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Occtis Tachonis, eighth, latest and (according to everyone in his family) least of his House has been staring at the dead moth on his desk for at least a half an hour.

The moth, an Eight Spotted Skull Moth to be precise, is a beautiful example of its kind. Death has not changed the beauty of its deep brown wings, and the white and gray eyespots that do indeed look like skulls if you’re inclined to see skulls are perfect in their symmetry. It will look lovely once Occtis mounts it onto the board with the rest of his growing moth collection. There’s work to be done before that, positioning the wings and such, but Occtis has done none of it. Instead, he tries to repeat the hand gestures he’s seen his siblings use, says the words he’s heard them say. When his siblings do this, the dead rise and walk. When he does it, nothing happens, not even the twitch of a wing.

The members of House Tachonis do not cry. Occtis, being the worst example of his house, feels the tears welling up and puts his head in his hands as if there was anyone around to see him. In the silence of a held back sob of despair and frustration, he can hear the litany of his sibling’s accomplishments. Petra and Ryah raised a pair of rats from the dead when they were only three years old. Frons commands soldiers both living and dead. Ethrand can create ghouls that not only won’t degrade within a week, not only take orders on the first try, but won’t strip the flesh of their creator the first chance they get. Occtis is nearly ten years old and can’t even make a dead moth flap its wings once.

“Oh wow, that moth’s almost as big as me!”

Occtis’s head snaps up at the unfamiliar voice as he hears himself make a very undignified, un-Tachonis like squeak of surprise. At first he thinks there’s a butterfly in his room, some species unfamiliar to him that appears to be glowing green in the afternoon sunlight. When he rubs the unshed tears from his eyes and can see more clearly, all he can do is stare.

The pixie, four inches tall, clad in a green top and short pants with mismatched boots, her shimmering wings more beautiful than any butterfly, moth, or dragonfly, stares back at him. She has short brown hair, a dusting of freckles across her nose and bare shoulders, and looks as old as some of his teenage cousins thought that might not mean anything. Faeries are supposed to be immortal, at least that’s what he’s read, and some look old and some look young forever and always.

“You’re a pixie,” Occtis says in awe, then flushes in embarrassment because that had been a rude and stupid thing to say. She knows what she is, obviously. “I-I’m sorry, I’ve only seen pixies in books and—” And in the east wing library where there several interesting specimens of smaller fae mounted on boards, very similar to Occtis’s insect collections. “—And in other books,” he finishes awkwardly. He gets up from his chair and bows, falling back on the manners that have been drilled into him. “My name is Occtis Tachonis, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The pixie darts a little bit closer and does something between a bow and a curtsey. “You can call me Thimble,” she tells him. “And I’m supposed to be waiting out in the gardens because faeries aren’t allowed inside the manor even though my partner Thjazi is in here talking with your dad, and it’s not fair because I’m his bodyguard and his best friend and besides it’s boring without anyone to talk to or play with, so I thought I’d sneak in and try to find him and your balcony doors were open and then I got excited because you’re a kid and I’m kinda sorta a kid for a fairy at least, and you have a lot of cool moths—”

Thimble’s words are a torrent, and it takes Occtis a moment for his mind to catch up with his ears. He doesn’t know the word dad, but when people come here it’s to talk to his father. Maybe dad is some sort of fairy slang or something. He’s not sure about the word kid either, but she hadn’t said it in a mean sounding way, so maybe it’s okay to be whatever that is. “Um— if your partner is meeting with my father they’re probably in the main receiving chamber? Or in his private study, depending on how well they know each other—”

“We haven’t been here before,” Thimble says quickly. “Thjazi says that the Tachonis family is dangerous and kinda creepy—” Her eyes, the same color as her wings, get bigger as she waves her hands. “I mean, not that you’re creepy, you seem all right, and you didn’t magic me for sneaking up on you or try to put me in a jar or anything. Not that I’d let you without a fight!” She gestures to two needles that she has belted to her hips. “Throat, eyeballs, ears, just like Thjazi taught me!”

“There’s also a place right at the back of the neck where a needle inserted just right could—” Occtis starts to say, eager to show off his knowledge of anatomy, then stops. “No, wait, what I was going to say is that if they’re in the main receiving chamber, there’s all these wards and glyphs that stop people from sneaking in. Not just people. One time a bird flew in through the window and it—” Occtis makes an emphatic gesture with his hands. “—Just dust and feathers. I don’t want you to turn to dust.”

“I don’t want to be dust,” Thimble agrees whole heartedly. “But it’s boring outside by myself. Can I stay in here with you? Or you could come outside and we could play hide and seek or something? I’m sooo good at hiding, but I’ll let you hide first if you want!”

“I’ve never played hide and seek,” Occtis says. What he doesn’t say is that while he knows the word from books, he’s never played anything with anyone. This is all so confusing. Thimble wants to spend time with him? No one ever wants that. He’s old enough to know that the tutors and the servants are not his friends, that they are paid to teach and look after him. He only sees his family when there’s a function that everyone needs to attend. Even then, he barely speaks, and often slips away after an hour to find a quiet place to read. Most of the time, no one even seems to notice that he’s left.

“Oh it’s fun! You just—”

Footsteps in the hall. Thimble’s voice fades into the background as Occtis feels his heart beat faster. Those aren’t the soft steps of any of the servants, and he knows the cadence of the walk of every one of his tutors. Those are the heavy booted footsteps of guards, and guards never come down to this wing, why—

“Get out!” Occtis hisses.

“What?” 

“Go outside or hide or something!” Had Occtis locked the door after he had come back from lessons? He doesn’t usually, at least not until bedtime. No one ever comes down here except for his servants and tutors. He’s not sure his own father knows where his room is. “The guards—”

The door is already opening. Occtis, frantic, sees a green blur zip past his vision in the direction of the balcony just as he reaches for an open book on his desk.

“My young Lord Occtis—” the guard clad in Tachonis colors begins to say, but his words stop when Occtis looks up from the book he’s holding. Hopefully that means that the expression Occtis is trying to make, a mimic of any of his siblings when they are vexed, is what is actually playing out on his face instead of what he’s actually feeling. He’s had a lot of practice on hiding his emotions from other members of his house.

“Why have you interrupted my studies?” Occtis asks, pleased when his voice doesn’t shake with the anxiety he feels. He can’t maintain this for long, he can already feel his chest getting tight.

“Apologies, my young Lord, but there is— was— a fairy as a guest in our garden, who has alluded our sight, no doubt with some fairy trick and—”

“I don’t see why this is a concern of mine.” It sounds like something his father would say. Occtis feels pride warm him even as something colder that he doesn’t have a name for squeezes his heart. 

“The wards indicate that she might have entered the manor somewhere in this wing, young Lord, and your balcony doors are open and the balcony overlooks the garden—”

“So you’re placing the blame on me—”

“Not at all, young Lord, I—” The guard looks like he’d rather be anywhere else right now. Occtis wishes he’d just leave so they could both get what they want.

“Do you see any fairies in here?” Occtis turns, gesturing with a grand sweep of his arm. He pointedly does not look for more than an instant at the very slight shimmer of dust on the floor under where Thimble had been flying.

