Content Warnings

Ableism
Medical horror
Chronic illness
Covid-19 (fictional references to)
Discussion of incest

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Burning Bright’s deceptively weak-wristed punch cracks my head to one side, wrenches the delicate muscles in my neck, and knocks me off my feet. A lurch and a flail, stars exploding behind my eyes, a one-handed grope for the back of the chair, the side of the table; two clean misses, and down I go.

At least this particular trip to the floor isn’t my fault.

My backside thumps hard, no cushion on raw concrete. Pain rattles my hips and zig-zags up my spine, blotted and blurred by the much more immediate shock of the hurt in my face, a blender taken to my thoughts. Left hand clamped to the slow-motion explosion in my cheek, heart slamming inside my chest, sweat boiling on my skin. Adrenaline screams through my arteries, everything shaking and quivering, muscles tight and taut and ready to go, go, go!

Not fear, just the raw chemical cocktail of animal survival.

Turns out I don’t know how to take a punch. No surprise there, it’s my first time.

Bright staggers back too, the blow bit deep into her reserves. Sagging and panting, dirty lank hair stuck to her face, eyes struggling and squinting to stay open. She clutches the table with one hand, her other held in a pose of tender pain, her poor bruised knuckles.

Our twinned breathing all ragged and rough, echoed by the distant rush of moon-wind down the mountain slopes, whispering out across the roof of Plato Base. The 3D printer fans carry on whirring, mechanism humming away, insensible to violence. The lone table-zoog Grimgrave told to look after me is up on her paws, ears back, teeth bared, tail stiff, shrinking from Bright’s proximity. Several dozen more zoogs in the domesticated corner are frozen in shock, tails tall, claws braced, ready to bolt — or fly to my aid?

Make like a zoog. Not a sensible option, but one’s mind is rather beyond sensible options so soon after getting punched in the face. And, contrary to popular belief, unlike their earthly cousins, zoogs rarely play dead.

My lips peel back, to show my teeth.

“I am not,” I hiss, “interested in your sister!”

If that is not enough, we shall proceed to bite.

“Get up.” Bright heaves the words out, chased by rattling breath. She swallows hard, dislodges a plug of mucus deep down her throat. “Get up.”

“No.” I take my hand from my cheek, flesh taut, tender, throbbing. “If you want to hit me a second time, Bethany, then you can come down here.”

Zoog-style courage lends me strange abandon. Beneath her exterior of chronic illness and exhaustion, Bright is still a magical girl, a big scary dragon girl, more than capable of shrugging off mundane missiles and tearing war machines apart with her bare hands. If she wants me dead then she could simply transform, pull me to pieces with razor-sharp claws, cook the remains in a breath of hot flame.

But she doesn’t. She’s not. She won’t? So I will get her on the floor and make her taste concrete.

“I’m not,” she labours to say, “gonna stomp on a one-armed cripple. Want you standing again. So I can knock … knock you down.” She struggles to straighten, pulling herself upright, inflating herself with every hard-won breath. Rakes her hair back out of her face. Blinks hard, trying to focus. “I’m gonna punch you again. And again. And again. And again. I’m gonna break your face. Until you learn what I tried to teach you—”

“Scarlet Edge attacked me!” I screech. “Not the other way around! Were you not paying attention!? Are you blind?!”

Bright shakes her head, not really listening. “I figured out where she got that bruise. The one on her face, the one that won’t heal. You put it there. You put it on her. You marked her!” Bright chokes up a fragment of a roar, wheezing and spluttering, then sags against the edge of the table. The zoogs half-scatter, half-advance, caught between rational fear and Grimgrave’s promise. “My sister is mine,” Bright rasps. “Mine, mine, mine. Nobody, nobody is allowed to do this. You can’t take her—”

“I bit her on the face, I told you that,” I say. “Scarlet had her sword in my gut, so I bit her.”

“You can’t take her away from me!”

“I don’t fucking want her!”

Duelling shouts echo off into the Big Room, followed by a chorus of hissing zoogs, tails thwapping the floor, claws scraping on concrete. But their threat display is lost on Bright. She looms over me, staggers forward, one step, then two.

“She’s locked herself in her room,” Bright spits. “For days. Days! She’s never done this before. She won’t see anybody, not even me, not even me! And it was you, you fucking dream-bait bitch, you did this. You did this to her, you took her heart from—”

Bright pulls a boot back mid-rant, to deliver a kick.

