Young Writers Society

Noah faltered. He started to study the ground instead. Which, when Max thought about it, he had been doing a lot lately.

“You’ll see,” Noah said, and left it at that. He glanced back up. “...Do you want to talk about something else?”

“I’ve already had this conversation with you,” Max said, knowing exactly what topic he was thinking of. “It feels silly to say it again when you already know.”

“But you want to have the conversation,” Noah said, sliding his hand over to hers. He gave it a soft, cold squeeze that she still found incredibly comforting. “I’ll listen.”

Max took a deep breath.

“Okay,” she said. She let Noah keep his hand where it was, her legs crossed as she readied herself for this topic. “I had a conversation with Adam last night. About gender. And how I feel…boy adjacent, sometimes? Just not all the way. And I tried out he/him pronouns but it didn’t work, so now I still want to be using she/her.”

Noah nodded.

“And,” Max added, “there’s…a name I like more than my actual first name. I still want to use it, even if the pronouns don’t really match, but…”

She looked up at him.

“You already know it,” she said, softly.

“Maximillian,” Noah finished.

“Yeah,” Max said.

They settled back into a silence that was both comfortable and not.

“You don’t have a problem with it,” Max said, “do you?”

Noah shook his head.

“I don’t,” he promised.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

In turn, he raised a hand up to mess with her already messy hair. “You’re welcome.”

When they were done with that, Max finally got up. She didn’t care when she left Noah’s room wearing an oversized t-shirt and a pair of boxers. Ronan was gay, Adam had his eyes only on Blue, and Gansey also probably had his eyes on Blue. Plus, Blue and Rain had already seen her in her pajamas before. The others honestly had, too.

Noah followed her out.

I did want to join him, Skull insisted.

Liz looked unconvinced.

Skull groaned.

Fine, he relented. The two of you snot-nosed brats win. It wasn’t as evil as a thing as I’m making it out to seem. I wanted to see more, alright?

His arms were crossed again. Liz listened carefully. She also moved towards the light switch in the back of the room, suddenly realizing she had never turned it on earlier. When she flipped the switch, the room was flooded with light. Skull looked less like an ominous ghost and more like a regular old teenager, though he was admittedly a little younger and more messily dressed than she was used to seeing. This must have been the form he had before he came back to life.

Bickerstaff saw my potential, Skull said, and I thought I could work with him to see beyond the veil. There were…people I wanted to see again. People who hadn’t become ghosts when they died. When he approached me after seeing my power, I could only say yes. I didn’t realize what it all would involve.

“Was he…” Liz wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. “Was he the one who killed you?”

Skull gave a sad smirk.

Do you see any death wounds on me, Lizzie? he asked. Liz looked more carefully and couldn’t find any. What she could find, however, was how strangely his shirt clung to his body. She thought back to how young he looked, and vaguely remembered something she had read about once. You’re a smart girl. You’ve figured it out already, haven’t you?

“You…died from starvation,” Liz guessed. “Your ghost looks malnourished. Like you didn’t get enough to eat. And that can stunt your growth, so…”

I died when I was seventeen, Skull said, but my ghost has always looked a few years younger. The streets were a rough place to die, between the hunger and the cold. But they’re not that dramatic of a place to go. Better to think I died going up against Bickerstaff, or that I was blinded by my greed and was killed by the bone glass. It makes for a nice story, doesn’t it?

Blake grinned.

"I'm glad you asked," she said. She grabbed Mads by the arm and jerked them out of the bedroom. "We have to celebrate you getting a job with a mandatory psychic reading. You're going to get to meet the infamous Little Red Riding Hood."

"She means our friend Red," Kody supplied, peeking his head out from the stairs. He had heard Blake's voice and come down to see what was going on.

"Also known as our ex," Blake added. "She's got a psychic gig she does outside of her other job. She's done readings for all of us. Me, plant boy, social recluse-"

"She even did one for Gordy," Kody added, "back when he lived here and she did, too."