“No, my young Lord. My most sincere apologies for having disturbed you.” The guard bows deeply and finally, finally leaves.

Occtis stands frozen in the middle of the room as the guard’s footsteps recede, book still in his hands, which are beginning to shake.

“That was amazing!”

Occtis does the embarrassing surprised squeak again, dropping his book as Thimble zips out from behind one of the heavy curtains bordering the entrance to the balcony. “You didn’t leave?”

“Of course not!” Thimble says, her smile as bright as the light of her wings glinting off her needle swords. “I couldn’t just leave you if you were going to get into trouble! If the guard had been mean I was going to pop out of hiding and say something clever about fooling you both and then I would have flown outside, or maybe made him chase me down the hall. But I didn’t have to do any of that! That was some great acting by the way.” Her face darkens slightly. “Unless you weren’t acting and that’s how you always talk to servants—”

Occtis emphatically shakes his head. “No, I don’t usually— I just wanted him to go away.” He’s struggling to control his breathing, his whole body telling him he’s in trouble even as he knows that the guard won’t say anything to his father, and that nothing would come of it if he did. 

“Well then it was great acting!” Thimble’s face clears, her smile returning. “I should probably go outside, if there’s all sorts of wards and things that’ll tell people where I am in here. Wanna meet me in the garden?”

“You still want to— play with me?”

Thimble tilts her head. “Yes?” The glow of her wings dims. “Unless you don’t want to, because I almost got you into trouble.”

“Yes! I mean, no, I mean—” Occtis takes a deep breath. “Yes, I want to play with you.”

“Great!” Thimble flies around his head and then zips out the window, dragonfly quick.

Occtis stares after her for a long moment, still having trouble believing all that just happened. The laugh, when it frees itself from his throat, is an unexpected thing. Shaking the pixie dust out of his hair, he hurries out of his room.

Many years later, an older, much less alive Occtis will come back to that moment while he trances, and realize that he has no memory of laughing before Thimble came to visit him that first time.

—- — —

Any time Occtis gets to travel away from the estate is a novelty and an adventure. Most of the time, he barely even remembers what his family has been invited to, if it’s a strictly diplomatic function where his father wants to display his full family, or a wedding that would be politically disadvantageous to turn down. What Occtis cares about is getting to see something that isn’t the manor, and while he gets overwhelmed easily by large crowds, he loves observing people on his own terms, tucked out of the way where he can watch them without being disturbed.

He prefers the weddings though. There’s more cakes and sweets at those, things that are only served at home when Occtis’s family is the one hosting a function. Also, more important than even cake, there are sometimes faeries at weddings, at least more often than at boring diplomatic discussions. And that means he might see Thimble.

It’s not as if Occtis hasn’t seen Thimble often in the last few years since they met. She comes by several times a month, following no schedule that Occtis has figured out. She always accompanies Thjazi the few times when he has some business with his father, but most often she comes alone, sneaking in through cracks in the garden walls and hiding from the skeletal birds that sometimes congregate in the trees. Occtis has spent so much time out in the gardens that he’d be in danger of getting freckles like Thimble’s if sunny days in Dol-Makjar weren’t as rare as they are. 

No one has questioned why Occtis is suddenly spending so much time outside, either in the gardens or studying on the balcony (Thimble hiding behind his hair and reading along) and if the guards know about Thimble’s visits, they say nothing. At twelve, Occtis has come to realize that while he is lonely, there is a certain amount of freedom that comes with neglect. His family has deemed him unimportant, so nothing he does is important, unless it directly goes against his House.

It turns out, after leaving at night and spending nearly an entire day in the carriage, it is a wedding they’ve been going to, arriving early enough to attend the smaller, more intimate party before the wedding day itself. Occtis is sure that someone must have told him whose wedding this is, but the names fly completely out of his head when he sees a flash of green and gold from across the courtyard upon stepping from the carriage. If he wasn’t surrounded by family, he would smile and wave. Instead, he watches Thimble fly in a figure-eight, her sign that she has seen him.

Occtis doesn’t see Thimble again before the party, though he does spot her during the reception, hovering near Thjazi’s shoulder. Occtis hasn’t spoken to Thjazi nearly as much as Thimble, but he’s always had a smile and a kind word or two during the few times they’ve spoken. Thimble talks about Thjazi a lot, about the adventures they’ve been on and things they’ve done. It never occurs to Occtis to be jealous of his friend, instead listening to her stories with rapt attention, learning much about her in the process. She might be a child in the way faeries reckon such things, but her playful and mischievous nature is combined with a warrior’s heart, many of her tales ending in blood if not death.

Occtis can’t slip away from the party as soon as he would like. Dances have been arranged for him, potential suitors perhaps or, more likely, people from other families that his family cannot snub and thus have been pawned off on him. It’s annoying, but not unbearable. The nice thing about being trained near endlessly in such things as dance and deportment is that after awhile, you barely have to think about what to do. Step this way, say this thing, step that way, pay a compliment, repeat, bow at the end, move on to the next person, continue until you’ve run out of arranged partners.

When Occtis finally finishes his duty (the end of which is conveyed by the tiniest of nods from his father) he weaves through the crowded room, ducking down a hallway that he knows leads to a water closet, where his presence won’t be noted as anything out of the ordinary. Less than a minute later, he sees Thimble’s hundred firefly glow sipping towards him and smiles his first true smile of the day.

“Occtis!” Thimble flies around Occtis’s head twice, showering him with pixie dust before landing on his outstretched hand to hug his upraised thumb. “I missed you!”

“I missed you too,” he says, feeling his shoulders relax and his chest loosen just by virtue of her presence. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been apart months or hours, when she’s not around his world is poorer for it. 

“It’s unfair that I can’t hug anyone properly,” Thimble complains, huffing a sigh that sends pixie dust swirling around her in a tiny cloud. “I’m too small.”

Occtis, who had never been hugged in any way before Thimble had flown into his life, is just grateful to be touched. He won’t learn the term skin hunger for years yet. “You’re not too small,” he says quickly. “It’s everyone else who is entirely too big. We should all be like you, the perfect size for stealing snacks.”

Her face lights up. “Yes! You should all be snack sized like me!” She says with a laugh. “C’mon, let’s find the kitchens and go swipe some sweets!”

Occtis does not point out that there are plenty of desserts on the tables in the other room, he just smiles as Thimble lands on his shoulder. Thimble has always insisted that stolen food tastes better, and Occtis, having followed her on countless snack stealing expeditions, can’t prove her wrong. Maybe it’s the forbidden nature of it, or the company, but there is a certain something extra that leaves other food lacking.

“Okay, now I know I’m the one who does the distraction,” Thimble is saying in his ear as Occtis sneaks down the hall, following the smell of food. “Because I’m small and fast and just overall great, plus you’re the one who has big hands for stealing cupcakes while I grab all the cookies. But I was thinking this time you could take a turn! I shouldn’t be the one who gets to have the most fun all the time!”

“Me?” Occtis slows his steps. “What can I do?”

