Silver Light Chapter 6 (Patreon)

We didn’t go any further into the city to find our friends that day. Neither of us felt up to it. Fiona had almost been killed, and I had killed the person who had been trying to kill her. Fiona was dealing with it better than I was, despite being the one who had almost died. She just seemed to be hardier than I was, both in body and in mind.

I walked in a daze as my brain tried to parse what had happened in Harry’s house. We’d been attacked by two strange people who seemed to be… well I don’t know what they seemed to be. I couldn’t wrap my mind around them or their strange behaviour. I couldn’t figure out why they would attack the pair of us out of the blue.

The biggest thing on my mind however, was the death I had caused. Was it murder? Had I murdered someone? I think in the end it was the permanency of it that was hitting me the most. It was how that person was gone from the world forever and whatever small contributions, present or future that they made to the world would be gone now.Snuffed out. That was a lot of power to hold crackling at one’s fingertips.

Every time I read or watch or consume any type of media where someone is in a similar situation, that first life that the hero has to take. It’s always the same thing, “You never forget their face. You’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of your life”. Would I be dealing with the same thing? Would I wake up in the middle of the night, a bronze mask staring at me in my mind’s eye?

That sounded less than ideal.

Moon tried to talk to me for a bit too, her mind wandering from topic to topic like a bored puppy. She would seem almost cute if it wasn’t for the connection we held. I could feel the raw untamed strength coming from her. You know when you’re standing on a beach, and you can see a storm rolling in? You can smell the energy on the wind as it pulls at your clothing and hair. A thin spray of water hits your face as salt water is pulled up off the sea to mix with the beginnings of the rain starts up. You see the raw power advancing towards you, your sight is becoming more and more limited as the wall of rain cuts off your view, but because it’s the sea you’re looking at, it’s hard to gauge the actual distance. 

That’s what it’s like to feel connected to the Moon like this. All I had to do was ask the right words, form the right picture in my mind, and the fury of a goddess would tear apart whatever I pointed my finger at. The fury of a goddess who didn’t seem capable of staying on topic to save her life.

This one time, I greeted Mars as we flew by, and he had the audacity to propose the notion that I should attempt to terraform myself as he was doing. Why would I ruin myself like that? Earth and her blue and green works for her, but I much prefer my clean grey silver skin.

“Sounds great Moon,” I mumbled.

Oh speaking of that, did you know that when the… What is the word for them? Ah yes! Scientists! When the human scientists all decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore, he was so angry! It was so amusing to watch, I was giddy with the excitement of it all. He was going to throw Nix at the Earth! It wasn’t until Jupiter got involved that everything settled down. What a mess that whole debacle was. Great entertainment though!

“Pluto… right. I remember that,” I said, and I even felt a small smile shyly introduce itself to my face after her tale. I wasn’t sure if her stories were true, but they were certainly entertaining.

Jupiter has Neptune keeping an eye on Pluto over that. Such a lovely boy that Neptune. Did I tell you about-

It continued like that almost the whole way home. At some point she went silent, but I couldn’t tell you when that was, I’d started zoning her out. She was just too much at the moment.

I was so lost in my melancholy thoughts that I didn’t even notice us cross the threshold into Fiona’s house again. It wasn’t even midday and we were already back. I stared numbly about myself like a lost puppy, trying to figure out what happens now. I didn’t even mean the bigger picture at this point. I meant like, do I go and sit down on the couch, or do I go and curl up on her bed?

“What do we do now?” I asked the apartment at large.

Of course, Fiona did indeed think I meant the bigger picture, “I don’t… I guess we need to leave town. That fire is still spreading, and those… people… I don’t like it. I want to get our asses out of here.”

“But we don’t have like… anything. We don’t have food, at least not the kind we can carry with us. We don’t have… I don’t even know what we need for camping and shit. We have none of the required gear,” I said anxiously.

“I actually have a tent… so there’s that. I only have a month left of my meds too… and no food yeah… shit. I hate to say this but I think we need to do more breaking and entering,” she grimaced, fear etching her face as she spoke about her meds. Meds that we both knew in the backs of our minds would eventually run out. There was now a finite amount in the world. A time limit on her life.

“More… but what if we get attacked again?” I said in a small, scared voice.