Bram walked to the vendor. He stopped by the girl as she ran her fingers against the smooth, dark leaf of a potted plant. Suddenly, he was struck by the sensation of existing within his own skin. Bram folded back in on himself, shoulders hunched and eyes nervously looking away underneath his hood. He should have run away.

But he was already here now. Morgan and the girl’s follower were nowhere to be found.

He looked at the embroidered jacket she was wearing. It was a light bomber jacket with flowers embroidered up from the bottom. Her long, pale blond braid covered some of them. Standing beside her now, it was all too clear that his guess on who she had been was correct: Sophia Lovelett, the girl who had just moved to Wildegate at the start of the school year. He looked into her lifeless gray eyes and felt no pull. It was startling, realizing that. It implied things. Certain truths that Morgan and Jasper would never see.

Are you like me? he found his mind traitorously thinking.

She just had to catch it.
The Norwegian Forest swiftly stole across the ground, her tan fur with sepia stripes blending in with the sunlight.

Her tail twitched excitedly.

This is gonna make me famous!

She thought.

She pictured bringing the vole home and her mothers look of shock and pride, and her sister. Well her sister would have to acknowledge her now. The vole suddenly looked nervous, furtively glanced this way and that.

Vermin, you are MINE.
Fiorella pounced.

The vole skittered away.

Fiorella let out a yowl of frustration.

God-damn prey always getting away from me. It would be nice if prey could sit still and and not run away from me for one second.

She sped after the vole.

She was going to catch that rodent. And her parents were going to be proud of her, and worship her name, and depend on her for all food and…the vole scurried up a bush.

Fiorella started a moment in shock.

I didn’t know voles could climb

Lashing her tail with agitation, Fiorella marched around the bush, chattering.

‘’How dare you get away from me, you…you stupid creature! Climbing is supposed to be my thing! Now get down from there right now and let me catch you like a good little vole and no-body has to get hurt.’’

The vole just stood in the bush and looked at her.

Oh how it infuriated her!
‘’You listen here you stupid vole,’’ her voice almost rising to a screech, ‘’No body gets away from me, no-body acts like their so inferior to me, and here’s the important part, NO-BODY LOOKS AT ME WITH THEIR SMUG LITTLE FACE, UP IN THEIR SMUG LITTLE PERCH, WITH THEIR GOD-DAMN ADORABLE SMUG LITTLE EYES AND ACTS LIKE THEIR GOD AND I’M NOT’’

She launched herself onto the bush but stuck her paw in between two middle branches.

He walked beneath the familiar, towering trees, following the moonlight instead of any man-made path. Crickets and tree frogs sung their songs as he made his way to the tree house.

Jasper found himself humming, softly, too. It felt calming, being somewhere so natural right now. This part of the world wouldn't betray him in the same way magic had-

The crickets went silent. The frogs deafened. Jasper, sensing a shift, went silent as well.

A single twig snapped up ahead.

He almost called out for Morgan and Bram, but something stopped him. There was a pull of something ahead, not quite as strong as the book but just as tantalizing.

Jasper moved quietly through the trees. Peering out from underneath the shadows of a great oak, he saw a lean figure with their hand against another tree. He caught a glimpse of braided blond hair, an embroidered jacket, and faded jeans. Something about all of it looked familiar.

The air hummed with the warmth of magic. The tree's lowest branch lowered and elongated. When it finally stopped growing, it touched the ground and made a perfect doorway.
The figure put away something that shone in the moonlight in their pocket.

As they did, the air within the doorway shimmered. On the other side of the doorway, Jasper could oh-so-easily see a bustling market.

