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When Laudna heads below the deck of the skyship, the noise almost instantly vanishes – the clamor of the others, the whip-whistling of the wind, all gone. Before Imogen, Laudna had found quiet spaces disconcerting; then she suddenly had Imogen, and the quiet became a refuge: a place to bring Imogen to, to coax her back into gentleness, to carefully rub the headache from her temples. And so Laudna gravitates to the quiet now – through the cramped and sadly undecorated hallways, to the farthest end of the ship, to the door that is – of course – closed.
Imogen is, sometimes: a closed door. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident – it’s only that she’s been an open door for such a long time that she wants to be something, anything else. She wants to be something that has a lock on it. She wants to choose who she lets inside. Impossible to blame her; in fact, it has made Laudna ache for her consistently for the last two years and change.
It’s only that it’s strange, now, to be on the other side of the door. To not know if it will open for her.
Laudna swallows, raps her knuckles lightly on the wood. “Imogen?”
There’s a moment, and then she hears: Yeah?
Imogen’s mental voice is a distillation of her voice, crystalline and clear – but Laudna can tell when she’s using it to hide the fact that she’s been crying.
“I just wanted to see if you were alright,” Laudna says. “And if you want tea.”
Fuck, she hasn’t brought tea. She should have brought tea. “Well,” she says, “actually, I don’t – I can probably make it in there, if you want, I only thought – oh, I’m being silly. Do you want me to leave you alo—”
Click click click and the door opens. The purple light of Imogen’s magic fades from the handle.
“Alright,” Laudna says, and she steps inside. She closes the door behind her. “Should I lock it?”
“I dunno,” Imogen says. Her physical voice is all snotty and stuffed-up. Laudna locks the door, walks around the bed; Imogen has wedged herself between the bed and the wall, and is curled up into a miserable little ball. The locket winks a coy silver eye at Laudna from Imogen’s hands.
“Hello, darling,” Laudna says softly. “Here, let me—” and she briskly strips the blanket from the bed and crawls onto the mattress so she can drape the blanket over Imogen’s shoulders. “It’s cold up here, isn’t it?”
“Haven’t noticed.”
“Shit. That was a sincere question, you know I can’t feel the cold.”
A quiet, snuffly little chuckle escapes. “Yeah, Laudna, it’s cold.” And sure enough, Imogen grabs onto the blanket and pulls it tighter around herself – as best she can, given the little space she has tucked herself inside. The messy purple haystack of her hair makes Laudna ache in an impossible way. Sometimes the light hits Imogen in a way that makes Laudna feel undone and unraveled. Imogen: some fey, some angel, some creature from a dream. Too good to possibly be from Exandria, not the Exandrian dirt that birthed Matilda and Laudna. Of course Imogen would have had to come from somewhere else – it makes sense, everything everyone has said about her. Exaltant. Yes, yes. When she looks like that. When she laughs, when she tucks her hair behind her ear. Exaltant, exalted, exultant.
Laudna bites her lip, reaches out, combs her fingers through Imogen’s hair; Imogen makes an almost-imperceptible sound, leans into the touch. “Oh, darling,” Laudna says. (She continues to stroke Imogen’s scalp.) “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know,” Imogen says. “It didn’t – it wasn’t bad, right? He wasn’t mean. He didn’t throw us out. He gave me…” Her thumb rubs over the locket obsessively. She’s going to wear out the silver, eventually. Tarnish it. Except she won’t, obviously, because Laudna won’t let that happen. When Imogen is sleeping, she’ll polish it. Every night. She’ll make it shine. Easy.
Laudna swallows. “I mean…” she attempts. “Just because he didn’t, you know, the pitchforks…I only mean that, you can – if you’re upset, that’s—”
“I’m not upset,” Imogen says stubbornly. “That’s silly.”
“It really isn’t.”
“He loves me.”
“He’d better.”
“It was good,” Imogen says desperately. “Seein’ him again.”
Laudna takes pity: “And Flora.”
