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She lived alone, like a monster does; a creature shoved in the darkness of closets and the beneath of beds, shadows in rotting forests and the jagged maw of some deep cave. Millie Parfait lived alone because she was a monster, and thought it would be like that until the day she died.
So she’d moan and gripe about it, rant to the creaking cupboards and the fence that toppled over every storm, complain to the chickens that clucked in their pen and her tired old cow that couldn’t see out of its left eye about how lonely she was. She didn’t want to be lonely. It was the only way Millie could push away the monster in her chest, the one that by association, made her a beast in a child’s fairytale.
You see, once upon a time, there was a little girl in a village, as happy as all little girls are. She ran and played with the other children, in forests and creeks and the streets of the world she knew. She was happy because that was what a child should be, and happiness should always cling to you like your shadow because it lives in you like a ghost of a child, like a memory ingrained, like the primal want of sunlight, laughter, and another person laughing with you.
Her mother died, her smile weakened. The children began to disappear from the town, her smile was gone. Don’t you think that the laughter that lives in you would die like a seed unwatered? That the child would curl up in a corner when all the love in its life was gone?
She lived on the edge of town like a ghost, a limp thing, rags and dust cloaking her and making her one with the dirt of the earth. She heard the whispers on the breeze, gossip by every person who had mourned for their children enough and decided that their hollowness carved out by grief could be better fed by hatred.
The dried leaves on the ground bit at her bare heels as she walked, the shadow of the trees looming over her like hulking beasts. Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she would catch a glimpse of some thing; dark and flashing, yellow eyes in the mist of early day. Like it lived in the moment before things woke and things slept. Lived in the time where all was vulnerable, predatory in its following of the girl.
(There’s no reason to ask why she left. The girl wouldn’t tell you the truth anyways, and even in death, would lie still.)
She slept in hollows of trees, in the crooks of branches that creaked in the night and made her fear falling onto the ground below. Her stomach growled along with the choruses of birds, and so she fed herself on that. Because for the first time in a long time, the child within crawled out from her corner and held a flower in her hand, watching the liquid from its petals stain her fingers. They tasted bitter. She loved them anyhow.
She wandered through towns like a ghost, empty and hungry, and knew not what she was searching for. Whispers followed her along with the eyes; about the girl-corpse that walked in the dead of night with flowers braided in her hair, some fairy creature come to take the children away. Doors shut, things were locked away, children no longer walked in the streets.
The girl wondered if talking to the acorn in her palm was a sign of madness.
A cat wandered up to her in the forest as she sat there, starving. His eyes were cunning slits, watching and waiting, and there was magic in the way his fur shone like the night sky. He crawled into the girl’s lap, purred when her shaking hand met his fur.
She named him Lucie. He gave her a name. Cats weren’t supposed to do that, but the girl had been lonely too long to care.
Now the townspeople of the villages she walked through whispered of a dead girl with a dark cat on her shoulders, flower stems forming wreaths wrapping over the two of them. A witch, and one who had made a pact with the devil so young? Her mother must be disappointed.
Monster made its home in the mouths of the people the girl never met while the girl looked for a home away from the teeth of loneliness. She wanted a garden with flowers and somewhere for her cat to curl up on chairs and somewhere she could hear the birds talk without her stomach interrupting. She wanted that, trying to feed the withered child inside her, somehow managed to ignore the things that followed her like omens.
When it rained and she started to shiver, it would stop. If she ever fell while walking, injured herself in any way, she could gather some pretty flowers and eat them to make the pain and bleeding stop. The magic made itself known slowly, pooled in the cracks of the girl.
She was taller, only by a little bit, hair choppy and ragged. She wore a shapeless hat that she loved dearly, Lucie could curl up in it as she walked along. Shoes that were a bit too big, leggings that she adored along with a cape and blouse. The ghost changed as it walked, carried with itself a name that spread through cities like a folktale mystery.
The girl-corpse-ghost-witch that wandered forever.