I lash out with my right leg. My naked prosthetic foot connects with Bright’s left knee, just below the cap; a wedge of naked steel digs deep into the ligaments. She yells in pain and surprise, gropes for the side of the table, the back of the chair, two clean misses.

Down she goes, an uncontrolled backward topple. Bright lands on her arse with a painful crack, air thumped from her lungs. Screws up her eyes, jaw open wide, clutching at her knee. An exhausted groan escapes her throat.

“Ffffffuck, ahh … ” Then panting, wheezing, gritting her teeth. The zoogs go silent.

“You hit me,” I say, voice shaking. “I hit you.”

Bright pants hard, saliva foaming between her teeth, hate in her eyes.

“Welcome to the floor,” I say. Almost laugh. Bright doesn’t find it very funny. She clutches her knee, rocks gently back and forth, whines through clenched teeth.

I grab for the chair, lever myself to my knees, then lurch back to my feet. Bright hauls herself upright too, unwilling to be beaten, staggering and stumbling until she stands opposite, though far from straight-spined. She’s even more bowed and hunched than before, a puppet with a lazy mistress at the strings.

She flexes her right hand, makes a fresh fist, starts to pull it back.

“Your sister seemed rather unconcerned with you,” I say. Best way to hit her, better than another round of two cripples wailing on each other. “Disgusted by you, even. She didn’t recognise you, refused to fight you. Whose fault was that? Not mine, I’m pretty certain of that much. Not mine. So I am not going to let you take this out on me. Next time you hit me, I’m going to bite you. I’m going to bite, and I won’t let go until I remove a pound of flesh.”

A few zoogs hiss their approval, “Biting! Biting!”

Bright’s fist loosens. Can’t raise it all the way. Lips shake, words trapped in her mouth. Her eyes tighten, glossy with tears.

Holy shit. Have I made her cry?

“So?” I spit, driven on by spite. “Are you going to punch me again? Why not transform? You can turn into a bloody great dragon, and I can’t even transform at all right now, maybe not ever again. I’m sure you could kill me with ease. Won’t be the worst thing I’ve faced today, not even the first time I’ve died. No? Not going to do that either?”

Bright turns her face aside, as if I’ve shamed her.

“Didn’t think so,” I sneer. “Burning Bright. Paper tiger.”

She blinks at me several times, eyes misted, half-shocked and half-offended, like my adrenaline-fuelled nonsense insult has cut her to the quick. Another blink and her face re-hardens.

She grabs the throat of my jumper. Opens her mouth with a fresh threat. But then — silence. Moon-wind and my heartbeat.

Bright lets go, turns away, staggers off with a limp. She crosses the domesticated corner, mostly ignores the zoogs, grunts with exhausted frustration when a few of them don’t get out of her way fast enough. She lurches into the mouth of the corridor that leads to the bedrooms. And then she’s gone.

A great breath goes out of me, purges my false courage. I start to shake. Hard pulse in my throat, hot buzzing in my head, pressure behind my eyes.

Burning Bright could easily have killed me. Or just as easily have beaten me black and blue, made good on her threats, left me to twitch and writhe on the floor, if only she wasn’t so exhausted. Now she’s gone, fear crashes back down, held at bay only briefly by the spleen of a wounded dignity that I no longer truly possess.

I collapse into the chair, panting for breath, massaging the stump of my right arm, phantom pain shooting up and down my long-dead limb. What was I thinking, delaying the repairs to my prosthetic by even a second? I am naked without my right arm, incomplete and vulnerable. In front of Grimgrave — Grimmy — it was unavoidable. Not pleasant, barely acceptable, but not total humiliation. But in front of Bright? Without my arm I am a worm on the topsoil, waiting to be eaten.

My face too; I probe the tender flesh of my left cheek, wincing through clenched teeth, the beginnings of a nasty bruise. Aren’t magical girls supposed to heal fast? Where’s my regenerating flesh? Why fix my heart but leave me with a bruised face?

The zoog on the table trundles over, tilting her head left and right, asking for pets. I reach out and stroke her, absent minded. Is this what it’s going to be like, living on the moon? Bright will come at me again, and perhaps next time she won’t be quite so drained; I must deal with her first, get the drop on her, show her that I’m too much bother to hurt, that I will bite and scratch and kick—

A scrape, a slide, the distinct noise of a heavy sack of flesh slumping to the concrete, all from the corridor to the bedrooms.