“Well, you’re a Tachonis, so you have like, spooky magic stuff you can do, right?” Thimble says with a smile Occtis can hear. “Like, make shadows move, or— there’s always mice in places like these, I’m sure there’s some mice skeletons somewhere that—”

Thimble’s voice is drowned out by the beating of Occtis’s heart, a terrible, thundering too fast sound. He’s never told her that he’s flawed. It’s a secret of the House that he was born defective, lacking, wrong. He’s been forbidden to speak of it to anyone outside of his family. He can’t tell her. He wants to tell her. What if he tells her and she looks at him like his father and his siblings do, like he’s not worth anything? Magic never mattered to her before. What if he tells her and she no longer wants to be friends?

“Occtis?” Thimble’s weight is gone from his shoulder. She’s hovering in front of his face now, all warm light and the scent of honeysuckle, her eyes large with concern. “Occtis, did I say something wrong? I didn’t mean to make you cry!”

Dimly he’s aware of the wetness on his cheeks, the rasp of his breath. He tries to stop breathing, as if that would stop the crying, but it doesn’t help. He’s ruining everything. Whenever he’s with Thimble he doesn’t have to think about how he doesn’t have magic or how lonely he is without her or anything bad, he can just be happy and watch her be happy too and he’s ruining it.

Clattering from the kitchen down the hall, the voices of servants growing closer. Thimble turns her head for a second, but a second is all he needs. Occtis runs.

It’s not the playful scramble of all those hours of hide and seek, but the desperate, panicked flight of a boy who is certain that his secret will ruin his only friendship. He runs blindly down halls and through doors and then he’s suddenly outside, the grounds dark save for the lanterns in the gardens and the firefly glow of the strings of lights illuminating the hedge maze. He heads towards the maze, quickly losing himself in the twists and turns. He’s just reached a dead end with a small fountain in it when he hears Thimble’s small voice, thick with tears, somewhere close by. “Occtis! Whatever I did, I’m sorry!”

Her words carry no magic, but Occtis comes to a stumbling halt as if they had, her anguish stopping his own tears as his panicking, spiraling thoughts suddenly untangle. He can’t let Thimble think that this is all her fault, he can’t hurt her like that. Maybe he’ll lose her as a friend if he tells her his secret, but suddenly not explaining himself, not telling her feels more dangerous to their friendship.

“I’m over here!” Occtis calls, but she’s already diving down towards him, a falling star in miniature. He holds out his cupped hands for her to land in, should she chose to. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have run away, it’s not your fault, it isn’t, please don’t cry—”

“What’s wrong?” Thimble sniffles, wiping away the glittering tears trailing down her cheeks as she lands in his hands. “I’ve never seen you cry before.”

“Tachonis’s aren’t supposed to,” Occtis tells her, realizing that with his hands full he can’t wipe his own tears away. A small price to pay. “But I’m not a very good Tachonis.”

“You’re the best Tachonis I’ve ever met,” Thimble says firmly. “And don’t say it’s because you’re the only Tachonis I’ve ever met. I’m still right.” She flies up in front of his face and then there’s a tiny hand on his cheek, wiping away the last trailing tear. “Can you tell me?”

One last chance. Occtis could say no. But he’s already not good at being a Tachonis, and maybe this is a House secret but it’s also his secret, and he’s so tired of keeping it. “You have to promise not to tell anyone else,” he says softly, sitting on the edge of the fountain. “Not even Thjazi.” Promise you’ll still be my friend afterwards, he does not say.

Thimble thinks about it for half a moment, but Occtis doesn’t hold that against her. He’s asking her to keep a secret from someone she’s described as her partner in all things, and Occtis is just her friend.

“I promise,” Thimble says, looking into Occtis’s eyes, and the light from her wings turns the golden green of leaves in sunlight. A breeze seems to spring from nowhere, warm and smelling of honeysuckle. “I swear on oak and ash, birch and willow, and all the good trees of the Golden Orchard, not to reveal your secret, may my wings fall off and I never fly again.”

“I don’t want your wings to fall off!”

The breeze dies down, the light fading slightly as Thimble shakes her head. “They’re not going to, because I’m not going to break my promise.”

Occtis nods, feeling more pressure now than he had a moment ago. He averts his eyes. “I-I-” He swallows, takes a deep breath and tries again. “I— I’m not a sorcerer like the rest of my family. I don’t have magic.”

Silence. Occtis hunches his shoulders. This is it, this is where she tells him he’s nothing. Or maybe she won’t say anything, maybe she’ll just fly away and never speak to him again. Maybe she’s already flown away and he’s just imagining her slight weight in his hands.

“Is that all?” Thimble doesn’t sound disgusted, like his family does sometimes when they have to speak to him. She sounds… confused. When Occtis flicks his eyes over to look at her again, her brow is furrowed. “You can’t do magic?”

Occtis bites his lip and nods.

Thimble tilts her head, ever so slightly. “Why were you scared to tell me? That’s why you ran away, right? Because you were scared? What did you think I would do?”

He feels his shoulders hunch even higher towards his ears, the muscles in his back tightening like ropes being pulled. “Not talk to me anymore. Like my family. They don’t, unless they have to. They don’t even want to look at me most of the time.”

“Just because you can’t do magic?” She throws up her hands. “Loads of people can’t do magic!”

“But I’m supposed to,” Occtis says miserably. “I’m a stain on the House.”

“That’s—” Thimble says a word in Sylvan that Occtis doesn’t know, but sounds remarkably close to the Elven word for unicorn excrement. “Occtis, I don’t care that you don’t have magic. I care that you’re Occtis, who plays with me and gets in trouble with me and tells me cool facts about moths and anat— anatimony.”

“Anatomy,” Occtis automatically corrects her. He feels his shoulders start to relax. “You really don’t mind?”

“Of course not!” Thimble flies up and stands on Occtis’s nose, resting her tiny forehead right between his eyebrows. “You’re my best friend,” she says softly

“I thought that was Thjazi.”

“You can have more than one.”

Occtis smiles even though he feels like he’s about to cry again. “I only have one.”

That moment, right before Thimble breaks the silence, will later become a beautiful, crystalline memory, one Occtis will return to in those times when he’s struggling to hold on to his values, to his very sense of self. The first time he had ever felt accepted for all of who he was.

“Oh!” Thimble suddenly flies up into the air, smacking herself in the forehead. “Occtis, I’m an idiot!”

Occtis blinks. All the worry and fear that had been in him feels like it’s draining out of his body, and nothing else has moved in to replace it yet, except a dizzying sense of relief. “Because you can’t pronounce anatomy? That doesn’t make you stupid.”

“No! Because I forgot something! There’s a place you could go to learn magic! I mean, I don’t care if you have magic or not, and your family shouldn’t treat you like—” Thimble says the unicorn excrement word again. “—Just because you don’t, but if you wanted magic because it would make you happy, you could learn how!”

Occtis has never heard of such a thing. “You’re either born with magic or you get it from— the earth, I think.” He only has a vague understanding of what druids are and how they get their power, he just knows that his family dislikes them for some reason. “Or the Light, I guess, according to the Candescent Creed priests. You can’t just learn magic.” Still, his heart pounds. Could he? Is it possible? He feels his fingers move in old, familiar patterns.

