No.

The stray dry cough pushed her head off the pillow. Her fingers scurried for the plastic jug placed near her cot and were stopped by a different set. Those fingers had trimmed nails and an odd one that stood speckled with white. The set of lights reflected the sunlight coming through curtains, reduced to lifeless glass in the sudden power cut.

Emilio lighted his left finger-tips with a loud snap. The gilded flame jumped from his thumb to the forefinger, using both of them as living wicks to relish his energy. A leather-covered book rested below his elbow, held up by a scraped knee.

"Whaa–ater," she croaked, trying to reach for the glass. The pair of brown eyes blinked through the cracked spectacles. His fingers grasped the handle of the jug and poured her a glass of water. The glass however stayed on his end of the table.

"Rizal and I were talking to Hera Anaikos and her friends in the corridor by the girl's bathroom. Anaikos, Jiang, Garcia and Carlton agreed that they had entered the bathroom at half-past ten. You went in a minute or so later, according to them."

His fingers tapped against the wood. "When you entered, there was no porcupine. When you ran outside, multiple witnesses saw a stone porcupine.  That thing's still trying to tear down that door."

"And it just occurred to me that I had never asked you what your element was." His taps echoed down the corridor, keeping rhythm with the deeper thuds against stronger wood.

"So," he said, letting the flame take over the whole palm. "What are you waiting for, umbrokinect? Kill me, take the book, and do your thing. Damn shame to see all that good talent wasted like that, we could've had a cool actor for a Jackal Carbon adaptation that too."

Kritika's throat constricted against her will. She retched and coughed, saliva dripping from her mouth. She clutched her throat and lunged for the glass. The streak of fiery gas singed the hairs on her forearm. She didn't have the energy within her to wrench it from his hands.

"Em–"

"Dios mi, alright," he muttered. He pushed the glass towards her, ready with the jug in his hands. Kritika grabbed it with both hands and downed it in one painful gulp. She peered at him with bleary eyes, feeling the weight of the glass growing as water collected within it from the jug. A second glass, and then a third found itself being consumed at breakneck speeds.

When the fourth glass stood empty as the jug in his hand, she lifted the glass and began to roll it on her palms. She could sense the patterning of the crystals that made the container, and each scratch on it became magnified a thousandfold to her fingertips. Glass began to flow under the command of her kinesis, arranging themselves under the blueprint she had wrought in her mind. The body of the glass condensed and then elongated into a rod. The top half pinched at the middle and smoothened its bottom into a bowl.

She slammed the newly formed wineglass on the table beside her bed.

"You seriously concluded that I was an umbrokinect, after being attacked by the Happy and a terrakinectic sparring porcupine, the latter being specifically designed to seek out terrakinects?"

Emilio placed his glasses on the desk, rubbed his eyes with the balls of his palm, and sank back in his chair.

"Look, I'm sorry."

"Thank you for your apology, now leave me alone, please," she said, lying back on the bed. Her fingers discovered the dust gathered on the sills of the Medical room window to her left. There were old friends of hers lying in wait; garden loam, beach sand, gravel, cement dust, and clay. Then there were the tiny flakes that didn't stick to her digits, what she knew to be dead skin. The thawed referee grunted from two cots away and turned over. A blanket-wrapping skill like that would've made him a much sought-after embalmer in King Tut's court, had he been alive in that era.

Fudging asshole.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Emilio asked, eyes still hidden behind his palms.

"I'm not exactly in the mood to talk," she said.

"Alright. What is your issue with me, Kritika?"

"Nothing!" She said, with a wave of her hand. "You got the book, now get it to Lamai so that you can remove the wards and I can fudging go home. And what's my issue with you, you ask? I don't know, but about two seconds ago, someone tried to fudging murder me because they suspected that I was an umbrokinect! Just like that!"

"Again, I'm really, really sorry about that! No one is above suspicion here, Kritika, and you weren't exactly very generous with your kinesis in the fights."

"And nothing roused your curiosity beforehand to just ask me to demonstrate my kinesis? A simple 'Hey Kritika, I've never met you before this, what's your element?' would've done a way better job than just downright setting my fudging arm on fire!"

"I said that I'm sorry! Please just, look."

So tired.

What am I even doing?!

Too damn tired to fight with this guy. Ahh, screw everything, I probably got up on the wrong side of my bed.

"I– You know what, you're absolved of your sins, knight. Venture forth and restore peace to this broken realm, yadda, yadda. . ."

He looked befuddled by the sudden change in her opinion.

"Okay then, I don't know how to say sorry better than this, but um. . . Will a double raspberry sundae do the trick?" he asked, growing a dubious smile on his face. The bud looked beautiful enough to her.

Hmmm, okay.

