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There were not enough hours of sleep NOR enough apple blood in Eda's veins to be dealing with a freakout this early in the morning.
It had started out...well, if not peaceful, at least domestic. It was Friday, which meant Luz would be coming across from the Human Realm to spend the weekend once she finished her classes for the day. (Eda could not, for the life of her, understand why Luz insisted on subjecting herself to more SCHOOL when she'd already graduated from Hexside AND human kid school last spring.) Eda had woken up a bit earlier than usual–no, scratch that, a LOT earlier than usual–because of a faint humming someplace next to her.
Eda remembered teasing Raine about this when they were witchlings. "You're so musical that you hum and whistle even in your sleep, but you clam up as soon as you're onstage?" Back then it had just been a quirk. Cute, even. Eda had secretly enjoyed watching the outlines of filigrees and flowers trace themselves into the air as Raine's bard magic responded to their half-tuneless, drowsy humming. (Though of course she'd never admit as much.) Since the Day of Unity, though, since Belos and the Collector and everything they'd both thought they'd lost, Eda hadn't been the only one with recurring nightmares any more. And Raine's nightmares did not play nicely with their tendency to do bard spells in their sleep.
This time it looked like Eda had woken up before it got too bad–Raine's brow was furrowed and their forehead slicked with sweat, but only a few formless lines had begun to take shape in the space around their nest. Nothing with any real meaning behind it yet. Eda nudged Raine’s arm. "Hey. You keep that up and you're gonna wake Hooty, and nobody wants that this early."
Raine mumbled something that sounded like "promised" under their breath, wincing but not quite waking. Eda watched the line of magic nearest Raine’s head trace the outline of a familiar arm–the one that had been attached to her before the day of Unity, the one Raine had ripped off to save her. Eda grimaced and shook Raine’s shoulder gently. “C’mon, nerd, wake up.”
The threads of spell work on the air stuttered and dissipated like smoke on the wind as Raine’s eyes flickered open. "Wha–oh. Was I doing it again?"
Eda briefly considered lying. She knew Raine well enough to know that they already felt bad for the other two times they'd woken her up that night alone. But then again, Raine knew HER well enough that she probably wouldn't be able to fool them. So instead she tried to play it off with a shrug. "To be fair, it's not as if we don't all have enough nightmare fuel to last us the rest of our living days, Rainestorm."
Raine sat up and groped one hand towards the nightstand in search of their glasses. Eda took a quick inventory while they weren't able to see the look of open concern on her face. (You have gone soft, Owl Lady.) Raine seemed absolutely spent. The shadows under their eyes could've put Hunter's to shame. Although Eda could empathize with a proclivity towards nightmares–Titan knew she'd had plenty of nightmares in her day, and would have plenty more–she wished she knew why Raine's had kicked up so much more recently. It had been bad right after the Day of Unity, and then again when Luz and the other kids had made it back from the Human Realm and they'd all faced the Collector. But that had been years now. Since then, Raine would wake screaming or sobbing with a nightmare still playing out around them about once a month, maybe? Until the last week or two, when suddenly they were suffering nightly. Sometimes, like today, more than once a night. That didn't just come from nowhere, did it?
Eda schooled her expression as Raine slid their specs onto the bridge of their nose and met her gaze. "Regretting letting me stay over so often yet?" they ventured with an attempt at a smirk. It wobbled into a guilty frown halfway through.
"I'm regretting not kicking Belos in an unmentionable place when I had the chance," Eda retorted. "For a number of reasons, but this is certainly one of them.”
She’d meant it to make Raine laugh, but instead they did that thing where their nose wrinkled up and their eyes went all sad and distant. “Did you want to talk about it?” she prompted, reaching across to touch Raine’s nearest hand.
Raine shook their head, using their free hand to wipe an errant tear from the corner of one unfairly-green eye. “It’s nothing new. Just bad memories.”
“Tell me about it.” Eda faux-trust-fell sideways so that her head flopped directly into Raine’s lap (which, to her gratification, did make them chuckle a bit). “The least our brains could do is come up with some new material, huh?”
Raine began idly combing their fingers through Eda’s hair, which made her go warm all over and temporarily forget that she was trying to cheer them up/distract them. What was she, a lovesick teenager? “I just…I’m just thankful that we all made it out okay, in the end.”