Forever, until one day, the forest stopped, revealed a meadow green and untainted. Wildflowers scattered over it like spilled dyes, running up and down the hills to the opposite edge of the forest a few miles away. The treeline curved around the space like an embrace, a town in the far distance, close to the glimmering sea. It was all color and light, things the girl had never seen before. The girl wanted to see it again and again. She made this home.
Millie sat in her chair; rickety, falling apart, woven by hand and magic. The years gave her time to hone her magic, taught in part by Lucie and by messing around, both of which were unreliable. By then, Millie knew what she had done, who her little cat was. The devil sat by her feet, his eyes glittering with mischief.
“Let’s go to town,” He urged, voiceless, a rolling of thunder in Millie’s skull. “Turn all the fruits into vegetables again, paint all over the city walls.” Lucie leaped up, landed neatly on the armrest of the chair and looked deep into Millie’s eyes, in a way that would have been intimidating if it weren’t for the fact that he was a cat, even if said cat was really just a devil in disguise. “Let’s cause chaos, my girl.”
Millie grinned and rolled her eyes, her whole body already a live wire of excitement. It had been too long since she was able to flex her magic, too long since she had someone to talk to who wasn’t a cat. She took her hat off its peg by the door, cloak already wrapped around her shoulders and magic sparking her eyes an even deeper emerald green. She walked out the door and began to walk towards the town in the distance with Lucie curled up around her shoulders, when she heard a faint whistling.
To the right of her, in the forest she had come out of so many years ago, came an explosion.
- - -
She had fallen, hit the earth where nobody heard and stumbled out of the forest like a corpse from a grave, lopsided, missing a whole part of herself. There had been a cottage in a meadow near her crash site, ravaged by the elements and probably one strong breeze away from collapse, and yet carried with it a sense of home. The door creaked when Enna pushed it open, the sound ringing in her ears and deafening her to the footsteps behind her.
Enna whirled around, and almost got her head blasted off by a stray thunderbolt. In front of her, a human who had made a deal with a devil; a witch, a blasphemer against all that Enna was supposed to be for. But Millie smiled at her, saw the broken, shattered stump of a wing and ushered her in, warm tea shoved in her hands and days later, a glass imitation of her lost wing. Enna could fly again, away from the earth that had gripped her like a greedy beast and took her away from the heavens.
Enna thanked the devil and his witch, and stayed.
Let’s consider for a moment, the concept of a parable. You bring ten people into a room and kill them all. Some were good in life, some were bad. You still don’t know where they are going. You know where you are going, maybe. The blood on your hands weighs you down.
(The girl will not tell you her story, no, she won’t. She will lie to your face and laugh at you. She will take the secret to your grave and tell it to your corpse as a joke, because she won’t die.)
There is no story to tell.
Enna sat curled up in Millie’s favorite chair, flexing her wings, inspecting how her new one caught the light, split it into a hundred colors. Millie watched her from the doorway, watched her smile, and wondered when she would leave.
She hoped she didn’t leave, there’s only so much you can tell the devil.
Millie sat next to her, leaned against the chair leg and looked up at Enna. “So, who are you?”
Enna blinked, taken aback by the bluntness of the witch’s statement. “An angel.”
“You don’t look like one,” Millie squinted and leaned closer, as if trying to catch a glimpse of some sort of angelic power radiating off of Enna.
“Shut up.” Enna flicked Millie’s forehead, making the other jerk back. Enna blanched, heart in her throat as she realized what she had done. “Crap, I-uh- I’m-”
“You don’t speak like one either,” Millie grinned, fangs white and longer than the average human’s, Enna was pretty sure. “Are you sure you’re an angel?”
“Why did I fucking stay,” Enna asked herself, slumping back in her chair. The witch laughed aloud, bright and airy. Enna found herself smiling, just a little.
The cottage was rather neat on the inside, rugs and cushions and decorations covering every inch of available space. It was soft and jarring, crazy and tame, the insides of what made Millie, Millie scattered across the cottage interior. There was only one bed, and Millie claimed it, rudely shoving Enna off one night when she was sleepy and unaware of where she was, resulting in Enna giving her the cold shoulder for a week.
