Work Text:
Ferne opened the door to the shop slowly - a futile attempt at to keep the bell above the door quiet. But despite her efforts, the bell sounded and Ferne flinched for their neighbors.
The smell of parchment and ink hit her as the sound of the bell faded away. "Hey hon" came the tired voice from the corner. Ferne turned to meet her mom's eyes as they turned in their chair to face the door. Behind her mom lay a desk, cluttered with sheafs of paper, an inkpot and quill, and a long cold mug.
"Hey Ma. Long night?" she asked as she walked across the room towards the stairs up to the rooms above. Pausing there, she glanced at the various papers on her mom's desk. "This your latest manuscript?"
The answer was a short, tired, "Mhm" before her mom continued. "How was patrol?"
"Eh... Fine." she shrugged. "Nothing really happened." That was the same answer Ferne gave every night and she could tell it concerned her mom. For what it was worth, her mom never really pushed this subject.
"And the other girls?" This question was always a bit harder: Ferne never kept great track of the rest of her team and they all ran patrol on their own. That is, unless things went bad, or they happened to run into one another by chance in the night.
Ferne looked at her mom exasperatedly, and sighed. After a moment she relented and answered curtly with "I don't know." At this, the fear that Ferne knew was hidden just beneath the surface flooded her mom's eyes. Like always. Those eyes stared at her, and seemed to blame her for the silence that followed.
The pause grew large before Ferne relented, explaining what she knew her mom already knew. "I didn't run into any of them. And it didn't seem like any of us needed the extra help tonight," she said, before heading up the stairs. Yet another samey answer.
Her mom's concerned eyes didn't change as they followed her up the stairs. Ferne knew her mom wanted to say something more, but didn't. She knew it would be nothing that the two of them hadn't said before.
With Ferne reaching the top of the stairs, the first ritual of the night was complete.
~~~
Ferne shut her door quickly and fell into a comfortable position onto her bed. She let the evening wash over her, an evening like most others. Not much different from yesterday, nor would it be that different from tomorrow. She let out a tired sigh - She couldn't help it! Ferne felt so done with it all. Well, not the patrols - she still loved those, but the rest of it just grated on her. Dealing with her mom, the notes, the fame... Well, the Hunters weren't too famous, really. But what fame they did have just... grated. That was much more Lexine's scene anyway, and Ferne prefered it when it stayed that way.
But The Notes... Ferne needed to do those. Her eyes drifted towards her desk - towards the piles of homework she had completed long ago, stacked messily, awaiting their trip to school tomorrow. They sat aside a notebook, its leather covers worn thin and stuffed with papers. Rowen's project. A comprehensive list of every single monster the Hunters had ever faced. Comprehensive before tonight that is, but that was just the name of the game. Even if they were variations on a theme, each night, each monster was slightly different.
Ferne's mind drifted back to the night itself - The Chumps, the ambush, the ichor's burns. She hadn't noticed those until quite a while later, after it put a holes in her outfit, burning into her skin. Ferne shuddered at the memory but pushed it down, thinking instead of Ennis's killcount. She never responded when the running tally popped into their heads, or when Lexine responded with some slightly larger number. Ferne always had both them beat.
She really needed to write it down. All of it, put it down into a report so Rowen could compile it together and give it to the other girls... Rowen was the real reason why they could do this so well, all on their own, rarely working together.
But the memories, the monsters... that monster... they made her shiver. Shiver in a way that she hadn't on the street, in a way that she never did while on patrol. Her forearm twinged where the ichor, dripping and spraying had touched her skin. It wouldn't leave a mark at all, she knew, but it stuck and stung nonetheless. She hated the idea of sketching that dripping cat the more she dwelled on it.
But she needed to. Rowen relied on her. Well, she relied on all the Hunters, really, to keep The Notes up to date. But she did rely on Ferne's sketches. She looked at her notebook. Those drawings were mostly hers... She didn't have much of a choice.
She had to dwell on the past, in her memories. That was the second ritual of the night.
So, Ferne swung her legs up, over, off her bed. She pulled herself to the desk, and began then to sketch her beasts.