Rex feels around for the handle next to his bed. After getting out of his blanket, he sits on his bed. He doesn’t even need to see– he knows it's not morning. It’s dead silent, except for the quiet hum of the air conditioner.
“Alexa, what time is it?” Rex asks, yawning.
His robotic ‘assistant’ responds in a monotone voice, “Sorry, I didn’t get that.”
Annoyed, Rex repeats, “Alexa, what time is it?”
“Sorry, I didn’t get that.”
“Alexa! What is the current time right now at this moment!?” he says, raising his voice.
“The time is 1:42 AM,” she replies, “Good morning! If you want to hear some calm music in the morning, just say–”
“Alexa, shut up.”

How did she stop the Zippu?
The device could obliterate matter from a subatomic level, reversing it's effects was impossible.
Several other things didn't add up.
Why hadn't Feronia informed me that she'd sent a mediator? The star knew how skittish I could get around new stars. Doing something without telling me was out of character for her.
I remembered that the Tavatian had addressed her as Everess. Everess was a title only held by royal stars. To my knowledge none of the royals alive today bore the name Eos.
I tried to come up with a way to voice these thoughts. I didn't want Eos to feel uncomfortable around me. I wanted spilling her secrets to come naturally for her.
''Where did you say you were from again?'' I asked.
Eos gave a casual shrug.
''That's not something I'm ready to share.''
I considered her words slowly.
Her lack of willingness to divulge her background led me to conclude multiple different possibilities.
She was ashamed of her family and refused to be associated with them, or she had no family with which to speak of, or perhaps her family had sent her here with an ulterior purpose.
''Let me deduce then.'' I said easily. ''The Tevatian back there adressed you as Everess so your descended from royalty. But I've never heard of an Everess with the name Eos. That probably means that your family prefers to keep themselves hidden from the public eye. They may have committed a crime perhaps, or some other dark deed and fell from grace. So people prefer to pretend that they don't exist. You are probably ashamed of your family's heritage so you decided to disappear from your home galaxy and hook up with the Astra Planeti. Is that your story?''
I glanced at her.
He face lit up with amusement.
''You must think my life is quite a fairy-tale.''
I looked at her closely hoping to discern the answer in her expression. Several emotions glimmered in her deep amber gaze, but I couldn't glimpse at the secret beneath their depths.
Eos it seemed kept her secrets closer then the hair on her pelt.
But somehow I felt at ease around her. Comfortable. She had this welcoming aura around her that reminded me of a fire's warmth.
''What about you, what fantastical whim of fancy might you stem from?'' the star asked tilted her head daintily.
''Your a traveler,'' she guessed. ''You've never stayed in one place for most of your life. You've seen much, perhaps too much. You go around from world to world spreading your knowledge and experience where ever it's needed most.''
She gazed at me, and something cheeky entered her tone as she went on, ''Is that your story?''
I just stood in stunned silence. She'd been accurate down to the last detail. Before I joined the Astra Planeti I had been a wanderer going from planet to planet helping the being that inhabited each one find their peace.
I felt my communicator buzz.
I sighed.
''I can tell you what my story is going to be.'' I groaned. ''Feronia screeching into my ears all day about what a clutz I am.''

“I’m sure,” Morgan said. She kept her eyes on the buildings all blurring together. She didn’t want him to see her face, even though he admittedly wouldn’t really look at her while he was driving. “I should go home now, anyways. I need to clean Hamlet’s tank.”

“Hamlet?” Chase echoed. “I thought he was Romeo now.”

“That was a month ago,” Morgan clarified. Back before he had gone back to college.

“Are you ever going to stick to a name?” Chase asked.

Morgan gave a smile only she could see in her reflection. Her fingers traced the spine of K. Campbell’s Magyk. It was too much fun, changing Hamlet’s name. She liked seeing how the names fit him. He was the same snake no matter what name he had, but he carried himself differently with each one. “No.”

Chase let out a sigh that might have been the ghost of a laugh.

“You’re impossible,” Chase said.

“You’re a Payne, too,” Morgan said. “We’re all impossibilities.”

Now Chase let out a genuine laugh, though it was a quiet one. That had been their grandmother’s favorite saying, back before she passed away. “I guess we are.”

