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The McDuck mansion was a strange place. Host to the richest duck in the world, a family of misfits and adventurers, ancient artefacts wrested from the cold earth, art beyond compare, portals to other worlds, mysterious tomes and a litteral vault for inexplicable lurking beneath it all. In was one of the few places Lena, the shadow of an evil witch brought to life by a botched ritual, felt like a normal duck by comparison.
That said, despite the alarmingly high odds of discovering a lost Rembrant in a downstairs toilet or being attacked by a sentient suit of armour, one got used to the ambiance. Webby’s penchant for summoning up that which could not be put down and hiding it in the broom cupboard was harder to roll with, but they’d sorted it out eventually. No, of all the strange and wonderful sights of McDuck manor it was the houseguests who always caught her off-guard.
Lena froze in the doorway to the kitchen. The tallest swan she’d ever seen in her life was stood before the refrigerator, opening and closing the door with no small look of wonder on her face. She was dressed in a simple blue tunic that was rather in contrast to the golden coronet nestled in her volumus hair. Power poured from her, an unseeable pearlescent wave more intense than Lena had ever thought possible, filling the huge kitchen up to the brim and spilling through the windows like moonbeams.
“Uhh… sup?”
The swan turned. As her eyes settled on Lena she let out a shriek, her hands coming up reflexively. “Not the face!”
Lena blinked. It was not the reaction she’d been expecting. She’d been expecting something more graceful, or perhaps to be annihilated on the spot by a wave of her hand.
After a moment the sawn lowered her hands, cocking her head as she looked Lena up and down. “Oh. My mistake. Has anyone told you your magic feels just like Magica De Spell’s?”
“It’s come up.” Lena huffed. She looked the mysterious swan up and down, chewing over the obvious question. As much as Lena hated any connection to Aunt Magica she had to ask, even if just to determine how much the swan might hate Lena’s guts. “You know her?”
“More than I’d like, she tries to steal my power every couple decades.” She pulled an ugly face. “It’s… unpleasant, but that’s not important. I should introduce myself. I’m Selene, Goddess of the moon. Also I am the moon, technically.” She gave a shy wave, waggling her fingers at Lena.
Lena opened her mouth, found she had no snappy comeback to that one, and closed it again. “O~kay… Do the McDucks know you’re here Ms Moon?”
“My good friend Della invited me,” Selene explained brightening at the mention of Della. “I needed to get away from the family for a while. Zeus is being a prig again, telling everyone he banished a titan. Like, hello, it was clearly the mortals but that doesn’t stop him. It gets really annoying.”
“Right. Well I’m Lena.” Then, as she remembered she had a surname worth mentioning. “Lena Sabrewing. I’m Webby’s friend.”
“Well met, fair Lena. Any friend of the McDuck family is a friend of mine.” Lena felt Selene’s power shift, the world buckling ever so slightly as the conversational nothings became truth.
Lena shook off the shudder than ran down her spine. It was way too late and she was way too tired to deal with any more weirdness. She elected to ignore it for the time being. Stepping into the kitchen proper Lena made her way over to the refrigerator, the capital ‘G’ Goddess stepping politely out of her way, and pulled out a carton of milk. In difference to company—and not because Teatime had been nagging her about it—she poured it into a glass.
As she put the carton back in the fridge she found the Goddess hovering at her shoulder.
“What?” Lena demanded, turning to face her.
“Sorry, I was curious,” Selene explained, smiling at her. “I’ve been trying to figure out where the light stays on once the door is closed.”
Lena paused, words once again failing her. She glanced at the clock, 2am, and the pitch black windows. “For how long?” she asked, with no small trepidation.
Selene seemed unconcerned by the question. “Just a few turns of the glass. It’s a wonderful mystery, if the box is closed how can one see the light? If the light is absent, how can one observe that the box is closed?”
That sounded far too much like philosophy for Lena. She reached up and pressed the catch on the door, and the light blinked out.
“Oh!” Selene seemed overjoyed at the solution. “That is clever. Thank you, Lena.” She reached out and pressed the switch herself a few times until she was satisfied. She put her hands on her hips and smiled at the refrigerator. “What riddles mortals have devised.”
“Yeah we’re good at that. Maybe next you can delve into the mysteries of the microwave, or uncover the dark the tale of the toaster oven,” Lena suggested sarcastically.
