Work Text:
Home—the very first one; the one he was born in and where he took his first steps and said his first words—is an adobe house in the middle of a sea of dunes, with his mom's cactus garden out front and his dad's workshop out back.
Home is looking out over the miles of pink sand at sunrise, huddled into his blanket as he leans out the loft window, the lingering chill of the desert evening licking at his cheeks. It's chasing after dusty tumbleweed in the late afternoons, after the heat abates a little bit, with a snake around each arm that always, always snitch to his parents whenever he gets too close to the Rainbow Gorge, or the Singing Oases, or the Lizard Pit.
It's being tucked into his bed up in the loft in the evenings, with stars rolling across the little slice of sky visible through his window. His dad's gentle strumming of his guitar in the corner, and the accompanying low, throaty laugh whenever Asra asks when can he go see the gorge, pretty please?
And his mom laughs, and tucks him in a little snugger, and kisses his hair.
"Someday, little heart," she says, like always. Tomorrow Asra will ask her if it's someday yet, and she will laugh and say it won't be for a long time. Asra will pout, and his dad will laugh and coax him out to the workshop, distracting him from the eternal question with bits and bobs until the next tomorrow rolls around.
---
And then—when his mom and dad determine that the middle of the desert really is no place to raise a curious and driven child (a combination that makes for such a handful, and that's not even accounting for the magic)—home is a big city by the sea, with ships always coming into port and carts always rolling along the streets and so, so, so many things for a child to see and do and find.
They still go to the Nopal house, sometimes, in the coldest weeks of the year, but most days home is his bedroom with the slatted stained glass windows, and the bed with a dozen embroidered pillows, and the mechanical clock his dad made for him, with a fox that comes out to cheerfully chime in the morning.
It's peering through the lattice fence into the garden next door, trying to tempt their neighbor's cat to come over and play. It's sliding down the banister of the creaky, curving stairs, laughing delightedly when the spell his parents embedded in the newel kicks in, floating him up off the rail and setting him gently down onto the floor. He had proved too stubborn, still, in the face of innumerable variations on the theme of Asra you must stop sliding down the stairs it's not safe, and his parents had resigned themselves to damage control. He thinks they secretly enjoy it this way, too, because sometimes his dad hides around the corner and catches him just after the spell works its magic, making Asra laugh as he's spun in the air, weightless for a moment before he lands, safe and secure, in his dad's arms.
It's the smell of his mom's favorite tea wafting from the kitchen as he pads downstairs in the morning; it's his dad's throaty voice singing as he works, The fox went out on a chilly night, he hoped the star would give him light—
It's him and his mom joining in, For he'd many a mile to go that night—
It's kissing his parents goodbye, watching them leave, and knowing for certain they'll be back.
---
And in a cruel twist of fate, home becomes a hidden cave by the docks, with the few pillows and books and the delicately speckled lavender egg that were all the things he'd managed to bring with him from their old, too-silent house.
It's ducking into shadowed alleys unseen by the sun and thinking of the way his dad's inventions filled his old workshop, glittering and golden. It's looking up at the moon and hopelessly wishing it'd sing him his mom's lullaby. It's listening to the sound of the waves and wondering if tonight is the night the tide will finally rise enough to flood his little makeshift shelter, leaving him with nothing, absolutely nothing more to lose.
And then, by some little cosmic kindness, home becomes the smell of myrrh, the warmth of a tattered green blanket, another's hand to hold as they huddle together on the cold, gritty beach. It's calloused fingers tearing day-old loaves in equal halves; it's forming a unit and holding onto each other as everyone else around them devolves into screams and squabbles.
It's sleeping on the highest floors of old, abandoned buildings, their crumbling walls giving way to a panorama of the city. Asra looks out over the sea of lights as Muriel dozes uneasily beside him, and he imagines that every orange pinprick is the light from a bedroom window where another child is being tucked in warm and snug. He knows this isn't true, but it's a nice thought. Maybe the world is kinder to other people. Maybe someday it'll be kind to him and Muriel again, too.