Millie built Enna a room after that.
There was a friendship that bloomed, a strange thing, one that caught them both off guard. They yelled at each other and fought often, cursed each other when all the hot water was used up or when the laundry wasn’t put out to dry yet, even though the two of them were at equal fault for putting it off. The cottage was in danger of burning down multiple times, and having a devil cat as a pet didn’t help matters, really.
But when Millie found Enna curled up on the porch, a crack in the wing the witch had given her, and Enna’s hands shaking like it was the end of the world. Millie merely pulled her inside and settled her in her own bed, wrapped her up in blankets and fed her food, set up a vase with a rotating bouquet of flowers.
Millie didn’t sleep until she had fixed that wing.
Enna felt guilty then, for all the things Millie was doing for her, a veritable list that she had not made up for. She wasn’t sure if a friendship was supposed to be transactional. She wasn’t going to risk it anyways.
“You’re such a freeloader,” Millie groaned, throwing a lump of dirt at Enna, whose hands were already dirty from hours of gardening. The angel felt the comment strike home, and it hit harder than Millie intended. Enna pulled on a fake smile that had Millie stilling for a moment in concern.
They knew each other too well by then.
“Excuse me, bitch, I am helping,” Enna threw a handful of weeds back at the witch, trying to hide her fakeness, laughter coiled up in the back of her throat, spring loaded and ready. “You can take care of this on your own if you want.”
Millie raised an eyebrow, Enna’s slip forgotten and now she was focused on calling out Enna’s bluff. But her smug face rapidly turned into panic as the songbird stood and began to move away back into the house, already peeling off the thick gloves and throwing the spade to the side.
“Wait, wait,” Millie scrambled to her feet, running her fingers through Enna’s hair and trying to clean it of dirt while the other screamed and tried to push her off. “Please help, I’m sorry, I’m fixing it now.”
“No, you’re not!” Enna yelled, grin transmuting into something real as she stumbled back and almost stepped into their newly planted flower bed, five hours of work inches away from being crushed under her bare heel. “Your hands are covered in shit, let go!”
Millie was laughing by then, cheeks reddened by work, sun, sheer glee turning her into a miniature flame. Enna tried to ignore the way it sparked something to life in her chest “Nah, get over here, you’re down for a makeover.”
Enna screeched, finally losing her balance and tumbling back onto the ground, frantically trying to push Millie away as the witch ruffled her hair, stray petals and roots getting tangled up in it. In her struggle to get free, and Millie’s attempts to continue her games, Millie accidentally elbowed Enna in the face.
“Shit!” Millie cursed, sitting up. She gently removed Enna’s hands from where they cupped her nose, making a noise of apology when she saw the streams of gold running down from it. “Give me a moment,” She said gently, shifting her weight over to pluck a few petals from the nearby plants. Millie’s movement reminded Enna of the position they were in; the heady scent of flowers and sun warmed grass, Millie straddling her and gently applying what felt like mashed up plants to her nose.
A cooling sensation spread throughout her face, the stinging in her nose easing as Millie leaned back, her work done.
“Thanks,” Enna muttered, hoping that the golden blood smeared over her face would hide her blush.
“You’re welcome, dumbass,” Millie got off of Enna, the songbird strangely missing the comforting weight. “By the way, I made that from my spit.”
By the time Enna was running after her, Millie had already gotten a head start. The two of them left their half finished garden project behind, Enna screaming curses and threats as she chased Millie through the meadow, their chickens and aged cow watching their antics uncaringly.
Millie tripped over something, went down into the long blades of grass that almost hid her from view as she rolled down a hill into a shallow divot. Enna ran after her, collapsing next to her and heaving for breath.
“Fuck-” Enna gasped for air, wiping her forehead of spit. “You.”
“Love you too, babu,” Millie said flippantly, already rolling off of the grass and plucking some flowers from where a small patch grew, humming to herself.
Enna lay there, torn petals on her cheeks, and tried to make herself as small as possible, and tried to hide from the thing in her chest that threatened to swallow her whole.
