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It’s quiet, here in Eda’s mind.
For now, at least, and she’s grateful for that.
Which means something has gone desperately wrong outside, and she’s effectively trapped and helpless here, and now - now -
Not this nightmare again .
She stands there in the abstract, hazy dark, and listens, and waits for the fires to start.
-
“Eda?”
“Hm?”
“How do I know if I’m in love?”
Eda sits up to look at Raine, sprawled on the grass beside her. It’s not fair, she thinks, how extraordinarily good-looking they are, especially smiling up at her like this with the wind teasing their hair back from their eyes and -
“I don’t know,” she says quickly, slumping back before they realise she was staring. Again. “Gotta be honest, I don’t really remember what it’s like. More focused on this beast thing, y’know?”
Raine turns to smile at her, soft and gentle. “Yeah. I - yeah.”
“Why would you even ask me, anyway? I don’t think I’m exactly the most qualified -”
A shrug, long and slow and languid. Sometimes they remind Eda way too much of a cat. Which is weird. Maybe the owl beast wants her to eat a cat. Or twenty.
“You seem like - you know about this kind of stuff.”
She huffs a laugh, leaning up on an elbow to grin down at Raine. “You know the thing about owls being wise is a joke, right? You should know this by now. You’ve been around me for, what, 9 years? Weren’t you there when I tried dyeing my hair green?”
Raine laughs - gentle, musical, soft. Eda feels a matching smile curl up the corners of her mouth.
She’s too caught up in the moment to notice the flames licking at the base of the hill.
-
Somewhere, Luz is screaming.
I’m sorry , Eda thinks. I’m sorry .
-
Lilith is laughing today. It’s the first thing she notices when she comes downstairs.
Relief curls in her gut, cools in her lungs - Lilith never laughs anymore, not since her mother started ignoring her, and Eda misses it. She misses being able to make her laugh. More than she’ll admit.
She jogs down the stairs, quick as she can, and finds her way to an empty seat. The table is longer than usual, seats filled with silent, shadowed figures, stretching down the length of the impossibly long dining room, but Eda doesn’t question it.
She never questions it, in this dream.
Lilith catches her eye, light sparking off her glasses, and her laughter rises. “You look like shit.”
“Language,” their mother chides from the kitchen, but they grin knowingly at each other and ignore it; she swears more than they do.
“Yeah, well,” Eda says, propping her elbows on the table. “The owl beast does that to you.”
Lilith’s smile thins, but she doesn’t say anything.
The lights in the room flicker off, and it all goes silent, and Eda cries out automatically; she hates the dark.
So does Lilith, right?
So does -
FLOOM.
The kitchen is burning, and the house is burning, and Eda stands in the flames and knows she did this.
“Eda,” someone says, and she whirls around, hair in her eyes, sure she’s burning, sure -
No-one.
Nothing but endless fire.
“Eda?”
“Lilly,” she says automatically. “Lilly? Where are you?”
“Eda, please, I know you’re in there -”
-
Light smears across her vision, and Eda cries out.
“Eda,” someone breathes, relieved, and she wonders when her dreams started filling with fire.
I know that voice.
She heaves herself upright, clunky and slow, limbs screaming in protest, and blinks until her vision is clear.
Huh. Fuck.
The first thing: the living room is destroyed. Eda winces as she looks over it - couch upturned, walls clawed to death, stuffing from pillows draped over portrait frames and shelves like off-colour snow, Hooty whining from his new home squashed under the kitchen table.
And the second: she’s currently full owl beast, minus her consciousness. Great .
Luz stands up from where she’s been kneeling in front of her, now hovering at eye level, and offers her a bottle of elixir quietly. Her hair is messy; Eda wonders if she’d let her brush it later, or if that’d hit too close to home.
And when she takes the bottle, claws latching around the neck with practiced ease, she - flinches.
“I’m sorry,” Eda blurts, pushing back at the sting it brings to the forefront of her mind. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay? Anything a little magic can’t fix?”
Luz shakes her head, looking determinedly at her feet. Oh, fuck . “No, it’s okay. I was stupid.”
Eda brings the bottle to her lips, wincing as her elbows scream in protest. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry for hurting you, though.”
She smiles this time, but says nothing.
For a moment, Lilith flickers across her vision, wearing much the same expression with her elbows propped up on the table, Eda’s mirror in a thousand ways, hair curling around her shoulders, and the owl beast’s eyes flicker back in her reflection in the window opposite.
Luz starts backing away.
“No,” she starts to say. “No, I’m fine, it’s just a blip -”
She shakes her head. “You drink that, yeah? I’m not scared. I’m just gonna get more elixir for you. It’s just down the hall; I’ll be right back. Okay?”
Eda nods slowly. “Okay. Where’s King?”
Luz’s smile is genuine. Relaxed. “In your room. He doesn’t know anything happened.”
Eda huffs a laugh. “If he gets fleas in my nest I’ll charge.”
“You won’t.”
“I won’t.”
Luz chuckles as she disappears into the hallway, and Eda downs the elixir and sighs. This’ll take… a while to work through. For both herself and the rest of the household. And she can’t believe she - let herself snap like that, let the beast rampage until it tore up the house and hurt Luz, and -
“Edalyn?”
She looks up, shrinking, and frowns at Lilith. The shirt she lent her the other day is slipping off her shoulders, the hem bunched up in her fists, and despite being all of three years older than her, she looks - small. “What’s up?”
Lilith’s jaw works, eyebrows pinching together as she watches Eda’s body click back into place.
And, finally, “Does it hurt?”
Eda twists her wrist a few times, feeling the bone rotate under her fingers. “Just ‘cause I’m old. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I always worry about you,” she mumbles, looking remorseful.
Eda snorts. “Honestly, you’re worse than Luz. Sheesh, you go full owl beast one time…”
“ Edalyn .”
“Yeah, yeah. Pass me my foot, would you?”
Lilith picks up the disembodied shoe at her feet with a disgusted expression, and it’s then that Eda spots the scratches on her arms.
She stiffens, and Lilith watches her go still with a frown.
“It wasn’t you.”
Eda grits her teeth. “It was.”
“You heard me calling you, didn’t you?”
Well, that gets her attention. “Huh?”
Lilith watches her head lift, ears twitching up a little, and her frown softens as she crouches to put Eda’s foot on. “I called you. That was when you stopped. Well - actually that might have been partially Luz, but it got a response.”
“I-”
She sighs. “I am sorry, you know. For all of it.”
Eda sighs too as she flexes her foot. “I know. We’ll talk about this - all of this - tomorrow, ‘kay?”
Lilith smiles as she straightens. When Eda sees her again, the little girl laughing at the table opposite her, her eyes stay amber-and-grey, and she smiles back.
(Luz comes back smiling, bearing an armful of relatively unharmed clothes, a bottle of elixir, and a self-proclaimed shoulder demon, and finds Eda and Lilith hugging quietly on the floor. Eda offers, muffled by cloth and exhaustion, to brush her hair.)