Archive of Our Own

As he’d done dozens of times in his life, and now a handful of times in his death, Occtis followed cautiously but curiously behind Thimble as she flitted ahead, her bright green wings lighting his way forward.

It was equal parts eerie and exciting this time around, trailing her through the now abandoned and half wrecked castle at the Golden Orchard – the first place he’d ever gotten the chance to follow her, twelve years ago when he was just a child. So much had changed since then. So much had been lost. The very light of this place, all but snuffed out after the attack by Occtis’s own family. It was reflective, he couldn’t help but think, of how their relationship was at the moment. A bit broken. A bit darker. But still there was so much history, so much magic yet to be found if only they had the time to figure out how it worked now.

Small chance of that, though. After they’d all come back together in Dol-Makjar just in time for the play and the meeting of the Sundered Houses, it became clear they still had much to learn about what Thjazi was up to and why it had gotten him killed. Occtis and Thimble, along with Julien, had broken off after the events in the city to make for the Orchard to look for answers and survivors, but they’d found few of either so far. Much of the Orchard had been razed in the Tachonis attack, and half of the castle along with it. They’d been lucky just to find Aranessa and her protectors from the Barrowguard there assessing the damage and to learn that the survivors of the attack had all fled to separate corners of Aramán already.

Julien decided in an instant to travel back to safety with the Lady of Royce, unwilling to let her leave his sight again, and while that left them to fend for themselves with no backup to speak of, neither Occtis nor Thimble could blame him. They had no interest in separating themselves from each other again either.

Still, Occtis mused as he and his companion slowly made their way through the castle toward the apparently still standing library, it might have been nice to have another sword nearby in case his family had left any unpleasant stragglers behind. Even if that sword was attached to someone as insufferable as Julien Davinos.

"Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” Thimble assured him as she reached the top of the once magically glowing staircase up which he now dragged his corpse of a body. “Wait, you know that. I could hardly get you out of that place the first time we…”

She trailed off as her voice turned from fond excitement to melancholy, the memory of the joy of their first meeting suddenly drowned out by the cloud of darkness that had taken over this once vibrant place between places.

"Yeah,” Occtis said, trying to fill his own voice with as much of that fondness as he could. “I’ll never forget.”

He smiled softly when she looked back at him with a strained smile of her own, the same one she’d been giving him every day since they’d come back to each other. He hadn’t asked, couldn’t bring himself to ask, but the reasons behind the pain of that smile constantly nagged at him, as did the fact that Thimble no longer seemed to want to touch him. Occtis knew, deep down, that she still cared about him. He knew that with Thjazi gone, he was probably the person she cared about the most outside of her family. But part of him couldn’t help but wonder if she was now so put off by the state of him that, like everyone else around him since he’d died, she now only stuck around because she needed him for something.

Occtis put the thought out of his mind and continued up the stairs to join her at the door to the library, instead focusing on detecting the magical energy still faintly radiating from inside the room. He wasn’t particularly attuned to it, being without innate sorcery and more at home with necromancy than the fae magic inherent to the Golden Orchard, but Thimble had it covered, examining the threshold and the room beyond once Occtis slowly eased the door open.

“Hang back a little bit, I’ll check it out,” she ordered him, and he waited patiently while she made her way through the room, following little by little as she marked each new area safe for him, both as a big person and now one not possessed of a living body.

After about ten minutes of meticulously checking and occasionally dispelling a trap or two between them, Occtis thought they had managed to clear the whole room. While Thimble set about lighting the remaining candles and torches with her druidcraft, he began to wander over to the most enticing of the many bookshelves lining the walls of the room. He had no idea what kind of answers they could possibly find here about what Thjazi, Mara, and the Cloak might have been up to with all the artifacts they’d been collecting, but he had to start somewhere.

Occtis spotted a book on a shelf three rows above his head with a promising title, something about the relationship between Faerie and Obsidia, and reached his hand and foot for the ladder just as Thimble’s voice rang out behind him.

“Wait, don’t step—”

She called out to warn him just an instant too late. Just an instant after his foot made contact with the glyph. And in the next instant, his entire body filled with a dull pain that he suspected would have been much sharper if he’d still been alive. Even so, he closed his usually wide open eyes in response to the sensation, and when he opened them again after shaking off the pain, he couldn’t quite make sense of what they showed him.

The same ladder. The same bookshelf. The same room. But all of it was now unfathomably large and far away, as if his perspective had been pulled out of his own mind and down to a distant spot on the floor beneath him. He looked down at his hands. Still there, still the same relative size and distance away they always were, still pale and dead. So why did everything else now seem so…huge?

