Milo, Malcolm, Hazel - The past (Patreon)

Authors note: Set right after the fire that burned the alley outside of Hazel's home.

Laying back on the floor, Milo watched the dust swirl up above. Little flecks of gold rained down around him in a swirling, slow motion miasma. It was beautiful really. Like an evening rain shower. That is, until it got into his eyes and nose and he was coughing and sneezing with a beam laying over his chest.

“Are you okay?” Hazel shouted at him from above, peering down at him from the rafters.

“Yeah,” he coughed. “Great, actually.” Getting hit with a wooden beam absolutely did not hurt or make him question why he felt he was an adept carpenter. “Just going to lay her for a while in case my spine is broke.  Might decide to make this my home.”

The little squeak of worry that escaped Hazel was accompanied by her scurrying down the ladder and to Milo’s side. Her hands fluttered around him, helping him push the wooden beam from his front.

“Can you move? Can you talk?”

“Definitely cannot talk.” When she smacked his chest, he cried out in pain, in turn making her shriek again, her hands fluttering, the cycle starting all over.

“Oh, Milo. I’m so sorry. I thought I had it.”

Milo had lifted the beam to her, asking her several times if she was going to be able to keep hold of it. She was using magic of course so he wasn’t really concerned about her strength. More her focus. It had been fickle as of late.. Ever since the fire and Lucinda. Hazel had assured him, however, that she was fine and so Milo let go. And the beam was lifted high into the air until Hazel’s eye caught on something in the alley beyond and she dropped the beam. Right on Milo.

“What did you even see?” Milo asked sitting up.

“It’s nothing,” she assured.  There was a hole in the roof of the apothecary.  It gave the perfect view of the still smoldering alleyway. “They’re still looking for survivors, you know.”

Milo’s heart fell a little at the look of hope on her face. “It’s been two weeks, Hazel. I think what we’re hearing from that alley is spirits not moving on.”

“No, I know.” She ducked her head, moving her fingers through the dust on the ground.  The soot had all been swept away at this point but they could still smell the remnants of that day.  “Do you think mom is in there?”

Milo hoped not. He hoped Lucinda burned and he hoped it was painful. But he wasn’t going to tell Hazel that.  What good would it do? The woman at least couldn’t hurt her any longer.

“Hey,” he said, “let’s forget about the beams today. Want to get the front counter built? You got all those shelves up too. We need to be putting your stuff on it.”

Hazel’s eyes ticked towards the back wall. There were a few bottles that had survived. Tonics and hexes that had always been there. “I mean, I have some stuff.”

Milo nodded. Getting up, he took a spare box and went over to the shelf, eyeing the contents curiously. Bestial hooves floated in some sort of amber liquid while other tonics hissed at him from beneath their cork. One by one, Milo started putting them in the box.

“What are you doing?”

“Disposing of them.”

“Milo! That’s product. You can’t just–”

“Nope. Non negotiable.” He shook his hand as a particular vial tried to bite him. “This is your moms shit. Not yours. And if you want to make the apothecary something helpful, then her stuff needs to go.”

“But–”

“Haze,” he turned to her, putting the box aside. “You are so much better than your mom. Get the creepy cows heads off the shelf and put your herb bundles up there. Flower vases. Affirmation shit and crystals or something.”

She blinked at him. “You really have no idea what ingredients go into potions do you?’

“No. But it’s not going to be this shit.”

With a sigh, she walked forward, beginning to help him. When he bumped her hip she giggled a little. With each remnant of her mother that was taken away, it was as if a shroud lifted from the shop itself.  If Milo had it his way, he was going to erase every bit of Lucinda Alright from this home.

“I was thinking of making Mr. Billows his own little sanctuary on the upper shelves. Give him something to climb.”

“You sure you don’t want to set him loose? I’m sure he would be much happier down at the creek.”

“Milo, that’s my cat.”

“It’s really your own personalized demon but sure. We’ll go with cat.”

The front door opened, a draft of cool air breezing past the dust and broken boxes that littered the floor.  A few wisps ducked inside, making their home in the upper corners of the shop, shedding light on just how much work had to be done.

“Brought food.”

Milo looked over his shoulder spying Malcolm with several bags.  His hair was pulled back today, his pants and shirt loose.  Milo wasn’t going to lie, the new look was doing it for him.

“What the hell, Button?” Malcolm asked, setting down the bags. “Why do you look like you got in a fight with a tree and lost?”

“It was a beam, thank you. And Hazel tried to bludgeon me with it.”

When Malcolm looked at his sister, she just nodded primly. “He was mouthing off. Someone had to silence him.”