- - -
By then, Millie knew Enna’s name better than her own, having shouted it in varying tones, having called her to breakfast and dinner and lunch and her side when she was lonely. She knew how when it rained, her wing, the one that was hurt, would ache with phantom pains. Millie knew that keeping plants in Enna’s room would help her sleep better, had sectioned out a part of her flower garden especially for that purpose.
Millie wondered if she knew Enna better than herself, or if the monster in her chest was just gearing up to devour her whole. She wondered if that was why Enna didn’t look her in the eyes too long now.
It was raining, hard, thunder shaking the roof as Millie sat in a cocoon of blankets on the rug, sipping tea and giving Enna a dirty look when she placed down a royal flush with a smug grin.
“Fuck this,” Millie threw her cards down, revealing her sad hand as she drank all of her now slightly lukewarm tea.
“That’s what you get, bitch,” Enna smirked when she made eye contact with Millie, fiddling with the plate of cookies balanced on the armrest of the chair.
A beat, a moment, flames burst to life in the center of the cottage. Windows shattered, the beams of the house crumbled and fell. Rugs ignited, ash swirling into the air instantly. The whole thing burned down, no survivors, you can find Millie’s hat and Enna’s wing smoldering in the wreckage of it all.
Then Millie looked away first, Enna looking the other direction, the wallpaper catching their attention for some reason. The air was charged, lightning would strike, the moment would burst to pieces and they would return to their usually scripted show.
Something slammed into the window.
Millie jumped with a shriek, spilling tea all over herself and the floor, Enna too busy squinting at the blotch on the glass to laugh. She stood slowly, Millie still cursing to herself as she tried to dry herself off as best she could. The floorboards creaked underneath Enna’s feet, the metal doorknob freezing cold to the touch. Enna had to struggle with the door, the wind trying desperately to get in and bring in the rain.
Millie followed her, tea still staining her shirt as the two of them stepped out onto the rain and wind battered porch. The rain stilled for a moment, the eye of the storm opening above them as Millie’s eyes glowed yellow-green, pupils becoming slits to match Lucie’s. The shadow on the window twitched, started moving like some great, large bug and Enna screamed, leaped back and pushed an indignant Millie in front of her.
“What the fuck?!” Millie shouted behind her, trying to get herself to be heard over the still booming thunder in the distance and the rain that beat down on the ground outside of the small dome protecting the house.
“I’m not touching it,” Enna shouted back, struggling to keep Millie from running behind her.
The creature leaped forward and crawled into the folds of Millie’s hat. Enna stared, a peek of what seemed to be a wing appearing from the depths of the black fabric. Millie trembled, making eye contact with Enna.
“What-” She took a deep breath and tried to calm her shivering, already taking slow steps back to the door. “What do I do?”
“We could, uh,” Enna opened the door for Millie, as the witch robotically moved inside to sit in her chair, sitting as if a plank of wood were nailed to her spine. “Catch it and throw it outside?”
The hat twitched, and Millie instantly threw it off, the lump hitting the wall with a light thump. The two of them stared at the hat, then at each other, then back to the hat; like they were in some crappy sitcom.
Enna jumped back when the hat flipped over, revealing a small creature not unlike a butterfly. It had wings that caught the light like dew caught on a spiderweb. Long hair the color of a sunny day stuck to her face, flyaways on her damp cheeks. She looked beautiful, made Millie’s breath catch in her chest, the jaws of a trap slammed shut. The fairy, it was the only thing Millie could relate the creature to, quickly grew in size, and suddenly there was a human-like figure sitting on the floor.
She blinked, looked down at hands that were covered by lacy gloves and shook the water from her head. She stood and smoothed down her slightly wrinkled dress, then stuck her hand out towards the dumbstruck pair with a huge smile.
“I’m Pomu!”
And that was that.
- - -
The storm had spat her out like a mouthful of rotten fruit; after having whipped her around for what felt like days trapped in its wild winds, it just let her go. Pomu wasn’t sure how to feel about that sort of rejection.