“ … Bright?”

A few brave zoogs venture beyond the domesticated corner and across the bare concrete, to poke their snouts into the corridor and peer at whatever made that sound. They start to chitter-chatter, lashing their tails from side to side, paws going up and down, claws clicking on the floor. A couple of them look back at me, with expressions of such incredible clarity, a way no being has ever looked at me before; they need an adult, they need help, they need somebody sensible and responsible, big and strong and clever.

“Bright?” I call again. “Bright? Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

If not for the zoogs I would suspect a trap. But now I’m thinking medical emergency, a heart attack, just like me. Maybe magical girls are especially susceptible to heart problems. Maybe Bright has been losing her mind for the last few days in a similar way to myself, clawing at Scarlet’s bedroom door, desperate for her return.

“Bright!” I shout, one last time.

Then I’m out of the chair and hurrying across the domesticated corner, a bee-line for the mouth of the corridor. I refuse to have Bright’s death on my conscience.

Zoogs part, scurrying out of my path, closing in my wake.

Burning Bright is down on her arse, slumped against the wall, body like a sack of rotten potatoes dumped beneath the rainbow graffiti. She rolls her head at my approach, eyes bloodshot, narrow with total exhaustion, but not the least bit distressed. Zoogs sniff at her boots, scatter when she waves a hand at them.

I stand over her. She makes no effort to get up.

“I take it you’re not dying?” I ask.

She makes eye contact, but she’s barely there. Dull topaz, fires burned down to cinders. The moment drags out and out and out; has she suffered a massive stroke, brain damage? Should I go wake Nerys, is this an emergency? But eventually Bright swallows, then inches a shrug with one shoulder.

“So fucking tired,” she mutters, almost inaudible. “Can’t think. Can’t … can’t.”

“Well you can’t sleep there,” I say. “You’re in the middle of the corridor.”

She eyes me again, tries for grumpy. One hand gestures, limp, vague.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “I mean, do you need somebody to literally pick you up off the floor? What is this?”

Bright closes her eyes, rolls the back of her skull against the concrete wall. “You were right first time,” she mutters.

“Pardon?”

“Dying,” she grunts. Holds up a hand, with great effort, thumb and forefinger a quarter-inch apart. “Always dying. Never there. Journey, no end. Blue-balled by death. Stood up at the altar. Whatever metaphor you like.”

Her eyes stay closed, limp blonde hair stuck to her forehead. Her chest rises and falls beneath her rumpled black hoodie, slow as a coma victim. Zoogs creep closer again, sniffing around her edges, biting at one of her shoes. This time she doesn’t chase them away.

“Bright,” I say. “Bright? Get up.”

No response.

I glance back into the Big Room, praying for Grimgrave’s swift return. Bright obviously needs help. Magical girl or not, she needs a week of good sleep, a month of calorie surplus, and a year of therapy. But I am not the one to deliver any of those things. I’d rather cuff her round the back of the head.

Several zoogs look up at me, waiting for me to do something relevant and sensible.

“I don’t know what to do,” I hiss to them. “Is she … well, yes, obviously she’s sick, but—”

“Oh Rose thou art sick,” Bright croaks. Her eyes crack open, clouded and thick. “The invisible worm, that flies in the night, in the howling storm, has found out thy bed … ” She trails off.

“Are you delirious, or just quoting poetry for fun?”

Bright drops her eyes, the only gesture she has strength for. I make another glance for Grimgrave, but I am steadfastly and unconditionally alone, except for the zoogs, and I don’t think they can provide anything except moral support. Perhaps if several dozen of them work together, they can drag Bright down the corridor, grinding her face on the concrete, but that wouldn’t achieve anything useful. Though it would be satisfying. I would take pictures.

Perhaps this is a chance to solve my problem. Bright can’t defend herself.

Deep breaths, take a moment, consider the next step with great care. Am I really going to do this? Bright seems helpless, but she is still a magical girl. Perhaps she can transform perfectly well, and simply chooses not to do so right now. Our only witnesses are a dozen zoogs.

Yes, take the opening. Might never get another chance. I need to follow my instincts.

“You can’t sleep here, Bright,” I say, trying to find a way in. “Do you have a bedroom up here? In Plato Base, I mean.”