“What were you gonna say?”
“What?”
Eda narrowed her eyes at them. “You hesitated, and then you did your ‘it could be worse’ bit. What were you gonna say before you hesitated?”
They hesitated again, but this time it was because an enormous yawn got the better of them. “Just that I’m tired,” they said when they could speak again, pushing up their glasses so they could rub their eyes. “Which is probably obvious, so I decided not to say it.”
"Hmmmmm."
Raine narrowed their eyes. "Don't love the tone that's snuck into your voice there."
"What tone?"
"The 'I have a really bad idea' tone."
"Excuse you. I have nothing but great ideas. Speaking of which, I have a great idea for how to get you a few decent hours of sleep and maybe even work through some of these recurring nightmares." Eda was banking on the combination of Raine's sleep-deprived brain and her fast-talking saleslady voice to keep Raine from getting out ahead of the idea, but–
"Please don't say sleeping nettles."
Damn. Raine always had been sharper than her. "Why not? They'll keep you asleep."
"As much as I'd kill for a normal night's rest, Eda, if I'm having horrific nightmares I'd just as soon have an eject button."
"And that's why you keep having them!" Eda realized she'd gotten a bit louder than she meant to and lowered her voice a few notches. "Look, I used to have nightmares about the Owl Beast all the time. And it sounds completely backwards, but when Hooty drugged me with sleeping nettles that one time–"
"Wait, he did what?"
"--I ended up being able to confront some of the stuff I'd been running away from for years. That's how I figured out how to become Harpy Eda." Raine flushed a little in spite of themself. Eda smirked. "And I know you aren't complaining about that."
"Shut up," said Raine, giggling a bit shyly. The furtive smile faded swiftly, though, morphing back into that nervous, uncertain expression of theirs that made Eda want to fight the entire Boiling Isles to protect them. "Just because it worked out for you in the end doesn't mean I'll have the same experience."
“Sooner or later you’ll be so tired you won’t wake up from a nightmare anyway.” Eda didn’t actually know if that was true or not, but Raine didn’t push back, so she assumed that she was right. (Or that they were too wiped out to fight her as much as they might otherwise, which worked out the same, so: she was still right, even if she was wrong.) “You know I wouldn’t suggest something that I thought would hurt you.”
“I know you wouldn’t intend for it to hurt me. You can be a dingus when it comes to risk taking behavior.”
“Now you sound like a Hexside guidance counselor.” Finally she got a full laugh out of them, not an anxious chuckle or a furtive giggle. Eda reached up and brushed Raine’s cheek with the back of her hand. “C’mon, Rainestorm. Too much more of this and you’re gonna be so shaky you hit your head or something. If you can face the Emperor in real life and walk away, you can deal with a few nightmares.”
Raine stifled a yawn so huge it made Eda’s jaw ache. “...okay,” they said when they were able to speak again. “But if I end up trapped in flashback nightmares for four hours, you owe me big time.”
Not wanting to give them enough time to change their mind, Eda went downstairs to brew up some sleeping nettle tea. She had it on hand mostly for the times when notorious-insomniac Hunter tagged along with Luz to visit. Though these days she kept it in a box that Raine had spelled so that she was the only being who could open it. Even though she enjoyed being able to turn into a harpy woman, she wasn’t taking any more chances on Hooty using it for his own weird purposes.
King was sprawled out on the couch, still sleeping peacefully. He had his own room, but Eda suspected he wanted to be the first person Luz said hi to whenever she got here, and so had positioned himself as close to the front door as possible. Eda tucked a corner of the blanket that was drooping off his shoulder back into place before making her way to the kitchen.
Just the scent of the tea as it steeped made Eda yawn, so she grabbed a pack of apple blood from the fridge and downed it in several gulps. She probably could go back to bed for a bit before Luz arrived if she wanted to, but she’d prefer to stay alert in case Raine did start to have another nightmare. She likely wouldn’t be able to wake them thanks to the sleeping nettles, but maybe she could at least sit with them and comfort them.
She half-expected Raine to have already nodded off again by the time she got back upstairs, but they were still sitting up, knees drawn up to their chest and chin resting on their folded arms. Eda felt a pang as she noticed the tears that had reappeared in their eyes, which they wiped away quickly as she approached. “Is this what you do when you wake up from a bad dream alone?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light as she handed the mug across to them.