“Occtis? Occtis! Oh gods, not again…”

He heard Thimble cry out in confusion and then mutter to herself in agony, but her voice didn’t seem to come from the same place it had before. It seemed much higher. Had she just flown to the ceiling when he was attacked?

Oh. No, that wasn’t it at all, he thought as soon as she flew into his view, searching around at what would have been about his eye level.

If not for the fact that he’d just been reduced to her height by the perfectly placed spell glyph.

“I’m here! Down here!” Occtis called out, waving his arms above his head to try to get her attention. “Thimble!”

Her head whipped around a couple more times before finally her eyes found him five feet below her.

“Wha…? Oh!” The shock in her voice was evident, but it was replaced quickly with concern. “You…are you okay?”

“Um…I think so, just—"

“Hang on, I can’t hear you, let me…”

Thimble flew down to join him, landing about a foot away – though to Occtis it might as well have been a mile – and for the first time in their lives they stared at each other face to face while all four of their collective feet were firmly on the same ground. She took one cautious step forward but stopped, the same apprehensive, unsure look on her face that had been there when she’d first seen him again after his death. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, understanding that the situation was…weird, to say the least. But the look had returned each time she’d been about to get close to him since, and it made Occtis feel even more hollow inside than he already was.

He watched her face, more detailed than he’d ever been able to see before, twist with uncertainty as she drew her eyes up and down his new four-inch-tall form.

“Still you?” Thimble asked. A whisper, though somehow loud to his ears. She was used to shouting at big people, he realized, to make herself heard. He’d always tried to speak so softly to her in return.

Occtis looked down at himself, examining again for anomalies aside from the usual ones and finding none.

“Seems like it,” he said. “Do you know how t—Oh!"

Before he could even look up, Occtis found himself wrapped in a tight, desperate hug that would have knocked the wind out of him if there’d been any wind in him. He felt himself tense for just a second before relaxing completely for the first time in…he couldn’t even remember how long. Warmth radiated from Thimble’s body as it wrapped around him, not quite bringing life back to his own, but as close to it as he could possibly imagine.

Occtis felt her grip begin to loosen in disappointment, then realized his mistake of not moving and finally hugged her back, earning another squeeze. It was so surreal, wrapping his arms around her, ever so careful of her wings, feeling her relax again and bury her face between his neck and shoulder. He’d never imagined such a thing would be possible. Never thought he’d feel something so incredibly comforting, something done out of such pure care and affection. Never thought he’d feel anything so deeply again at all.

The hug seemed to go on for several full minutes, Thimble’s grip growing tighter and tighter with each passing second, as if she were afraid he’d disappear or grow back to his normal size at any moment.

Occtis chuckled, then wheezed a bit as he spoke in her ear. “You’re lucky I don’t need to breathe.”

“Shut up. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” she muttered into his neck with the smallest sniffle, still not loosening in the slightest.

“I didn’t think you’d want to at all,” Occtis confessed after another moment. “At least, not now that I’m…”

He trailed off, and finally Thimble’s arms slid away from around his neck, her hands and eyes coming to rest on his chest where there was no longer a heartbeat to be felt.

“I’m sorry…I didn’t think…” she whispered, shook her head. “It was just kind of shocking, you know? I....”

He watched her struggle to find the right words, then decided he didn’t know if he wanted to hear them anyway.

“It’s okay. Really,” he assured her, then gave a small, self deprecating laugh. “I’m sure it’s…kind of gross and weird—”

Finally her head snapped up as her eyes met his.

“No. Occtis, it’s…it’s not that,” she sighed. “I just didn’t know if you’d want me to be near you. Since I kinda…left you alone to die and everything…”

“Wait…what?” Occtis shook his head in confusion. “You mean you haven’t been avoiding touching me because you’re freaked out by how dead I am?”

“No, I don’t care about that! You’ve always been a little creepy and stuff, this isn’t that different,” she said brightly, then darkened again. “I just thought…well, you know…”

Occtis frowned. “Thimble…No. It was not your fault.”

“But I wasn’t there! I wasn’t there to protect you!” Thimble shouted desperately, starting to take off from the ground, but Occtis reached for her hand to keep her there, his grip and his voice gentle.

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to be there for that. It was awful, I don’t know how anyone made it out,” he told her, silently noting the tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t think there’s anything you could have done. Honestly. And I wouldn’t have wanted you to see…”

They both looked down toward his chest again as a heavy silence fell. Thimble still hadn’t seen the scar that had been left, but she’d heard about Ethrand’s attack. She knew what kind of broken state Occtis’s lifeless body was in beneath his shirt.

