Fairy Bride Ch19: S'Envole (Patreon)

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Cannes

He didn’t think he’d sleep.  Spencer lays on the cot he volunteered himself for, rocked back and forth by the waves. The space is dark but for the moonlight, a perfect canvas for his thoughts.

As usual, none are good.

There was a time when his concerns were… so mundane.  Once, his biggest worry was the number at the bottom of the manor’s budget sheet.  He was some nobody backbencher, the press didn’t know his name, and he could slink off for a night of adventure whenever he pleased.

Spencer remembers the day that ended, a week after the Keeping.  His time-off was over, and he was called for a meeting.  Spencer didn’t know what to do about her, so he opted to just lock her in her new room with enough books to keep her entertained.  He remembers breathing a sigh of relief; he could finally be alone.  But he had forgotten, after all that constant fretting, to show her the new wardrobe.

He only made it halfway down the hall before he heard her screams.

It’s different now.  The bills are always higher, and he’s always getting calls from ever-angrier donors.  That dream of political change he’s always had, it lies forgotten.  It’s hard to remember the single mum, the desperate migrant, the injured labourer, when he’s always worried about what will happen past his own front door.  But he can’t tell her. He can’t tell the voters.  He can’t say anything.

Why is it always so hard?  Why can’t all that effort and pain make something?  Why can’t this just, for once, be different?

With a worrying crack from his spine, Spencer lifts himself to his feet, groggily throwing on tomorrow’s shirt and his glasses.  Might as well go topside, get some fresh air.  He tiptoes his way across the deck, footsteps drowned out by Mallory’s snores.  The hatch is open, oddly enough.  He frowns, about to step up, when a shape half-shadowed in a nearby alcove catches his eye.

“...L?”

He stops, looking quizzically at the plastic cage and its tiny denizen.  Shouldn’t she be with Daph?  The butterfly flaps her wings fitfully, clambering up a tangle of sticks before trying to take off, and immediately plopping to the ground.  Spencer frowns, searching the container.  There’s no apple core in sight.

Did she forget to feed her?

The latch opens with a tiny creak, and Spencer slowly settles a handful of apple slices into the terrarium’s centre.  L Morgan flutters her wings, puttering around in the corner furthest from her surprise intruder.  Spencer giggles to himself and closes the cage, looking out past the sun deck to the ocean beyond.  Hopefully, his wife doesn’t mind the help.

Cannes is just in the distance, a smear of urban light streaking across the black clouds.  He can see a stream of pink at the very edge of the horizon.  The sun will rise soon, but in this interim, he pictures the many boats at port rocking silently at low tide, clustered close in the dark.

“Do they have sunrises like these in the mountains, L?”  He asks playfully.  “Are they just as… calming…?”

Slowly, his face sinks into his hands.  It’s so much.  It’s all so much.  He’s ready to finally let it out, like he does most nights, but a voice interrupts him, floating down from the stern.

“She’s never leaving that, is she?”

Spencer looks past the yacht’s layers.  It’s easy to find her - a silhouette in a white dress with hair the colour of the moon.  Her feet dangle a mere metre above the water.  Spencer smiles at her shyly.  “I could buy a larger enclosure.”

“Would it really matter?  She’ll never fly away.”  Daphne sighs, her head sinking toward her chest.  She’s been in an even worse mood than usual since his phone call; this might be the first time he’s heard her all evening.  Spencer straightens up - with difficulty - and works his way down the decks.  She waits for him to reach the bottom before she speaks again.

“Do you think I’m doing her a kindness, keeping her alive?”

His brows furrow.  “I don’t think I can answer that.”

“You can.  You breathe.  Is that a life worth living?”

It only takes a second to ponder it.  “Always.”  He shrugs.  “A box is better than nothing.”

She seems to accept the answer, her head sinking a little lower.  Spencer saunters to her spot, but Daphne makes no move to leave.  As he struggles to slide his feet through the railing, he notes that Daphne’s holding a glowing vial in her hand.  She’s brought out the aether-blood, but seems content to just watch it.  It sparkles whenever she shakes the glass.

“It’s late,” he says. “You should be sleeping.”

“I had another nightmare.”

“Again? Even with the Nite-Lite?”

She turns away, quiet.  “It’s almost August.”

Spencer grimaces.  Late August.  Right.

No point asking what the nightmare was about.