Raine hiccupped and shrugged. They had a flat in the capital where they stayed when they were teaching bard classes, but at this point they stayed at the Owl House more often than not. Still, Eda hated imagining Raine waking up screaming as they sometimes did, painful images still hanging in the air around their empty bed, and having no one to make them laugh or hold them. “Sometimes,” they admitted, looking down at the tea mug balanced in their lap. “Sometimes I try to play something lighthearted to distract myself.”
“Does that help?”
Raine nodded.
Eda rummaged through the trunk across from the nest for a moment and pulled out her lute. “Here’s the deal, then. I’ll play something stupid, and you drink your tea. Ideally try to drink it fast enough that you don’t pass out and spill half of it. Fair?”
“And ideally you try to play fast enough that we don’t start to dissolve into black sludge,” said Raine, which meant yes.
“Then I guess you better drink extra fast.” Eda lifted the lute and began to play the first tune that came to mind, which turned out to be one of those obnoxiously-catchy songs that Luz liked to blast when she was getting ready in the morning. Eda didn’t even realize she’d been mentally working out the chords for it before now, but she managed to play it pretty well, all things considered.
It didn’t take long for the curse to put in its two cents, and by the time Eda reached the end of the second chorus repetition she could feel a prickly cold sensation in her feet that meant she was starting to corrupt herself. She stopped playing and glanced over at Raine. They’d dutifully drunk their tea down to the dregs and they’d gone a bit cross-eyed trying to keep watching Eda play even as the sleeping nettles began to take effect.
Eda set down the lute. “C’mon.” She eased Raine back into a comfortable position on the pillows. “Try to think happy thoughts or something. Maybe that’ll keep your dreams more pleasant.”
Raine’s eyelids were drooping, but they reached up and (clumsily) found Eda’s hand. “I don’t have to think happy thoughts when you’re with me.”
“You’re such a sap,” said Eda, even though her cheeks were burning. “Go to sleep before I hit you over the head and speed up the whole process.”
She tucked the blankets around their shoulders like she’d done with King. Already half asleep, Raine mumbled, “Love you, Eda.”
They’d said it before. And Eda had said it back. Many times. But it still somehow made Eda squirm every time, half with giddy delight and half with that old instinct that letting people love her was a bad idea. This wasn’t the time or place to interrogate those thoughts, though. So Eda just brushed a strand of turquoise hair back from Raine’s forehead so she could kiss it and whispered back, “Love you too, nerd. Sweet dreams.”
Eda wasn’t even sure Raine heard her, as their breathing had already evened out and their expression had smoothed into an exhausted sort of peacefulness. Eda sat with them for a few moments, straining her ears for any note of sleep-humming and watching the air for any spellwork. But it seemed as though, finally, Raine was sleeping deeply and without the intrusion of nightmares. Eda let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. Okay. They’re good.
Rattling around too much downstairs would probably wake King, so Eda busied herself tidying up in the room next door to her own. After they’d repaired and rebuilt the house, Eda had decided to set this room aside for King and Luz. It was more King’s room than Luz’s, since he lived there full time and Luz was usually only here on the weekends. Luz’s side of the room was more orderly, if only because its occupant was in and out less frequently. King’s side, as usual, looked like it had been hit by a gorenado. Eda rolled her eyes, but she was secretly kind of glad to have something to do while she was the only one awake in the house. She started corralling King’s stuffed animals and had just gotten them lined up at the foot of his bed when she heard a faint tune through the shared wall between King and Luz’s room and hers. And it wasn’t just humming–it was full-on singing, though Eda couldn’t make out any actual words.
She probably didn’t need to run–after all, Raine was asleep for better or for worse, and two seconds wouldn’t make a difference in terms of whatever nightmare they were having–but she still ran, heart hammering in her chest as if she was the one having the nightmare. She braced herself for the horrors that were no doubt taking shape around her beloved bard’s sleeping form: Terra Snapdragon puppeteering vines like some evil instrument, Belos with his all-too-charming smile, the Collector giggling as they made a chaotic mess of their surroundings.
None of that greeted her as she skidded to a stop in the doorway. Instead, standing at the foot of the nest, were two familiar outlines. One was lithe and moved with a dancer’s grace–unmistakably a dream-shadow of Raine themself. The other was a bit taller, with a bushy mane of hair that fell to its waist and one arm that was severed at the elbow.