Instead of calling further attention to that, however, she poked him lightly in the ribs and forced a smirk onto her face.

“Nothing I could have done, huh? Doubting me? Even after everything I told you I did?” she teased.

“Never,” Occtis vowed with a soft smile. “But…you were where you needed to be. And now you are again.”

Thimble’s smirk grew into a bright, genuine grin as she pulled him back in for another hug. She sighed with content when his arms encircled her once more.

“I could really get used to this,” she said, and he chuckled.

“Speaking of which…” he said as the hug melted away again. “Do you have any idea how long this lasts?”

Thimble frowned as she racked her brain.

“Um…not really. I know they had these glyphs in here in case anyone got in that shouldn’t, so the warrior pixies that guarded the place would have an easier time fighting them,” she explained. “But that kind of made the wearing off part irrelevant. Assuming it does wear off…”

“You mean…I might just be stuck like this?”

Thimble scoffed. “Don’t say stuck like it’s such a bad thing to be small!”

“I’m not, it’s—I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for you at all. But you have wings,” he reminded her.

“Oh. Right…” she conceded, then gave a nonchalant shrug as she sized him up once more. “Well it’s okay, I can just fly you wherever you need to go. Watch this.”

Before Occtis even knew what was happening, Thimble had scooped him up in her arms and taken off, carrying him like a scared child as he clung to her neck in surprise. She floated up with complete ease, hovering above the table for a moment and smirking at his awe-struck face before depositing him on the surface and landing again in front of him.

Occtis stammered as he found his balance. “Wh—how are you so strong?”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms in front of her. “Please. You weigh basically nothing like this.”

“Well that’ll certainly help while we see if this can be reversed…” he muttered, casting his gaze around the room from his new perspective atop the table in the middle. “We did come here for a reason.”

“Right, right. Research, work…all that not fun stuff…” Thimble said, then sauntered up close to him with a mischievous look Occtis knew all too well. “Alternatively....I think we’ve earned a day off, don’t you?”

He almost laughed. “How? We haven’t found a single thing yet.”

“Occtis, you died!” she reminded him loudly, as if he might have forgotten. “And I got revenge on Casimir. And neither of us has taken a day off since!”

She poked him in the ribs again, and he sighed.

“Well…when you put it like that…”

“Sometimes spells and stuff just last for one day, right? Maybe this is one of those,” she reasoned. “Let’s just take one day while you’re like this and see what happens, and then when the day’s up if you’re not back to normal we’ll look for a way to get you big again and then get back to work. Deal?”

Thimble held out her hand, but all he could see were her eyes, bright and inviting and so much greener than he’d ever been able to see before. She winked at him, and Occtis felt that familiar spark of curiosity and lust for adventure he’d always felt with her. Fainter now, as most of his feelings were, but still undeniably there and positively begging for his attention.

He could never say no.

“Deal,” he said, taking her hand to shake but finding himself pulled into yet another hug before she quickly released him and flew around in a happy little circle.

He watched with a smile as Thimble fluttered around for a bit, excitedly going on about all the things they could do together now that he was her size, seemingly unable to decide which to try first.

Then all at once, she came to a stop.

“Wait. Pin’s not little now too, is he?” she asked, and Occtis cocked his head in thought, not having considered it.

“Huh…”

With a flourish and a snap of his fingers he conjured his familiar, who bamfed into view next to them on the table, knocking over a stack of books as he arrived.

“Aw, man. He’s just normal,” Thimble whined. “I mean that’s good for what I wanna do, but it would’ve been funny.”

“Normal? This is terrifying, he’s so big,” Occtis countered, staring up at the button-eyed face of his reanimated fox who now towered over him – and looked like he was considering taking a bite out of at least one of them. When the initial shock wore off, he had to admire his work a bit. It turned out he had made a scary creature after all. The problem was that the only people small enough to be scared of him weren’t scared of anything. “God, I can’t believe this is how it is for you all the time. I mean, I knew that, obviously, it’s just—and you fight big people all the time and everything!”

“I know. You’re gonna respect me a lot more now, huh?” Thimble smirked at him again before flying up to nuzzle Pin’s nose.

“I never didn’t respect you....But yes. This certainly does put all our interactions into a new perspective…” Occtis mused, already taking notes in his mind to remember this experience should it be useful later. But his companion was no longer listening, busying herself instead with climbing on the fox’s back as if he were a horse.