She was against a cold window, saw what seemed to be a place to dry off and get warm then leaped for it. Pomu found herself human sized again with a hat in her lap, and what seemed to be an angel and a witch staring at her.
She had the faintest fear that she was dead, so Pomu decided to announce herself and see what happened.
The cottage had a new resident.
Nature can be the kindest, most loving thing ever. A father, a mother, its sunlight warm embrace of you pulling you in, venus flytrap sly.
A fairy was a manifestation of its kindness, one of many. There were others, yes, harsher ones, yes. Nature will love you with a flower then choke you to sleep with the nightshade’s poison.
The fairy wondered why that had to happen, then realized there would never be a true answer for that.
(You sit next to her and ask about her story. Yes, you came out of the blue, no warning or anything, she shouldn’t have to tell you anything.
She smiles at you, and begins.)
A tall, towering tree, deep in the forest. Centuries old, probably, with roots so long that if the tree were flipped over, it could grasp the moon. Leaves of every shade adorned it every season, never a bare branch to be seen, even during winter. Flowers bloomed, never just one species. They called it Fairy’s Heart, because that was where fairies lived. Bit on the nose, if you asked the fairy.
It was tall enough that if a stray wind ever grasped you, it would carry you for miles before you ever reached the ground. ‘Bit of a construction issue,’ the fairy would say with a frown, a playful smile still in her eyes. ‘They should fix that.’
The storm went on and on, a dragon’s breath taking the fairy away from her home, tore the breath from her lungs with its gusts. She remembered her little hollow in the tree, once a woodpecker’s home. She had flowers everywhere, and though they died after some time, the fairy never used her magic to prolong its life.
There was a bit of fakeness to it, she supposed. The placing of your will in something else, puppetry, not letting it grow and die on its own. Foolishness, naivety, a list in every scattering of dried out petals.
The fairy tells you that she thinks her story is rather boring, and there isn't much to tell unless you want a play-by-play of a plant’s growth.
She leaves it at that, the tale ending with a beginning.
Pomu wasn’t some pretty, delicate thing that you would expect at first glance. They learned that fast when she taught them how to plant things more neatly, to take care of their crops and flowers better. Pomu had a steel core, some sort of awesome thing that transcended all the stories and folktales about fairies.
She laughed at Enna and Millie’s antics, at the baby chicks that ran in the grass. She laughed at everything, as if it was the only way she could breath, her lungs would collapse otherwise.
For some reason after she had arrived, there was finally an order for the chores. The guilt that had come from seeing Pomu try to lug what had become a laundry haul for three people was enough to cause that.
Pomu slept in her small form, in a cup filled with a fluffy scarf placed by the windowsill. Pomu said she liked sleeping in moonlight and sunlight, where she was as close to the outside as she could be.
And once again, Millie sectioned out a piece of her home for Pomu.
Millie wondered if she was giving some part of herself up, if this was some sort of messed up repentance by the monster in her. Pomu smiled at her, asked her to pass the salt. She did, their fingers brushed, the monster lay like some dead thing on her chest and she had to learn how to breathe again.
Not much later, Millie was sandwiched between the two of them as Pomu read a story aloud, something about a maiden of roses and a dragon of the moon. It sounded sweet, Millie wasn’t listening, a sickness struck like a viper’s bite.
The moon hung like a swollen teardrop in the sky.
Delirium had Millie firm in its grasp, her body lying limp on her bed. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her mouth was always dry. Someone tried to pour water into her mouth, a soft hand holding her chin, a sweet voice telling her to drink. She jerked back, spilled the water all over herself. She cried for something she never had, and felt the pressure of a hug like a whole new atmosphere.
Enna wiped her forehead with a cool cloth, Millie’s fever receding enough to leave her able to recognize faces again. The songbird’s face was screwed up, worry carving fault lines into the once smooth planes of skin. Millie gripped her wrist weakly, trying to stop her, mouth opening to say something but her dry lips cracked with the effort.
