I’m so proud of you!”

The words came so easily. They realized that here were words they’d been waiting years to say, even before their death. And they were the right words to say – something broke in her expression, tears gathered in her eyes. She let out a quiet hiccup, such a small sound from such a large woman, and pulled them into a hug so fierce that their feet left the ground.

“Molly,” she whispered, with all the love in the world.

From the very first night that Molly had awoken alive again, the very first night where they’d shared a meal and a fire with Shakaste, the need to find Yasha had been one of the most important things in the world. The need to find her and apologize had been fixed in their heart and up until this moment they hadn’t even known what they wanted to apologize for but now it all came rushing back as they wrapped their arms around her and clung with all their strength.

Yasha really did give amazing hugs. Five gold pieces was a steal.

“I’m sorry,” they murmured, trying not to lose their voice to tears again. “I promised I’d always be there for you to come back to and then I wasn’t and I am so sorry…”

She shushed them gently, rubbing big, soothing circles all up and down their back. “It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice breaking on a sob. She kissed their cheek and said again: “It’s okay, Molly.”

“Yasha!” Jester cried plaintively from just behind her. “Put him down and share! Molly, is it really you?”

Yasha let out a huff of amusement, set Molly back on their feet, and stepped aside so that Molly found themself confronted with Jester and...a red-haired halfling girl with startlingly blue eyes.

The girl looked sheepish as Molly looked them over, scuffing a toe on the floor. “So I’ve had a, um, a bit of a makeover since we last saw one another."

And yes, the more they looked, they could see it. The eyes were the right shape, even if they were blue now. The mouth was the right shape, even if it was no longer full of needle sharp fangs. “Nott the Brave!” they cried happily, picking her up and hugging her. Jester immediately took her cue to pounce on them both, seizing Molly and Nott in a rib-crushing embrace. “Oh, you made it work. I should have known you would, I’m so happy for you.”

She even hugged the same as she always had, with her legs as well as her arms. “We missed you!” she said.

“We really did!” Jester added. “Oh, Molly, it is so great to see you again! How did you find us?”

“The note!” Nott gasped, wriggling out of their grasp enough to look up at Molly. Jester took advantage of the opportunity to cuddle closer, her tail twining around Molly’s leg. “Caleb left you a note! I remember!”

Beaming fit to burst, Molly reached into their shirt, pulled out the note, and unfolded it for all to see. Nott let out a delighted gasp before her expression softened into something desperately warm and fond. “I’m really glad it helped you, Molly.”

Now that Nott was no longer blocking their field of vision and Jester had tucked herself against their side, Molly looked around for Fjord. They saw him there standing at a respectful distance and already in tears. Their old roommate grinned back sheepishly when they saw that Molly had noticed.

They remembered that Fjord hadn’t been the most demonstrative of individuals, so Molly stepped close and simply clapped him on the shoulder instead. “Well, I hope you’ve--” I hope you’ve been taking care of yourself, they meant to say. But apparently, Fjord had simply been waiting his turn, and threw his arms around Molly with no further hesitation.

As Molly recovered their wits, they were able to take in the details that had changed from what they last remembered. It wasn’t just Yasha’s hair and the corresponding recovery of her divine power that they knew that represented, or the fact that Nott was a halfling now. Jester was missing a chunk out of one ear, had taken up piercing and decorating her horns and had even joined Beau in tattooing herself, if the curl of color they could see from just under her blouse was any indication. Fjord, meanwhile, had let his tusks grow out – a seemingly simple change, but Molly remembered how much it must have cost him to reach that point.

Somehow, once the laughter and tears had subsided enough for everyone to remember how to think, Molly wound up on the sofa – or, more specifically, Yasha wound up on the sofa with Molly settled securely on her lap. She looped her arms around their waist and rested her chin on their shoulder. Jester took the seat on one side of Yasha, with hers’ and Molly’s tails twined together, Fjord took the other side. Shakaste, Nila, Keg, and Calianna ranged themselves about the room, with Nott perched on the edge of Nila’s armchair. As everyone got themselves settled, Shakaste turned his head towards Molly and gave the most singularly smug smile Molly had ever seen on the old man’s face, and Molly adored him all the more for it.

Finally, there was Beau pacing the center of the room, clearly gearing up to talk.

It was only then, however, that Molly fully realized that they weren’t all together, not yet. “Where’s Caleb?” they asked, glancing around as if they might find the wizard hiding under an end table. An unpleasant curl of anxiety settled in their stomach, souring the bright warmth the reunion had brought. They had absolutely heard plenty of stories of the Mighty Nein’s fiercesome wizard on their journey. Surely he was alive, he had to be alive.

“He wouldn’t come down,” Jester grumbled. “Said he was busy. Oh! But if we tell him you’re here, Molly, he’ll come racing out of his library, I know it!”

“He’d better,” Fjord grumbled. “Practically lives in that fuckin’ thing nowadays.”

“I mean,” said Beau, folding her arms and tapping one foot. “It’s gotta be pretty frustrating, right? He spends all that time gearing up to bring Molly back to life, and then he thinks he’s fucked it up.”

Silence fell with all the heavy finality of an axe. Molly practically heard everyone’s minds screech to a halt in unison. Yasha got hers’ going again first. “You think he’s responsible for this?” she asked, staring at Beau over Molly’s shoulder.

“Think about it. I mean, you weren’t here for the start of this, babe, but think about it.” Beau nodded at the rest of the Nein. “Molly here says they came back on the night of that really big storm. You guys remember that, right?”

“Thought the whole damn Empire was gonna drown,” Fjord snorted. Then his eyes went wide. “And the next morning…”

Beau finished his thought easily. “We found Caleb passed the fuck out on the lawn.”

“And his eyes had—”

“Exactly.”

Molly was utterly at a loss and increasingly worried, looking back and forth from Beau to Fjord as if they were watching a battle in an arena. “Caleb can’t do that,” they said weakly. No matter how powerful a wizard was, there was some magic that was solely in the purview of gods to grant.

“I didn’t think so either,” Beau said. “But the timing makes sense.”

“He was sick as a dog for about a week afterwards,” Fjord said. “Couldn’t cast a cantrip to save his life.”

“And ever since, he hardly comes out of his library. If it weren’t for Nott, the idiot would have starved by now. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? He spends all that time and energy and, and does something to himself trying to bring Molly back and he thinks it doesn’t work, because Molly woke up there and not here.”

“But why wouldn’t he tell us?” Jester asked, frowning in equal parts confusion and concern.

“He didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Nott said. “In case it didn’t work.”

She seemed to shrink in on herself as all eyes turned on her. “Don’t look at me like that,” she grumbled, kicking her feet against the armchair. “I said he should tell you all and he told me that’s why he wouldn’t. He didn’t know this would work! And it sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? When we thought it didn’t work, we were the only ones who were sad about Mollymauk all over again. Instead of all of you being sad with us.”

Jester made a desperately upset sort of sound. “But what if we wanted to be sad with you? And, and even if we weren’t sad about Molly, we were all really worried about Caleb instead! Caduceus said…” Her eyes went wide and she turned to Molly all of a sudden. “Oh my gosh, Molly, I can’t believe you just missed Caduceus! He left just last night! Oh, you should have come to see us then! I think you would like him so much.”

“He wasn’t meant to replace you,” Yasha murmured, and punctuated the words with a soft kiss to Molly’s cheek. “I would never let that happen. But he is very nice.”

Molly considered admitting that they had met Caduceus and that he was, in fact, very nice. After a moment’s deliberation, they decided it against it. It still felt nice, knowing that they had done and seen things that the Mighty Nein did not know. There was no harm in keeping a secret close to their heart for just a little longer, something just for them.

“Well, what the fuck are we waiting for?” Keg said from her spot leaning against the wall. “Let’s go break the good news.”

“Yes!” Jester declared happily, getting up from the couch and pulling Molly up with her. “Let’s go!”