Jasper Callahan was sitting down next to Morgan. Bram stared at his wavy black hair and amber eyes. Jasper, and all of his chiseled features, looked very much like a statue one might find in a museum. If Morgan looked like a forever moving artist, he looked like her forever moving muse. Even as he sat down next to her, he was tapping his Nikes against the ground.

"Can someone get that?" Lockwood called out from the library, where he was currently curled up in an armchair in a t-shirt and pajama pants. "I'm not decent."

"I'm not, either," George shouted. Nate, who was downstairs training, was out of earshot and probably wouldn't have been able to hear them over the smoke jets, anyways.

"Then put on a pair of trousers!" Lockwood shouted back. "It could be a client!"

"At this hour?" George questioned.

Lucy, who had been heading down the stairs anyways to see what Lockwood was up to, sighed.

"The two of you are impossible!" she shouted, joining in on the argument. She made her way down the rest of the stairs and went to the door.

A flock of geese flew past her with great, powerful gusts of wind coming from their wings. Red covered her face with her arm as she went in the direction they had come from. She waited for that gentle sea of fog to form into something tangible, but it all came so much more suddenly. Red took in a big gasp of air, then, both in this other world and the real world.

Dead plants littered the forest floor, and the trees around her had no leaves despite the ones further away being brilliant shades of reds and oranges and golds. The woods were unnaturally quiet. The air felt unnaturally still. Red ran through the trees on the edge of the clearing, grasping for something more.

Now Kody was there before her, still in the forest but among other trees. He was hunched over on the ground, skin pale and eyes glassy. Blood blossomed from a gash across his stomach. It looked like it was made of something sharp and exact, like a blade or claws.

She could feel the tug of the real world, then, but she demanded another vision with a cry of, “No. I need more. I want more.”

The vision flashed. She saw a familiar figure silhouetted in the moonlight, all too still. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew his form. She knew who he had to be.

“Gordon?” she called out, but he didn’t answer. The part of Red who had done these visions a hundred times before knew that she wouldn’t get an answer from the person in the vision. The other part of Red, the one who was haunted by that image of Kody bleeding out, hoped the Gordon in her vision would break all the rules.

Red’s eyes shot open.

Crys’s sunglasses fell back down as she looked over her shoulder at Jasper.

“That’s Felix,” Crys said, “short for Felix-Doesn’t-Know-Fun.”

Jasper, far too overwhelmed by the last few minutes, barely managed a nod.

“Bold words to say around your DM,” Felix threatened as he slipped ahead of Austin and Crys and opened the classroom door for the entire group. “You just lost an inspiration point.”

Crys dragged Austin over to a desk in the front of the room. “Are you listening to this, Austin? Defend my honor,” she begged, pushing up her sunglasses again. “I barely have any health after our last session.”

“Your boyfriend can’t save you now,” Felix noted, distracted, as he sat down and pulled out a packet of what was presumably notes on Hamlet. Jasper’s stomach clenched, and then he shoved the feeling deep, deep within him.

While Felix did his best to block the paper from Crys’s view, Jasper awkwardly waited in the front of the classroom for the teacher. He mostly kept his eyes on the open door, but his gaze did wander to where Austin was sitting once or twice. He averted his eyes as soon as they made eye contact.

A bell tolled out in the street.

Strange, Jack thought. It had only just struck midnight. It couldn’t possibly be the next hour already.

The bell tolled again, closer this time.

Jack paused her sweeping by the dying embers of the fire and looked at the door. The rain pounded against the window, and something pounded against the door. The door knob turned. It couldn’t have been the tavern owner, or even one of the regulars. Jack hadn’t found any lost belongings during her cleaning, which was one of the only things that would have justified the return through such miserable weather.

The door swung open.

Lightning flashed. Thunder clapped. Knowing her omens, Jack leaned her broom next to the brick exterior of the fireplace. As the lightning briefly lit up the dim room, a dark figure was outlined in the doorway. Said figure had a hand up against the door and one against their abdomen.