Eda blinked. Maybe Raine had fallen right back into the same nightmare they’d been having when she woke them before–of the moment when they’d thought she was dying during the Draining Spell, when they’d pulled off her arm to save her from the very magic that was killing them, too. But as she watched, Raine’s nonsense singing compelled their dream counterpart to shuffle back and forth anxiously. Its behavior struck her as more similar to panicking-during-a-performance-Raine, not life-or-death-heroics-Raine.
“What about us has you so scared, Rainestorm?” Eda murmured, starting to move towards the nest. But she was arrested in place as dream-Raine knelt before dream-Eda and pulled something out of its pocket, holding it up to dream-Eda shyly.
“WHAT?!” Eda blurted, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Raine’s singing broke for a second and the outlines flickered and shimmered as they mumbled restlessly, losing the tune. Eda felt like bursting into flames, but she managed to sit on the edge of the nest and stroke Raine’s hand gently. “It’s okay. Shh.”
The furrow in Raine’s brow smoothed, and Eda watched as her dream self tossed its head proudly and turned away. Raine’s dream self slumped, dropping the object it had been holding out–a ring box–and covering its face with its hands. In the nest, the real Raine whimpered and curled up more tightly, almost hugging themself in their sleep.
A better partner would have stayed in the room and continued to coo reassurances until Raine was quiet and peaceful again. But within herself Eda could feel the Owl Beast stirring in response to her brain short-circuiting and her heart pounding, and that wasn’t going to help anybody. So she sprinted out of the room as quickly as she’d sprinted in and all but slammed the door behind her, leaning against the hallway wall and putting a hand over the jewel at her chest.
“Okay, okay, we don’t need to be freaking out about this,” she said under her breath. Whether she was talking more to the Owl Beast or her own stupid heart, she couldn’t be sure. “It was just a dream. It doesn’t actually mean that the Raine Whispers is planning to–or even wants to–propose?” Her voice came out foolishly squeaky on that last word. Guess she was a lovesick teenager after all.
And right on cue, she heard the front door bang open and King’s delighted shout of greeting from downstairs. Eda groaned, rubbing her eyes. She hadn’t had enough apple blood or enough sleep for this. “But it’s fine,” she told herself. “Nobody needs to know. Especially not Luz Meddle-in-other-people’s-romantic-lives Noceda.”
***
“RAINE WANTS TO PROPOSE TO YOU?!”
“Would you shush?” Eda hissed. She had no idea how Luz had managed to pry it out of her within ten minutes of arriving on the scene, except that Point A had been Luz noticing that Eda was WAY too interested in hearing every gory detail about her History of Poetry midterm, Point B had been Eda attempting to insist that she just wanted to make sure that Luz wasn’t getting into any trouble over there where Eda couldn’t hear about it and be proud, and now here they were at Point F and Eda had accidentally somehow told Luz the exact thing she’d been planning to avoid talking about. “They’re still asleep upstairs and the last thing we need is you waking them! For at least three reasons!”
“I thought you said they’d taken sleeping nettles,” said King with a smirk in his voice. “They’re asleep for awhile and you’re stuck with–”
“Ohmygosh I wonder if they already have the ring and everything???” Luz’s grin would’ve made one of those weird human pumpkins–a jock-o-lantern, Eda thought it was called?--go home and reassess its career choices. “Or wait, do you do engagement rings on the Boiling Isles, or something else? Like engagement teeth or something?”
“Ew,” said Eda. “No. We do rings.”
“I bet they already have one!” Luz elbowed King. “Kiiiiiiing you’re gonna have a new step-parent!”
“How do you say that in Spanish?” King demanded.
“Padrastro,” said Luz, booping the tip of King’s nose. “Or Madrastra. I wonder which Raine would prefer.”
“Raine doesn’t speak Spanish, and we don’t even know if they ACTUALLY want to propose!” Eda interjected. “All we know is that they had a nightmare about it, and I accidentally saw it.”
“Ooh, it wasn’t a good dream?” said King. “Rough way to find that out.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare because they were proposing! It was a nightmare because–” Eda made a conscious effort to stop the sentence in its tracks, but the signal didn’t reach her mouth in time, “--I was kinda turning them down?”