“Alright, both of you need to eat. You’ve been at this all day. I’ll take over for a bit.”

“Fine by me.” Milo began digging into the bags as Malcolm grabbed some of the nearby tools. He had been working on getting the hearth back in order, dragging stone up from the creek to rebuilt it. “The hell, Mal? There’s too much green in this food!”

“Yeah. Weird. It’s like you need a vegetable occasionally.”

“Oh! Sokolata stew,” Hazel cried. “My favorite. Thanks, Mal.”

He smiled that small little smirk of his and just nodded to her before beginning to plaster the mortar of the stone.

As Hazel munched happily, Milo picked at his plate of root vegetables. There was chicken and rice in it but he was almost certain they were spinach, disguised as protein. “What were you doing today?” he called out to Mal. “Thought you were going to be here this morning.”

“Was taking care of something.”

Milo paused. He knew that tone. It was the one that said he was taking care of something that directly was going to fuck with Milo.

“Am I going to pick up my job tonight to find that I’ve already failed?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” Malcolm said with a shrug. “But, you probably shouldn’t go out and buy anything big.”

Milo tossed aside the food, and really, he had just been looking for an excuse to do so. “Fuck you, Mal. You could have at least given me a head start.”

“Not the way it works,” Malcolm sang at him.

Hazel looked back and forth between them. “You two really need to stop taking the opposite jobs. It’s just cruel at this point.”

Neither man said anything to that. They had discussed it a few times but ultimately, the thrill of trying to one up each other won out each time.

“I’m going to go down to the creek and grab a few of the big willow branches. I want to make a welcome totem for over the door. Want the rest of my stew, Milo.”

“No. I want actual food.”

Hazel shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

She left with a hum.

Milo watched Malcolm for a minute as he moved stone from one side of the room to the other, piling it high before slapping mortar across the surface and leveling it out.  It was going to be a huge fireplace. One that could practically see Hazel standing up in. Malcolm’s idea was to make it so she could cook several things in there at once.  That, and he planned to buy and enchantment for rose colored fire. Something that wouldn’t look like the orange flames that had shot through the market a few weeks prior.

“Did you really fuck up my job?” Milo asked.

“Did you really mess with my client last week?”

“I didn’t mess with him.”

“What do you call breaking three fingers?”

Milo thought about that for a moment. “Collateral damage?”

The look that Malcolm shot over his shoulder clearly said he was not amused. His client probably wasn’t either. “Cute.”

Pushing away from the back shelves, Milo came over to him, sitting by his side. “I know. I’m pretty adorable. Irresistible, some might even say.”

“I don’t think anyone says that.”

“I would make a ‘your mom’ joke here but, you know, gross.” Even Malcolm was wrinkling his nose at that.

“Are you going to be helpful or are you going to annoy me?” he asked him.

“I can be both.” Milo didn’t hand him any of the stone though. Instead, he laid down on the floor, stretching his legs out before him, his head placed inside where the hearth would be. “I’ve been thinking,” he started.

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“That old cellar, down where your mom kept her torture shit. It would be a good art studio.”

At that, Malcolm paused.

The cellar was always locked but the three of them had heard the screams that came from there most of their childhood. Had smelled the blood and piss.

“I’ve already cleaned it all out,” Milo said quickly. “Just need you to say yes.”

Malcolm shifted, not quite looking at Milo. “What makes you think I’d be able to create art in the very place my mother conducted her rituals? It’s probably infused with her magic.”

“I think it’ll be hard,” Milo said with a nod. “But, I also think it would be the best fucking middle finger to Lucinda since she hated every ounce of art you ever created. So why not take her pride and joy and turn it into a place of creation? Draw really nice things. You know. Everything she hated. Like happy families. Me. You.”

Setting his tools aside, Malcolm turned towards him. His head was bent, the subject of Lucinda never having been an easy one.  “I want to tell you how messed up that line of thinking is.”

Milo smiled. “But you’re kind of into it, yeah?”

Malcolm broke then, that small twitch of his lips signalling that Milo had won. “You gonna help me get it all set up?”

“As long as you don’t drop a beam on me.”

Reaching out, Malcolm brushed some hair from Milo’s eyes, fingers linger for a moment. “Go into the boxes that I brought in. There’s a burger there.”

Milo’s eyes went wide. As he scrambled away, he could hear the low rumble of Malcolm’s laughter follow him.

The apothecary may have once been Lucinda Albright’s home, but between Milo, Hazel and Malcolm, they were going to rip it from the cold grip of her dead corpse and make it their own.  Because if there was one thing they all agreed on, they would be damned if they were going to let anyone take them from each other.