Before long, the awkwardness of the silence compels him to speak again.  “Do you ever think it’s weird, how well we know each other?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m trying to think of some conversation we haven’t had, and I’m… drawing blanks.”  Spencer laughs.  “It’s like we’ve exhausted every option, and we’re only three years in.  How do the other couples manage it?”

Daphne shrugs.  “It’s fine to just…exist next to each other.  You know that, right?”

Spencer wilts.  “That sounds uncomfortable.”

“That’s what I thought.”  Daphne gives a lopsided smirk.  “Well, if you need to fill the air, I was thinking about what I’d do if I was free.  Care to bite?”

“Go ahead.”  Daphne lifts a brow, clearly not expecting that answer.  But he only matches her smile.

She looks up at the sky.  “I’d run a bookshop.  Some little hole in the wall just packed with shelves.  There’d be little tables in the back for clubs, and I’d know everyone who came in more than once.  I’d read every single book before I sold it.”

Spencer grins.  “You’d be bankrupt in a week.  Times have changed, Daph.  Most people just order online, or listen to audio - “

“Bollocks.  That’s not the point.”  She rests her chin on the thick plastic padding Spencer’s wrapped around the railing.  He can still see the goosebumps forming on her neck.  “It’s an old dream of mine.  I always wanted to be a librarian.”

“What stopped you?”

“You need a uni degree.”  Daphne lifts her head again, looking curiously at Spencer.  “What about you?”

Spencer rubs his chin thoughtfully.  “I wanted to be a pilot.”

“Really?”  Daphne wrinkles her nose.  “Is that why you put me in that stupid helmet?”

“I put you in that stupid helmet because it keeps you safe.  And it makes you look adorable.”  He playfully rubs her arm.  “My little Red Baron.”

Daphne mumbles something, turning her head away from him.  Spencer puts his hands on the deck, leaning back and watching the lights.

“When I was little, around nine, Britain took part in Desert Storm.  You might have learned about it in school.”  He explains.  “Of course, my father insisted I watch the whole thing with him.  I sorta drowned out all the horror and devastation and just… watched those British Jaguars and American F-16s.  They were so huge.  So powerful.  Transformed entire highways into rubble.  And watching my father cheer at them, feel pride in them, I thought… what if that could be me?”

Daphne nods, watching him gesture with a strange look.

“I got obsessed.  My bedroom was stuffed with model planes, recruitment posters, books about Lord Dowding and Bomber Harris and every British battle from Flanders to the Falklands.  Guy stuff, you wouldn’t get it.”

Her antennae jolt.  “I was a little boy, too.”

“You know, your mum’s showed me all the childhood albums, and I still don’t really believe it.”  He smirks at her.  “I was so certain the RAF would be my future… I think the saddest day of my life was when I learned I couldn’t get in.”

“Why?”  She scooches closer.

“Because of these.”  Spencer swipes the glasses off his nose and dangles them before her eyes.  “Go on.  Try them out.  Should give you a good practical demonstration.”

Daphne plucks the glasses and holds them towards the horizon, the lens catching light.  Delicately, she puts them on, blinking owlishly.  “Oh, shit.  I can’t see a bloody thing.”

Spencer chuckles.  “Put on a turtleneck, and you’ll be the perfect librarian.”

“Oh, you arrrrr-rrrr…”  Daphne’s words dwindle as she remembers that she can’t swear against him.  “... go jump in the bloody ocean.”

“I’ll need my glasses first, else I’d get lost.”

Daphne chuckles, and takes them off.  She’s about to hand them over when she pauses.  Tilting her head to watch Spencer through them, then pulling them away, then putting them on again.  Each time, her smile fades a little more.  “Does it ever make you sad?  Not being able to fly?” she asks.  “Having that… dream taken from you before you could ever have a say?”

He grimaces, and looks out to shore.  “Sometimes, I suppose,” he shrugs.  “Everything seems so simple up there.  Just the sky, the birds, the clouds.  None of the worries on the ground.”

“Clouds aren’t that fun to fly through,” she confides.  “Mostly just cold and damp.”

He chuckles.  “I guess I lost that dream, but… it doesn’t feel like it.”  Spencer places his head on her shoulder, surprised when she doesn’t push it away.  “Maybe, in one life, I could fly.  But in this one, I get to watch you.”

He feels her body freeze.

“So, I guess you could say…”  He smiles sadly.  “... Life had another dream waiting.”

For a while, silence is her only reply.  Then, slowly, she grabs his head and pulls it toward her face.  Glasses and all.

“Spencer,” she hesitates.  “Can I ask you something… deep?”