King and Luz made simultaneous sounds of dismay.
“That poor thing,” Luz said. “Maybe Amity can give them some tips. She was really scared I’d reject her when she wanted to ask me to Grom.” Then, brightening, “But that definitely means they want to propose to you, Eda!”
“Maybe Eda secretly does want to turn them down and that’s why she’s freaking out,” King suggested.
“I don’t know!” Eda exploded.
“Didn’t you ever daydream about getting married when you were a kid?” Luz asked.
“Well, you obviously did,” said Eda, rolling her eyes. “I bet you’ve wanted to be married since you were born.”
She’d hoped it would at least make Luz squirm a little, maybe get the attention off her own situation for a minute. But Luz just nodded solemnly. “I think I wrote a story about marrying Prince Eric from the Little Mermaid when I was like…five years old?”
“There’s mermaids in the human realm?” King interjected.
Luz giggled. “I wish. What about you, King? Ever thought about finding somebody special?”
“Gross. Titans don’t do romance.”
Eda strongly suspected that this was just his ew-gross-romance-teenagehood talking–none of them had any way of knowing whether Titans usually partnered up, seeing as how King was the only living one they’d ever met. “I never really thought about it when I was a kid,” she muttered. “I think if I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have wanted to get tied down. Lily talked about it, but I think it was mostly because she thought it was what Mom wanted to hear. Can you picture that nerd having eyes for anything besides her boring history books? Pfft.”
Again, the ploy to divert Luz’s attention didn’t work. “I bet she’d make an amazing maid of honor though! If that’s a thing you do in the Boiling Isles. Eda, you have to tell me all about weddings in the Boiling Isles before Raine wakes up and proposes to you!”
Eda wanted to toss off another snarky response, but the thought that Raine might propose to her that day hadn’t occurred to her yet. She’d assumed that they were entertaining the idea for some distant future date, not IMMEDIATELY.
“Eda’s all red,” King noted smugly.
“I–am–not!” Eda said through gritted teeth. “Can we take maybe seven steps back in this whole conversation? I haven’t even had my apple blood yet, and I didn’t get nearly enough sleep–”
“I’ve got it!” Luz was already on her feet and scurrying for the kitchen before Eda could stop her.
Eda groaned and collapsed onto the couch, rubbing her temples. Beside her, King tossed the stuffed panda he’d been fiddling with onto the floor and straightened up to look at her. “You’re still red,” he informed her.
“And you’re still obnoxious.” Eda shot a sidelong glance at him. “Would you really be okay with it? If–you know.”
“What, if you and Raine got married? I thought you didn’t know if you wanted to say yes or not.”
“I don’t!” Reminding herself to keep her octave and volume to a more reasonable level, Eda went on, “But even if they did ask, and even if I did consider it, I’d never say yes without checking with you, King.”
King shrugged, though when he spoke next Eda could tell by his tone that he was touched. “They already stay with us half the week anyway. It wouldn’t be that different. Plus they make you happy.”
“Apple blood delivery!” Luz crashed back into the room and pressed a container of apple blood into Eda’s hands. “Okay so Raine though.”
Eda jammed the straw into the container and took several large gulps in rapid succession. “Raine though.”
She was (somewhat) prepared for Luz to keep asking her sappy questions about wedding traditions in the Boiling Isles. She was not prepared for the direct, sincere, cutting question that Luz asked instead: “What’re you scared of?”
“I’m not SCARED,” Eda protested, with a bit more heat than she’d intended. “I just–it’s Raine. And me.”
Luz and King waited for Eda to elaborate. When she didn’t, Luz prompted gently, “And?”
“And Raine is the fiercest witch on the Boiling Isles, and I’m just–me.”
“Hey.” Luz’s expression was surprisingly stern all of a sudden. “Don’t talk about my mentor that way. She’s amazing.”
Eda rolled her eyes. “But Raine could be with anyone. ”
“They almost died to rescue you,” King chimed in, with the sarcastic tone of a teenager who was delighted to be reminding his parent of the obvious. “Pretty sure they’ve picked you to be with, Eda.”
“And they’ve been with you for years now,” said Luz. “Getting married just means they want to celebrate being committed to you.”