Molly, however, found themself digging in their heels. “Actually,” they said, glancing around the room, at their new friends and old. “I was just thinking, maybe I should go upstairs alone? Caleb’s in for a nasty shock as it is – the least we can do is not crowd the poor boy.”

And more than that, they wanted to ask how. They wanted to ask why. They knew the others did as well, but maybe in the quiet of just the two of them, Caleb might be more likely to answer.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Fjord said, even as Jester pouted in disappointment. “Much as I would love to see the look on his face.”

Out of the corner of their eye, Molly saw Yasha wave Jester over and whisper something to her. Whatever it was, it made the disappointment on her face dissolve into a bright, mischievous smile, and suddenly she was all but shoving Molly out the door of the study.

“Go up the stairs, take a right, third door on the left!”

“I’m going, I’m going!” Molly laughed.

“Go get ‘em, tiger!” Keg called after them.

“We’ll be here when you’re done,” Shakaste added, moving to take Jester’s recently vacated spot on the couch.

Molly had just enough time to see that Jester had taken up Beau’s recently vacated spot in the center of the room before Nott pointedly closed the door behind them. And with that, they were left alone in the big house, and there seemed to be nothing to do but follow Jester’s directions.

Up the stairs they went – a wide, curving spiral that went from the entrance hall to the second floor, which was itself crowded with rooms. A couple of doors were hanging open, and of course Molly couldn’t help but peek inside. They saw a well-appointed workshop, its tables piled high with scrap metal and crowded with beakers. They saw a training room with sand scattered all over the floor from a sandbag hanging forlornly off a hook, and a room filled floor to ceiling with a variety of plants blooming in strange colors.

The third door on the left when you took a right from the stairs was not hanging open. But when Molly leaned against it and pressed their ear to it, they could just barely hear the sound of rustling paper and a cat’s meow.

They took a deep breath and knocked.

Chapter Text

Almost immediately a voice called out from the other side – a haggard, irritated, desperately familiar voice. “Jester, I told you I would be down when I was finished!”

Molly felt their heart grow so warm and full with love that it felt as if it might burst in their chest. Here he was, the last missing piece. “Not Jester, actually!” they called in a sing-song sort of way. “Though the horns are both quite similarly fetching, if I do say so myself.”

There was no reply from beyond the door for several long seconds, neither voice nor cat nor paper. Molly grinned; they could practically guess Caleb’s thought process from this side of the door. He would be wondering if this was a prank, and then deciding – rightly so – that no matter how wide a streak of mischief the Mighty Nein had in them, none of them would play a joke about this.

On cue, Molly heard footsteps approaching very quickly, then the door was wrenched open, and there stood Caleb Widogast, pale as a sheet and breathing hard and staring at Molly with huge, round eyes.

One of the first things Molly had noticed about Caleb had been his eyes, quick and clever and such a startlingly beautiful shade of dark blue. The wit and intelligence of that gaze remained, marred as it was by shock, but the color seemed to have drained from them – now they were a pale grey, just barely tinged with blue, the sort of bruised color you might see in a sky where stormclouds were gathering but the rain never quite fell.

“Oh,” said Caleb, very quietly, drawing Molly out of their shock. “Oh, okay. This is a dream. Nott did warn me this might happen. I see I should have listened. Okay. I am just…I am going to go wake up now.”

He turned and started to retreat back into the library. Quick as a cat, Molly stepped forward to grab his wrist. From the way Caleb went tense as a wire under their hand, all at once, they might as well have run a current up his spine.

“Not a dream,” they said. “Though if you’re saying that I’m a vision, well…” They laughed, and the sound came out shakier than they would have liked. But Caleb still wasn’t looking at them, Caleb seemed to be barely breathing, and Molly felt concern tying their stomach in knots all over again. “Beau seems to think I have you to thank for, well…me,” they added softly.

Caleb let out his breath in a long, shuddering sigh that broke on a sob and it broke Molly’s heart to hear. “You don’t,” he whispered. “Because it, it didn’t work. You were supposed to wake up here, where we could, um, look after you, and remind you of everything.”

Getting into the library was a little difficult since Caleb hadn’t really moved out of the doorway yet. Molly managed it, however, sliding past Caleb and moving around to face him and ducking their head to look Caleb in his tear-filled eyes, still glassy with shock.

“I’m here now,” they said simply. “I’d say that’s the important part.”

Caleb shook his head, still apparently at an utter loss. “I, I don’t understand. I thought it failed, when you…” He went pale as a sheet, then reached out to seize Molly’s shoulders in a surprisingly fierce grip. “Please, please tell me you at least did not wake up in the ground again. I tried to be very specific about that. I tried to spare you that much, please believe me.”

Molly felt as if their heart would burst with love in their chest. They couldn’t stop smiling, there were tears gathering in their eyes as well but they were long past caring. “Next to it,” they said, and their voice broke as well. “Up above ground and wrapped up in my tapestry. Thank you.” A thought occurred to them, a way to ease the tension before it snapped and rebounded on them both. They twirled to show off their coat, the silver dragon curling across their back. “Do you like what we’ve done with the old thing, by the way? Nila made this for me.”

Glancing over their shoulder, they could see Caleb smile. “It is very nice, Mollymauk. She did well.” His expression grew faintly troubled, and he added: “I am sorry, about your other one. Beau and Yasha said that they went to visit you, ah, your grave one year, and it was gone.”

“It’s just a coat, Caleb.” That wasn’t entirely true, but what they said next was. “Coats are for wearing, not leaving lying around. Someone else probably needed it more, and I wish them well with it.” They twirled back around to take his hands again, beaming in reassurance.

Caleb looked tentatively reassured. “I suppose. It did stay for, ah, for quite a while. Longer than I ever would have expected. But people are superstitious about graves.”

“They’re more superstitious about freezing to death on the road. A fact I nearly became intimately acquainted with – if it wasn’t for this thing, I might not have made it to Shakaste. That was quite a storm I woke up in. Actually, come to think of it, Beau seemed to think that was significant. The storm, I mean. Is she right?”

And now the wizard looked somewhat abashed. “Somewhat. The, ah, the storm did not bring you back, as such, but storms can provide a boost to magical energies, especially in the use of—”

Molly felt a presence coalesce right behind them, saw Caleb’s eyes go wide, all a scant second before a pair of familiar arms wrapped around him and a pair of blue hands closed over their joined ones. It all happened so fast, Jester wasn’t there and then she was, and Molly let out the most undignified noise of shock as they felt their heart leap into their throat.

Jester giggled. “Hi, Molly,” she chirped in her sing-song way.

“Hello, Jester,” said Molly weakly.

“I see you found Caleb.”

“You did give me very good directions.”

“Now, will you do me a favor?”

“Anything for you, dear.”

“Caleb hasn’t gone outside in like a week and I think he really needs some sun and also some food that hasn’t been sitting outside his door all day. Would you pretty please take him on a walk and maybe buy some pastries for you both to eat? Here.” She moved around to stand between them, fussily turned Molly’s hand palm up, and counted out five gold into it. As she did so, Molly caught Caleb’s eye. The wizard offered them a sheepish sort of smile that nevertheless made Molly’s heart skip a beat.

“I can do that,” they said, in a voice that was perhaps an octave too high, but maybe they wouldn’t notice. Molly slipped the gold into their pouch, started for the door, then paused and looked back at Jester. “How on in the world did you do that, by the way?”

Jester winked at them. “I can do a lot of cool things now.” Then, affecting a pout, she added: “I would have just taken Caleb outside myself, but—”

“But I can do Jester’s very cool trick as well,” Caleb finished. “And we both have better things to do with our day than playing hopscotch with time and space.”