The wind howled.

Jack went to the door. There were rules to be followed, and this was one of them.

“Do you need help?” Jack said.

The figure just let out an otherworldly groan. They stepped into the dimly lit tavern. Jack swiftly shut the door behind them, locked it, and pushed a chair up underneath the door knob before she even saw who she was helping.

She finally turned to face them as a third bell tolled.

"How could you?" Emma said.

Dylan, who remembered their last conversation on Emma being over what the best kind of coffee was, blinked. "How could I what?"

Emma just looked at them with the most betrayed expression Dylan had ever seen her give.

Something tells me this isn't about the coffee, Dylan thought.

"I really don't know what you're talking about," Dylan said. They raised their hands in surrender, but the response just made the fury all the more present in her voice.

“What’s-” Dylan started to say, and then the disorientation that accompanied Dylan waking up faded. The dull ache in their chest turned to a piercing pain. They withdrew in on themselves, pulling their legs tight. They felt numb. They felt all too much.

Dani wrapped her arms around Dylan and pulled them close. A moment later, Violet joined in on the embrace. Dylan just sat there. He wanted to melt into both of them and just disappear. Thinking of [SPOILER] in the day was hard enough on its own. Thinking of them at night, when she wanted to do nothing more than slip out of bed and go running down the street to their house to pull them into an embrace, was even worse.

Violet coughed up her first full flower after killing Dylan for the fifth time.

Up until that point, she had coughed up several flower petals. It was always just a petal or two or maybe even three, and it never happened when she'd expect it. It would happen when Dylan flashed her a smile and then intertwined their hands with Dani. It would happen when Dylan called her Penny, only to turn around a second later and banter with Dani.

Violet knew she was a sinner. She knew that she was never going to be more than just a friend, just an acquaintance. She was never going to hold the spot that Dani Kim held in Dylan's heart.

So those little flower petals, painfully purple and slightly sweet to taste, kept slipping up out of her lungs and all the way out through her mouth.

“I-I don’t know where it is, either,” Skye whispered. Her gaze dropped down to her feet. If she studied the grass, twigs, and leaves littering the forest floor, she could maybe forget about how she was so scared that she was feeling nauseous.

“We should check with the clones,” Lou suggested to Gladdy. “Maybe they know where it is.”

Skye bit her lip, then gave a little nod. A second later, the other Skyes folded back into existence. Skye was barely paying attention. She felt lightheaded, and dizzy, and like she was about five seconds from passing out. It wasn’t the first time she had felt this way, but it usually wasn’t this bad. Because, usually, she didn’t have to spend long periods of time with Ye Shou looking like-

“I’ll make sure they don’t ask too many questions,” Reyes promised. Envy glanced at the guards, but neither of them were paying attention to the two homunculi. “Although I’m sure the colonel will have his hands full with Ed alone.”

Envy reluctantly followed Reyes towards Eastern Command’s offices. “Have you met him before?”

“It was some time ago,” Reyes mused, “back when he came to offer Ed a position as a state alchemist. He didn’t realize he’d be offering the position to a child. I talked with him again after Ed passed the exam.”

“Is he…” Envy trailed off. It felt dangerous, questioning the morality of an officer while they walked through the halls of a military building, but he didn’t want to walk into this meeting blind.

“He’s a good man,” Reyes reassured him. He gave Envy’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “I wouldn’t have let Ed work underneath him if I didn’t trust that he had Ed’s safety in mind.”

Reyes chuckled.

“Not that Ed would have let me stop him from working with the colonel in the first place,” Reyes admitted. Envy studied the back of Reyes as the younger homunculus kept walking. What was it like, getting to watch someone grow up like Reyes had seen the Elrics do? He couldn’t imagine ever being so close to someone like that. Even more so, he couldn’t imagine what it was like to be the subject of that attention. Father had never once shown them the fondness that Reyes was showing the Elric brothers now.