“Yeah.” Just mentioning the horse brings the smile into Imogen’s voice, floods it with golden light. She’s leaning her weight into the touch of Laudna’s fingers, where they’re scratching ever-so-lightly at her scalp. “You know, there’s probably no way Cynthia is takin’ care of her right? Flora doesn’t – she needs her food given to her in smaller portions, otherwise she gets excited, eats it all at once – then she gets gassy – Laudna, I swear, if you could smell that horse’s shit—”
“Like this?” Laudna says, and casts Thaumaturgy; Imogen gags with her whole body, tips her head back onto Laudna’s lap to look up at her with sparkling eyes.
“That’s disgusting,” she says. “Where’d you even – you know what, don’t tell me where you smelled somethin’ like that. Just take it away, please.”
“Alright, alright.” Laudna changes the scent to lavender; she strokes her thumbs lightly down Imogen’s face, clearing up the tracks of her tears. “Sweet girl. I’m so sorry about all of this mess.”
“It’s not your fault,” Imogen says. Her voice is a cobweb that glitters with dew.
“Well,” Laudna says, “some of it is my fault. They wouldn’t have…if I hadn’t shown up to Gelvaan—”
“—then I would have died there,” Imogen says easily. “Laudna, none of this is your fault. Okay?”
“Well, some of it.”
“Laudna.”
“A little bit of it.”
“Laudna.”
“Imogen.”
“Laudna.” The smile has settled into Imogen’s mouth; her shoulders are relaxed, just slightly. “Are you the one who made a cult to blow up the moon?”
When she sees Laudna’s disgusted expression, Imogen laughs. Beautiful. She’s so beautiful.
“No,” Laudna sniffs, “I didn’t do that. Eugh. Their whole plan sounds so tacky when you say it out loud. No, Imogen, I’m not in favor of breaking the moon open and eating all the gods. Or anything like that, really.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Now you say it back.”
Imogen huffs warmly; her smile grows. “Laudna. Just to let you know. I’m not in favor of breaking the moon open and eating all the gods.”
“Good,” Laudna says, “because if you were, you know I would go with you, and I’m not sure I could stomach being a part of another apocalypse…solstice…thing. Like, I just don’t think my body would hold up.”
Imogen’s face twitches through several feelings in quick succession, and then goes completely still. Her eyes are wide and luminous and cold. “You would go with me?”
“I mean, yes,” Laudna says, “obviously. What, do you think I would – like, fight you? Imogen. In what world.”
“You wouldn’t stop me?” Imogen says, and Laudna realizes – with a sudden, sharp swoop of nausea – that she is on a tightrope,
and she didn’t notice until she was halfway across. Now she’s here, in the open air, and Imogen is staring at her from the other side, and her face is empty. Laudna is wobbling on that tightrope and she is standing on the deck of a skyship with a shattered rock in her hand and she is here, in their little cabin, with Imogen watching and waiting for her to give her an answer. Imogen’s eyes are like handfuls of violets in boiling water.
“No,” Laudna says slowly, “I wouldn’t stop you.”
“What if I wanted to destroy the world?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Imogen says, her voice sweet and terribly sour. “Sometimes.” Then: “You wouldn’t—”
“No,” Laudna says again. “I don’t think I would.”
Imogen makes a sharp little snarling sound, jerks away from Laudna’s touch and pulls the blanket over her head. She is a miserable, feral little lump; Laudna loves her so deeply that it’s painful, it hurts her. The sweet pain mixes with the panicked pain – I said the wrong thing, I hurt her, I messed up, I hurt her – and leaves her dizzy and tipsy and terrified. She has done something wrong, but she doesn’t understand what it is and she can’t take it back, because it’s true: she would follow Imogen anywhere. If Imogen woke her up before dawn tomorrow and said we’re going back to the Feywild, fuck Exandria, I’m sick of this place, then Laudna would go with her without a second thought. She would write a hundred rhymes for Imogen, and force Imogen to memorize them, and then Imogen wouldn’t be stopped by any gatekeeper or bramble wall. The only locks in the world would be the ones Imogen created for the door of herself, and everything else would be open to her.
But Imogen didn’t say let’s run away. Imogen didn’t say let’s blow it all up. Imogen went to the Feywild and tangled with a dragon and went to Gelvaan and talked to her father – all of these impossible, terrifying things – because she wants to save the world. So Laudna wants to save the world too, but secondarily; mostly, she wants to save Imogen.