“Yeah, whatever you say,” she agreed, then offered her hand down to him. “Come on, let’s go for a ride.”

And Occtis, already accepting of his inability to deny her anything, took her hand and let himself be pulled onto the undead steed.

Pin, it turned out, was a gracious mount, happily taking commands from Thimble better than he ever did from Occtis. They ran and jumped and skidded around the room at a frantic pace, both riders laughing and occasionally screaming when he mistimed a turn around a chair or failed to slow sufficiently before face-planting into the wall. Occtis held onto Thimble for dear life and only twice had to fight off the urge to voice his suspicion that she was deliberately trying to get Pin to buck them off.

The marathon finally came to an end after Thimble challenged Pin to a race and easily finished ahead of the exhausted fox and his completely incapable rider. The moment he crossed the finish line, Pincushion laid right on the floor and went to sleep – or as close to it as an undead creature with button eyes could achieve.

Occtis gave Thimble a shrug but didn’t move, and she rejoined him on Pin’s back, where they sat and simply recounted the race and the frenetic journey around and around the library. As they chatted, Occtis watched her idly crafting little flowers made of pure magic to stick in Pin’s coat. He had no reason to believe it would even be possible, but after four or five he asked her to teach him how to do it. Thimble laughed at him like he was joking at first, but upon realizing his serious intent she paused, truly concentrating on how it felt to use her magic, then did her best to describe it to him as she formed a flawless purple flower and placed it behind his ear.

With her help and the same dogged persistence that had gotten him (most of the way) through his program at the Penteveral, Occtis tried over and over and over again to replicate what she’d done, learning from each failure, adjusting, tweaking, creating some truly interesting specimen along the way. An hour later, the best he’d come up with was a small brown sprig of a plant that looked at least half dead already.

“Guess it was always going to be a struggle for a dead guy to create something that could’ve stayed alive,” he concluded with a frown.

“So what? Mine won’t stay alive either,” Thimble said, then gently took the sprig from his hand and studied it. “I think it’s pretty perfect, actually. Perfectly you.”

She handed it back to him and then turned her head to the side, leaning toward him as if presenting her ear. Occtis smiled as he got the message, reaching forward to place his beautiful failure of a flower behind her ear just as she’d done for him. They stared at each other for a moment, matching flowers and grins, and again Occtis felt a warmth fill his chest that he hadn’t considered possible anymore. Just another surprise to add to the list of them in a wonderfully surprising day.

He didn’t have much time to contemplate it, for the next thing he knew, Thimble was on her feet and beckoning him up again.

“That’s enough magic for now. Let’s go make a mess.”

Swept off his feet again by his favorite person, Occtis didn’t question what kind of a mess they’d be making on the highest shelf of the bookcase she brought him to, but he quickly found out. He watched as Thimble shimmied behind the row of books, disappearing for a moment before giving a grunt of exertion and reappearing as the heavy tome fell away and tumbled to the floor in a clatter.

“You’re up,” she told him as she clapped the dust off her hands in satisfaction, and for the next couple of hours they took turns just…pushing books and scrolls off the shelves for no other reason than that it amused her. The scholar in Occtis objected and his pride took a slight blow when he was unable to move the heavier books, but when it came down to it, he wouldn’t have traded the afternoon for all the knowledge in all those volumes.

As the evening fell and the sunset gave the Orchard a fraction of its golden glow back, they found themselves seated on a rafter high in the ceiling, feet dangling over the edge while Thimble had a quick bite to eat from her supplies and Occtis mused aloud at how similar the day had felt to the first day he’d spent in this castle. Similar, he noted, but far less anxious on his part, even though the world and their lives (or afterlife, in his case) seemed to be in such turmoil.

Such a world should have been even more terrifying when he was this small, but by her side he felt nothing but joy.

It was nice, he started to tell her, to have just spent the day not worried about anything beyond the walls of this room, but the moment he began to thank her for the suggestion of the day off, she suddenly straightened in excitement, gasped, and took off from her seat.

“Um…” Occtis watched helplessly for a moment before she realized her mistake and came back to scoop him up again, though still didn’t provide an explanation.

It wasn’t until she landed them on the small table beside the window that he understood. Taking up most of the surface of the table was a phonograph, looking quite dusty but still in working condition. There was even a record already on, and looked like it had been for years, if not decades. Thimble floated up and hovered over it, reading out the words and gasping in delight again. The record, she reported, had been the favorite of the old Lord Royce, Aranessa’s grandfather, and Thimble had been around on a few occasions when the lord or his granddaughter had played it. Occtis smiled as she recalled fond memories of watching the lord and lady dance to the songs, and the same for Aranessa and Thjazi, once, though that memory seemed to sting as much as it comforted her.