Asra holds on until every tomorrow, waiting for someday to come.
---
The world is never kind, Asra slowly learns, but sometimes people are.
Home is a vague, almost-forgotten concept that cycles between several spaces where they are made welcome: the dock workers' dorms; the baker's empty stall in the market after dark; and, occasionally, the backroom of Miss Embri's magic shop, where Asra sometimes signs on as temporary help.
Muriel and Faust are the only constants in a shifting sea of borrowed beds and stranger's rooms, and they hold onto each other through the flotsam and jetsam of life on the back streets. They don't always have a roof over their heads, but there's always a shoulder to lean on, a scaly squeeze, and a hand (or a tail) to hold, and sometimes that has to be enough.
Miss Embri, the baker, the dock workers that Muriel helps out sometimes for a meager pay—they all ask, in their own concerned ways, if Asra and Muriel wouldn't want a more permanent living arrangement. And the two of them always smile, and shake their heads, knowing too well how quick people's minds change, how fast kindness can sour at the slightest perception that it's being taken advantage of. They accept as few free favors they can, and pile together their rightfully earned savings, coin by pitiful coin. They keep looking for a place where the they can lay down the weight of the world pressing heavily on their too-young shoulders, where they can dig foundations deep into the earth and be absolutely sure they will always, always be welcome.
---
And years later, they make home in the shape of a little hut, hidden deep in the woods where the unkind world doesn't (can't) snag on their dusty, tattered clothes.
They pack in mud and moss and stone, and beneath their dirt-encrusted hands home takes shape in the shelter of strong roots and the desire for safety and some kind of comforting permanence.
"It needs to have a hearth," Asra says with certainty, and Muriel thankfully doesn't comment on how his voice cracks with the fickleness of adolescence, merely nodding in agreement. Muriel's memories of hearths are blurry at best, but he remembers warmth, and huddling in front of a fire, and something called family, a unit of us—and so they tie back their hair and roll up their sleeves and dig out a pit in the far wall. They take pride and pleasure in kindling a small fire, and even though they don't yet have any pots or pans (or anything to cook in them even if they did), they sit in front of their hearth (theirs!) and stretch out their leaden limbs, laughing in exhausted satisfaction.
They break fresh bread from the market, and it has never tasted so sweet.
---
A young girl arrives on the ocean wind, and before Asra knows it home falls into place in the curve of her smile and the warmth of her hand on his touch-starved skin.
It's walking with her through the market, being dragged from stall to stall with a constant stream of "Asra what is this, Asra what is that, Asra I'm sorry I think I got us lost—"
(No, Rei, it's alright, I know this city like the back of my hand, I've got us.)
It's hearing his name on her mouth again and again all throughout the day and still feeling like it isn't often enough.
It's pulling her into the backroom of the shop because he can't stand another minute without kissing her breathless, and then laughing against her mouth when Miss Embri yells at them from upstairs to be mindful of the inventory they keep stocked there. It's laying with her beneath the stars, listening to her tales of distant shores and tropical sunsets, wondering, wishing, hoping that home for her is the same thing it is for him.
It's the room above the shop when Miss Embri moves out and Rei asks him to move in. The space is messy and lived in, but it looks like it's been lived in by someone else, because Rei still doesn't know what to do with her aunt's things—what to keep and what to put aside and what to throw away—and so they tie back their hair and roll up their sleeves and throw open the windows and the balcony door. They get a new mattress and a dozen more pillows and spread out rugs on the worn wooden floor. They hang up curtains in their favorite colors, fill the shelves with trinkets they've collected, pin up a map on the wall and mark all the places they want to see someday. (Someday.)
They make a space that is neither hers nor his but some irreverent riot of theirs, and when they're done they kick back with tea over the rickety dining table, with a fire going in the stove and incense wafting through the room. They hold hands, and the house creaks softly before it settles into something they call home.