“No, that’s the thing!” Thimble flies in tiny, excited circles. “Thjazi has a friend who’s a wizard, which is like, a person who studies magic, and she said that—” Her circles slow as her brow furrows. “She was kinda drunk, so it was a little hard to follow, but I think she said that magic is everywhere. Some people are born with it inside them, and those people are sorcerers and bards and stuff. But there’s still all this magic outside that anyone can use, you just need to work harder to get the magic’s attention. So you study how other people do spells and try to—” She waves her hands vaguely. “Copy them but better? I think she might have said something about words of creation but she mostly talked about fiddling with spells until they worked.” She lands on Occtis’s knee, her wings drooping slightly. “Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well.”

“It’s okay.” Occtis keeps moving his hands. He’s never thought about it before, but it makes a sort of sense that magic could just be— floating around in the world. He knows that the Barrowdells were created by the fall of the Shapers, the magic released by their death a curse that had changed the landscape forever in strange ways. It’s easy to imagine some of that power spreading, thinning out until it was everywhere. Not thick enough to cause problems, but still there, for people who knew how to use it. Or maybe magic has always been in the world, outside of people, waiting to be discovered. There’s so much he doesn’t know. But oh, he wants to learn.

Thimble looks up at his fingers. “Are you trying to do a spell?”

Occtis nods. “It’s for animating the dead. I used to try and copy my siblings, but it never worked.” He frowns down at his hands. “There’s probably nothing dead close by, but this is the only spell I’ve memorized by heart.”

“Oh! I know one!” Thimble flies back up into the air. “I can’t do it, but there’s this spell that Thaz uses all the time, for signals and distractions, to make sparks! And it’s a little spell, not like making copies of yourself or throwing fireballs, so maybe it’ll be easier for you to make work!”

“It’s snack sized,” Occtis says, smiling as he starts to let himself feel excited, hopeful even.

“Yes! It’s snack sized like me, and that means it’s perfect!” Thimble does a little spin before flying closer to Occtis. “Okay, so I’ve seen Thaz do this hundreds of times. You just—” She holds up her hand, tucking in her pinkie and ring fingers and makes a flourishing gesture, as if she’s flinging something away from herself. “And then there’s sparks!”

Occtis copies the gesture, imagining sparks flying from his fingertips. He’s not immediately discouraged when nothing happens, he hadn’t expected to get it on the first try. “Show me again?”

They go back and forth like that for several minutes, Occtis entering the same state of focused calm that he wishes he could call forth on command, not just when he’s studying something. He thinks about the motion he’s using. Casting away, directing magic that’s inside, outside. But he has no magic inside, that’s the point— If magic is everywhere, maybe he has to catch it first….

Occtis raises his hand, making a gesture as if waving someone closer, tucking his ring and pinkie fingers in at the same time. Does he imagine the feeling of tiny pinpricks of warmth in his palm, like grains of sand? He makes a flinging motion and—

Glowing green sparks appear in the air for an instant, as bright and beautiful as any star before they fade.

Occtis stares at the place they had been, the afterimages dancing in front of his eyes.

“You did it!” Thimble spins with joy. “Do it again!”

Occtis raises his hand. What if it had been a fluke? Can this really be happening? Can the magic truly be his? He gestures again, breath held in anticipation.

Sparks, firefly green, appear in an arc before vanishing.

Occtis’s laugh is not a sound anyone of House Tachonis would recognize, as bright as the sparks the boy had just made appear. Thimble’s laugh joins it as Occtis casts the spell over and over again, making adjustments. He can make the sparks larger by making this gesture slower, make them fly further by snapping his wrist just so, change the color of sparks with a thought. 

Another moment that Occtis will come back to, not just in trance but at the Penteveral when he feels loneliest: Thimble flying through the air, a rainbow shower of sparks falling all around her.

“Well done, young wizard.”

The voice, seeming to come from thin air, cuts through the laughter as if it were a knife. Occtis and Thimble both freeze, eyes wide, as Thjazi Fang appears in front of them., smiling broadly.

“Thaz!” Thimble squeaks, looking at him and then to Occtis. “Occtis, I didn’t know he was there, I swear!”

“I believe you,” Occtis reassures her. “It’s all right.” He’s not sure if it is yet, not really.

“Had just stepped out for a breath of fresh air when I saw you running across the lawn, with Thimble flying after you,” Thjazi says, making no move to draw closer to the pair. “Thought you two might be gettin’ up to something, and whatever it was had to be more interesting than the party inside, so I snuck in the maze after you. Got here just in time to hear Thimble explaining wizardry to you.” He nods at Thimble. “And you did an excellent job, considering Murray was about three sheets to the wind when she was trying to explain it to me.”

“Are you going to tell?” Occtis asks.

“What, that you aren’t a sorcerer? Kid, I’ve had my suspicions about that since I first laid eyes on you. The marks of your family’s magic haven’t touched you a bit.”

So his lack of magic was even more obvious than Occtis had thought. He feels his shoulders start to slump, then straightens. No. Things are different now. Just because he wasn’t born with magic doesn’t mean that he can’t have it. Not anymore.

“I haven’t said a word about what I’ve thought to anyone, and I can keep on doing that,” Thjazi says. “But it’s a poor secret to anyone who has eyes to know what to look for. I think your father realizes it too, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment.” He gives Occtis a look. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

Thjazi nods. “There’s a school where you can learn to be a wizard, if that’s what you want to do.”

Occtis nods enthusiastically, his fingers twitching at the thought of new spells. Maybe there he could learn to do what his family had been born knowing how to do. Then they’d finally see that he’s worth something.

If there’s a small, bitter, angry part of himself that shouts that he shouldn’t have to prove himself to his family to be worthy of basic respect and the least amount of attention, well, it’s a very small part. It’ll have time to grow.

“Youngest they’d take you is fifteen,” Thjazi says. “Don’t think anyone owes me enough favors to get them to bend on that. Gives you three years to learn what you can on your own, and gives both of us some time to figure out just how we’re going to convince your father to let you go.” He smiles a little crookedly. “If you were anyone but a noble’s son, I’d just send you there myself and give the school a considerable donation. But your father is—”

“My father is my father,” Occtis says. Trying to imagine having to speak to his father, asking him for something for the first time, something important, makes him feel almost sick, and he puts that thought aside. Right now, he has a question, one that’s easier to ask. “Why do you want to help me?”

“Because I’d never let him wake up without fairy knots in his hair ever again if he didn’t?” Thimble flies over to Thjazi and tugs on a lock of his hair. Thjazi waves her away with a chuckle.

“There’s that I suppose,” Thjazi says, and this time his smile is straight and true. “You’ve been a good friend to Thimble, and it seems only right that I try to help you become something better than what your family might have planned for you. That and—” Thjazi gives a little huff of a laugh. “Wouldn’t hurt to have a Tachonis owe me a favor somewhere down the line.”

Thimble shoots Thjazi a look, but Occtis just nods, satisfied. He’s studied court politics as much as anatomy, and understands the currency of favors.