Pomu sat opposite Enna, the other side of Millie’s bed, and offered her a sip of water. Millie’s hand shook as she gulped it down, water spilling down her chin that Enna wiped for her with a tender hand.
Pomu watched Enna work, seeing the gentleness in each movement. She spoke in a low voice; “Are you two… like that?”
Enna stared at her, hand resting in the cold water-filled bowl she used to dampen the cloth, making it overflow, taking up the space meant for something else.
“I hope not,” Enna laughed. Fake, like her wing that shuddered behind her at the weight of the lie. “Nah, we’re just friends.”
Pomu was silent, and Millie lay on the bed and wished she had passed out from the fever so she didn’t have to hear this.
When Millie was better and could take some steps without crumpling to the ground, she would catch Enna and Pomu sitting together. Their wings would brush, they would lean away, then minutes later inch towards each other again, tectonic plates in motion.
Pomu sat on the porch, wings fluttering in the sunshine. She had a bow in her hair, a scrap of fabric that she had snagged from Millie’s cloth covered walls. Millie just shrugged when she saw it and told her she looked nice. As she sat on the porch, she ate a few strawberries that Enna had given her, from the garden they had. Red stained her lips, trickled on her fingers like blood, dried on her cheeks in the afternoon sun.
The animal inside Millie wanted to eat her alive.
Enna thought she would have learned by now, after all that had happened, and by now would have managed to shove back the impulsive thoughts that jumped out at her from nowhere. She had a list of moments ruined by it, where she said something and had to apologize, where she did something and had to apologize. Enna thought that by then she would be made up of broken promises and apologies glued together in the facsimile of something that wasn’t supposed to lie, something that wasn’t supposed to break promises or make mistakes. An angel in everything but name, half winged Enna Alouette.
They were standing in the garden, like they always did at this time of day, the two of them with their wings brushing against each other as they plucked the weeds and trimmed the plants.
Enna looked over and saw Pomu offering a raspberry, took it and ate it, made a face at its bitterness. Pomu giggled, said something Enna couldn’t remember, because this was all a haze by the time she was functional enough to reflect on it.
Pomu Rainpuff, in all her rainstorm glory, kissed her on the mouth. She tasted of flowers, like how Millie’s tea smelled. She tasted like the berries she had been eating moments before. Sweet, honey, warm, adjectives that Enna was pulling out of thin air, all the ones she loved because Pomu tasted like everything and anything she had ever wanted.
Pomu bit at her bottom lip gently, tongue flicking over it to soothe the sting, Enna’s knees almost buckled. Her wings fluttered, the disconnect from the artificial one forgotten for once. Her tail fanned out in joy as she ran her hands through Pomu’s soft hair, felt the flowers that Millie had woven into it that morning.
Her head was dizzy, flying away from her spine. Her mouth tasted like salt.
“Are you okay?” Pomu asked, always the caring one, eyes filled with worry as she wiped away a tear from Enna’s face.
“Yeah,” Enna whispered, mouth dry, throat wrecked even though she had said barely anything. “I, uh.”
She extracted herself from Pomu’s embrace, hands tingling from where Pomu still held them, a lifeline that kept them together even as Enna licked her lips nervously, tasted salt still.
The sea was far away, it streamed down her face as she broke down in Pomu’s arms, a sun warmed body pressed against her own.
From the window, someone watched.
- - -
There was a monster in Millie’s chest, that’s why she hid. Some frightful creature in its cave, seeing its shadow on the walls and shying away from it. When people came to Millie of their own volition, falling from the sky and crashing against her windows, she wondered when she would end up eating them.
She didn’t know how to express how she felt, curled up in her dark room for days with Lucie sleeping against her stomach. Enna would knock at the door and call for her. Pomu would simply leave her food. Millie wondered if it really took that long for someone to give up on her, then realized it probably wouldn’t be hard since it was her in question. The beast gorged itself on her when there was nothing else, and fed her insecurities and doubts in return.
She lay there on her back one day, her cat sitting next to her, staring at her with cold eyes.