The question seems to revive her somewhat. Bright squints at me, huffs and puffs and grits her teeth. “Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t need you to drag me to bed, dream-bait. Let me be. Leave me to my misery. I can’t get up. Fuck getting up.”

“No,” I say firmly. “I’m not letting you sleep in the corridor—”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t, actually, certainly not after you sucker-punched me.” One hand on my hips, rather unimpressive without symmetry. “But Grimgrave has made it very clear, I’m one of you now—”

Bright snorts. “Chucklefuck.”

“Grimgrave,” I repeat her name, with extra emphasis, “has made it clear. Either we help each other or we die unremembered, in pain. I’m not sure I believe a word of that yet, but I don’t exactly have any other options. I should probably just leave you here, yes. But … ” Am I really doing this, just for the respect of a bunch of zoogs? “I’ll ask again. Do you have a room up here? Grimgrave told me you don’t spend much time in Plato Base.”

But you’re here now. Fleeing your sister? Or the lack of your sister, rather.

“Mmmmmm.” Bright waves a vague hand.

“If not, I’ll put you in my bed. On my bed, rather, since there’s no sheets right now. I vomited on them earlier, after I had a heart attack and passed out.”

“Ugh.” Bright grimaces. “Not like you can help me up anyway. One-arm. cripple.”

“Mmhmm.”

I brace my legs, metal foot scraping on concrete, then reach down to grab Bright’s arm. She resists, tries to slap me away, but I get a good grip on her wrist, her forearm, then haul her upright with all my might, give her no choice but to help me or have her arm wrenched from the socket. She groans with frustration, stumbles to her feet, blunders into my side. I’m braced well, take her weight with ease.

“Arm over my shoulders,” I snap. “Over my shoulders. Over! Or I’ll drop you and you’ll hit your head. There, that’s better. Now come on. Walk. Walk! Raise your feet!”

Bright grumbles at my commands. She stinks of unwashed flesh, days of sweat, sour tears, all half-obscured by the faint undertone of astringent medicine.

We stagger down the corridor together, Bright half-limp, me carrying most of her weight. Zoogs trail behind us, cautious lest we topple backward. We round the corner and take a left, into the hallway with the doors to the private bedrooms, the corridor itself vanishing into darkness up ahead. My bedroom door stands ajar, the latch and lock broken when Grimgrave kicked it in.

“Which one’s yours?” I ask.

Bright nods at the dark. “Third down from chuckles. Opposite side.”

We drag each other the rest of the way. My prosthetic leg does ninety percent of the work, an iron pillar of infinite strength to which I cling for every step. Bright gets heavier, mutters to set her down here, let her rest, let me fucking rest you dream-bait joke, let me down, fuck you, fuck off, fuck.

The third door down from Grimgrave on the opposite side is totally unadorned, blank matte metal, just like mine.

“You’re sure this is the right one?”

“Fuck you,” Bright mutters.

After a moment of awkward fumbling I manage to depress the door handle with my hip. We stagger over the threshold together.

Bright’s bedroom is a concrete box, mine but mirrored, shower cubicle in the opposite corner, desk on the opposite side. Bare walls, bed smartly made with a mass of thick blankets, four stacks of clothes neatly folded beside the foot of the bed, draped with a spare coat, a hoodie, guarded by a pair of boots. The only evidence of personality is the desk, piled with used notebooks, some of them open on chicken-scratch handwriting, surrounded by little towers of books, paperback and hardback, palm-sized and leviathan and everything in between. More books are stacked on the floor next to the desk, organised by size, many studded with tiny colour-coded slips between their pages.

Sparse and spartan, except for the books. Is this the truth of Bright’s inner life, or does she simply not care enough to bother decorating her home away from home?

I drag Bright over to the bed, ease her down onto the mattress. As I step back and roll my left shoulder, she slumps sideways, head on the pillow, drawing her booted feet upward.

“At least take your shoes off!” I snap. “I am not doing that for you.”

Bright grumbles like a big sulky baby, kicks at her own feet until her shoes tumble free and flop to the floor. A handful of extremely brave zoogs creep over the threshold of the bedroom and bee-line for the shoes, sticking their heads inside for some unfathomable reason. Bright draws her feet up at last, head heavy on her pillow, weight of her body denting the covers. I flick on the bedside lamp so we’re not relying on the spillover light from the corridor. Bright blinks and squints and sinks into her sheets, topaz eyes dull as dirt.

