And her hallway
Like...Like...

Like a million voices call my name
Like a million voices calling
Not now, not never again...

No. No, dammit. Deny. I will not. I Will Not.

She leaves, and it's a blessing I never could have imagined. Alone with the picture. The frame cracked when I threw it at her feet, a hairline fracture. Not even noticeable when you don't look for it. Exactly opposite to the cracks in the armor I've been trying to perfect for four months now.

(Vine, the only one but me alive, and that only because she left shortly after the snapshot was taken. And she left cold, without words to anyone. Not my sister anymore, even if we are the only ones..)

I realize distantly my fists are clenched so tightly my fingers have gone numb. It's an effort of that Will to straighten them.

(Silvergate, laptop ever present, resting on one hip in its case, saucy half-smile on his lips, black hair in his eyes as always, and what you can't see was the hand he had on my ass to tease me, that bastard was straight as a Nazca line but he loved to antagonize me...)

We had a raith, an emergy form we'd created. A group mind. No, it wasn't a hive mind, but the energy between us always flowed free. As it should, should in any coven.

(Connor, quiet and unobtrusive, but with gentle hands and always ready to heal, wide blue eyes deceptively innocent for someone who Awakened in a riot...)

I put the picture on the altar, face down again. I can't see it. I can't see Alaerian in that picture, laughing and trying not to give Gate the satisfaction of looking over.

(Shimmer, out of place without her veils but every bit as beautiful as Eloine Herself, knowing damn well what her handfasted was doing and knowing that she would be Maiden in the spring, and Alaerian would be the Young God and Connor the old, in a spring that will now never come...)

I think about going back downstairs, getting some beer. Maybe they have something decent downstairs. Liar Kim sure seems to enjoy that ale enough. I lean against the door, trying not to think.

(Flight, the best healer of us all, my twin in appearance except for coloring, an herbalist and able to brew with the best of them...)

NO. I deny. I will not. I WILL NOT. No beer. Not now.

(Ildeera, Priestess and Witch, the light of my life, the Lady who made me really see the Goddess, the one who found the Singer...even if she never did understand Spirit...)

I take a deep breath and chant it aloud. "No. No. No. No." I give into it, for the first time in a long time. Pure primal Younger Self in rejection and refusal. Younger Self is where the power comes from, an American-trained Verbena said once. She was wrong. The power comes from the Daemon. But sometimes you gotta get down and dirty with the inner child before that stubborn strength of will comes up.

Then I realize I swore off that kind of work. Even without magick. And I shut up cold. Cold as this New Hampshire winter that is going to last forever.

Sitting here now in this bar for hours
Strange men rent strange flowers
Seconds to the drop but it feels like hours and I
Think I'm going to...going to...

Before I realize it, I'm in the kitchen again. Cocoa congeals in the mug on the counter. I could give a rat's ass.

I get into the herbs. Valerian and catnip. Loads of it. The water heats while I stare at it blindly. I'm trying not to see. I'm trying not to See. I'm trying not to think about a woman who saved my life and a woman who says she was born six months ago and a woman who...I....

Goddess help me.

Drink it down fast, bitter, bitter like my life now, bitter like the aftertaste of electricity shorting out six futures. Not counting mine. Bitter like the knowing that I didn't even engage in hubris, that I was only doing what I'd done so many times before. Bitter like the loss of my innocence in one sour note sung at the wrong time.

I want to sleep. I want to drown. And I'm still too stubborn to die.

Sleep....

I feel the drugs hitting before I even make it to the bed.

This, this is the way it was
This, this is the way it is
When the water come rushing, rushing in