“But you definitely don’t have anything better to do with your day than talking to Molly, right?” Jester linked her arm through Molly’s and winked at Caleb. Caleb tried to look stern at her in a way that was so achingly familiar, before he gave up.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.” He offered his arm to Molly in turn, and Jester was happy to surrender her grip. Molly, meanwhile, was happy to take Caleb up on his offer, even as they tried to pretend that the sudden abundance of physical contact wasn’t overwhelming in all the best ways. “Mister Mollymauk, will you join me for a walk?”

“Mister Caleb,” said Molly, in a voice that was definitely an octave too high. “I would be delighted.”

Jester beamed like a proud parent, blew them both a kiss, then opened a door in time and space that looked into the sitting room downstairs and stepped through. Calianna had just enough time to wave at Molly before it closed again, and Molly was left staring blankly at the space where it had been.

“So, ah,” Caleb said, drawing Molly’s attention back to him. “Jester was not kidding when she said that the B team had rolled into town.”

“You thought she was?”

“It wouldn’t even be the strangest story she came up with to get me to stop working.”

Without any words spoken, they both made their way out of the library and back into the hall. Frumpkin slipped out the door behind them just before Caleb closed it, and they all set off for the front door. “Why is the B team all in town?” Caleb asked. “Are they with you?”

“They are in fact with me, yes. Met them all along the way and they all decided to see me safely home.”

Caleb hummed thoughtfully but said nothing in reply to that. So Molly took a chance. “So, about how you brought me back to life…”

The wizard shook his head. “Can we please have something to eat first?” he asked very quietly, offering Molly a sidelong and plainly apologetic smile. “It is, ah…it is a very long story.”

“Of course,” Molly said without hesitation. There wasn’t even any echo of disappointment at Caleb’s words. They had time. They knew that, now. And yet they didn’t want to let the silence linger, they still weren’t at all used to that, so Molly asked instead: “So what have you all been doing with yourselves? I’ve heard stories. I’m still not sure I believe all of them.”

Caleb snorted with amusement and shook his head. “You shouldn’t. Ah, let’s see…”

Molly had heard so many stories of the Mighty Nein on their journey to Zadash, about how brave and heroic they’d been, all the people they’d helped and all the ways they had changed the world for the better.

On their walk with Caleb to the bakery, they heard the other side of some of those stories. They heard about how the Mighty Nein had, in all this time, ultimately never stopped being a bunch of chaotic disasters who tripped into trouble and fought their way out by the most wildly ridiculous means.

The night before they killed that ancient red dragon, none of them had gotten a lick of sleep because Caduceus had passed around what he’d thought were strengthening potions he’d concocted, but had in fact given them all terrible food poisoning. “Everyone has their off days.”

Nott and Fjord had accidentally become best selling authors whose work was widely considered a spiritual successor to Tusk Love. “We really just needed a few pages for the infiltration but they got very invested in it.”

Jester had apparently taken to disguising herself as Molly whenever she needed to be inconspicuous. “Be very careful if you find yourself in the vicinity of the Lucidian Ocean, there are people there who don’t like you very much.”

Beau and Yasha were actually married. “They celebrated by picking a fight with an entire company of the Righteous Brand.” He had a feeling that Fjord and Jester would be soon to follow.

Nott still had the crown of the deposed King Bertrand Dwendal shoved under her bed somewhere. “It’s fine, it would have looked terrible on the new one anyway.”

And when they had all, bloodied and battered, faced the avatar of the Crawling King, Jester had rallied their spirits by making up a song on the spot about how he looked like a diseased penis. “Having a good memory is not always a blessing, ja?”

All the while, Molly listened with rapt attention, offering what commentary they could, laughing and cheering for their friends like they should have been there to do from the start. But there was no harm in making up for lost time.

It occurred to them eventually that they weren’t sure they had ever heard Caleb talk this much, not in all the two months or so that they’d known one another before.

The years had been kind to Caleb Widogast. That thought struck Molly like a bolt from the blue as they accepted a bag of pastries from the man behind the counter at the very upscale bakery before retiring to a little park to eat them. It wasn’t the same one where Molly had spoken to Caduceus the night before – fewer trees, more flowers and open green. There were polished marble benches and they picked one to sit on, the bag of pastries between them, the better to keep talking and let Molly keep admiring how Caleb had grown and changed.

He was more confident, that much was plain to see – still not inclined to look someone in the eye, but now it was plainly as a matter of preference, rather than mingled fear or suspicion. His shoulders weren’t as hunched, like whatever weight he’d been bowed beneath when they’d first met had eased. He was still a disheveled mess in the same tattered brown coat, but the stains he bore were more evidently a sign of careless study – soot on his cheek, ink on his hands, dirt in the shape of a cat’s paws on the front of his shirt. He wasn’t actively trying to hide himself beneath grime anymore.

And he smiled so easily now, talked so freely, especially when it was about the others. I remember the look in your eyes the night before, Molly caught themself thinking. I remember you were thinking of running out on us. But since then, Caleb had clearly gone to the ends of the world and back for his friends.

Molly was so, so happy for him and, coincidentally, starting to remember just how smitten they’d been before everything had come to a swift and bloody end.

Did you ever think back on it, they wanted to blurt out, in the moments when Caleb paused for breath. Did you ever think back on all the times I showed off for you and flirted with you like my life depended on it? I tried so hard to make you see that no matter how scared you were of your own fire it would never burn hot enough to hurt me.

Not that I ever expected anything to happen – you weren’t ready and, gods, neither was I. But I wanted you to know more than anything that if you ever decided that you were, I would always be waiting.

Did you ever know? Did you ever think back on it and wonder?

They remembered that day in Hupperduke, their impromptu mission to free a family falsely imprisoned.

“Schmidt, one second,” Caleb said to his newly summoned invisible servant, getting up and dusting himself off before jerking his chin towards the two of them. “You two, circus-people. Mollymauk.”

“Yeah?” Yasha asked.

“Ja, ja?” Molly echoed easily.

Caleb opened his mouth, closed it again, and Molly heard him mumble “oh, that’s cute” in a dreamy, faintly gobsmacked sort of way. He might not even have entirely realized that he’d said it, and that just made it even better. Molly resisted the urge to punch the air in glee. Instead, they leaned comfortably against Yasha, batting their tail against her thigh, to listen to their dear leader lay out the plan.

And of course, he’d gotten his revenge later, and had probably done so entirely unintentionally, the bastard. The brush of Caleb’s fingers against his hand almost drew Molly back to that moment instead, but they heard Caleb call their name very softly, and blinked the present day back into focus instead.

The sight that greeted their eyes was that of Caleb, wearing an expression of gentle concern. He sat back, head tilted slightly to regard Molly. “Are you all right, Mollymauk? You were gone, for a moment. Maybe longer. I am still not so good at noticing such things.”

Molly mustered up an apologetic smile. “That happens, sometimes. Things come back to me and they don’t really care what I’m doing when they do.”

“Ah, yes, I see.” He probably didn’t, Molly recalled that Caleb had a memory that was as close to perfect as it was possible to be. “This…this is probably all a lot for you to take in, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have dumped even more on you all at once. I know how awful it feels when everyone around you is overwhelming you.”

Molly waved a hand dismissively. “Think nothing of it. I want to know what I’ve missed. I…” I want to catch up, they almost said, but they knew that was impossible even if that didn’t stop them wanting it. Rather than risk betraying as much, they changed tact all together. “But come on, Caleb. We’ve both eaten, we’re both sitting down, no one around besides me to ask stupid questions. How did you bring me back to life?”

Caleb drew back a little, blinking in surprise. Then he let out a soft huff, his gaze sliding away from Molly’s, running his inky fingers through his hair in agitation. “I admit I was hoping you had forgotten to ask,” he murmured.

“My memory isn’t that terrible.”

He smiled ruefully. “Apparently.” His expression softened, his eyes going distant and sad in a way that Molly had grown so familiar with over the course of their journey. “You know we all tried to bring you back first, ja? It took some time, longer than any of us wanted. First for our clerics to even learn how to bring back the dead, and then for them to learn how to bring back someone who had been dead for as long as you had been by then. But as soon as we were strong enough, we went back to you, and…and we tried.”