“Are you comfortable?” I ask. “Need anything?”

“Fuck off.”

Roll my eyes. Why did I even bother? I cast around for a cup or a glass, find a mug by the sink, fill it from the tap, clack it down on the bedside table. Bright twitches, eyes the only part of her still capable of motion.

“I’m not going to force you to sit up and drink,” I say, “but there’s water there if you want it. Understand?”

Bright paws at the edge of the bed covers, gives up quickly. I sigh, step forward, grab the sheets.

“Roll.”

“Nn?” she grunts, eyes narrowed.

“Roll!” I demand. “Roll toward the wall. Unless you can’t move at all. In which case forget it.”

With much grumbling and huffing and pouting of lips, Bright rolls as instructed. I pull the covers back, hold them in place. She doesn’t need the step two, not from my mouth; she rolls back into place, over the edge of the covers, onto the bare undersheet, onto her side. I pull the covers up and over her shoulders. Her eyes flutter shut, lids like wax paper, greasy blonde hair tangled against the pillow. She breathes as if wheezing through a filth-clogged pipe. Her face, slack and pale and lined, seems to soften just a touch, easing toward sleep.

Silence and discretion would be the sane move now. That’s what I should do, my ‘duty’ discharged. Shoo the zoogs into the corridor, put out the light, shut the door without a sound. Let Bright sleep, let gratitude germinate, let her do the work herself.

Something stays my feet. Bright herself? The fragile beauty of her, that undeniably pretty face lined by care and sickness?

Knowledge, gut-deep and lower; I am on the right path to breaking this woman. Nobody has helped her to bed before, nobody has tucked her in, not like this, not in a very long time. She is too exhausted to process what this means, too preoccupied to raise her defences. She cannot resist, not in the ways that matter. Her walls are riddled with rot, her gatehouse is ruins, her drawbridge is collapsed into her moat. If only I walk into her keep, I will have her eating from my hand.

Would that make me too much like Willow? No, since I was never trying to break Willow’s skull. Or was I? Perhaps I’ll never know.

Bright’s eyes creak half-open again. Swivel, stare, narrow-slitted. “What?” she croaks.

“Can you sleep?” I ask.

Eyebrows twitch, parody of a shrug. “Nah.”

I fetch the chair from her desk; sitting on the edge of the bed would be too intimate. She mumbles an entreaty not to mess with her books, so I content myself with a glance. The open notebooks are crammed with poetry in a small, neat, loop-lettered hand. I know nothing about poetry, let alone how to judge it, so I don’t.

Set the chair next to her bed, ease myself down into the seat. Bright stares, blank, spent.

Raise my left hand and reach out, slowly, carefully, like approaching a wounded lion. Don’t bite, don’t claw, you majestic creature; and she is, isn’t she? Bright is a dragon, the red dragon of Britannia according to those with a little too much dream in them. She could snip my hand from my wrist with the gentle pressure of her claws. Never forget what I am dealing with, as I once forgot with Willow. I’m here to help, you must know that, deep in your body. You know that I am here to be good to you where all the world has been bad. A touch will prove my intentions, a gentle touch, an understanding touch. Bright’s eyes follow my hand, scrunching with incomprehension.

I must have lost my mind. But we all have to be mad up here on the moon, or die down there in England.

Contact. My hand on Bright’s forehead. I stroke her hair out of her face. Greasy, clammy, unpleasant. The shaved stubble side of her scalp scratches against my fingers and palm, but it’s not uncomfortable. She endures the first stroke, frowns at the second, pulls away after the third. Rolls back a little, stares at a point on the wall.

Say nothing, move slowly. Maybe she gets it now. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe she won’t attack me again once she feels better, once she’s back on her feet after a good sleep. Perhaps now I can herd the zoogs out and return to the Big Room.

“I was dying when Nerys turned me,” she says, a low and broken rasp.

Silence. Maybe that’s all. But then her eyes swivel to me, to check that I was listening.

“Turned you?” I echo.

“Into a magical girl.” She sniffs back a glob of mucus. “S’not some big secret. I’m not letting you in on shit. Signal and Grim, they already know. Everyone knows it.”

“Alright.” A pause. She wants the obvious. “Dying of what?”