She smiled in hope that it would ease the awkward interaction further, just hoping that it would perhaps lighten up her day. The bud flowered into an innocent, full crooked-toothed grin.

We still have time and hope. It's not the end of the world yet, Kritika.

Maybe she really had something to look forward to in a school she had despised all her life. She took a deep breath and said, "Tomorrow after school, at your family's grill. We'll treat everyone in the council."

"Deal. I think it's time you guys had a taste of the best grilled-lobster burgers in the world," he said, with a joyful glimmer in his eyes. Kritika was never more pleased to nod a yes.

"Have you been to 'Pappy's Grilleria' before, Kay?"

"Nope," she replied, a grin curling the edges of her lips. "But it was a major player in my parents' story. They had met each other in the Grilleria. Ma was an immigrant from Kathmandu trying to figure out her relative's address in Lyonesse. Dad's blind date had abandoned him for her ex. Both of them trash talked about their exes over the lobster risotto. And in three years time, I came along."

She looked at him and asked, "I guess I have the Grilleria to thank for my birth. What about you? Is there a 'legend of the Grilleria' bedtime story?"

Emilio laughed and ran his fingers through his dreadlocks.

"Yeah well, Pappy likes to call that one the legend of El Pappy. Started out in a rickety old food truck in New Orleans, and ended up as the owner of a premier restaurant in Lyonesse. It's a whole other saga, Kay; I'll tell it you tomorrow at the Grilleria. We still have a fudging umbrokinect on the loose to watch out for."

She let her head sink into the soft, white pillow of her cot as she flipped herself over. The chair nearby creaking into emptiness, the door slamming shut and the silence that followed were almost musical. The sting in the gash on her calf made her wish for a book to read while she waited for it to subside. The day had made itself clear as her mother's signature showpieces; if she were to move a voluntary muscle, she would have to pay it with blood.

No.

So this is interdimensional nausea, she mused as the throbbing in her head resumed. Her stomach gurgled and churned its empty liquids.

Hungry. I'm hungry.

Her fingers clasped the mnemnotic charm she wore around her neck in an effort to ignore the tremors in her abdomen. No wonder why the fiend sorceress had refused to part with it, even after her death. A charm strong enough to give mutual memories to both the wearer and the ones beholding the wearer was worth a fortune anywhere. The girl lifted a hand and held it facing the sunlight. Glamour cleared itself around the festering cut on her palm, pus oozing from the gaping wound.

Hmmm. . . This thing's really messing with my memories now. The library incident had me clean as a blank slate.  And I'm half convinced that I can bend earth, urgh.

Wouldn't it be easier though, Kritika, to forget everything and start over?

Kritika. Heh.

You've already forgotten your name. A few more days and you'd be good as new. You could aim for college, get a job in some Parisian art gallery, and fall in love with someone. The whole white picket package.

The silks of glamour magic, made of the strings of the web she had woven so skillfully, parted ever so lightly around the wineglass. Had the referee been awake, he would've glimpsed the glass in its original state and a battered woman in her mid-twenties on the bed. Like the curtains rippling above her head, the magic renewed itself from her energy pool, enshrouding her tainted armor, black leather jerkin and combat boots, and turning them into school gear.

But you'd still be an umbrokinect, in a land that is incorrigibly superstitious about them. Lysander Camur should have heard about my escape by now. Can't waste anymore time.

No!

Please no, I can't do this!

No! Stop, no! She winced and repeated in her mind, cupping the wound on her arm, shielding it in her sudden delirium. Attached to her hardened knees were two thick beams of smoldering lead. Unwieldy, immobile, and simmering hot; on whose calf muscles the claws of the dead fiend sorceress found justice. She dug deeper and deeper into her flesh, frenzied in the fleeing moment bestowed upon her to avenge herself. The umbrokinect bit her lip and tongue, and waited through the sudden purgatory.

Stop please, beasts of the heaven please, no more!

No more.

The scratching went still as the afterlife clamped shut, reclaiming its frustrated occupant. The storm had died down, its end just as abrupt as its onset.

Urgh. . . Fuck you Camur.

Too tired, so damn tired.

All that's left of the Lower Forests of Lyonesse are twelve aging trees in four different schools. An entire seed bank of Irushin would rot away somewhere in this school.

Damn you Lysander for being such a blockhead, none of these kids deserve to die in the hands of invading fiends.

No.

No.

But she couldn't stay awake, not after that misfire of a creature she had conjured up. The Happy had drained half her energy, and a strong, all-sense illusion like that one would soon trigger alarms, alerting the higher authorities. She could almost hear the phone going off in the Camur Mansion.

Her eyes closed soon despite her best efforts, and she slept soundly for the first time in five years, cocooned safely in her umbrokinesis.

⑅ ♾️ ⑅