There’s sincerity in her voice.  “How deep?”

“Deep deep.  Like… we-can-never-talk-about-it-again deep.”

His stomach turns queasy, but he slowly nods.

She sighs.  “If our roles were reversed, if you were the Kept, and I the Keeper, what would you do?  How would you see me?”

Spencer purses his lips.  That’s a minefield if he’s ever seen one.  “I’ll answer if you promise to not get mad.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Can you try?”

She shrugs.  It’ll have to do.

Spencer blinks a few times and stares into the smudged city lights.  “Honestly, I think I might prefer it.”

More stiffness from Daphne’s body.  At least she’s trying.  “How?”

“It’s just… tiring, after a while.”  He laughs at the absurdity of it, but Daphne doesn’t join.  “There’s never an off-switch.  Sometimes I just wanna float away, let life take me where it takes me.  But now, if I tried floating, we’d both drown.  Maybe it’d be easier if I handed everything to you.”

He doesn’t need his glasses to see her intensity grow.  “Even if…?”

“... even if,” he nods, knowing how shitty that sounds.  “At the end of the day, I still get to see you.”

She makes a face he can’t quite place, and turns to look at the fading stars.  “This past week, I’ve been… heh.”  She taps the glasses.  “Trying to see the world through your eyes.  Walk in your shoes.  Understand why…”

She trails off.  Spencer lifts a brow.  “Why what?”

Daphne ignores his question, taking the glasses off.  “I can’t do it.  I can’t put myself in your place.  I imagine having that power over you, my life in your hands, and it… never clicks.  Why would I have done this to you?”

He swipes the glasses and puts them on to study her expression.  She’s looking at him like it’s a question.  But he has no idea what she wants answered.

“It’s different, in the moment,” he says vaguely.

“What do you mean?”

“I think there was a time, a long time, where I felt the same way as you.  But when the knife is on your flesh, and you see your blood glow through your skin… the power stops being some abstract.  It becomes something in the palm of your hand.  And once it’s there…”

Spencer blinks.  He doesn’t realise that he’s staring at his left wrist until he shakes his head.  The mark is still there, cut into the skin, but totally unlike hers.

“... you become capable of so much more than you can imagine.”

Daphne’s staring at something too: the vial of blood.  Quietly, she mutters a word he doesn’t understand, and then:  “The low which overcomes the high.”

“Pardon?”

She ignores him again, fiddling with the bottle.  Spencer sits up, another jolt of anxiety shooting through him.  Before he can move to halt her, she’s popped the stopper out, filling the air with a metallic scent.  “This will make me stronger, right?  Just like it made you?”

“Uh… maybe?” Spencer watches the blood fizzly with a queasy squeak.

“And how strong was that?  Could you lift a… piano?”

“I don’t know.  It, uh, also made me writhe with pain, so I-”

“It did, didn’t it.”  She lifts it closer to her lips.  “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

He realises a moment too late, lunging forward.  “Daphne, wait!”

But she’s already tipped the vial into her mouth.

Spencer stops, horrified, as Daphne clutches her head, her antennae turning bolt-stiff, steam wafting from her mouth.  She utters a soft hiss that tugs at his heart.  After a moment, her body rears back.  She opens her eyes…

… bright, swirling lights dance in her pupils.

Spencer studies her, speechless.  Her heart glistens beneath the fabric of her dress, sending rivulets of light across her body.  Waves of colour ripple through her, tracing out her veins.  They accentuate the curves of her face, her chest, everything.  And in the corner of his eye, just before it all vanishes away, he watches the blood travel through the contours of her wings, revealing patterns he long thought he dyed over.

The patterns of a modest sphinx.

Daphne blinks and shakes her head as the aether disperses through her bloodstream.  “Holy shit,” she mutters, staring at her hands.  “That feels… fucking amazing.”

She chuckles, catching Spencer’s dumbfounded face.  His mouth is hanging wide open.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No,” he smiles.  “I’ve seen something beautiful.”

Daphne slowly leans toward him, lifting a hand.  Black fingernails slide across his stubble.  He doesn’t realise that he’s leaning back until a grin flashes across her face.

“What’s the matter?  Is it okay when you do this?”  She asks, tilting her head. “Thought you wanted to be my Kept.”

She leans so close he can taste the wisps of steam from her mouth.  Spencer draws in a short breath, closing his eyes, waiting for the kiss he’s sure is coming.

Instead, she plucks the glasses off his eyes and quickly darts away.

“DAPH!”