But I’m wrong. She sneers, staring up at nothing. “What does it matter? Plague. The pandemic. Remember that?”

“Of course.” Months home from school, five years back. An unidentified nightmare-borne pathogen drifted from a Dreamland overlap somewhere in the world, never conclusively identified. Just another crisis, one among so many others.

“Most don’t.” She sniffs again. “Everyone prefers to forget. Pretend it’s all over. Millions of corpses. Who gives a shit?”

A long pause. “You caught it?”

“Mmhmm,” she grunts, eyes past my shoulder, on the concrete, far away. “Before they had vaccines. First it was like a bad cold, like the flu, just like they said on the news. Then it got better for a while. But then … ” She trails off, comes back with a dark bitter smirk, one corner of her lips raised in amused disgust. “Then it came back. Evil shit. Not like they showed, not like they said. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t walk, could barely talk. Riddled with blood clots. Lungs, legs, brain. Spine and hips started to crumble.” A big sniff, a wet swallow. “They didn’t believe in it, you see. Didn’t think diseases and viruses would dare touch us, oh no. Carry on, keep calm, all those old fucking lies. But as soon as I went down? Then it’s every bastard for themselves. Masks on, hands scrubbed, nobody breathing each other’s air. All so their fucking golden girl wouldn’t get sick as well. When all the time she was so fucking magical, she couldn’t have caught it anyway.”

“They?” At first I assumed she meant everyone.

Bright’s eyes swivel to me. “Parents.”

“Ah. Right.”

Bright falls silent for a long moment, dull topaz eyes blinking so slowly, sunken into the cradle of her blankets. Eventually her attention drifts away. She’s done, time to get up, turn out the light, leave her to—

“She and I, we were so close.” Bright’s voice, a slurred mumble; I would think her half-asleep if it weren’t for her open eyes. “Francesca and I. Closer than sisters are meant to be. You can’t even imagine it, nobody can, nobody knows what it’s like. And then … she started to drift. Kept secrets. I hated it, didn’t understand why she’d changed, where it was coming from. I thought maybe she’d finally gotten a boyfriend, after all our teenage years together, finally figured out she wasn’t … wasn’t like me, wasn’t real for her. I was just a … a toy, for her. All that time, just a toy. We had such fights. Screaming fights. Got bad, bad, bad. And then when I got sick, she looked at me like, oh great, finally, Beth’s just gonna fuck off into the grave. Huh. Huh.”

I would reach out, tell her I understand what it’s like to be used as a toy. But that might stop her story.

“They had me on a respirator,” she carries on after a moment. “Pipe down my throat, arms full of needles, the lot. Sedated, already had brain damage. Last thing I remember, last thoughts I ever had, they were all of her. Thought she might sweep in any moment, come save me, though it didn’t make a lick of sense. Wanted to feel her hug me one last time. Wanted her to kiss me goodbye, just say goodbye, just … just tell me that it all meant something. And if not.” A pause. A scowl. A gritting of teeth. “If not. I wanted her to catch it too. Die at my side. Next bed over. Hold hands as we go.”

Stay silent, try not to judge.

“Wasn’t meant to wake up.” A deep breath, a hard blink; sudden lucidity. “Nerys woke me up.”

A very long pause. The zoogs on the floor have fallen silent. Wind whispers against the roof.

“And … ” My voice feels too loud. “She made you into a magical girl?”

“Made me an offer,” Bright says. “Hardly could’a said no. Tube down my throat, swaddled in wires. Tiny white room, plastic walls. Couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe by myself. Nerys sat on my chest, told me people I loved had been telling me lies.”

“Lies?”

“My lying sister.” Bright’s eyes harden. “It was all lies. Nerys told me it was all lies, but I couldn’t stop thinking of her, even then. I thought if I’m a magical girl, then she’ll have to tell me everything. I’ll give her no choice. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, for her, yes, to get her back. Yes, yes, I said yes. Nerys bit into one of my drip bags, fed her gunk right into my veins.” Bright’s eyes swivel to me, a bitter smile on dry lips. “You know where I was? Where I woke up? Know what I saw, after I tore the needles out and broke down the door?”

Shake my head. Can’t quite follow.

“Guess,” she rasps. “Guess.”

“Not in a hospital?”