---
And then home is somewhere far over the desert horizon, and Asra is too anger-blind to admit it.
Why wouldn't she come with him? Vesuvia isn't home. Home can be wherever they want it to be, as long as his hand is in hers. The stars spin meaningless circles over the Nopal house and he wonders if she's seeing the same constellations he does, or if she's far enough away that she's seeing something else. He wonders about seeing eye to eye; he wonders about matters of perspective.
His heart is tugged on by a compass needle pointing stubbornly west, and he throws it into the bottom of his bag and closes his eyes to reality and hides under the covers from a world that has never been kind, not really. He ignores the pull of the golden compass until the day he wakes up from a smoky nightmare and digs it out, only to find it isn't pointing west anymore.
---
And then home is an empty, overturned grave; an aimlessly spinning compass; black ash and bleached bone glinting accusingly in the moonlight.
Home is the sand of the Lazaret worming its way beneath his broken nails, into the bleeding scars on his knuckles, filling cold and cruel the spaces where her fingers should be slotted between his.
Home is a red cross mark on the shop's front door; cobwebs in the corners; an envelope on the dusty glass countertop with his name on the back and her aquamarine pendant inside. Home becomes the ghoulish glow of the lamp in the backroom as he commits blasphemies too unspeakable for the light of day.
Home is empty, right now, but it won't be for long. Home will be warm again, with laughter and love and light, someday.
Someday.
(Soon.)
---
Home is Rei opening her eyes, blinking up at him slow and sleepy and alive.
Home is when she haltingly, determinedly, says his name, or something that sounds like it: A-ah—and he grins so wide that his mouth hurts at having to relearn how to smile after all this time.
It's her fumbling fingers becoming steadier and surer as she gets used to shuffling his deck; it's watching her pace the length of the storefront in the orange afternoon light, taking stock of their wares in the quiet of day's end. It's seeing the neglected garden they'd once built together turn from yellow-brown to living green under her patient hands; it's waking up to a sweetly fragrant spring morning and realizing the wisteria has begun blooming again under her tender care.
It's recharging the protection sigil at the door twice—thrice each time he leaves, a spell at his fingertips and a prayer for her safety on his kiss-starved mouth.
It's him standing hesitant at the doorway after a long journey, wondering if he's still welcome; it's her pulling him inside with a smile and a ready cup of tea and reassuring him in her wordless way that he always, always is.
---
Home wanders off to the palace on a countess's summons, and Asra follows after her and is surprised when Muriel follows him in turn. Home gets them into trouble with her infuriating, insistent, wonderful sense of compassion, and—to Asra's increasingly shocked delight—home gets them out of trouble with his quiet courage and steadfast strength.
Home dissipates into a cloud of silver smoke, and home helps Asra to his feet when his lungs fill with enough ash and guilt to suffocate him. Home closes the guest bedroom door behind the two of them and says, in his ever-familiar gravel voice, "I'll stay here. Watch over your body. Just . . . be safe. And . . . bring her back."
Asra cracks a smile, touches a hand gently to Muriel's forearm. "I'll bring her home," he promises. "To both of us."
Muriel blushes, unable to meet his eyes, and says, gruffly, "If you're going, then get going."
Asra laughs, climbing onto the bed and making himself comfortable as he closes his eyes and reaches inward.
"I'll tell her you miss her already," he can't help but tease one more time, and laughs again when Muriel grunts an embarrassed denial.
Asra falls through sand and sea, and when he emerges onto the wide pink beach, home jumps into his arms with a whooping cry and a kiss for him ready and waiting upon her smiling mouth.
---
Home becomes just a little bit more full, the day Muriel moves into the shop.
He arrives on a sunny morning, his meager belongings in a pack strapped to his back, a load of wooden beams in his arms, and a sheepish expression on his blushing face.
"It's . . . to make a bigger bed," Muriel explains, endearingly shy. "And reinforce the dining chair legs."