“You won’t need those where we’re going!”  She calls back, opening a trunk beneath a bench cushion.

Spencer looks around the empty ship.  “Guh-going where?”

Daphne stands up, turning back to him.  He can see the outline of the leather cap in her fingers, the goggles reflecting the sunrise.  She holds out her free hand, offering it to him.

“Up.”

His heart freezes.  Spencer can feel the twitches erupting across his face as he tries to stutter the words.  “Uh-uuhhhhh… yuh-yuh-you can’t - ”

“I’ve been practising with weights,” she explains.  “And the aether…I can feel it strengthening me.  It’s dark and there’s no one out to see us.  Spencer, it’s perfectly safe-”

“It’s not!”  Spencer says harshly, enough to make her step back.  His body curls. “Y-yuh-you said you’d drop-”

“Spencer.”  She starts.  “Look at me.”

He forces his eyes open.  Daphne’s kneeling on the deck across from him, looking him in the eye.

“Have you always wanted to fly?” she asks.  “Since you were a little boy?”

“Yuh-yes.”

“Then just for now, I’m not looking at Spencer Harcourt,” she replies.  “I’m not looking at my Keeper.  I’m looking at a boy whose dream I can make real, and I’m always going to catch him.”

He stares back with wide, wild eyes.  She rises and walks forward.

“Do you trust me?”

Spencer hesitates for a moment, before nodding.  “I do.”

She offers her hand again, and he takes it.  Daphne lifts him to his feet and spins him towards the bow.

“Then close your eyes…”  She wraps her arms around him, and gently pushes him forward.  “... and let me lead the way.”

Spencer snaps his eyes shut, meekly nodding.  He takes small steps, slowly following her over the plastic-wrapped bars.  At no point does she ever let go, and once they reach the bow of the ship, her grip tightens.

“You’re shaking,” Daphne mutters.  “I need you to be as still as you can, or you’ll throw off my weight.”

“I-I-I cuh-can’t stop.”  He whimpers, feeling a gust of salty wind.

“Think about something else.”

“How?”

She ponders for a moment.  “Remember that story you told? About the fisherman and the Swan?  You never finished it.  Tell me now.”

He nods several times, his mind fumbling.  “Th-the Swan Maiden stayed in the fisherman’s house for many years.  They married and had children, but her heart never changed.  She longed for the lake.”

He hears the sounds of Daphne adjusting her helmet.

“One day, when the children were older, the fisherman sailed away, as he was wont to do, every morning.  They heard their mother weep and were old enough to ask what’s wrong. She told them everything.”

His heart skips a beat when his foot slides off the bow.  She pulls him back.

“She begged them to go into their father’s closet, and hand her the feathered cloak.  ‘Please,’ she asked, eyes filled with tears.  ‘He always comes back.’”

There’s a gentle thrumming of wings behind him.  They quickly build pace.

“The kids didn’t know what to do.  It was clear if she left them, she’d never return. Everyone deserves freedom, but don’t children deserve a mother?”

He feels her breaths slow against his back, and tries to follow them.  Human and nymph, moving as one.

“But in the end, they chose to be selfless.  They could see the curse for what it was, and it took away their mother, not her.  So they opened the closet.  They handed the Swan her cloak, and tearfully said goodbye.  And then…”

Spencer pauses as he starts to feel their bodies lean down.  There’s a hundred versions of the story’s last sentence, but he can only remember one.  The one his mother read, in her favourite tongue.

“Elle s’est envolée.”  He whispers.  “And was never seen again.”

Their feet leave the ground.

For a moment, only the howling wind holds them aloft.  But to Spencer, it feels like hours.  He grips his wife’s dress, his face scrunched, waiting for the inevitable, when -

FWOOSH!

Her wings find a rhythm, and they take to the sky.

Spencer’s breathing hitches as the spray pelts his skin.  Still wincing, he dares to open his eyes, stiffening as the sea roils below him.

“We’re flying!”  He shouts with awe.  “Holy shit, we’re fucking flying!”

“CLOSE YOUR EYES!” she shouts back.  “You have to trust me!”

Obediently, he shuts them.  Daphne grunts with exertion, the sound of her wings intensifying.  “I’ll tell you when to open them!  We need to keep the same shape!”

“How!?”

Another lurch, and they’re rising at a new, sharper angle.  “Stretch your legs back against mine,” she shouts over the wind.  “Make your spine stiff!  Pretend you’re flying on a… bloody paraglider!”