“Now, I figure we’ve got maybe another hour until the party winds down,” Thjazi says as he sits on the fountain’s edge near Occtis. “I’m going to see what I can do about getting you a book that might explain all the magical theory stuff I never had to learn, but for right now I figure we can have another practical demonstration. The spell you learned remarkably quickly is called Prestidigitation, and it can do a fair number of things depending on how it’s cast.”

“More than just sparks?” Occtis waves his hand just to make the sparks appear again, this time a spray of silver and gold.

“More than just sparks,” Thjazi says with a bright grin. “Now, I use this one a lot, it can clean anything, even gets blood out of clothes—”

Occtis watches closely, not knowing just how often he’ll use that variation in the future.

— — — 

“Convincing light to bend in one way instead of another, to make yourself and those around see an image that is not reality is no easy skill,” Occtis recites from memory. His reflection in the mirror is the picture of frustration, frowned and furrowed and stubbornly still him, no matter how many times he has tried to change his appearance. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, picking up the book from his desk and looking at the relevant page again, wondering what he’s missing.

To anyone else looking at it, the book Occtis holds is a textbook on human anatomy, and if they picked it up and read any of the pages, they would see intricate diagrams of the nerves of the spinal cord, or paragraphs detailing the many parts of the digestive system. That’s what Occtis himself had seen when the book had arrived by courier two months ago, just a week after his conversation with Thjazi at the wedding. The only clue that the book had been anything more than it had seemed had been the unsigned note.

Here’s the book I recommended the last time I saw you. It might take you awhile to get into it, but I’m sure you’ll find the information revealing when seen in the right light.

While spellwork was an exciting and still new thing for Occtis, he’d been no stranger to how some magical items worked, how they needed to be studied or held by a person for a length of time before they could be used. Occtis had read the book for an hour (maybe more, it really was a good anatomy text) before summoning a small ball of light with a word and a gesture, the glowing innards of a lightning bug smeared on his fingers. In the soft, green light the diagrams on the page had faded, revealing new text.

Occtis had expected something along the lines of his scientific textbooks. Formulas written down, facts laid out just so. Do steps one through three as stated and the outcome would always be the same. What he had found instead was a lot of talk about theory, and very little in the way of immutable facts. Yes, certain words, gestures, and even objects affected the magical field around a person, and that often produced the desired result, but since every person was different, what worked for one person might not work as well for another, or conversely, might work even better.

The experimental nature of this approach to magic thrills Occtis, even though he is currently frustrated. He reads through the list of recommended words to use to appeal to the magic, then at the diagrams and descriptions of gestures that have been known to work in the past. He’s tried nearly all of them.

He should take a break maybe, work on the reading for history that he’s supposed to be doing. But he only has three years to learn enough magic to— not impress his father maybe, nothing short of learning necromancy might do that, and the spells Occtis has seen in this book so far haven’t been of that sort, but at least show his father that he’s serious about learning magic, that it wouldn’t be a waste to send him somewhere where he could. Right now, those three years feel like forever and barely any time at all.

Occtis sets the spell book down, the pages changing back to the anatomy text, and picks up his history book. It’s a rare, sunny day, and even though it’s late afternoon, there’s still a few hours of good light before sunset. He’ll read out on the balcony and maybe if he’s lucky, Thimble might show up to distract him. It’s been over a month since he’s last seen her, and while she’s been gone for longer lengths of time before, he always worries a little. She leads a life more dangerous than his own. What if the last time he had seen her had been the last time and he hadn’t known—

“Occtis?” Thimble’s voice coming from the balcony is small, but as loud as birdsong. 

“Thimble!” Occtis perks up immediately, heading towards the open balcony doors, his frustrations of a moment ago all but forgotten. “Thimble, I have so many new spells to—” The rest of the sentence dies in his throat as soon as he lays eyes on her.

“Hey.” Thimble stands on the balcony railing, shoulders slumped slightly, the smile that struggles to stay firm on her face not reaching her eyes.

It’s the color of her wings that tells Occtis that something is wrong, that Thimble isn’t just tired or just sad. He knows the precise hue and shimmer of her wings better than he knows the color of his own eyes and something is missing from them, some quality he doesn’t have a name for. His history book falls from his hands, unimportant, just an obstacle to step over so that he can reach Thimble and hold his hands out to her. When she steps on to them, Occtis can feel the way she’s trembling.

“What’s wrong?” Occtis’s mind is already racing. Is Thimble sick? Should he send for the house healer, swear her to secrecy somehow? Or maybe he could sneak out, over the wall and then what? And where’s Thjazi? Has something happened to him and that’s why—?

“I thought you would know—” Thimble says dully, not looking up at Occtis. “Because it has to do with the dead. I thought you would know.”

“I don’t—”

“They closed the doors to Faerie.” Thimble’s voice is so quiet that Occtis has to strain to hear the words. “There were so many souls stuck in the realm of the dead because the Shapers are gone that they spilled out and— and Faerie had to— they needed to protect themselves—”

Occtis feels himself flush hot, then cold, as if he’s been doused with a bucket of water. This feels like something his family would have prevented, back in the Shaper’s time. Had they known such a thing was possible? Had they done anything to try and prevent what occurred? Occtis is not privy to most matters of the House, and for the first time the lack of knowledge upsets him. But this isn’t about him.

“What does that mean?” Occtis asks. “For you? For all the fae here?” 

“We’re— without that connection— we’re going to—” The light of Thimble’s wings is the fading glow of a firefly trapped in a jar as a small, hiccuping sob escapes her. “We’re going to age. We’re going to get old and we’re going to die. And I know we could always die,” she says in a rush, voice high now with emotion. “I could have gotten hit by a sword and died, but now I could die just by living too long and that doesn’t make any sense! I can feel time like a thousand tiny cuts all over!” She looks up at Occtis, eyes brimming with tears. “How can you stand it?”

“We don’t— we don’t feel it the same way. Thimble, I’m—” Occtis feels tears of his own welling up, born of sorrow and frustration at his inability to offer comfort. What is he supposed to say? I’m sorry is too ridiculously small. There’s a phrase in Elvish that would suit the situation better, about how he mourns the future that has been taken from her, but Thimble doesn’t know Elvish.

“And where am I going to go?” Thimble asks, as if Occtis has any answers. “With the doors to Faerie closed, I can’t go back into the light we’re born from. Am I just going to be alone? In the dark?”

“No.” Occtis bows his head over Thimble, as if to protect her from time, from the inevitable end, bringing his hands close to his chest, as near to a hug as he can manage. “No. I’ll find you. No matter when it happens, no matter where you are or where I am. I’ll find you, and I’ll make sure you’ll get to where you’re supposed to be. By blood and breath and bone I swear it. You won’t be alone.”

The words aren’t magic, save that Occtis believes them with his whole heart, and that some of the color returns to Thimble’s wings when he says them. That will have to be magic enough.