“Baby,” Rosa said softly as they sat at the kitchen table with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. “I don’t know if we have enough room for another kid.”

“She needs a home, Rosa,” Victor said. It was late at night—long after the kids should have gone to bed upstairs—but the two of them were still wide awake. They had gotten a phone call earlier in the day about a girl out at a boarding school in California who needed a foster home. Normally, the CPS would have looked for a family out there instead of closer to the East Coast, but her last foster parent had apparently been from the area. “And Mary’s going to be living at UPenn next fall, so they can share for now and then she can have the room to herself next school year.”

Rosa drew her lips into a thin line. It was a tough call. She wanted to say yes so badly, but they had to draw the line somewhere, didn’t they? “We only just took Billy in.”

“You told me to trust you about Billy,” Victor said, reaching across the table and grabbing onto her hands. “Can you trust me about Noah?”

“...Did anyone else hear that?” Mira hesitantly said.

Kalim and Grim gulped.

“I bet it’s nothing,” Ace said, though he didn’t sound the least bit certain.

“If we’re back in the world of the ghosts,” Ortho commented, “there’s an 83% chance that it’s a ghost, and a 10% chance that it’s another living person.”

Mira did the math.

“What about the other seven percent?” she said, not sure she wanted to know the answer to the question.

“A-”

Whatever had caused the rustling suddenly darted out onto the path. The entire group—minus Ortho—screamed. Grim clung to Mira’s leg, Mira clung to Ace, and Kalim also clung to Ace. It took Mira a moment to realize how small the thing was, and another for her to realize that it was a…

“-squirrel,” Ortho finished.

Kou didn’t know several things. He didn’t know that exorcists felt distinctively different from other humans. He didn’t know that spending so much time with a spirit like Hanako changed people, and that wandering so close to the Far Shore multiple times left a mark on the living. Kou was very much human, but he gave off all of the signals of something that arguably wasn’t. If someone had asked his older brother, who was arguably the stronger of the two exorcists, what he thought when he saw Kou, he would have said that he was just Kou. But if they had asked Teru to really look at him like this pink-haired boy was doing now, Teru would have been shocked to realize that his brother felt very much like a very low-powered supernatural threat.

"No," she reassured him. "I just thought you wouldn't like it. One time Valberry got into the cathedral—I don't know how—and I had to sneak Val back out because Sister Victoria thought Val was a nuisance."

She gave him a warm smile. Sitting down across from him, she grabbed one of the two mugs. One hand still holding onto Aster, he took a mug as well. He lifted the rim to his lips and took a sip.

"It's still hot-"

He felt a tiny spike of pain on his tongue. It hurt, but nowhere near as badly as the other pain he had suffered in recent months.

"It's...creamy," he noted. He stared down into the steaming mug. "What did you put in it?"

"Oh, that's the milk!" she said, excited. "You can also use water as the liquid, but I like the milk more. It balances out how strong the chocolate sometimes is."

He took another sip. It was still far too hot to be drinking in large quantities, but he liked the warmth that settled in his chest. Hot chocolate, he decided, was a drink Albedo had been foolishly missing out on.

His lips curled into a small smile.

The two of them drank in silence, him contemplating the drink and the mechanic entertaining Valberry and Cecilia after they entered the kitchen in search of her. He knew he had a role he needed to return to outside of the mechanic's doors, but he didn't quite mind being Viktor.

If only there was a room that wasn't really a room, but was still big enough for him to comfortably hide-

His gaze landed on the water closet door.

Dorian darted through the door.

The first thing he noticed was darkness. It clung everywhere—to the walls, to the floor, to the ceiling, and to him. It didn't feel like a natural darkness, either. This felt...different. Alistair's footsteps passed outside of the water closet door, but Dorian stayed exactly where he was. Because once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he quickly realized it wasn't a water closet at all.

It was a row of stairs, leading down to something.

Something that felt dangerous, but something that was also too enticing to ignore.

He floated down the stairs.