Fiona winced and looked down at her hands, “Then we win. Again. I’ll be the first person to say that violence isn’t good… but if it’s us or them… shit. I sound like one of those people online. You know the ones who debate situations like this? Still, I’m going to defend us. I will kick the shit out of anyone who tries anything against us.”

“Oh… okay. I think… I mean… that’s fine. Like, I think it would be okay, I just don’t like it and… crap I don’t know,” I sighed, then felt my expression slump as tension threatened to unravel me, “I’m just so weak! I’ve always been so weak. I get emotional and upset when I have to go to a fucking party for too long. What kind of guy gets upset over a party? I’ve always been nothing you know? A fuckup. I fuck up constantly. I’m the guy that everyone points to when they are talking about how our generation isn’t manly enough. They’re right too! I’m a wim-”

Fiona cut my self loathing off with a shove. It wasn’t hard, but it knocked me out of the downward emotional spiral I’d been starting for like a bucket of cold water to the face.

“That’s all a load of horse shit Delphie. For starters, all those wankstains who say that shit are evil. They’re all so caught up in this masculinity bullshit of theirs to see how weak they really are. They shit on you because they are weak. They see the existence of someone who doesn’t conform to their bullshit way of thinking as an attack, because if a man can exist and not be the pinnacle of asshole toxic masculinity, then they might have to confront the fact that they are wrong,” she growled, her voice getting downright scary as she spoke.

“I um…” I mumbled, unable to find a way to respond.

She took a few deep breaths, winced and apologised, “Sorry. I feel pretty strongly about that type of thing. My dad was all about that bullshit. Men must be men! He was so caught up in making sure men were being men that he had no idea how to comprehend women. I guess that’s why I was brought up on Men must be Men Lite. He didn’t know how to deal with raising a girl after raising five boys, so he just went a little lighter on me and called it a day.”

“Right… I’m sorry? I don’t know what to say,” I said quietly, a little intimidated by her right now.

“Ah shit sorry Delphie,” she said with remorse, “You were all upset and I turned this around and made it about me. We’ll make a plan yeah? Get out of the city, make our way to that lodge maybe, but mainly just get safe. Just remember though, you’re worth far more than you think you are alright? Shit you don’t need to be a man at all. Never needed to actually, but that’s besides the point. You’re a damn cool person alright?”

“Thanks,” I smiled, suddenly feeling rather shy.

“No problem!” she smiled back.

“Um, question though… why aren’t you calling me Elph or whatever it was?” I asked.

She laughed, and I felt a little tension leave my body when I heard it. She had a nice Laugh, “Because Elph sounds dumb now that I think about it, and Delphie sounds cute.”

“Cute…?”

“Yeah, because you’re cute, so you need a cute nickname,” she winked.

I blinked at her, once again at a loss for words. I was… cute? Me. Evan… now Delphira, was cute? She’d been telling me things like that this whole time, and it was eliciting some truly odd feelings within me. I think I might… like being called cute? Why? Was it because I’d always sucked at being a manly man? Fiona had more traditional male values in her than I ever would be even if I tried, and she was a girl. This was all really fucking confusing to be honest, unwrapping all the different layers of this whole thing was going to give me a headache.

I’d been staring at her in silence for like thirty seconds before she awkwardly looked away and brushed a finger under her nose, “Right so um. I guess we need to go through the apartment and figure out what we can carry with us then? I only have one hiking back, so we’ll probably have to raid an outdoor sports store or something. If other people haven’t already had the same idea.”

“Oh uh, yeah that makes sense. I guess I can like, carry stuff in the normal bags till we find one for me?” I asked.

“Bingo! Don’t want to use those things for too long of a distance. They aren’t made for the kind of distances we’ll be walking,” she nodded, seeming happy that I’d caught on.

“So time to tear your apartment apart then?” I said. I was ready to get out of Boston, that was for sure.

“Yup. Let’s do this!”

****

Fiona actually had quite a lot of stuff that would be useful, or rather it would have been before all of this happened. She had a gps, a little headlamp, a gas camping stove, and a lot of other things that relied on the way things used to work. We’d seen it around the place, the way even petrol didn’t want to do it’s thing anymore, but we hadn’t realised it would extend to gas as well. You just didn’t get the same flame anymore. It seemed fine with her little lighter, but when we tried the camping stove it couldn’t get to a reasonable heat. The thing was useless for cooking.