She shook off the momentary hurt and went about trying to blow at least a layer of dust off the record while Occtis gave a scritch to Pin, who’d hopped up on the armrest of the nearby chair to watch. When she was done, Thimble came over and offered him her hand again as she bowed slightly.

“May I have this dance, Lord Tachonis?” she asked in her best snooty voice, ignoring the way he rolled his eyes at the title she usually only threw out to poke fun at him. She straightened up and cocked an eyebrow. “You do know how to dance, right?”

He grinned and took her hand. “I know enough. What about you?”

“I’m sure I can follow your lead,” she said, starting to guide him up onto the record player before turning back to glare at him. “But don’t get used to that.”

“I wouldn’t even want to,” he assured her with a shake of his head.

They climbed atop the phonograph and the record together, then Thimble worked out the controls, brow furrowed and tongue peeking out as she concentrated. Eventually the surface Occtis stood on began to spin slowly, and a soft, crackling sound emanated from the horn. Before long it turned into beautiful notes of a song Occtis didn’t recognize, still crackling and slightly stuttering as the stylus tripped over the dust, but just the right volume and just the right melody.

Thimble joined him again, looking a bit more shy and anxious than before, but Occtis took her hand and began to show her the basic steps he’d been taught as a child at court. They were slightly more complicated now, as the “dance floor” he was working with continued to rotate at a slow but nonetheless dizzying pace, and he had to adjust to account for the spin to keep them both from getting disoriented. Together they got the hang of it, though, and soon Thimble’s laugh had almost drowned out the music in his ears as she reveled in every spin and twirl, every dip and step. Only a few times her boots trod on his bare toes, Occtis having shed his own cumbersome footwear hours ago to make himself easier to carry. Pin looked on curiously, yipping with delight when they abandoned the dance as the needle of the player drifted closer to the center and the game of hopping over it on each pass became more exciting than dancing.

They moved the needle back to the beginning and started the whole process over when the record ended, repeating that same pattern a few times before Occtis asked if there was another side. Thimble investigated and found that there was indeed, though she wasn’t familiar with the music on it. Together they managed to flip the wide disc and set the far less dusty side of the record to play. The music on this side was equally beautiful, though not as upbeat, and Occtis confessed he didn’t quite know how to dance along with it.

“That’s okay, I’ll take the lead on this one,” Thimble said, taking one of his hands and guiding the other around her waist as she stepped closer to him, then started to lead him in simply swaying through tiny steps as she studied his face from mere millimeters away.

Occtis let out a nervous chuckle but said nothing and let the instinctual smile that came stay in place. Satisfied, she rested her head against his collarbone and closed her eyes, and together they continued to spin and spin as the music played and the moonlight flooded through the window.

“We’re really gonna fuck this thing up if you suddenly poof back to normal,” Thimble teased, nudging his chin with her cheek.

“I’m not worried.”

“No. Me either.”

As they swayed, cheek to cheek, holding each other in a way that had never been possible before and might never be again, Occtis let his mind wander to other things he never thought were possible. For years he’d been aware of but determined not to acknowledge the crush he’d had on Thimble since they were kids. Because it was truly just that, just a childhood crush that surely meant nothing and could go nowhere. But how different might everything have been if he’d been like this all along, small enough to dance with her, to hold her hand, to swipe an unruly curl away from her eyes now and then…

No, he told himself. It wouldn’t do to think this way because he couldn’t stay this way. And he certainly couldn’t do or say anything once he went back to normal tomorrow or whenever they managed to work it out. It was impossible, and that was fine. They were fine the way they were. No reason to think it could be more. No reason to want more, he told himself.

For the briefest of seconds he considered asking Julien what he thought, but Occtis hated that idea so badly he physically shook it from his head, knocking lightly against his dance partner’s. Thimble looked at him in confusion and he apologized but didn’t feel like explaining. Thankfully she didn’t ask, and they went back to swaying together until finally the record reached its end.

Even when the record stopped spinning, though, they weren’t ready to let go. Occtis stood, still as death, waiting for her to make the first move to draw apart, but she only held on tighter, her fingers digging into his shirt as she breathed in deeply and then let out a long sigh. Finally, Thimble pulled away, stifling a yawn.

“That was nice,” she said with a soft smile, which he immediately matched.

“It was…”

“Probably time to…get some rest, though…”

“Sure. Lead the way.”