“I’m under strict instructions not to touch the microwave. However, the toaster oven was not mentioned.” Selene cupped her chin, the mischievous glint in her eyes reminded Lena far too much of the triplets’ mischief making face for comfort.
It seemed like an excellent time to make tracks and Lena seized her milk and went for the door. Presumably the Goddess could look after herself, or at least the fire alarm would wake Lena in time to get Webby out of the house.
“Cool. I’ll leave you too your… appliance investigation?”
Selene giggled. “Oh don’t worry about me. Time doesn’t have the same meaning to the ageless.”
“Heh.” Lena scoffed, hand on the doorknob. “Well that’s a lie.”
“Pardon?” The word cut through the air like a knife, cold and distant as the stars, and Lena shuddered.
She turned slowly. Selene had an odd expression on her face, not quite offended, not quite angry, but very much confused. Lena squirmed all the same.
“I just said,” she began, hesitantly. “Time’s all the same, ageless or not.”
Selene blinked. “I think you’re the first mortal I’ve met not to take our word on it.”
Lena gave an exaggerated shrug. “I’m not much for being normal.”
“Few are in this house. You don’t believe me, though? Then I should explain, time, when you have all the time in the world, is not such a precious thing as mortals find it. It is easy to fall into habits, a routine where one wakes to the same morning, greats the same friends, sees the same sights and performs the same duties before returning to the same bed. When all that you know is immortal an unchanging it is easy to see centuries slip pass in contented senescence until the world beyond your island is utterly unrecognisable.”
Selene let out a forlorn sigh and hung her head. “Or even fail to notice when your dearest friend disappears from the Earth.”
The Goddess fell silent, presenting Lena with her most hated of foes the awkward silence. Her thoughts lingered for a moment on her warm blanket and the girl who’d most likely stolen it in her sleep. She couldn’t imagine just waking up one day and discovering that Webby had vanished into the mist of time. Or rather, she could, but wished she couldn’t.
With an aggrieved huff, Lena set down her glass and scooted up onto the counter. Teatime would somehow figure it out and yell at her later, but if she was going to have a conversation with a Goddess she needed all the hight she could get.
“Does…” She fumbled for the right shape of her question. “Does that happen to every immortal, or just the ditzy ones?”
Selene didn’t seem to notice the dig. “Some more than others. I think we all fancy ourselves the exception but… well, when you celebrate your millennial birthday and things all start to blur together. Oh, it was different back in old Greece.” She clutched her hands over her heart, her eyes going distant. “There were bold heroes and earthshaking prophecies. Gods rode to war or went on epic quests, rather than whiling away days in a glorified summer home.” She shook her head sadly. “Now, Zeus won’t even allow the few true heroes left on the island. It’s such a waste.”
“Right, but the immortality thing,” Lena pressed, in a possibly vain attempt to keep the Goddess on track. “All immortals go spacey? Lose track of people. Lose track of their lives?”
“I’d rather not dwell on it, if we’re honest,” Selene said, turning back to Lena. “It’s a concern of the gods, not mortals like yourself.”
“Yeah, right, mortals like myself.” Lena rubbed the back of her head. There had to be a way to ask the question without blurting things out.
“I’m not a mortal, though.” Damn. Well, in for a penny. “Or at least, not a person properly. I’m an unageing homunculus formed of shadow and dark magics and have looked like this ever since I was ‘born’ and that’s fine, I’m used to it, but if being unageing makes you lose track of time then I could just—then she could just—” Lena’s anxious babble faded as she struggled to find the words to express her fear.
For a short time, Selene looked at her like someone waiting for a punchline, then she moved to genuine concern for her sanity, before at last seeming to consider her serious. That was the worst option by far. The Goddess attention rose like a cresting wave, her power engulfing Lena as she glided across the kitchen to stand before her. She cocked her head, her gaze piercing Lena’s breast as inch by inch she dissected her soul. Lena adopted her best disinterested teenager expression as the examination grew ever more intense.
“Amazing,” Selene concluded at long last, and Lena found herself once again able to breathe freely. “I’ve met many magicians over my life and they would have all sworn you were impossible.”
Lena snorted. “Show’s what they know.”
“No, no. It’s a wonder. Creating life from naught but magic is supposed to be the domain of the gods alone. Yet here you are, and created by De Spell if I guess correctly?”