— — — 

Occtis’s room at the Penteveral is no bigger or in any way better than any of the other student’s rooms, except that he doesn’t have to share with anyone, the only concession to his father’s considerable donation to the school. Without the additional bed and desk, he theoretically has more space, but he’d quickly remedied that by buying extra bookshelves with the monthly stipend his father provides, which hold as many books as they do spell components. If Occtis had to guess, the room is perhaps a quarter of the size of his room at home, but he doesn’t miss the extra space, doesn’t need any more than he has.

After all, his best friend takes up hardly any room at all.

“I can’t believe you’ve been here a whole year already!” Thimble flutters around the room, the tiniest smear of chocolate at the corner of her mouth from the pastry on Occtis’s desk.

“Neither can I,” Occtis says with a smile that he has to work to produce. Thimble and Thjazi hadn’t been present when his father had told Occtis that he needn’t have bothered with his carefully thought out arguments, because he didn’t care where his youngest son went to study, just as long as he wasn’t an embarrassment. Occtis had left his father’s audience chamber that day feeling stupidly blindsided by his indifference. Yes, Occtis had gotten what he had wanted, but it had taken months before the memory of his father’s face hadn’t accompanied him to every class. 

“I couldn’t have done it without you and Thjazi,” Occtis says before he gets sucked down into self-pity. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a large, round bone button that’s been dyed purple, rubbing it between his fingers, the small weight and texture of it soothing. “How is he?”

“Busy,” Thimble huffs, showering his collection of rat skulls with an excess of pixie dust in the process. “And I don’t know with what. He doesn’t tell me everything, and that’s fine, but he leaves me behind for weeks with no word except to manage things in Dol-Makjar and I worry, you know?” She looks down at Occtis’s hand and her face lights up. “You got my letter! The one with the buttons in!”

“I did.” Occtis smiles and pulls the second button from his pocket. “Thank you, they’re the perfect thing to keep my hands busy while I’m studying.”

The gift of the buttons had been a surprise, a reminder of when Occtis had been a child and Thimble more childlike in his presence, when every time they had met they had traded small things that they had found or stolen. There is a wooden box tucked in the drawer of his nightstand filled with buttons and beads, feathers and interesting rocks. They are the treasures of a young boy, ones that Occtis can’t bring himself to part with just yet. 

Thimble’s grin lights up her whole face and adds a bit of glow to her wings. “I knew you would like them! They’re the perfect shade of purple! As soon as I saw them I knew I had to steal them for you, and the guy I took them from was being such an ass to Thaz that it was either steal his buttons or threaten his balls. I mean, I ended up doing both—”

Occtis gives a little huff of a laugh and shakes the buttons together in his palm to hear the satisfying clink of them. “You’ve been busy too.”

“Yeah, there’s always something going on,” Thimble says. She sounds a little wistful. “I’m sorry I can’t come visit as often as I used to.”

“It’s all right,” Occtis says quickly, because what else can he say? Yes, he misses her when she’s gone, but that has always been the case no matter how often she’s visited him over the years, and he’s used to feeling lonely. He isn’t going to make her feel bad for something she can’t help. It’s not her fault that his tutors had taught him how to be polite but not how to make friends. At least people talk to him here. The bursar glares at him from time to time, but all his professors seem to like him well enough, for his enthusiasm and eagerness to experiment if nothing else. 

All right, one of his professors had thought Occtis had been holding out on him concerning ‘the great and terrible rituals of necromancy,’ until Occtis had managed to explain, with much mumbling and stuttering, that his father’s ‘teaching’ method had been to tell Occtis to ‘just do it.’ Even then, the professor hadn’t truly warmed up to Occtis until, during a discussion about whether the health of a person in life affected the quality of a corpse upon reanimation, Occtis had casually corrected his professor on several points and learned that what had been rather banal dinner conversation in the Tachonis household was not, in fact, common knowledge.

“I’ve been busy too.” Occtis says instead of telling Thimble any of this, gesturing to several open books on his desk. “Do you want to hear about what I’m working on?”

“Yes!” Thimble hovers Occtis’s notes. “Anything exciting?”

It’s all exciting to Occtis, every minor breakthrough a victory, every failure an opportunity to try something different. That had been something that Occtis hadn’t been able to wrap his head around right away, that failure to produce results wouldn’t be met with scorn or derision, wouldn’t lead to him being shunned. Mistakes were documented to lessen the risk of being repeated, and then you kept moving forward.

Occtis shows Thimble the spell they’ve been trying to replicate in his Transmutation class, one that could make a person or thing larger or smaller. He experiments on the chocolate marshmallow croissant on his desk for the better part of a half an hour, failing to make it changer size before he gives up for the night and Thimble helps him reduce the size of the pastry in the usual way, by eating it. After that, Thimble does an experiment of her own by trying some of Occtis’s coffee. One noise complaint and several prestidigitations to get pixie dust off the ceiling later, their ribs aching from laughing so hard, they declare both experiments a success.

After a night of staying up far too late talking, Occtis shuffles to class with a smile, pixie dust still in his hair and two purple buttons in his pocket, already looking forward to the next time they’ll get to see each other, no matter how many months it might be.

The next time Occtis will see Thimble is four years later, on the day Thjazi Fang is executed. 

— — — 

There’s a moment, when Occtis wakes up, that he wonders if he’s still dreaming. He only vaguely recognizes the room around him when he moves his head, and the perspective is strange, feeling both high up and low to the ground, as if he’s laying down on a table or something. Then he sees Thimble, still sleeping, and it all comes back to him. The failed rescue attempt. The death that so many people had tried hard to prevent coming to pass despite their efforts. Thimble— Thimble—

He hasn’t seen Thimble in four years. Four years. And now she’s here, laying in the paw of a nama that Occtis barely knows, one wing bent, bruised and bleeding. Occtis can barely see her from where he stands frozen, but he knows she’s dying, knows because he’d sworn on blood and breath and bone that whatever lay after her in this life, she wouldn’t have to be alone, and he feels that promise pulling at him. It was a child’s promise, and he’s a man grown now, but that doesn’t mean he won’t keep it. Even if it breaks his heart he’ll keep it—

Teor touches Thimble lightly with one golden, shining claw and Occtis and Thimble both gasp at the same time.

Occtis feels his body heave a sigh as, downstairs, Pin doesn’t breathe at all. He had fallen asleep in Pin, and seemingly woken up in Pin, since he’s seeing the room where Thjazi’s body is laid out instead of Thaisha’s room, which had felt like a cross between a study and garden. Pin turns his head, continuing to watch Thimble sleep.

It doesn’t seem possible still, that it has been four years since they had last seen each other. It wasn’t as if Occtis hadn’t missed her, hadn’t thought throughout the days that had passed of all the things he’d have to tell her the next time he saw her. He had been busy, and obviously so had she, and the time had just— slipped by somehow. Just slipped away, like Thimble almost had.

I have to learn healing magic. It’s not the first time Occtis has thought this. He’s been with Thaisha for some time, and he still remembers, after a particularly harrowing encounter with some undead in Venatus, how Thaisha had used the last of her magical reserves to heal him, leaving her with a nasty bite wound that thankfully had not festered in the time it had taken her to sleep and replenish herself. He knows healing magic is the domain of druids and bards and those who have devoted themselves utterly to a concept or a cause. Well, like all other magic in his life, he’ll just have to find a way to learn.