Silently, they climbed down from the phonograph and joined Pin on the cushioned chair beside the table. Thimble curled up at the fox’s side, and Occtis slotted in beside her, both of them lying down facing each other like they often had done even before he’d been the right size for it.

The silence lingered but it wasn’t uncomfortable, as Thimble just occupied herself for a while with Occtis’s hand, turning it over, tracing the lines with her fingertips, folding his own fingers into a fist and then splaying them out again. He watched her curiously, wondering what she was thinking, wondering if she was contemplating all the times that hand had held her entire body within it.

He never did ask, and she never did say, just entwined her fingers between his own and finally looked up to catch him staring at her.

“So, are you having fun being normal sized?” she asked with a smirk, and he laughed but didn’t refute the assessment of the situation baked into her question.

“Of course.”

“Glad we took the day off?”

“Best day off ever,” he claimed with a smile, truly unable to remember a day he had enjoyed more.

Thimble smiled back, but it faded as she let go of his hand and instead trailed her fingers down the buttons of his shirt with a trace of that same apprehensive look she’d had on earlier that morning.

“How do you…feel?” she asked, her voice so soft he could hardly hear her. “Physically, I mean. Is it different, when you’re this small?”

Occtis swallowed awkwardly on nothing. He hadn’t been thinking about it for hours now, but nothing had changed.

“Um…no, the same as normal, I guess.” He shrugged. “Well. The new normal, anyway.”

Her hand found his again as she frowned, and he wasn’t sure whether the contact was for his comfort or her own.

“We haven’t talked about that much…” she whispered regretfully, then bit her lip. “What’s it like?”

Occtis mimed taking a deep breath to gather himself.

“Kind of awful, if I’m being honest…” he confessed. “l can’t eat or drink, can’t sleep, can’t breathe. Everything inside me is just…wrong…”

“Huh,” Thimble said, regarding him with a different sort of curiosity suddenly. “In a way it kinda sounds like you’re in love.”

He let out a sudden bark of nervous laughter. “What? No. No I’m n—what does that have to do w—”

“Makes sense actually…at least the way I’ve heard people talk about it,” she went on, hardly registering his response. “I guess being in love is like being dead. Or at least dying.”

Now Occtis was confused. “Uh…come again?”

Thimble dropped his hand again and began gesturing for emphasis as she explained, “I mean…you’ve got all those songs and stories and everything making it sound all nice, right? But ask any real person and they’ll tell you how terrible it is. Just like you said, except not literally.”

“Uh huh....And what people have told you that?”

“Just trust me on this. Look at Thjazi!” she insisted. “Any time he talked about Aranessa and how he still loved her, he always just looked like he was dying. Really slowly.”

He squinted at her. “But he didn’t actually…tell you that…”

“Occtis. You know how insightful I am.”

He shook his head but declined not to comment on that particular argument.

“Okay....so that’s one person…”

“Well there’s Kattigan too. And Tyranny! With Wick!” Thimble cringed hard then as Occtis’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh but…don’t tell any of them I said that.”

“I…wow. Okay…”

“The point is…I think I’m on to something. Being dead and being in love have all the same symptoms,” she said, then sat up and gave a shrugging gesture as if this was all obvious and made perfect sense.

It did not. Occtis opened and closed his mouth a few times in an effort to find the words to tell her so, but nothing came out until the fourth try.

“I don’t know about this hypothesis,” he finally said, very matter-of-fact. “I think you need to do more research.”

She groaned immediately. “Ugh! Always research with you!”

“There’s insufficient evidence!”

“You’re insufficient evidence!” she countered with another poke to his ribs, this one strong enough to roll him onto his back. He’d have to check that spot tomorrow for strange coloration.

Then without warning she collapsed on top of him, falling at his side with her arm across his torso and her head on his shoulder. Occtis froze for a moment, then managed to maneuver one arm around her back, hesitant at first but then more confident when she seemed to relax under his touch. He reached toward the hand of her outstretched arm with his other hand, and she tangled their fingers together again without hesitation.

She sighed, deep and content, and he could feel her smile against him.

“I missed this. Just hanging out together,” she said, then lifted her head to look up at him. “I missed you.”

“Me too,” he agreed with a smile, then shook his head at himself. “Missed you, I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” She paused, looked away from his eyes, and laid her head down again. “I’m sorry, Occtis. I didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long…”

Occtis’s eyes closed slowly. He’d tried to forget about the first year or two at the Penteveral, when he was lonelier than he’d ever been despite being surrounded by people every day. Going to bed every night staring at the window, hoping to see the bright green glow of his best friend coming to pay him a visit. It never did come. Nearly five years went by with hardly a word from her, and he’d started to wonder if he’d ever even see her again.