“Yeah.” Lena took a sudden interest in a lose thread on her cuffs. “She wanted a mindless shadow clone to get her out of Scrooges dime, messed it up as usual and ended up with me. Whoopty do.”
Selene giggled, which earned her a sour look. “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. More the irony of De Spell of all people achieving the holy grail of shadowmancy by accident. The fates truly do have a sense of humour.”
“Do they have a suggestion box? Because if so I have some complaints for them.”
That just earned her another laugh. “They do not, and if they did I’m sure they would only use it for their amusement.”
“Typical.” Lena paused, struck by an unsettling thought. If Selene was real, did that also imply that the Fates were? She elected not to dive into that existential mess. “So what’s your conclusion? Am I— Like you guys?”
“Not even close.” Selene gave her a fond smile. There was no derision in her tone merely a statement of fact. “But you are a being of magic, not flesh. I dare say time will stay its hand.”
Lena gave a shaky nod. It was, by all measures a good thing. Lena had faced death once before, even hell if one wanted to describe her twilight existence as Webby’s shadow in that way. She had no intention of going through either again any time soon. Yet the thought of remaining a permanent blot on the world—never growing, never changing, never being more than she was—felt like Magica had ripped her heart out all over again.
“That’s…” Lena took in a deep breath and held it until her chest grew tight and she let it go. “I kind’a hoped that I’d be getting more and more like a person,” she said, in a very small voice. “Now that I’ve stepped out of Magica’s shadow. I’ve got my own family, my own magic, I’ve been getting my own life, you know? I was hoping that maybe I’d start doing other things too. Like, I breathe, I bleed, I get tired and sleep. I figured that maybe one day I’d get older.”
“Oh…” Selene shuffled in place.
Lena stared at her own hands, a spark of magic running through them and staining the feathers a brilliant blue. They still remained the same beneath the perlecent sheen, the magic merely skin deep.
“I’ve got this friend,” Lena said abruptly. “I’ve got a couple friends now, but this one’s special. She’s… I think she’s got a crush on me and that’s fine, she’ll either grow out of it or—“ Lena didn’t know how to complete that thought. “But I won’t grow out of it. Soon she’s going to catch up to me and then she’s going to grow up. She’s going to go to college, and then see the world. She’s going go on new adventures I can’t even imagine and I’ll be stuck. Here. This.” Lena took a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut.” “I can’t do that to her. I can’t be an anchor on her life.”
Selene let out a long sigh. Reaching out she put a hand on Lena’s shoulder, meeting the young duck’s eyes. “Would you like my advice as a friend or as a goddess?”
Lena paused. “What’s the difference?”
“The former is more comforting, the later perhaps more useful.” Selene smiled at her.
“Goddess then.” Lena had never cared much for her own comfort.
“Very well.” Selene stood up straight, arching her back and craning her neck so that she towered above Lena. The world shifted ever so slightly, and a breath of magic as cold and distant as the moon washed over Lena. “You have two choices. The first is to live your life as the immortals. Love, laugh and cherish those that share your life. Know in your heart that they will always leave you, no matter how much you may wish otherwise, and trust that once you can no longer share their days there will be another to bring you the same joy.”
Lena shuddered. It was abhorrent. Inhuman. Unfeeling. The thought that there could ever be another one like Webby—that the brightest light Lena had ever found could be replaced. “No,” she declared, shaking her head. “No. Never.”
“Then you must search for the second option. Embrace change in every form. Don’t just exist, fight with every fibre of your being to be, and to be as you will.”
“Urgh, I just told you. I can’!” Lena threw up her hands. “I can’t change.”
“Lena.” The countenance of the goddess flickered and for a moment Selene favoured her with a fond smile. “You are a creature of magic, and an impossibility even then. You will, because you must. The fates bless us ageless ones with so few who drive us to be more than what we are. You already know she is worth fighting for is, that is more than most of us manage, now all that’s left is the act itself.”
“But I—“
Selene held up a single finger, cutting Lena off.
“I can’t—“ Lena tried again only to be similarly shushed. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at the goddess. “Look—“
“Ut-ah. Don’t talk, do.”
Lena opened her mouth. Closed it. Took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
She had no idea how, but for Webby she would figure it out.