Speaking of fire… matches didn’t work unless you really rubbed them against the strike pad. Like I mean for a minute or so, if the match didn’t disintegrate before then. Realising that her Zippo was now our only reliable source of fire, she made extra sure it was on her person.

She had one sleeping bag, a small two person tent, canteens for water, a first aid kit and the list went on. It was impressive how much she had prepared. Apparently she had liked to go camping with some of her more outdoorsy HEMA friends, and I was more than happy to leech off her hobby. She even had a few pots and pans that were lightweight, as well as little plastic plates and some cheap cutlery. How we were supposed to carry all of this was beyond me, but I didn’t argue.

When it came time to leave, I found out I would be carrying a bunch more than she would be. I would have the big pack filled with as much as I could comfortably carry, while Fiona would have less.

“Why am I carrying more?” I asked, genuinely curious but also a little miffed.

“Wait out here,” she told me, indicating the living room.

She went into her room and closed the door. I was left idle, again missing the convenience that had been a phone full of entertainment. It was odd to actually miss sites like reddit and twitter, but here I was in a situation where I normally would have pulled the thing out and started scrolling.

When Fiona came back out, the sight took my breath away. She wore the suit of armour that had been sitting in her room, and my god did it fit her well. The thing was sleek and deadly looking, a far cry from the bulky crap you see in video games most of the time. It had obviously been made specifically for her body, and I could tell it had been done well. The way she moved towards me through the room with almost as much ease as if she’d been wearing normal clothing.

“Wow,” I breathed before I could stop myself.

Fiona grinned and her grey eyes sparkled with knowing mischief, “You like?”

“Yeah! I mean… like the armour is so cool I mean. Wow. How come you can move so well? Isn’t that heavy?” I blurted, trying to take my eyes off her but finding that a difficult task.

“Nah, armour like this, especially stuff made with modern methods, is really good. Sure it’s heavy, but the weight doesn’t feel so bad when it’s evenly distributed you know? Good armour is also made so you can move easily. You’d be too easy to pin down by lighter opponents otherwise. Everyone always expects plate to make you this lumbering tank, but you can run and jump almost as well as someone who isn’t wearing it, so long as you’re used to it,” she explained, stretching and showing off her range of motion.

“Wow… I always figured that because in games they like nerfed you for it that… yeah well you get me,” I said.

“Nope, my nerdy little friend, I’m afraid that video games were wrong on that one,” she laughed.

I smiled back at her, she was totally right. I was her nerdy little friend now. Emphasis on the little! I liked being smaller already, it had just been easier so far. I also liked being her friend actually. Having a friend as reliable as Fiona was always a win. I looked at the rest of what she was carrying, and saw she was bringing all of her swords, as well as a little mace and a buckler. She was loaded for bear, but medieval style.

“So um, if we’re all ready to leave…” I said, nodding towards the door.

“Yeah… we should get going hey. We need to find a pharmacy so I can… get more meds, plus an outdoor sports store. Probably ones close to the fire where they will lose everything anyway? I don’t know, a megacorp clothing store is one thing, but a pharmacy and a little sports store are another,” she grimaced.

“I know of some places we can go to. I lived around there. Shit my house is probably a blazing inferno by now actually,” I said, realising that I had seen the fire advancing into my suburb while we were out this morning.

“Okay, let's go then Delphie my little witch companion!” she joked, walking to the door and holding it open.

“I prefer the term mage I think. We start throwing the word witch around right now and I’ll be burning at the stake in no time,” I said, hiking the pack up further onto my shoulders and walking out of the house.

“Oh shit… I didn’t think of that. Let’s keep your magic on the down low then until we’re away from angry mobs,” she said thoughtfully.

Fiona took a moment as she closed her front door, staring at the place she’d called home for a while now. She seemed pensive, but not overly sentimental about it.

“Probably the last time I’ll see this place,” she mentioned as she turned back.

“Yeah… Boston is going to look very different the next time we see it,” I agreed.

“Well, let’s get moving. I hope you wore the thick socks because we have a lot of walking to do,” she said, patting me on the shoulder.

Setting off towards the blaze further into town, I noticed that my new friend the Moon was nowhere in sight above us. She must have dipped below the horizon.