“But what if they commit to me and then they regret it?” Oh no. This was exactly why Eda hadn’t wanted Luz to know about the (potential) proposal. She’d started talking about her FEELINGS, and now she wasn’t sure she could stop. “What if they realize in ten years that they should’ve found another bard or at least someone with working magic, or what if I accidentally turn into the Owl Beast and hurt them, or they get sick of waking up with feathers all over the bed, or–”
“Whoa whoa whoa,” Luz interrupted, putting her hand on Eda’s. “Take a breath.”
“I was already breathing,” Eda muttered, but she took a few deep breaths when Luz glared at her reproachfully.
“First of all, okay, so you drop feathers sometimes. King sheds fur. Would you get so annoyed with him that you’d kick him out?”
“I’m not married to King,” said Eda.
“Gross,” said King.
“Answer the question.”
“No, of course I wouldn’t.”
“There you go,” said Luz. “If feathers were a dealbreaker for Raine, I don’t think they’d be spending half their weeks here voluntarily, do you?”
“I–”
“Second of all,” Luz went on without waiting for Eda. “Have you accidentally turned into the Owl Beast even once since we came back from the human realm?”
Well…no, come to think of it, she hadn’t. There had been a few close calls. But overall, she and the Owl Beast had been getting along rather well in the last few years. Eda wouldn’t exactly call them friends, but they were at least decent roommates sharing the same messed-up body. “No,” she admitted, sounding a bit petulant. “But it could happen.”
“And if it did, where do you think that Raine would want to be? Far away and safe?”
Eda groaned. It was truly unfair how much sense Luz could make when she put her mind to it. “No, they’d want to be right next to me like the reckless sap that they are.” I seem to collect reckless saps, she thought with a glance at Luz.
“Again, they almost died for you,” King interjected gleefully. (Eda could not WAIT for him to get through adolescence…though with no real sense of how long Titans usually lived, she had no way of knowing how long she’d be living with 40%-more-sass King. Hopefully he’d hit young adulthood before she died of old age.)
“And lastly,” Luz continued doggedly, “as far as Raine wanting someone with ‘working’ magic…Eda, do you really think that Raine doesn’t see magic when they look at you?”
Eda covered her face with her hand to hide the stupid blush that spread across her cheeks. “Save those lines for your girlfriend, will you? I bet you’ve already got seven or eight different plans for how to propose to her.”
Through her fingers, Eda was gratified to see that she’d finally managed to turn the tables and make Luz squirm a little. “Well, actually…we have talked about it a little.”
“What, getting married? You are WAY too young, little miss, and–”
“Not YET!” Luz squealed. “I mean–we both have things we want to do first. But we’ve talked about when we want to get engaged, and we both kind of want to have a chance to propose to each other.”
“Two for the price of one, I like it,” said King. “Can I help with yours?”
“Of course!” said Luz, squeezing King. “I’ll want everyone I love to be there.”
“Why would you do that to yourself twice?” Eda demanded.
“We figured we’d both want to be the one doing the proposing, so why not do it twice?” Luz wagged a finger at Eda. “Besides, don’t change the subject. We were talking about you and Raine.”
The distraction couldn’t have lasted forever, Eda supposed.
“Tell me the truth. Without all of the bluster and fear of commitment and everything–”
“I do NOT have a fear of commitment,” Eda muttered.
“--if Raine proposed to you right now, would you want to say yes or no?”
It brought yet another blasted flush to her face to think about. But in spite of herself, Eda found herself imagining it. The look of bashful hope on Raine’s face. The way they’d no doubt stammer through whatever saccharine things they’d want to say. The feeling of their delicate-yet-firm hands clasping hers as they slipped a ring onto her finger.
“You’re red again,” King said without looking up.
“King,” Luz chided, trying and failing to suppress a smile. “But he’s right. If your expression is any indication, Eda, I don’t think Raine has anything to worry about.”
Damn if the kid didn’t have a point. It was still patently terrifying to think about Raine proposing, but…Eda supposed that she wouldn’t say no, if they did. That, however, brought a new worry to the forefront of her mind. “But they think they do.”
“Can’t exactly blame them. You looked like you were gonna have three separate heart attacks when you first came downstairs,” said King.
Eda looked down at her right arm, and the void just below the elbow where her hand should be. She thought about everything Raine had done for her ever since they were kids, providing a soft place for her to land time and time again. And she thought about Luz–bighearted, impulsive, in-love-with-love Luz who was already planning two proposals. And all of a sudden, Eda knew what she needed to do.