It takes some tactical planning (and the entire afternoon) to take apart and alter the current bed into something that fits the three of them perfectly, but they manage, and they fall asleep that night huddled side by side by side, warm and content and together.
True to form, Muriel's presence is unobtrusive as it seamlessly integrates into the shop: it's little wooden carvings filling up the shelves, etched sigils of protection appearing on doorposts, a chicken coop and a fenced-in yard springing up at the side of the house. It's coming upstairs to find Faust and Tulin snoozing atop Inanna in front of the fire; it's seeing Muriel's cloak hung up on the pegs by the door, beside Asra's coat and hat and Rei's traveling shawl.
It's seeing three places set at the table, and smiling knowing everyone is cared for and safe and here, right where they should be.
---
And then home is a place that's just a tad too small for all of them.
They really should move to a bigger house, Asra thinks.
Home is him having to flatten himself against the wall to dodge the pair of toddlers sprinting past him to the second floor, their bright giggles bouncing around the shop like late afternoon dust motes as Isha flounces up the stairs with Sam following at her heels. It's hearing the calm tones of Ethan's voice from upstairs as he helps Gale with their arithmetic.
He steps down into the shop proper just as Rei emerges from the backroom, preparing to head out for a house call. She smiles when she sees him, and he crosses the tiny space to give her a routine goodbye kiss as she dons her scarf and shawl.
The rest of the world doesn't disappear anymore when he kisses her. (It hasn't for a long time.) Instead, when he closes his eyes to feel her lips moving against his, the moment is underscored by the sound of pattering feet upstairs, the creak of old wooden beams settling, the quiet clucking of the chickens outside as Muriel gathers eggs, and the familiar, comforting smell of the hearth and herbs and home.
"I'll be back soon," Rei promises, and her smile lights up the tiny room plenty.
When she leaves, Asra looks around—the old plaster walls seem just that bit whiter, and the worn rugs on the floor look just that bit brighter. Home is the pieces of their lives contained in this old, old building: the belongings they've accumulated, the family they've built, the memories they've made and cherished and kept. He smiles.
Muriel comes in with a full basket, stamping the dust off his boots as he raises a stoic brow at Asra's grin.
"What's that for?" Muriel asks, and home is the way his hand settles easily at Asra's back, his mouth pressing nonchalantly to the top of Asra's head.
"Nothing," Asra shrugs. "I was just thinking—we've lived here a long time, haven't we?"
Muriel just smiles and squeezes Asra's arm, because he of all people understands the unspoken weight of Asra's words. They head up to the second floor, and Muriel has to lift the basket out of reach as the twins try to tackle their legs, their shrieking mirth mingling with Asra's babbling-brook laugh and Muriel's rustling-leaves chuckle. Asra picks up Sam, and Muriel tucks Isha under his free arm, and Asra thinks he really can't want for anything more than this.
(They can call this place home just a little bit longer.)
---
And then—years and years and years later, when the children are no longer children and are off having their own adventures—home is a small stone cottage at the edge of the forest, with a constantly blooming garden out front and a chicken coop beside the woodshop out back, and only a single floor because sometimes stairs are just too much of a hassle, these days. The wisteria covers almost the entire right half of the house's front, making a shady little spot beneath which stands an inviting hand-hewn wooden bench.
Asra takes off his hat as he comes up the cobblestoned path, pausing at the little porch to ruffle his hair into some kind of order. And when he opens the door—
Muriel looks up from his whittling in the rocking chair, and Rei looks up from the stove across the room, and they smile and say, together, "Welcome home."
And Asra steps inside, hangs up his hat and coat by the door—right between Muriel's cloak and Rei's shawl—and lets himself fall backwards into their overstuffed couch as Faust wriggles out of his shirt and slithers onto her favorite pillow by the fireplace.
Muriel moves from the rocking chair to sit at his right, and Rei comes over from the kitchenette to sit at his left. The arms of his loves settle around him, and Asra smiles, content, and settles into the warm little space between their bodies, right where he belongs.