Thimble wakes, and Occtis sees in her eyes the moment when she realizes that the last few days have not been a bad dream. She stands, looking down at Thjazi’s face. “I’m going to find who did this,” she says softly, and the light from her wings flares even brighter, just for a moment. Occtis can’t smell through Pin, just hear and see, but he knows the air would smell of honeysuckle and magic. Pin sneezes, as if to confirm that fact, and shifts, getting to his feet from where he was curled up.

Thimble turns at the sneeze, hands dipping to her needle swords for the briefest of moments before she relaxes. “Oh, it’s you.” She walks closer to Pin, studying him. One hand reaches up, so close that Occtis knows she must be touching one of the buttons as he feels his own body instinctively blink, even though Pin doesn’t.

“I remember these,” Thimble says, and her smile is so faint that Occtis wouldn’t have been able to see it with his own eyes if he had been standing there. She tilts her head. “Occtis, are you in there?”

Occtis makes Pin nod, a very un-foxlike motion that can’t be mistaken for anything else. Thimble moves closer, and even though Occtis shouldn’t be able to perceive anything through Pin that isn’t sight or sound, just for a moment he swears he feels Thimble hugging Pin as best that she can.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Thimble whispers.

Upstairs, Occtis’s lips move, saying words he can’t hear. “I’m glad you’re here too.”

— — — 

Thimble had told Occtis many stories about the Golden Orchard over the years. The endless fields of flowers, the silver streams, the golden trees that bore fruit so ripe and perfect that it could make a mortal weep tears of ruby and pearl. There were cats with wings like peacocks and owls, and it was always a perfect summer’s day, from the glow of sunrise to the richness of summer’s twilight.

What Thimble hadn’t told him was that apparently she had talked about Occtis to the other denizens of the Orchard. A lot.

“Thank you,” Occtis says graciously as he is gifted another flower crown by three pixies who he believes are named Foxglove, Snapdragon, and Poppy. There had been a lot of introductions, and he’s only been here two days. Well, four days if you count the siege, but there had been less in the way of introductions and more about fighting an undead army at that point.

The pixies laugh and place a second, smaller flower crown on Pin’s head before flying away.

“Remember when we were at Castle Torch, and you said that it was weird seeing so many people who liked me?” Julien asks from where he is lounging in the grass nearby, popping a grape into his mouth that’s larger than his thumb. If Occtis could salivate, he would. “I believe I know how you feel now.”

“It’s interesting to be around people who thrive, isn’t it?” Occtis says with a smirk.

Julien just rolls his eyes and eats another grape.

It had surprised Occtis that no one here had wanted to kill him. Well, save for the undead army and some of his cousins, of course, but no one of the Orchard had expressed a veiled opinion that he was an unnatural thing. They hadn’t called him a miracle either, which had been a nice change. Instead, he’d been swarmed by pixies who had been delighted to meet “Thimble’s Occtis,” and had declared Pin to be “cute scary.”

Occtis removes his old flower crown, draping it around Pin’s neck before donning his new one. Like everything else in the orchard, it reminds him of Thimble. She had made him a flower crown once, out of some pretty white flowers she’d found in the garden at his home. Neither of them had realized that the flowers had been mildly poisonous, and they had both broken out in a rash. Occtis smiles at the memory now, but it had been a terribly itchy ordeal at the time.

Occtis reaches for the small pouch on his belt, remembering what he had been doing before the pixies had distracted him. “All right, Pin, let’s try this again.” He sprinkles Pin with a pinch of dust and closes his fist. “Diminish,” he whispers.

Pin sneezes and stays the same size.

“Hmmm.” Occtis makes a note. “Perhaps in Elvish next.”

“What are you trying to do?” Julien asks. “Going to give him wings? I’ve seen you staring at the  tressym here. Granted, you stare at most things.”

“I’ve just never seen winged cats before. And no, Pin is fine the way he is.” Occtis reaches down to scratch Pin behind the ears. “I suppose I could have given him wings when I made him, but that would have meant making changes to his musculature and his skeletal system that seemed unnecessary at the time.” What he would like to do is study a tressym in more detail, and wonders if any were killed during the siege on the Orchard, and who to respectfully ask about getting his hands on one if so.

“I’m trying out a variation of the spell I used on Vaelus the other day,” Occtis says. “The one that made her larger.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” Julien says with a grin and an arched eyebrow. “That was very— intriguing.”

“Anyway,” Occtis continues, forcefully moving past that comment. “In theory I should be able to make something smaller as well. Most spells have an inverse. Use a closed fist instead of an open hand, powdered mouse bones instead of ground dire moose antlers—”

“And with that I shall take my leave,” Julien declares, scooping up his bowl of grapes as he stands. “Before the wind shifts and I end up the size of a grape with a face full of bone dust.”

“It’d only last a minute!” Occtis calls after Julien as he walks away. He notes that Julien is walking in the same direction that Thaisha and Vaelus had walked earlier, the two of them hand in hand. He wonders idly if Julien will be a welcome or unwelcome third, and then very pointedly turns his thoughts away. Instead of going back to what he had been doing, he lays down in the grass, eyes closed against the brightness of the sun. 

The Orchard is beautiful. It’s also dying. It’s a slow, graceful death, but it is dying all the same. Occtis wonders if there is some way to make it safe for the doors to Faerie to open once again. Would that halt the death that is coming for this place, or is it already too late? Would the faeries on this side of the door cease their aging? Maybe it’s too impossible a thing to hope for. But then, he himself is an impossible thing, or at the very least improbable.

The sun actually feels warm on his skin, in the way that the sun very much hasn’t since the night he died. That too is improbable, for all that it is welcome. Oh, it’s going to be hard to leave here, even though the must. Just a few more days to rest and recover, for Julien to spend some time with his family, and then they will be off again. Occtis will enjoy every moment he can, in this place that is almost perfect. It’s not the sense that this place is dying that mars its perfection, but the one person missing who Occtis always imagined would be here with him when he finally got to visit.

I’ll see you again. That’s the last thing Occtis remembers saying to Thimble. It’s also the last thing he remembers thinking before dying, that he had promised her that he’d see her again, and that it was the first promise to her that he’d ever broken. He might get to keep it after all, though he has no idea when.

Fear feels different, now that he’s dead, and so does worry. Alive, he would have fretted himself into a spiral of anxiety, wondering how Thimble will react to him when she sees him. The question that comes to him can’t cause his heart to race or his breath to come too fast, not now, and it makes it much easier to think through. Will Thimble be unsettled by what he is now, like Thaisha is? Perhaps, but Thimble has always been one to quickly adapt to any situation. She’ll need time to adjust, of course, she hasn’t had time to sit with this knowledge the way the others have. She might not even know what happened to him yet.

“I care that you’re Occtis,” Thimble says in his memory. He’ll just have to hope that what she had told him then still holds true now, even after death.

The warmth of the sun makes Occtis feel lazy in a way he nearly never is. Five minutes, he tells himself. Five more minutes and then back to work.