“Nila told me,” Molly finished quietly. “She said it…didn’t work?”

“Yes. Apparently that is, um, that is how it goes, sometimes. Especially if a soul has known death before. Its, its connection to the world grows ever so slightly weaker each time so its harder and harder to call it back. And you…well.” Caleb gestured at Molly, and Molly felt their chest tighten painfully to realize that there was a slight shine of tears in the wizard’s eyes at the memory. “You were already starting with a bit of a handicap, weren’t you?”

“So Beau tells me. I’m a strange one, aren’t I?”

“You are remarkable,” said Caleb fervently, and before Molly could even begin to process that, he carried on: “A while ago, I came across a very particular scroll. It took some time before I was able to understand it, and even longer before I had sufficient funds to scribe it. I must have bought out the stock of enchanted ink from here to Port Damali. It took, and I am being very literal here, an entire dragon’s horde. But that was only to be expected, because that scroll contained the secrets of potentially bending reality itself to your will.”

Molly found that they could only stare for a long, long moment, before blurting out in disbelief: “And you used that on me?”

They remembered a sewer, and the sound of chaos and panic overhead. They remembered a drow at their back with a blade to their throat. They remembered grinning, biting back the urge to laugh with exhausted hysteria and saying instead: “And boy, I’ve got to tell you that you are really overestimating their fondness for me right now.”

Caleb seemed surprised at their surprise, and then merely amused. “Why not? What better use for such a power than fixing the mistakes of the past? We have made many mistakes since we lost you, Mollymauk Tealeaf. But letting you be lost at all was one of our first and greatest. We have made good lives for ourselves, a good name. Better than some of us still deserve. There is so very little about my life I would change now, but your absence from our lives was something that always needed fixing. We wanted to be better, after we lost you. Because of you. Why shouldn’t you be able to see that?”

He was lying. He was lying somehow, Molly was certain of that, but they couldn’t be sure exactly how or why because Caleb had always been a bald-faced liar when he wanted to be and had clearly only gotten better with age. “I don’t believe you,” they said weakly. “I knew from the first day I met you that you were a man with very big plans. You would have used that kind of power on them, not me.”

“As I’m sure you have had ample opportunity to notice,” said Caleb mildly. “That was a long time ago.” Then he leaned over to pat Molly companionably on the cheek, whispering in a low, conspiratorial sort of voice: “This is apparently news to you, mein freund, but sometimes plans change, and sometimes things work out for the best.” And, as Molly waited for their heart to start beating at a regular rhythm again, Caleb settled back and carried on: “Of course, the power turned out to be a bit much for me to handle. Not everything that I wanted to happen did happen, but the important things did. And, as I’m sure everyone has told you in far too much detail, I was quite ill for a while afterwards. I underestimated the strain that sort of power can put on a soul. It is, quite understandably, magic that can only ever be cast once.”

“Beau thinks that’s why your eyes changed,” Molly said weakly, trying to keep up.

Caleb gave a dismissive half-shrug. “People do say that ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’. I suppose they were on to something. They don’t hurt, I assure you, I can still see just fine. Nott was a little disappointed, though. She liked us having something of a family resemblance.” And, judging by the wistful note his voice took on for just a moment, Caleb had, too.

There was still something they absolutely weren’t being told, something Caleb was trying to brush aside and hoping Molly wouldn’t notice. But…maybe that didn’t matter. They were here, they were alive, they had Caleb to thank for that. Why else would he have brought Molly back if he didn’t want to? They weren’t remotely ready to confront the full and total weight of that fact, but maybe they didn’t have to be ready just yet. They had time.

“So you are the one who gave her the makeover?” they asked instead.

Caleb seemed relieved at the change in subject and, despite their lingering suspicions, Molly couldn’t blame them. “Yes. I didn’t even wait to scribe that scroll when we found it. She had waited long enough. Now…now she looks at her hands and she smiles, Mollymauk. Doing this for her was one of the best things I have ever done.”

“And the family resemblance was her idea?”

Caleb’s cheeks went pink in a way that couldn’t just be attributed to the brisk, chill air. But he also looked warm and fond, in the way he’d always done for Nott the Brave. “She thought it was appropriate. I agreed.”

“Caleb, that is quite possibly the most disgustingly adorable thing I have ever heard.”

“Well, just as you said, there is a lot you have to catch up on.”

Like something out of Fjord and Nott’s bestselling novel, they both tried to play it cool and recover their wits by reaching for a pastry. Unfortunately, they’d eaten their way through most of the bag by that point, so they grabbed for the same one and Molly felt like they were the one who’d just had a current run up their spine. They pulled back sharply, saw Caleb do the same out of the corner of their eye, and the two of them sat together in breathless, awkward silence for a moment or two.

Caleb, of all people, broke the silence first. “And it seems to me,” he said. “That we also have a great deal to catch up on, Mollymauk. I haven’t even asked you what your journey was like.”

Molly snorted in amusement and waved a hand dismissively. “Not half as interesting as any of yours’, I’d imagine.”

“I think I would like to be the judge of that.”

For a change, it was suddenly Molly who absolutely could not meet Caleb’s gaze. They grabbed hastily for the pastry in an attempt at cover which probably failed utterly, bought themself a few more seconds by shoving a bite in their mouth, and by the time they swallowed they found their nerves buzzing with the same frenetic, freeing energy that had first driven them on to confide in Caduceus.

Fuck it. Of course Caleb was a man who always wanted to learn new things. Why not indulge him?

“Well, I suppose you know how it started. I woke up that night in the rain, all wrapped up in my tapestry…”

It surprised them how long it took to tell the story. They’d gotten the explanation for why they were going to Zadash down to a bare minimum, something to be told and gotten out of the way as quickly as possible. The details of how they’d gotten to Zadash, refused such abbreviations, however, especially since Caleb seemed determined to ensure that was the case. He had a way of asking just the right questions to tease out an extra detail in Molly’s memories, something to linger over, and before they knew it, the sun was setting and their meeting with Caduceus was spilling forth from them like a river rolling downhill.

“I always thought you would like Caduceus,” said Caleb easily. “He makes us all our own sort of tea. I think he will find it quite the challenge, matching something to you.” He hummed thoughtfully, then added: “If I know him, he will have checked to see that you aren’t actually undead. I suppose you pass muster, then. That is good to know. A weight off my mind.”

“How did he--?”

“He just has to look. He sees everything, that man.” After a beat, Caleb glanced at Molly and added: “I always thought he would like you, too, and it sounds to me as if he did.”

“Really? That’s good to know.” It was a weight off their mind as well, and Molly grinned in relief to feel it.

After that, there was nothing left but to relate the details of their reunion with the others – first Beauregard, then the rest of the Nein, everyone but Caleb. The wizard’s expression went so warm and soft as he heard about his friend’s joy. When Molly happened to mention how surprising it was just how joyful everyone had been, Beau especially, Caleb actually chuckled lightly, shaking his head as if in a gentle admonishment.

“Beau didn’t even like me that much!” Molly insisted. And yet she’d greeted them like long-lost family.

“For someone who used to make their living off of reading fortunes by reading people, you have something of a blind spot, ja? A lot of things have changed, Mollymauk. Why shouldn’t they have changed for the better?” Caleb reached over to clap Molly on the shoulder. “Besides—”

Whatever thought he was going to follow that up with, he never got the chance to. Caleb suddenly went stiff, eyes widening slightly, and when Molly opened their mouth to ask why Caleb held up a hand in a silent bid for quiet. Molly understood why a scant second later, when Jester’s voice chirped in their ear from nowhere just as Nott’s was probably doing to Caleb.

“Hi, Molly! Thank you for keeping Caleb busy. We just thought you should know that dinner will be ready soon, so please come home now!”

“We’ll be right there,” Molly said, just as Caleb gave an identical assurance to Nott.