“Are you worthy,” It wasn’t a question; Lucie’s head cocked to the side as his tail swished behind him. Millie looked at him with puffy eyes, red and wounded. “Are you worthy of love, Millie Parfait.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement; fact, maybe, for Millie to accept or deny. She sat there, and for a second was transported back to when she was a child. She had stopped crying on the third day, sat there empty eyed, looking into the faces of the remaining children and then their backs when their mothers urged them away.
She knew she wanted them to turn around, but when they didn’t, she supposed she deserved it.
The monster howled, broke to pieces, a mask dashed on the floor once the play was over. The child lay there, reached out, the curtains fell.
Her door creaked open, the stairs groaning as she walked down them, silent when she paused on the last step. Enna and Pomu sat on the couch, Pomu hunched over, drawn inward, bringing to mind dying flowers. Enna was rubbing her back, eyes darting up to see Millie on the stairs.
Sadness, joy, reproach, shame, something else; a slideshow of emotions on Enna’s face greeted Millie. She sat on the couch next to the two, leaving space that Pomu extinguished almost immediately; leaning into Millie’s side.
“Are you okay?” Pomu asked. She was glass, snowflake thin, any word could break her.
“I think so,” Millie tried to inject some warmth into her tone. It came out like a lie. “Just needed some time to myself.”
“Was that my fault?”
Millie sat there, confused, unsure of where the situation was going, having had an idea of where it could go but no way to steer it. She was thrown head first into the deep end, she hoped she didn’t drown.
“It’s not,” Enna soothed, gentle, her usual rough edges encased in softness. Millie almost couldn’t recognize the tenderness on her face. “You didn’t do anything wrong, baby.”
A pet name like a brick to the head, Millie made to stand up, to leave, to get away from whatever this was, that fueled the absence in her, made the child in her put on its monster mask.
A warm hand gripped her wrist, stopping her. Millie looked down and was caught by Pomu’s sundew spell, pierced through by a wanting gaze.
“Please don’t leave,” Enna was the one to talk this time. “Please.”
Millie would rather be punched in the face than listen to her two favorite people talk like they were at her funeral. She sat back down.
It was quiet before Pomu reached out, hand cupping Millie’s cheek. The witch leaned into the touch, surprising the both of them. Pomu studied her face, where the skin stretched thin over her cheekbones from malnutrition, how her eyes were wet and threatened to flow over into tears.
Millie wasn’t sure who leaned in first. The couch creaked underneath them, the walls of the old house heaved, it was a mundane beat of time.
Millie didn’t know what to think when Pomu kissed her, only felt herself shatter into a million pieces when she did. She clung to the fairy, felt Enna’s fingers thread through one of her hands. She was floundering, out of her depth, static sparking on her lips and making Pomu yelp, then giggle.
Millie didn’t know how to describe it when Pomu kissed her again, nails scraping the back of her neck, Millie feeling like her whole body was converging on a single point, a singularity, heavy with everything. She shook apart, Pomu held her together.
She had no breath when Pomu pulled away, eyes glazed over yellow green, her magic making the small plants on the window grow and change colors, the fabric of her cloak shifting like water around her, a depth to hide in.
Enna pulled Millie out, hands firm on her shoulders, then kissed her. She bit at her lip, huffed into Millie’s mouth, tried to get even closer, her fingers digging into the witch’s shoulders. It was violence, a mutual devouring, that was what the two of them were.
They were gentle with Pomu, who sat next to them with a huge smile, one hand running over Enna’s wing as the other held Millie’s hand. With each other, they bit and drew blood and yelled, knew no other way of showing their love. It was love, yes yes yes, it beat in Millie’s ears like her magic, had her breathing in Enna’s scent of ozone and flame or was that her? Was Millie setting something on fire? She hoped not. Pomu wasn’t screaming, only nuzzling into Millie’s neck and peppering soft kisses there, Enna’s fingers turning her head so that way she could kiss her too, and Millie watched with the largest smile, beast sated and sleepy for once.
They kissed on a couch, in a cottage, in a meadow that was theirs. Millie Parfait did not and would never again live alone.