Occtis doesn’t open his eyes when Pin yips excitedly and leaps over him, running off through the grass. He just smiles and puts his senses into Pin. Don’t go chasing pixies, he mentally commands, but it’s not a pixie Pin is running full speed towards. A wolf is running to meet him, a sight that would be terrifying except the wolf in question, his fur familiar shades of black and brown and gray, has a glowing spectral paw.

“Ha! Hey there, fella!” Kattigan’s voice is a booming, unexpected thing. Occtis doesn’t make Pin look up at Kattigan, not when he’s pouncing on Wulferic, barking with joy that Occtis can feel the faintest echo of. “Where’s your boss at, hmmm? He’s got someone who’s been frantic to see him.”

Occtis doesn’t remember pulling his senses out of Pin, doesn’t remember standing. Off in the distance, he can see Kattigan and Wulferic, and while there are people standing next to him, they all fade in his vision as there is a flash and flare of green and gold. Leaves in sunlight, a color he knows better than the color of his own eyes.

Occtis doesn’t run to Thimble, but only because he doesn’t have time. She’s a dragonfly, a hummingbird, a shooting star, and he’s barely taken five steps before she’s there, hovering in front of his face. He holds out his hands, but she doesn’t land in them, just hovers, pixie dust falling like snow onto his palms.

It’s only been— how long since they’ve last seen each other? A month? And yet, she looks older. Well, he looks different as well, so it’s only fair that she does too, he supposes. He tries to remember to blink as she stares at him, some emotion on her face that he can’t name, a strange light in her eyes that makes him think of Julien, though he doesn’t know why..

“Oh, being dead looks good on him,” Occtis hears faintly, a voice that tickles his memory but that he can’t put a face to, unimportant in this moment.

“Tyranny, you’re interrupting what is no doubt going to be a very touching moment.” That voice he knows. Wicander Halovar. Fantastic. “Two friends reuniting, one after getting her revenge, one after dying—” His voice rises slightly in panic. “Has it gotten colder all of a sudden?”

Occtis doesn’t have to look away from Thimble to see what his shadow is doing, creeping towards the priest of the Light, towards the rest of the group because Occtis just wants them to leave them alone. No, Occtis commands, and his shadow stops being long and sinister.

“How about we all give them some space, yes?” That’s Teor, the man who saved Thimble’s life, and who is currently saving the situation from getting out of hand. “Let us all go down to this lovely stream over here—”

Footsteps fade into the distance as Thimble and Occtis continue to look at each other.

“So I guess you know,” Occtis finally says, his words tumbling like stones out of his mouth. “About the whole being dead— thing.” He’s going to die again, this time of embarrassment. How come fear and worry feel different but embarrassment feels just as terrible?

“Yeah.” Thimble’s says softly. “We had heard rumors, about House Royce and the Davinos and the Golden Orchard— and you. That you were all gone. When we got back to Dol-Makjar, Bolaire and Murray and Hal told us what happened.” That look in her eyes, the Julien look, doesn’t fade. “I should have been there.”

“Thimble, no.” Occtis should put his hands down, but he’s frozen in the moment. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“I could have had your back!” Her voice is the cry of a falcon with a broken wing. “I could have done something! They killed you! They destroyed nearly all of House Royce!” Her eyes burn. “I’m going to kill them Occtis. Your father and your brother, I sw—”

“Thimble!” Occtis has never raised his voice to her in his whole life, but he will not have her swear to end his family, not here, not now, not when unfulfilled faerie promises can turn on their owners. He hates how his voice sounds, sharp as a slap. “Thimble, please,” he says, his voice a rasp. “Don’t.” He half raises a hand, as if he could hold her. “It’s going to be all right.”

It’s the kind of stupid nonsense people say when they can’t think of anything else, and he’s not surprised when Thimble makes a sound that he’ll hear on his worst nights, the sob of a pixie whose heart keeps on breaking. Suddenly she’s standing on his nose, her forehead pressed between his eyebrows, her tears smaller than raindrops on his skin.

“Nothing is all right,” Thimble sobs. “Nothing’s been all right since Thjazi died. I’m not— I’m not—” Her words catch in her throat with a sound like buttons clinking against each other. “It’s all so big,” she whispers. “And I feel so small.”

Something softly clicks into place in the back of Occtis’s mind. As if he’s done it a hundred times before, as if he knows it’s going to work perfectly, he closes his eyes, gestures with a hand covered in pixie dust and whispers the Druidic word for small.

When Occtis opens his eyes again, he’s four inches tall and Thimble is staring back at him in shock, looking him in the eyes in a way she’s never been able to before, her hands on his shoulders. “Occtis, you’re—”

“The perfect size,” Occtis says, and smiles. “Um, this might only last a minute, but would you like a hug? You can say no—”

Thimble throws her arms around Occtis so hard that he almost falls over, and even though she’s still crying, she’s laughing too. Occtis, who can no longer cry, just laughs as he holds his best friend for the first time. He promises himself that he won’t let it be the last.

— — —

Occtis, congratulating himself for coming out of his trance and remembering not to try and breathe this time, feels easy in his body and even easier in his mind in a way he hasn’t felt in weeks. Around him, the trees of the Orchard glow softly in the twilight that will last until dawn. Next to him, he feels Wulferic’s warmth, and smiles to see Pin curled up on top of Wulferic. His smile only deepens when he sees Thimble sleeping on top of Pin, the light of her wings muted as she dreams.

Occtis hadn’t meant to trance in the Orchard. He has a perfectly lovely room inside of the castle. Not a guest room, Lady Aranessa had told him, but his room, for whenever he wished to come back. She had made it seem like a simple thing, but he wonders if she knows how meaningful a gesture it had been. He thinks she does.

No, he hadn’t meant to trance outside, but he had felt safe, especially with Thimble by his side, and, just like old times, they had spent hours talking. He has a vague memory of Kattigan telling them he’d told everyone else to give the two of them some space before the man had climbed up into the tree that Occtis and Thimble had been sitting under. Occtis looks up, wondering if he’s still up there. When he looks back down, Thimble is blinking and rubbing at her eyes.

“Go back to sleep,” Occtis tells her. “There’s hours until dawn.”

Thimble yawns and doesn’t move to get up, but she doesn’t close her eyes either. “You sleep with your eyes open,” she says. “Did you know they sort of glow in the dark now?”

“I did.” He’s not sure who had mentioned that to him first, Thaisha or Vaelus. “And I wasn’t actually sleeping. It’s more like what elves do. Trancing.”

“Neat.” She yawns again. “Were you dreaming?”

“I don’t really, not anymore. Or maybe just not yet. Mostly I just try and remember things that are important to me.”

“What were you remembering?”

That last night that we didn’t know was the last night. Pastries and coffee and pixie dust on the ceiling. Promises made. A shower of sparks. Stolen sweets. Laughter. A moth.

“A lot of things,” Occtis says. “But mostly the best day of my life.”

“Tell me about it?” Thimble yawns and closes her eyes.

Occtis smiles. “Well, I was nine years old and alone in my room, trying not to cry because I couldn’t make a dead moth flap its wings. But then I heard a voice—”