Before he did anything else, he crumpled up the empty bag of pastries, set it alight with a thought, and then let the ashes drift away on the chill air. Then he got to his feet and pulled Molly up with him before Molly could so much as blink, and just like that the memory they’d been trying to keep at bay hit them upside the head…

“No, he’s my pillow!” Beau was whining, her arms around Caleb’s waist, trying to prevent Molly from hauling the wizard upright. “Fuck you, Molly.”

“Nope, he’s getting up now. Go fuck yourself, Beau,” Molly answered back, easy as breathing, and because she was exhausted beyond all reason they were eventually able to break her grip and pull Caleb up with them so that the wizard was slumped heavily against their side instead, an arm around their shoulders. “Come on.”

Caleb grunted in acknowledgement, then lifted is head and stared blearily around the room. “Okay. Point me at the thing,” he mumbled. And Molly obliged by walking him slowly, carefully around the ruined prison cells, going where he was bidden, giving Caleb a chance to see if anything magic caught his eye. Caleb, meanwhile, was practically boneless against them, utterly exhausted and, apparently, utterly trusting that Molly wouldn’t let him fall.

He seemed to stare a little longer at some of the torches on the walls but finally, after a quarter of an hour, he merely shook his head and smiled dazedly at Molly.

“The only thing magical in here is you, friend,” he whispered in a low, conspiratorial sort of way, so that his breath ghosted warm on Molly’s face. Then he patted them twice on the cheek, pulled away, and limped over to slump down next to Beau on the ground again. Molly, meanwhile, was left motionless and speechless for a solid five seconds. At least Nott was too busy rooting around in the debris to notice. Yasha definitely did. She didn’t say anything, because she truly was a wonderful friend, but Molly didn’t have to look at her to feel her gaze or know what she’d say if she could.

On some level, they agreed.

Maybe the time was coming where they could say something. Maybe the time was coming when they should.

When Molly blinked the present back into focus, it was to find themself being carefully steered along with an arm around their shoulders and a hand on their arm. “That was a long one,” Caleb said from right beside them, a twist of amusement and warmth in his voice. “Oh, Mister Mollymauk, we are going to have to keep a very close eye on you until you are truly yourself again. Can’t have you wandering into the road and getting hit by a cart, can we? That would be very anticlimactic, for you and for me.”

“That it would,” Molly answered weakly, glancing sidelong at Caleb to find their friend looking back at them with such a soft look on his face that made their heart feel like it was doing flips in their chest.

Because maybe they had a bit of a blindspot in certain circumstances. Maybe they were deluding themself even now. But overall, if there was one thing Molly trusted themself to understand, it was people. And something in Caleb’s smile, something in the way his hands lingered before he apparently trusted to keep Molly walking under their own power, answered a question they hadn’t had the courage to ask.

Because of course even if Caleb had wondered what could have been, he wouldn’t have pined or wallowed. He had moved on and done good things and maybe even some of them had been in Molly’s honor, and wasn’t that a thought that sent chills up their spine.

But even if he hadn’t wallowed or pined, maybe Caleb had still wondered. He had always seemed a man bowed beneath the chains of his past, and maybe Molly had just become another link in that weight. But now that Molly was back, maybe he was wondering – just as Molly was – if maybe what could have been could now be.

He didn’t say anything just then, of course, and neither did Molly. They just made their way back to the house in companionable, comfortable, thoughtful silence. Because it had been such a long day, they both had so much on their minds that to confess anything now would be to make an utter hash of this blessed second chance. But tomorrow…maybe. There was always tomorrow.

Time for that, later.

*  *  *

Dinner hadn’t even been started by the time they got back. In fact, dinner preparations turned out to consist entirely of Jester laying a jewel-encrusted bowl on top of the table in the dining room and praying over it for ten minutes. Whatever the spell was, it was something eagerly anticipated by the others – Nott danced anxiously from foot to foot, Beau looked like was practically drooling. Molly, meanwhile, felt Yasha step up next to them and wrap an arm around their shoulders, tucking them against her side. They sighed contentedly when she pressed a kiss to the top of their head, leaning against her.

“If you hadn’t chased me out,” Caleb remarked, leaning against the wall and watching Jester work. “I could simply have made the mansion and used the servants in there to cook.”

“Maybe if you’d gone out and gone some fuckin’ sun more than once a week, we wouldn’t have had to chase you,” Fjord retorted, apparently on Jester’s behalf.

“Did you and Caleb have a nice visit, Molly?” Nila asked, apparently in a bid to break through the tension.

“I thought so,” Molly said, glancing at Caleb, who nodded back with a gratifying lack of hesitation. “It did involve just so many pastries, which I expect is why I don’t look like I’m ready to chew my own foot off the way Keg does.”

“Fuck you, Molly!” the dwarf called over from her seat. “You should have brought some back!”

“I’ll have you know I had a very important mission to help with and keeping Caleb out of this house required every pastry at my disposal!”

Keg rolled her eyes and let her forehead thunk on the table as Calianna giggled.

“If you all were really this hungry,” said Shakaste serenely. “I would have thought you’d be trying a little harder not to break the lady’s concentration.”

“It’s okay,” Jester said without opening her eyes. “I’ve sat through worse. Okay, here…we…go!”

With that, the bowl shattered into bright, glimmering dust that floated freely in the space for a moment before coalescing all along the top of the table. Then, with a faint whoosh of displaced air, it all became properly visible, properly real – masses upon masses of food, all piled up on the table, the biggest, most impossibly delicious looking feast that Molly had ever seen.

No more words were spoken for a good few minutes, after that. Everyone simply piled around to grab a chair and grab whatever food was nearest. Molly found themself seated with Yasha on one side and Nott on the other, with Caleb on the other side of her. The aasimar and the halfling both seemed to be in a minor competition as to who could pile the most food onto Molly’s plate first. They didn’t get much of a chance to dig in right away, however, because once everyone was settled Fjord called over: “So Molly, how were things on the trip down?”

Beau swallowed her mouthful with some difficulty. “Oh holy shit, yeah. You came all the way down from Shady Creek Run, didn’t you? That’s, uh…that’s a walk.”

“We could have bought horses!” Keg grumbled. “If Shakaste’s stupid donkey could have kept up.”

“Don’t be jealous that Shakaste has a nice ass,” Jester called over, a scant second before Molly could make a similar retort. Their eyes met across the table and they dissolved into a fit of laughter at the mere sight of one another.  

“But seriously, Molly!” she chirped once she’d gotten her breath back. “How was your trip? We want to know everything!”

“It was quite a story,” said Caleb placidly, buttering some bread. “They already told me everything while we were out earlier, of course.”

“What?! No fair!”

“That’s okay!” Nott declared, an edge of mischievous glee in her voice. “Because you don’t know what we were doing while you were out. That’s our secret.”

“For now,” Yasha added, breaking off a chunk of cheese for herself and for Molly.

“Everyone, stop being mean to Mr. Fjord!” Calianna called, visibly struggling not to break down laughing. “Molly, tell him about our trip!”

“It’s fine, Cali,” Fjord said with a sigh of theatrically overdone exaggeration. “I’m used to this and worse.”

But as the laughter among their friends faded, Molly still found themself with all eyes at the table expectantly on them. And it was almost enough to make them freeze, all that attention, all that focus, but then they felt Yasha’s hand rest on their knee under the table and give it a reassuring squeeze. That was enough to jolt them back to life, to give all their friends a bright smile. “Well, as we’ve already established, I woke up a little over a month ago on the night of that big storm…”

It took longer to tell the story than it had to Caleb, because there were more people to make interjections. Whether it was Beau swearing and saying, “You were alive like three days and met a banshee, you have the shittiest luck” to Jester cooing in delight at the mention of Kiri and declaring that they absolutely must visit soon to Nott asking if she could borrow Nila’s new book while they were all in town and Fjord warning Keg and Calianna about some fiercesome sea beast or another that had supposedly been plaguing the Menagerie Coast as of late.