Occtis knew she had her reasons. He’d never blame her for it. But gods if it hadn’t been a relief to finally see her again when Thjazi had recruited him for the Venatus job.

“It’s okay. I needed it, I think. Needed to learn how to do things on my own,” he assured her, then gave a chuckle. “Glad that’s over, though.”

Thimble let out a tired laugh as well. “Yeah. I won’t do that again.”

“I know,” he told her, then squeezed her hand until she looked at him again, her pretty green eyes obviously growing droopy. But he had one more thing to say, and he wanted her to hear him. “Thank you for this. Today, I mean. It’s the first time I’ve felt almost…alive again, since…” he trailed off, but smiled down at her again. “I almost forgot how it feels.”

She matched his smile as her thumb traced a comforting pattern over his own. “Yeah…I almost forgot for a while too, actually. Felt like old times.”

“It did…”

For a minute they just stared at each other, then Thimble let out a mighty yawn and buried her face in his neck, snuggling ever closer as she quickly began to drift off.

“Don’t go anywhere, alright?” she murmured. “Even if you get big again…stay with me…”

Occtis felt her breath and heartbeat slow to a pace that told him she was definitely asleep within seconds. He smiled to himself once more, then turned and planted a featherlight kiss on the top of her head.

“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

He closed his eyes and rested in his own way, coming closer to sleep, he thought, than on any other night since his death.

~

In the morning, Occtis was still tiny, and Thimble was still excited about it.

They goofed around through an hour or two of the early morning before finally getting down to business, as it seemed he would not be suddenly popping back to his normal stature. The previous day’s activity of dumping books on the floor had left the library in a bit of a state, but this proved advantageous in its own way. Occtis was free to roam about the books and scrolls on the floor in search of answers while Thimble occupied herself looking through the ones on the higher shelves only she could reach without help.

The first couple hours of searching were mostly quiet and fruitless, but eventually Thimble called him over to check out an interesting find. Up on a high shelf, obscured by larger tomes all around it, was a smaller book with a purple cover and some arcane symbols on the side. Immediately Occtis could see a similarity between it and the spellbook that Thjazi had given him as a child, twelve years ago, in this very same castle.

Occtis was sure there would be something useful inside, if not for this problem then for later research. Thimble pushed a couple of the surrounding books off the shelf and helped him open it right there, then left him to it as he immediately became engrossed in the handwritten script inside.

While his companion continued checking through books on the opposite side of the room, Occtis skimmed through page after page of what was most definitely a rudimentary spellbook left behind by some sort of mage – perhaps even the same one whose book Occtis had seen all those years ago. Thjazi had taken that one back eventually, and Occtis couldn’t recall how the handwriting had looked after all this time, but the descriptions of spells and components all rang familiar in a way.

The morning rolled on, and he did his best not to get too engrossed in each page of the book, finally succeeding long enough to reach paydirt. With only a dozen or so pages before the end of the volume, he found the description of a spell to enlarge the size of objects – and willing creatures. Permanent, if done properly, unless another spell reversed the effect. He read the description over and over again, making sure it was something he could do from this library and wouldn’t mess up so badly he put himself or Thimble at risk.

He was so engrossed in the words and symbols that he didn’t notice her approach until she’d wrapped her arms around his neck from behind, startling him slightly with the hug.

“Nothing good on my side. How about you?” she asked, her chin resting on the top of his head as her fluttering wings held her aloft.

“Actually....I think I’ve almost got it…” he said, still not taking his eyes off the pages.

“That’s nice. You could get it. Orrrr…” Thimble drew out the word for heavy emphasis. “You could just stay like this for a while.”

Finally Occtis dragged his eyes away from the book, looking straight up at her eyes above him. After everything they’d done the previous day and night, all the fun they had and the comfort they found together, he wanted nothing more than to agree, to have those arms around him every second for as long as she would have him. But he knew how much danger all their friends were still in beyond these walls. He knew so many people were counting on them.

So he just smiled, gave her arm a fond pat, and made a quip instead as he returned his gaze to the book.

“You wanna be the one to carry me around forever?”

Thimble scoffed lightly and tousled his already messy hair. “I’m sure we could get you flying eventually, you’re really smart and I’m pretty resourceful.”

“Hm…” Occtis muttered as his eyes landed on an interesting footnote he’d not seen yet. One about how the spell could be inverted.