“Okay…”  Spencer tucks his legs back and grips her arms.  It’d be easier to do with handles instead of skin.  “Like this?  Am I - woAAAHHHH -”

He screams as he feels his world flip around, Daphne pulling them back into a loop.  Just as quickly, the wind rushes forward as she tilts down.  He clutches her tightly as they plummet.  Faster, faster, faster…

… until she pulls back up, levelling out.  Eventually, everything takes a strange, serene quiet.  No sounds from the harbour, or even from the birds nearby, just the steady hum of her wings.  “We’re here,” Daphne mutters.  “Open your eyes.”

He follows, and his breath is stolen away.

Everything in the world has shrunk away.  Above them, the sky has become a painting, a backdrop of brilliant violets and ambers and golds.  Mallory’s superyacht floats far, far, below, a single piece of white in a swirling ocean of blue.

The lights of Cannes still shine, like a canvas.  He can see the smeared flecks of villas, the cars, the palm trees.  Without his glasses, it’s little more than an Impressionistic blur.  Spencer blinks, and the world disappears in a soft white blanket.  One of his hands leaves hers, briefly, to swipe through the cloud.  He laughs, despite himself, as it turns into water droplets on his skin.

“Told you!”  She says smugly.  “Wetter than you’d think!”

“Is it always like this?” he asks, wistfully.

“No.”  She shakes her head.  “I don’t always get that view.”

When the cloud passes, he stares at the sky again, for once satisfied by her silence.

“How does it feel?”  She asks, after a while.

“Perfect,” he whispers back.

He never bothers to hide his tears.

“That’s good.”  Daphne says with a strange lilt.  “Then I get to do some tricks.”

“Tricks?”  The pitch of her wingbeats change.  Slowing.  Spencer moves his head back.  “Wh-what are you - DaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPH!”

“WOOOOOOOOOOOO!”  She bends them straight for the waves, her wings tucked behind her.  Daphne starts to laugh.  “ISN’T IT FUN?”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!”  He screams, holding her tight.  He’d thrash and flail, if the sheer force of their dive didn’t prevent him. The wind slams down on his eyes and floods his lungs with air.  Eventually, even his screams die.

And then she speaks.

“Open.”

Spencer dutifully obeys.  They’re flying low, mere feet above the water, Daphne’s wings beating again.  To his right, he can make out the yacht, but to his left, grey sleek bodies shine in the sunlight.  Rising and falling dolphins, squeaking in surprise.

He watches them, speechless, while his wife nestles against his cheek.  “Put your feet on the water and run as fast as you can.”

“Won’t that upset them?”  Spencer asks.  “I hear dolphins are assholes.”

“Then you’ll get along great!”  She releases her hug, holding him upright by the wrists as his feet drag across the waves.  Her wings start beating faster to accommodate.  “C’mon!”

For a moment, Spencer just stares at his reflection in the water, distorted by the splashes from his feet.  The water is bitingly cold.  But his face quickly sets, he buckles his knees, and juts his first leg forward.  Then the other, then the next, each time getting faster.

Until he’s skimming across the waves.

“Heh.  Heheheh.  Heheheheheheheh!”  He starts giggling as he tries out new patterns, leaving different splashes in his wake.  “Daaaappphhhneeeeeeeeeee!”

“MMM?”  She’s focused on matching the tide, constantly readjusting her position.

“It’s fucking workiiiiiiiiiiiing!”  He bursts into full-on laughter just as she pulls away, moments before a massive wave could smother them.  Spencer puts himself back into position and closes his eyes before she can even ask.  “What are we doing now?”

“Just keep still and don’t move,” she says.  “It’s a secret.”

Already, he feels them rising higher.  As the world becomes silent again, she starts muttering to herself, clearly lost in thought.  “Heavier than a melon, but… if I adjust my angle, you …”

“Wh-what are you talking about?”  His voice takes on a fearful edge.

“Just don’t open your eyes!”  She shouts back.  “Promise me!”

“I promise!  I’m not looking.”

“Then wait for it, ‘cause you’re going…”  She grits her teeth.  “... to fly… on your OWN!”

A rush of air.  A flurry of sounds.  Spencer feels the cold vapour of a cloud clinging to him.  But there isn’t any weight behind him.

For an instant, he’s merely confused.  Did she find some way to hoist him up?  Is this some trick of the aether?  But, slowly, gravity begins to pull, and he feels his body sink ever faster.  Panic grips his heart.  What’s going on?  She told him it’s a secret, he has to obey, but…

He opens his eyes, looks through the open sky, and realises he’s falling alone.  His wife is nowhere to be seen.