“Or it could just be more pirates,” he added. “Always the fuckin’ pirates. We take out one Plank King and another pops up like a goddamn daisy.”

“Molly, did Caleb tell you that we were pirates for a little while?” Jester asked, resting her chin in her hands with her tail swaying contentedly behind her, beaming like a cat glutted on cream.

“He told me some of it,” Molly answered, mirroring her posture unconsciously, finding themself enjoying just having another tiefling around. People were easy enough to read on their own, people with tails especially so. “Did you really start disguising yourself as me so I could be a pirate too, dear?” It was an easy guess to make, the only sensible explanation. No one would ever look like Mollymauk Tealeaf if they wanted to be inconspicuous.

“Of course! It was super sad that you had to miss out. But at least all the other pirates got to see how cool you would have been.”

They’d suspected, but hearing her say it out loud still filled their chest with such a rush of renewed affection for her, for all of them. “Gods, I missed you,” they said. It didn’t even begin to express everything, but it was a start.

“And we missed you,” said Yasha quietly, and all the other members of the Mighty Nein sounded their agreement.

The evening wasn’t perfect. There were moments of strangeness to be had as they all talked and got caught up. There were inside jokes Molly didn’t understand and bad memories they tripped over and scars they didn’t know the story behind. And there were so many things they hadn’t been there for, so many stories, and sometimes their friends got caught up in talking to and reminiscing with one another and forgot that Molly hadn’t been there.

But each and every time the good mood at the table faltered, one of the Mighty Nein would simply plough right through it with dogged determination and cheer, leaving Molly to trail gratefully in their wake. Whether it be by offering someone food or changing the subject or simply laughing it off, they steadfastly refused to let anything keep them from being happy on this day for long and Molly did their damndest to follow that example.

Long after an hour had passed and the meagre scraps of food left on the table had dissolved into light, they all stayed gathered around the table talking, joking, laughing. Nott stepped away for a little while and returned dragging an enormous kettle of tea behind her, Jester stepped away a little while after that and returned with a bottle of wine. Beau scooted her chair up to Yasha’s other side and laid her head on her wife’s shoulder and Molly was happy to share, leaning on Yasha’s other side. Nott settled herself in Caleb’s lap and Molly found themself just admiring the two of them with their imperfect, hand-crafted family resemblance. They also caught sight of Jester dragging her chair closer to Fjord’s, and of Fjord idly rolling the tip of Jester’s tail through his fingertips as he spoke with Nila. Calianna had commandeered a second chair and draped herself across them both so she could rest her head in Keg’s lap, occasionally piping up from there whenever she had a point to make to this conversation or that.

Shakaste stayed at the very edges of things, one of the few in the room without someone to get close to, but – though he appeared to be dozing off in his seat – Duchess Anastasia flittered and fluttered throughout the room, alighting on a shoulder here and there, trilling in what might have been agreement or buzzing in dissent. Molly twitched in surprise at one point to feel the bird nosing through their hair. Ever so carefully, they lifted a hand and felt the impossibly light weight settle on their fingertips. They lowered the bird to eye level and, on a wild whim, pressed a feather-light kiss to the top of her head before settling the familiar on their shoulder, where she stayed for time.

Eventually, soothed by either tea or wine, yawns started to spread throughout the room, increasingly contagious. When Molly glanced at the window, they saw that night had well and truly fallen outside, leaving the sky dusted with stars and overseen by one half moon and one crescent. And finally, finally, Caleb raised the issue that maybe they should figure out where their numerous visitors were going to sleep tonight.

“Here,” said Jester. “Obviously. But I think we have enough guest rooms!” Yet again, she glanced around at everyone in the room and they all shared a smile, all except Molly and Caleb who shared a confused glance at one another. But before Molly had time to question, Jester had already bounded to her feet and was encouraging everyone else to get up and follow her.

The house apparently had a fair few rooms left over that the Nein had repurposed as guest rooms. It wasn’t the first time Shakaste, Keg, Calianna, or Nila had come to visit, after all. Molly, meanwhile, probably should have gotten some idea of what was going on when they picked a guest room at random, only to barely have time to see inside before Jester leaned over and slammed the door pointedly.

“Not that one,” she said with a wink. She took their hand and towed them along. “I think you’ll like this other room a lot better, Molly.”

“Aren’t they all the same?”

“Most of them are.” Jester pitched her voice a little louder as she carried on, in a way that Molly realized was meant to gather the others, let them know that something was happening, that the time to unveil the surprise was at hand. Sure enough, they saw Beau poke her head back into the hall, shortly followed by Nila, saw them exchanging grins. Molly had the sense of something big building up, a wave that was about to come crashing down, and they were helpless to do anything about it but be towed along in the wake of Jester’s enthusiasm. Their mind had screeched to an utter halt – whatever was about to happen would happen and all they could do was trust the warmth in Jester’s eyes as she looked back at them.

“You see, Molly, Yasha told me something really important earlier. We have a lot of guest rooms, but they’re all normal, boring rooms.” She stopped in front of one door that looked like all the others and looked around behind Molly to satisfy herself that the others were gathering for the big unveiling of whatever it was. Molly glanced back over their shoulder to see all the members of the Mighty Nein, new and old, permanent and not, all scattered around the hallway, waiting and smiling.

Something of how overwhelmed Molly was feeling must have shown on their face, because Nott scurried over to take their hand and give it a squeeze, Yasha stepped up beside them to rest a hand on their shoulder, and the end of Jester’s tail twined and curled lightly around Molly’s. Caleb, meanwhile, offered a helpless shrug and a confused smile of his own, and somehow that was most reassuring of all.

And with that, Jester threw open the door and gestured grandly to what lay beyond. “And we could not let you stay in a normal, boring room.”

And so they’d decorated it while Molly was out with Caleb. Their friends had built Molly a room, a space, a home in the course of an afternoon.

Wide-eyed and breathless, they stepped inside and looked around. The bed was enormous and covered in a mound of colorful blankets over red silk sheets. There were a few fascinatingly colorful plants in pots on the sill of the vast, gleaming window hung with blue drapes that were embroidered with stars. A tapestry displaying the Moonweaver’s symbol in vivid detail hung on one wall, a couple of gorgeous landscape paintings dotted the others, and in between were colorful, gauzy drapes of fabric, hung apparently for the sake of the color and nothing more. Incense smelling of sandalwood was already burning in a holder set on a carved end table by the bed. There was a bookcase, standing mostly empty but for a couple of promisingly lurid looking volumes, with most of the rest of the space taken up with interesting looking knickknacks – a music box, a jewelry box already full of trinkets, some small carved statues of various beasts, a couple of pots of makeup, a wrapped assortment of other incense. Set on top of the bookcase were a stack of yellowing letters and a silk pouch, the mere sight of which made their heart ache in recognition.

“Those are all the letters I wrote you, Mister Mollymauk!” Calianna chirped, as Molly stepped forward to shuffle through them. “Before I knew that, um…y’know. But now you can finally read them! Better late than never!”

“One of those is the one that Fjord and I wrote,” Nott declared, pride ringing through her voice as Molly ran their fingers over the books on the shelf. “We autographed it for you.”

When Molly finally, finally took up that silk pouch and opened it carefully and let the tarot deck slide into their hand where it fitted like an old friend, their composure nearly broke all over again. “Yeah,” Beau said awkwardly from behind them, as Molly shuffled through them as well like a tiefling in a dream. “Uh, you might be kind of missing a card? We left the Moon by your grave. Seemed kind of fitting at the time? But it blew away like, so long ago.”

“I will paint you a new one!” Jester asserted without hesitation.

“I know it’s not much,” Fjord added, sheepish. “We did the best we could in an afternoon, but we’ll help you build the place up from here.”