***
Four hours later (four excruciating hours later), Eda was sitting next to Raine and impatiently biting her nails. The good news was that in the hour-and-change she’d been sitting with them, Raine hadn’t sleep-spelled anything, so they probably weren’t having any horrible nightmares. The bad news was that Eda’s nails were wrecked.
Just as she was considering getting up to pace, she felt Raine stirring next to her. They were slow to wake, and when their eyes finally fluttered open they looked for Eda before they did anything else. (Eda’s heart rate, already somewhere in buzzingbird range, decided to speed up even further.) “Hey,” they mumbled.
“Hey, hi, Rainestorm,” said Eda. (Was her voice higher-pitched than usual? It sounded higher-pitched than usual.) “How’d you sleep?”
If her voice was different at all, Raine seemed to be too groggy to notice yet. “Good, I think,” they said, reaching for their glasses. “At least I don’t remember any nightmares. I did have a weird dream that I was back in Hexside and couldn’t find my homework, but that’s pretty normal for–um. Eda?”
“Raine?”
“Any particular reason you’re dressed up like that?”
Eda looked down at the brown suit, red shirt, and yellow bowtie she’d donned in between her conversation with Luz and King and taking up her post next to Raine. “D-do I need an occasion?” Titans and toadstools, she was bad at this.
“I…suppose not?” Raine sat up as they adjusted their glasses on their nose, squinting at her. “But you also have the same expression I get when I’m about to perform, so I think I am going to ask for an explanation.”
Eda gulped. She’d thought of at least four different ways to say this eloquently, to explain what had happened and then to masterfully lead up to the question itself, but Raine was looking at her and she hadn’t slept enough and she found herself blurting out, “Do you want to get married?”
If Raine hadn’t been fully awake before, they were now. Their eyes went as wide as saucers and their pale cheeks flushed a bit. “I–what?”
“You can still propose to me later if you want to!” she added, feeling her own face grow hotter by the second. She was doing this all wrong. “I don’t mean to upstage you, it’s just that you were having a nightmare right after you fell asleep, and I saw that you were thinking about proposing, or at least dreaming about it? And you were worried that I’d turn you down, and I didn’t want you to have to sit around stewing about it so I just decided to…ask you first?”
Raine was roughly the color of a tomato at this point. They dropped their head into their hands. “I can’t believe I sleep-spelled all of that in front of you,” they groaned. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“I. Uh. Can’t help but notice you haven’t answered the question yet there, Rainestorm…”
“Oh!” Raine threw their hands away from their face, looking horrified. “Eda, of course! I’ve wanted to marry you for decades!”
Two feelings flooded Eda’s still-hammering heart at once: massive relief, and giddy delight. She managed to mask both with a sly smile. “Decades, huh?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Raine, hitting her shoulder lightly. “When we were younger, I knew you wouldn’t say yes because of the curse. And then after everything that happened with Belos and the Collector, I just…wasn’t sure you saw yourself getting married.”
“I didn’t,” said Eda. “Until I realized you wanted to ask.”
“We’re both a couple of idiots who deserve each other, I guess,” said Raine, giggling a little. Then they looked down at themself and groaned again. “Titan. I just got engaged and I’m in my pajamas.”
“Excuse you, you look adorable in pajamas.” Eda realized she was laying it on thick, and she didn’t care. She could’ve turned into Harpy Eda and flown all the way around the Boiling Isles right then. This proposal stuff wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. “But like I said, if you want to plan some over-the-top proposal later, I promise I’ll pretend to be surprised.”
“C’mere,” said Raine with a laugh. And then they were all tangled up together, Raine wiping tears from their eyes (happy tears this time, though), Eda snorting with laughter as she recounted how wildly excited Luz had been when she’d found out. Eventually Raine started to (purposefully) hum a sweet, nostalgic tune, which turned their bedroom into the hillside where they’d whiled away so many hours together as youngsters.
Before long, the adrenaline of the last four hours began to dwindle, and Eda drifted off with her head on Raine’s chest, feeling the gentle buzz of their voice in their ribcage against her ear. Raine dozed off again, too, their arms still twined around Eda’s shoulders.
It was the best either of them had slept in ages.