“What, hm?” she mimicked, playfully offended. “Don’t say there’s insufficient evidence of that, I am—”

“I would never,” he broke in, standing suddenly with her still wrapped around his neck. “We should probably get down to try this.”

“Now? Already?”

She drifted off him and frowned, and Occtis responded with a sad smile.

“I think our off day is up…”

Thimble sighed. “I guess you’re right. Come on.”

One last time, she picked him up, one arm under his knees and the other tight around his back as he clung to her shoulders for their final descent to the floor. She deposited him gently on the ground before flying back up to knock his spellbook off the shelf in case he needed to refer to it again, careful not to dump it right on him.

Occtis found the page once more and reread a few more times to make sure he’d get the procedure just right, then he moved to a clear spot on the floor with room for his full-sized feet underneath him. Thimble flitted around all the while, anxiously chewing on her lip as the moment she dreaded grew closer and closer. When finally he announced he was ready, she came and stood in front of him, slowly taking him in from head to toe one last time, then launching into a long hug.

They held on for a good long while, neither speaking, neither wanting to remember anything but how it felt to have the other in their arms. To Occtis’s surprise, it was Thimble who eventually let go first, though not without obvious regret.

“Not sure I’m ready to let you do it. This felt like a dream…” she said, still holding onto his hand.

“Yeah,” was all he had the strength to say.

“A really good one,” Thimble clarified.

“Really good,” Occtis agreed. “But I know it’s not. A dream, I mean. Because…I don’t sleep anymore.”

“Right…definitely real.” She smiled sadly, gave his hand a final squeeze, then let go at long last.

Occtis stared at her as she flew a couple feet back and up, then gave her a nod.

“Well…here goes…”

She nodded back. Then—

“Wait!” she shouted, flying back down again. She landed directly in front of him, paused to look him in the eye for one solitary second, then leaned in and kissed him. Simple, direct, just her lips meeting his for one or two brief seconds. Occtis didn’t even have time to react before it was over, but nonetheless he knew he’d never be the same. She pulled away, poking him in the ribs one last time as he reeled. “Okay. Don’t fuck it up.”

“Right…” Occtis muttered, and against his will his mind drifted back to the times he’d studied Julien’s behavior while on the road, hoping to glean something about how to behave in romantic-type situations. He asked himself what Julien would do, then quickly decided he had no interest in knowing that. He only knew what he wanted to do. And for once in his life, he wanted to act rather than think. To find out the meaning of something by simply doing it. The thinking could come after. Thimble had taken his moment of hesitation to start to fly away, but he reached for her hand. “Wait.”

Occtis pulled her close – his best friend, his most trusted companion, the light of his life and death – and kissed her back. It was longer this time, their arms wrapping around each other as they melted into the kiss, and by the end, Occtis wasn’t the only one breathless. And he felt, just for a moment, the pulse of something within him again, something giving him life beyond the magic that had brought him back.

They pulled apart again, Thimble catching her breath as she studied the way his eyebrows furrowed in an attempt to process what he’d just done and felt.

“Research?” she asked, clearly recognizing the look on his face as one of scientific contemplation.

“Research,” he confirmed.

“And?”

“Still insufficient evidence,” he said, meeting her eye roll with a smile. “But I think I’m close to disproving your hypothesis.”

Thimble grinned so wide she made herself giggle, which made him giggle in return.

“I may be forming a new one anyway.”

With that, she leaned in once more and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then flew back up and nodded with a finality that said it was really time now.

“Alright then…” Occtis said, nodding back.

Content with the end, for now, he began casting the spell with none of the hesitation he’d felt before. He felt the arcane magic wash over him and closed his eyes, and when he opened them again seconds later, he found himself looking at the library from a much more familiar angle.

With a much more familiarly sized pixie hovering in front of his face.

“Well. Fun while it lasted…” Thimble said, frowning only a bit as she studied him again from all the old angles.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But…it could be again.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“That spell worked. It got me back to my size,” he said, turning to pick up the spellbook off the floor. He held it up and showed her the footnote at the end. “But I’m pretty sure I can work out an inverse. So, theoretically…”

He trailed off and let her come to the conclusion herself. When she did, her face lit up as brightly as her wings.

“You could make yourself small again…”

“As long as I don’t fuck it up,” Occtis said, earning a smile that warmed the space where his heart should be. “Next time we have a day off?”

Thimble looked at him fondly for a moment, then floated up and kissed his cheek again, a tiny peck just as meaningful as the one before it.

“It’s a date.”