“We just wanted you to feel welcome,” Yasha finished softly. Molly could feel her gaze on the back of their neck, could feel all of them watching, could feel their baited breath and hope that they had done well and gods, how did Molly even begin to explain just how well and how much their friends had done for them? They knew if they tried, they’d just break down in tears again, and they had already cried so much today.

Instead, they bit their lip until they tasted blood, took a deep breath, and turned towards the bed. In three quick strides, they were close enough to throw themselves down theatrically onto it, and then they stretched languidly and folded their arms behind their head on the most impossibly soft pillow they’d ever known. It reminded them of Nila’s bed in the forest and of the Bountiful Bower and the warmth of Shakaste’s fire and every good and warm and safe place they had ever known.

“I’m home,” they declared. That was what really needed to be said, after all, that was what was most important. They had come to the end of this road at last, and if their voice shook and broke beneath the weight of that declaration, beneath the truth of it, the others probably didn’t hear over their own collective sighs of relief.

It was Caleb who broke the silence, who broke the last of the lingering tension. He did so by stepping into the room after Molly, a few books tucked under his arm that he slid almost fussily onto the shelf next to the other volumes that had been picked out for them. He glanced at Molly as he did so, saw the shine of overwhelmed, overjoyed tears in their eyes, and obligingly looked away with a faint smile.

“Didn’t want to miss all the fun,” he said and that did it, Molly was laughing so hard that they started to cry all over again but no one drew any attention to it, no one made any mention of it. Maybe that was because as all their friends, new and old, came in to wish them a good night, Molly saw that some of them were tearing up, too.

Chapter Text

Shakaste was the last to leave. The old man waited on the fringes until everyone else had their moment, had their say. Then, as Caleb filed out after Nott, he turned his head towards Molly with a warm, fond smile. When Molly got to their feet and went to him, Shakaste opened his arms to pull Molly close without any words having to be said.

“My offer still stands,” he said, squeezing once. “If you ever change your mind.”

“Thank you,” Molly whispered. They doubted that they would, but the freedom to have your options open was a heady, powerful thing, and they were grateful to Shakaste for still allowing them that. But they were also grateful to him for leading them this far. It really had worked out for the best. “Thank you for everything.” They tried to pour all the love they felt for him into those words.

Maybe they succeeded. Shakaste patted them on the head with his worn, gnarled hands. “Wouldn’t have changed a damn thing,” he said, and they fancied that his voice sounded a little rough now, too. “Get some sleep, kid. You’ve earned it.”

“Will I be seeing you off tomorrow?”

“I sure as hell plan to sleep in while I can.”

“Good. You’ve earned it, too.” Molly pulled away, kissed Shakaste on the forehead, then went back to their bed as the old man retired to his room for the night, closing the door behind him.

And yet they found that they couldn’t sleep. Maybe that was only to be expected, after everything they’d learned, seen, done today and in all the days since waking up very specifically next to their own grave. Their body was exhausted, their mind was alight, especially since everything in this room was still so unfamiliar that they found their gaze lingering over even the most minor detail.

It was so, so hard to believe that their journey was over, that they really were home. It was so hard to believe that they were with their friends again, and now they had the rest of their life to figure out.

Eventually, they gave up and went to go knock on Yasha’s door. She opened it sufficiently short order that Molly felt confident she hadn’t been sleeping either. So the night eventually found them sitting together on the roof of the house, passing a bottle of sweet, jammy wine back and forth beneath the light of two moons, as Yasha told them stories of the circus.

“So what happens now?” Molly asked at one point, giving the bottle a swirl to gauge how much was left, frowning in disappointment at their findings, and then handing the bottle over once more. They were pretty sure Yasha had gotten most of it so far, but Molly had also drunk a fair amount at dinner and afterwards, so what they had gotten had been more than enough to refill their mind with buzzing pink fog.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you all have gotten up to some impressive nonsense. I can’t keep up with that. Forget dragons, I’m still not sure I trust myself not to knock myself out with my own blood powers again.”

“Molly…” She made a soft, sympathetic noise, then wrapped an arm around their shoulder to pull them closer. “You know that doesn’t matter, right? We didn’t miss you because you were good in a fight.”

She realized the implications of what she’d just said a scant second after Molly did, after they’d already burst out laughing, long and loud and heartfelt enough that they were distantly amazed one of the others didn’t open a window and yell at them to shut up. They ended up slumped bonelessly against her, still giggling weakly. “Oh, Yasha, help,” they gasped. “Help, I’ve been murdered.”

They felt her tense, then she gave their tail a light tug. “That’s not funny.” Her voice had gone closed off, brutally steady. Molly’s heart ached in sympathy and regret. They pulled away just enough to look up at her, to meet her gaze as she stared intently at them, and they mustered up an apologetic smile.

“It was a little funny,” they offered.

One second passed, then two, then three. Then her expression softened, and she let out a huff that was equal parts fond and exasperated before kissing the top of their head and pulling them close once more. “Only because it’s you saying it,” she said.

“Fair enough.”

“I still don’t think it matters, but if it does to you…” She hummed thoughtfully, staring out into the dark as her fingers drummed an anxious little tattoo along their shoulder. “You can come with me, the next time I have to leave.”

They’d known her long enough and remembered enough about those times to know that this was a deeply significant, utterly impossible offer for her to be making, so much so that Molly actually pulled away enough to stare up at her in disbelief once more. “I didn’t think that was allowed,” they said.

She gave this obvious point some consideration before finally declaring, with no small amount of solemnity: “You returned on the night of a great storm. I have to think that is significant. That you bear his blessing now, as well as the Moonweaver’s. I don’t know why, but…you know me. I don’t ask questions. I think it will be all right. And if it isn’t--” Her grip tightened protectively. Her voice grew stormy. “--I will insist.”

They wanted to say she was being ridiculous, that a quirk of the weather and Caleb’s decision to use a storm to power his own magic didn’t mean they had any god’s blessing. Then Molly remembered the flash of lightning that had led them to noticing Shakaste’s campsite when they’d been right on the verge of laying down and giving up before they got started. Then they suddenly weren’t so sure.

So they didn’t know what to say to that. What could they even say to that, to this dogged insistence from Yasha that she would stand against her god on their behalf. Molly couldn’t think of anything that would come close, so they settled for a whispered “Thank you” and tucked themself safely against her side once more. They felt her relax when they did so. Her fingers moved to start carding tenderly through their hair.

“I will keep you safe,” she said, the weight of a vow in her words. “I will make you strong. And in return--”

“I’ll stay,” Molly said, without hesitation. “With you.” Like it always should have been.

Their oldest, dearest friend let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief and pressed a warm kiss to their temple. “That’s enough,” she murmured. “That’s all I need.”

They finished the wine together in easy, familiar, resolute silence, then Yasha helped them back inside and kicked them out of her room for the night. Molly went without compliant, truly intending to retire to their room once more, and then they passed by the door to Caleb’s room and heard muffled voices on the other side.

And so they lingered, of course they did, and Molly felt confident that not a Lawmaster in the empire would have convicted them for it. They lingered and strained their already-keen ears to the limit to catch even a snippet of what Caleb and Nott were talking about at such a late hour.

“--you want me to,” Nott was saying.

“Thank you, schwester,” Caleb said. “I will think about it.”

“I really wouldn’t mind,” she insisted. “There’s nothing else I want. Nothing that big. Nothing more than what you already gave me. But you…you don’t deserve to lose your chance to fix things just because you tried to fix something else, first.”

“At least I did fix something else.” They thought they heard Caleb laugh. “That was looking a little dicey, for a while.”

“I’m really glad they’re back. And I’m really glad you’re going to try and sleep.”

“How did they seem to you? Normal? They seemed like themself to me, but I might have been projecting.”

“They seemed like Mollymauk. I admit, it’s been long enough that I was starting to forget everything that meant. But it’ll be nice to have the chance to remember.”

“Ja. I think so, too. Nott, this is good. We did something good. Even if I cannot cast that spell again, that is not nothing. This is good. Today was good.”