She swallows, reaches out, puts a hand on some miscellaneous part of Imogen that’s covered by the blanket. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Don’t be sorry, Imogen says. Her mental voice is even and controlled; her body is shaking.
“What did you want me to say?”
Imogen makes another miserable little sound; she snuffles for breath, and at the same time she says: That is what I wanted you to say. She shudders when she says it, and the sobs escalate back into crying.
He didn’t— she says, he didn’t go with her. He didn’t take me along, he didn’t let her take me. He just let her go. I can’t – I want to believe he loved her, he loves her, he loves me, but how can I – when he just – and I should, I should, Laudna – I want you to come with me, I want you here with me, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Laudna bites her lower lip, considers, thinks at Imogen: Don’t worry about the sounds.
The what?
Laudna takes on her Form of Dread; her body flattens, thins, reaches its thousand hungry hands out into the world. As a tree, she is able to slither between Imogen and the wall and engulf her. Surround her in branches – not a cage, but a cradle.
You don’t have to, Imogen says. You don’t—
“Shh,” Laudna says, and the wind whispers through the branches of her: shh, shh. “I want to be here with you. Can’t you tell?”
I, Imogen says, I, and she fights a hand free of the blanket and twines her fingers through Laudna’s branches. Laudna.
“Hm?”
“I don’t know,” Imogen says weakly. “I don’t remember what I wanted to say.”
Which is a lie, which is obviously a lie. But Imogen’s voice is trembling, so Laudna lets herself believe in it. “That’s alright,” she replies. “It’s been quite a long day, hasn’t it?”
“Ha. Long week.”
“Mhm. Let’s just sit for a moment. And then I’ll make you some tea.”
Imogen snuffles, twists herself around impatiently until she can find the crook of Laudna’s shoulder – the place the bark has grown to match the shape of her head, so it’s comfortable for her to rest there. Laudna doesn’t know if Imogen knows, that Laudna’s body remade itself for her. She feels strangely shy about bringing it up. As if Imogen doesn’t already know, all the ways that she has changed Laudna’s shape just by being with her. Just by being willing to love her back.
If she was married to Imogen, had a child with Imogen – a little baby, with Matilda’s hair and Imogen’s eyes – and Imogen had to go, to save the world or to break it…well, Laudna would take the baby and go with her. She wouldn’t think twice about it. In the wreckage of a fallen city, in the shadowy dark pits of the Shadowfell, in the gardens of sweet and poisonous Feywild flowers – it doesn’t matter, Laudna would be there. She would rub the tension from Imogen’s temples. She would make her tea. She would teach their child how to walk, how to cast spells, how to say I love you. And then Imogen would never once be unsure of it: the fact that she is loved.
Just in case, Laudna says it now: “I love you, you know.”
Imogen doesn’t answer, which is alright. Laudna rests her chin on Imogen’s head, continues. “I love you no matter who or what you are, or where you’re going. So…I know there are a few things you have to worry about, because, you know, moon shit, but you don’t have to worry about that. Ever. Alright?”
Imogen still doesn’t answer; she just breathes into Laudna’s shoulder in silence, even though the Form of Dread has withered and Laudna’s shoulder is now just a knob of damp bone. After a very long silence, she says: I love you too. In the quietest possible whisper. Like she has to hide it. Like she can only admit it if no one can see it, including herself.
Laudna opens her door; she lets the words skitter into her brain and hide somewhere, in the shadows and the dusty drop-cloths. She tucks them in there, keeps them safe, says: “Do you want me to do the Form again?”
“No,” Imogen says, “that’s – that’s sweet of you, but you don’t have to.” She rests her hot forehead against Laudna’s throat. “I would, um, if it isn’t too much trouble. I would like tea.”
“Alright,” Laudna says. “I’ll make us some tea in a minute.”
“We should have bought tea in Gelvaan,” Imogen says. “Shit.” She blinks; her wet eyelashes paint stripes against Laudna’s neck. “There’s actually a really good…” and her sentence trails off into silence, then picks up across the gap: “I’ll show you someday. After all of this is – you know. I think you’ll like it.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Laudna says.
“Yeah,” Imogen says quietly. “Me too.”