Chapter Text
She didn’t remember much from that night but what little she did remember, she didn’t like to recall. Faces, voices, colors blurred and ran together like watercolors bleeding in the rain, and her throat was screamed raw, her cries wrenched from her throat and played back to her in a sick echo.
Nothing felt real, like she was stuck in a disorienting nightmare that turned her life inside out. She was shivering cold, covered in the blood of her friends and family, inhaling smoke and ash, and screaming for it all to be over. In a matter of minutes, she was faced with the full brunt of an incomprehensible pain that bent and shattered and twisted at her sense of being.
She remembers one other detail, something that she will never forget for the rest of her life: the smell of wet fur.
“Oh dear heavens,” a bespectacled creature said, regarding her with curious sympathy. “Are you all right?”
“H—huh?” Powder said, rubbing her eyes. The owner of the voice in front of her barely reached above her head with her sitting down. The sight of him was just strange enough to break her out of her stupor.
“Were you hurt by the explosion? Oh dear.” he said, wringing his hands together.
“What … are you?”
“I’m a professor,” he said adjusting his spectacles with a sharp look, deftly ignoring what he was sure that she meant. “But that’s not important. My concern right now is to get you somewhere warm and safe. Is there a tavern nearby where you can dry off?”
The closest tavern was the Last Drop. At the thought of her empty home, a sickening wave of grief came back to the small girl and she was rendered inconsolable.
“Perhaps not…” he muttered softly to himself. “Well we do seem to find ourselves in unexpected circumstances, I suppose I must cut my trip to the Undercity short. Why don’t you come back with me, my dear, I can warm you up at a lovely café near my laboratory. Would that be okay?”
In a daze, she nodded, not quite registering what she was agreeing to but feeling some warm comfort in this eccentric stranger’s interest. He extended a hand to pull her up and she rushed over to wrap him in a hug.
“Oh!” he exclaimed in surprise as her small shaking frame wrapped her arms around him. “Well… thats quite alright,” he said, patting her back gingerly. “There, there”
She didn’t know how long they remained like that, her sobbing into his fur and him standing still; warm, solid and staying right there with her instead of disappearing through her fingers like everything else had that day. She took a step back with lungs heaving and mouth trembling and nodded.
“There we are. You feel better now that you got all that out?” He said gently, handing her a monogrammed handkerchief to dry her eyes with. She nodded again, the semblance of a small smile on her face. He smiled back.
“I’m a yordle, by the way. To answer your previous question.”
“A yordle” she breathed in disbelief. “And what’s your name?”
“Cecil B. Heimerdinger” he said, “but you can call me whatever is easiest for you.”
“I’m Powder,” she responded, grasping his hand with both of hers, serving as both a handshake and a wordless cue for him to lead the way.
The journey home felt surreal. Only a few blocks from the wreckage, the rest of the undercity was carrying on as usual. The smell of food, whiskey, cigarettes, and warm bodies gradually replaced the acrid burning of smoke. They had no idea that her life had just been smashed to pieces, her family torn apart by blood and rubble. She put her head down, and clung tightly to her small savior, counting their footsteps as they walked through the noisy city.
“How much further is it?” she dared to ask.
“Just beyond the bridge.”
She stopped still. “You don’t live in the Lanes?”
He looked back at her gently, “I do not. I’m afraid it will be a bit longer of a walk ahead of us.”
Powder braced her legs against the floor. She could run back if she needed to. She had each alley, route and passageway memorized. She’d run the streets of Zaun with her sister, Mylo, and Claggor enough times to be able to make it on her own. She could survive if she needed to, she could survive alone.
Heimerdinger seemed to understand the thoughts thrashing violently in her head. “Would you rather I take you somewhere here? Closer to your home?”
Her mind was filled with a flash of smoke and the echo of screams. She smelled the ash and sickening metallic blood on her clothes. She shook her head and buried it into his side.
“If you’re sure…” he said.
She kept her head down and her eyes closed. She felt the way the floor beneath her feet changed from uneven rocks to smooth paverstones, but she didn’t dare open her eyes, on the bridge or anywhere else. She couldn’t stand to see any more ghosts.