In the back of his mind, something bursts. Flooding him with a feeling even sharper than the rising fear.

Idiot.  He’s such an idiot.  He fell for it again.

Did he really fool himself into thinking that she wasn’t going to drop him?

Spencer starts flailing wildly as he looks at the very distant ocean oh so far below.  He screams and reaches for the clouds, starting to thrash.  A shape solidifies from the clouds, reaching for his hand, her face obscured by the goggles.  When their hands meet, she starts pulling him up, but it only makes him thrash around more.  Kicking at the air, clawing at her arm, doing everything in his power to keep her away.

“SPENCER!” she shouts.  “Calm down, I’m here!  I’ve got you!”

“NO!” he shouts, trying to pull away.  He can see the blur of her wings tilts, the strain in her arms.  It doesn’t matter.  Her voice disappears under the ringing in his ears. A thousand words from a thousand voices, all replaying in his mind.  Cretin.  Retard.  Freak.  SheknowssheknowsSHEKNOWS

“Spencer, stop!  YOU’RE DRAGGING US BOTH!”

What the hell did he think he was doing?  This always happens, she’ll always see.  When will he fucking LEARN!?  His stomach turns as the world lurches, but still he fights.  The woman soaring above him terrifies him more.

Daphne’s wings beat frantically as they start to spin.  “SPENCERRRRR!”

“GET OFF ME GET OFF ME GET OFF ME!”

“I CAN’T CARRY YOU!”

Something in him freezes, and he looks at her with wild eyes.  She’s straining with all her might, brows furiously furrowed.  But Spencer can only think about the words.  ‘I can’t carry you.’  Where has he heard them before?

And just then, with his mind silent, Spencer’s hand finally slips free.

Daphne yells in alarm, twisting wildly, her body growing smaller and smaller in his sight.  Spencer closes his eyes, spinning until the wind is in his face.  For some reason, his breathing calms, and his body stills.  There’s something peaceful, in this moment, despite the certainty of what comes.  Or maybe because of it.

Maybe this was always what the world would offer.

But then something thumps into his chest.

Spencer opens his eyes, horrified, to see that his descent has been checked.  He’s falling more slowly, and at an angle.  Daphne’s wings blur as she struggles to push him through the air, flecks of moisture spattered over the lenses of her goggles.

He tries to say her name, but the stutter halts his tongue.  What the fuck is she doing?  Having a last laugh?  Finishing him off?  She screams something that’s lost to the wind.  He sees it for an instant, before they crash into the waves together.  A fear in her face that matches his own.

The ocean crashes into him like a thousand icicles, stealing his breath.  Almost erasing his mind with the shock of it.

Daphne’s wings beat at the water, keeping them from sinking deep, but he still can feel the rush of pressure.  She kicks off his torso, thrusting desperately for the surface.  Her husband remains, unmoving, bubbles rising from his throat.  He doesn’t think of warmth or survival in this frantic, drowning moment.  He thinks of apples.  The hundreds of apples she’d thrown in the air for a little game the aether made large.

She never dropped them.  No matter how far they flew, or how harshly she had to turn.

The ocean is vast and empty and dark.  An entirely different world.  Here, he’s small.  So little of his species has marked this realm: just rubbish and shipwrecks, all forgotten.  The creatures that exist beneath the waves are far beyond his comprehension, because he is tethered to someplace else.  Somewhere unreachable.  His feet are doomed to the shore.

But still, Spencer Harcourt takes comfort in this home of trillions, if only for a single moment.  Nestled in this cradle of life, things are still unknown.  None of his questions have answers.  Here, floating above miles of water, the truth might not yet be real.

He can still pretend to not know why it always falls apart.

Because he knows he’s heard the answer.  Once on an ancient stone bridge, many years ago, and again from the woman who just saved his life.  An answer he can’t outrun.  An answer from which he can no longer hide.

I can’t carry you

because the problem is always him.

Hey, everyone!  This is a big, big chapter, for the story and for Spencer, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing!

Massive shoutout to Heart for her amazing illustration of the flight; it’s easily one of her most impressive compositions yet, and I could spend hours going over every detail and why I love each so much.  I just hope the moment can match its beauty?

And what about Spencer?  It seems he’s finally reached a point where reality’s caught up with him.  But will that be enough to make him change?  Find out in Chapter 20: The Monster Always Needed, coming to you Friday, November 24th. I’ll see you there!