“Yeah. But think about it, okay? You deserve more good things, if we can make them happen.”

“I will, Nott. I promise. But for now, I will sleep. Or try to.”

“Do you want some more tea?”

“Please. I think Caduceus decided I was overdue for some of the sleepytime tea before he left. He is a smart one, that guy.”

“I’ll go and make you some.”

Molly had gotten so wrapped up in eavesdropping that they didn’t properly register that Nott was approaching the door until it was too late to make a unobtrusive exit. Instead, thinking as quickly as they could while still just a bit tipsy, they backed hastily down the hall just enough to make a reasonable attempt at looking like they were just passing by in that moment, rather than having been standing there for a couple of minutes.

They weren’t sure if they were successful. Nott’s expression as she saw them there was hard to read. “Mollymauk?” She looked like she wasn’t sure whether to be suspicious or concerned. “What are you doing?”

Caleb poked his head into view and smiled wearily at the sight of them. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

It was a good answer, it was an honest answer, and they could have given it and gone on their way. They even half turned to do so, but something in the way they moved made that familiar, crumpled, well-loved piece of paper brush their skin where it was tucked into their shirt.

And Mollymauk Tealeaf remembered in a flash that they very much had a reason to be here.

“I wanted to talk,” they blurted out, inclining their head towards Caleb. “To you. Just for a minute. Something I forgot to tell you earlier, with, well, everything else that was going on.”

Caleb and Nott exchanged a curious look. Something unsaid passed between them that ended with Nott letting out an exasperated sigh. “Just while I’m going to make the tea!” she said, nodding sharply at Molly. “Don’t keep him up too late.” Then she bustled off down the hall, towards the stairs, leaving the doorway clear for Molly to enter.

They did so, but only just beyond the threshold. They really didn’t intend to stay for long. Caleb, apparently for lack of anything else to do, went and sat on his bed, calling Frumpkin to his lap, and regarded Molly with a tired, concerned gaze.

“Mister Mollymauk,” he said. “What do you need?”

Molly drew out the note, unfolded it once more, and held it up for Caleb to read. The wizard scanned the note in a flash, and then his eyes went wide in a gratifying display of recognition.

“I need you to understand,” Molly said, keeping their gaze fixed on him, trying to communicate everything they felt through the force of it. “How important this was to me. I know that everything you’ve ever done for me probably pales in comparison to the obvious, but Caleb, I need you to understand that this note meant the world.”

Caleb’s cheeks went pink and his gaze fell to his lap where Frumpkin sat purring. “It is just a note,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe it survived this long. I suppose worms do not much like the taste of enchanted ink. And, and it was useless, after a while. We spent so long away from Zadash, and then Cree took over the Gentleman’s operations, and--”

Seeing that he was still refusing to understand, still refusing to let himself take credit for this most important thing, Molly couldn’t stay still any longer. They moved further into the room, close enough to kneel before Caleb, reached out to cover their hands with his where they rested against Frumpkin’s fur. “Caleb,” they said, and they were well past the point of being ashamed of the way their voice shook. “I didn’t remember anything before I read this note. I didn’t think to try remembering anything before I read it. Do you know how terrifying that is, to wake up with nothing, not even a name, no past and just unfamiliar darkness all around you?” To be cold and alone and to not even remember that there was another way to be?

Slowly, so slowly that there was no way for Molly to miss the way his fingers trembled, Caleb turned his hands enough to hold Molly’s in turn, lacing their fingers together. “I have some idea,” he said, so very quietly, and Molly’s heart broke all over again for this man they’d only just been starting to figure out how to love before it all went wrong.

They drew in a deep, shuddering breath, let it out slowly, then brought Caleb’s hand to their lips to kiss his fingers. “You gave me back my name,” they said with all the solemnity and sincerity those words were due. “You gave me back my life and you gave me back my name and, and every time things started to get to be too much for me I’d read that note and I’d think of you lot and the day I’d finally get to see you again and that kept me going and Caleb, today was still so much better than anything I ever dreamt up and--”

They were babbling and on some level they knew it and so maybe that meant it was a mercy when Caleb cut them off with a press of lips against theirs’. All their racing thoughts screeched to a blessed, quiet halt, and suddenly Molly was incapable of thinking of anything beyond pressing up into that kiss with a desperate, worshipful heat.

And maybe in the morning this wouldn’t mean anything, maybe there was nothing to this now besides Caleb’s need to reassure himself that Molly was real and Molly’s inability to ever express their gratitude in words and the reality that they were both desperately, truly overtired and emotions were running hot and high.

But maybe in the morning they would decide this meant everything.

And even if it didn’t, it was still a very good kiss. More than worth the wait, in Molly’s very definite opinion. But even if they made a low sound of disappointment when Caleb finally pulled away, they let him do so, and they felt their heart soar to see the deep red color in Caleb’s cheeks and on his lips. Molly didn’t doubt that their tail was giving away absolutely everything of what they were feeling and they were well past caring.

“You should try to sleep,” Caleb said, something raw in his voice.

Molly raised an eyebrow. “Before Nott comes back, you mean?”

“Something like that.” And then Molly felt a full-body shiver race through them as he reached out to let his fingers trail with hesitant softness down their cheek. “And I am overdue for some rest as well. Go to bed, Mister Mollymauk. I will see you in the morning.”

“Yes you will,” Molly said, and giggled a little at the joyously perfect truth of those words.

But they were in no fit state to explain their current position or the events of the past minute or so to Nott should she return with the tea unexpectedly. And so, not without a pang of reluctance, Molly got to their feet and left the room; a small, selfish, exultant part of them steadfastly refused to release Caleb’s hand until they absolutely had to.

And so Mollymauk Tealeaf returned to their room and retired to bed and they really, truly tried to sleep this time, they closed their eyes and tried to still their thoughts and it was easier than it had been before. But sleep and dreams still refused to come for them. At least this time, they were able to realize why with all the other nonsense cleared out of their head.

So the end result was them getting up again with a frustrated sigh and going to knock on Jester’s door instead. They still felt guilty as they knocked on their door, the sound sheepish and quiet in a half-formed hope that she wouldn’t hear it and stay asleep.

After a moment, though, they heard a sleepy mumble of acknowledgement from inside, followed by the padding of feet, and then Jester opened the door to see them. She was wrapped up in an ostentatiously luxurious robe, rubbing her eyes sleepily with the heel of one hand, but she smiled anyway when she saw them. “Hi, Molly. Couldn’t you sleep?”

“I’m afraid not,” they said with a helpless shrug and an apologetic smile in turn. “Still feeling a bit restless. And that got me to thinking - can I borrow some of your paints, Jester?”

If the Mighty Nein had the time and funds to maintain a house of their own, they had to think that Jester was taking care to keep all the paints she could ever use on hand.  

“Of course,” she said. “Which colors do you want?”

“...all of them?”

The fact of the matter was that Molly had been given their own room without any apparent hesitation and all their friends had worked so hard to decorate it to be as fitting and welcoming as possible, but Molly hadn’t done anything to add to that effort besides depositing their meagre possessions inside, and that wasn’t enough. They knew that to truly be comfortable in that space, they needed to add more of their own touch. They needed to make it theirs in a real, tangible way, just as they had with their own body.

Bless her, but Jester seemed to understand. She’d always had a talent for reading people. One look at their face, one moment of thinking back over the events of the day, and then her puzzled expression broke into one of delight. “Can I help?”

They let out their breath in a sigh of relief. “I would be honored.”

And so that was how they passed the rest of the night, with a brush in hand and Jester at their side and pots of paints in a rainbow of colors arranged on the floor. Together, they ran the brushes along the bare walls in swirling strokes and spirals, painting whatever the spirit moved them to paint. Jester even balanced Molly on her shoulders so they could work clouds into the ceiling before they helped her with the trees.

That was how the dawn found them – Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to their friends, well and truly making themself at home.