“Nah. Dream Control lab.” She spits the words, breathing hard. “Sister of a magical girl, you see? They had me hooked up and prepped for some sick dream institute shit, I still don’t know what. You wouldn’t believe some of the shit I saw in that place, some of the shit Dream Control are doing. And when Nerys turned me, I remembered it all. Franny had transformed in front of me, not once, not twice, but over and over and over. I was scrambled up in the head, and it all came crashing back in.”

“I … I’m—”

“Don’t say you’re fucking sorry,” she grunts.

“Alright.”

Bright settles back on the pillow, her breathing slowing again, the fight going out of her. “That’s why I’m sick. That’s what it does to you, being a magical girl. Freezes part of you in that moment, the moment you turned. Forever.”

She finally subsides.

A few moments pass, of less than companionable silence. The zoogs gingerly resume their sniffling and snuffling at the edges of the room. One of them noses at my prosthetic foot.

Why has Bright told me all this? Not because she wants to open up, surely.

Bright doesn’t want sympathy, or at least pretends she doesn’t. I don’t hate her. Any anger has long since gone cold, and the anger of being punched in the face by somebody who wants you to stand up to get punched again is not quite the kind of anger that makes me wish I could transform.

“If you sleep,” I say, “will that help? In the short term?”

“Mm,” she grunts. “Gotta get my juice back. Sleep up here, in an overlap. Helps.”

“Grimgrave told me you don’t spend much time up here in Plato Base. You still live in England. With family?” She replies with her eyebrows, a shrug, not worth an answer. “With your sister?” A blink, a yes. “And you don’t regenerate much girl juice down there?”

“Well done, Einstein.”

“Just trying to understand.”

“You don’t understand shit,” she grunts. “Never will.”

I let her off with that one; she’s just opened her guts and shown me her wounds, though I can’t fathom why. A barb or two is nothing.

“Grimgrave also insinuated that your … ” Tread gently. “Interest.” Obsession. “In your sister, in Scarlet Edge, is … romantic, or sexual.”

Bright turns her head, looks right at me, both eyes. “She’s mine.”

No hesitation. No shame. Blank challenge.

“Mock me if you like,” she growls, means the opposite. “Call me a degenerate. But you get out of my way. You get out of my way or I’ll kill you. She’s mine. No questions, no conditions, no compromise. Don’t care what Nerys says. Some things are more important. I’ll kill you.”

Put my hand up, try not to roll my eyes.

“I’m not interested in Scarlet Edge.” I speak slowly, clearly, enunciate carefully. “Read my lips, because I don’t know how else to say it. I am not interested in Scarlet Edge. I am not interested in Scarlet Edge. I am not interested in Scarlet Edge. More? Shall I keep going? Do you want it in writing?”

Bright’s lips compress with muted anger. This makes no sense.

“Bright,” I say. “I’m not! I don’t care. I would much prefer if she left me the hell alone. She’s obsessed with me, not the other way around.”

Bright stares hard, no less angry. Can she read my thoughts? Does she dare guess that Scarlet Edge made an appearance in my dirty little fantasies, collared and barking alongside Willow? But that doesn’t mean anything; masturbation is not reality. I am not interested in Scarlet Edge. I am not. I am not. I am not.

My lips move; should I tell of my suspicions about the art I found?

No. Not right now. That would only complicate any uneasy truce.

“Let me guess,” I say at length. “You’re thinking you might kill me anyway, because then her obsession would end?”

A dark little smile creases Bright’s face. “Sharper than you look, dream-bait.”

“Octavia.”

Bright snorts, turns her face toward the wall, dismisses me with silence.

Mad impulse grips me in three places, head, heart, groin. A flutter of red-black at the periphery of my vision, in the back of my head, down in my belly. A single instant of clarity shows the way forward, the clear and obvious steps along an open path.

Straighten my spine, raise my chin, set my expression.

“Say my name.”

Bright turns her face back to me, squinting with disbelief, eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. She breathes deep, starts to lift from the bed, flush with morbid energy. “The fuck did you say—”

“You heard me perfectly well. Say my name. It’s not a request.”

Bright manages to lever herself up onto her elbows, glowering at me, breathing harder, arms shaking. “You think because you helped me to bed—”

“Say my name. And I will make you an oath.”

A pause. “The fuck?”

“Acknowledge me,” I explain. “Then I will make an oath. Not only will I stand aside in all possible respects, removing myself as an impediment between you and your sister in every way—” A small promise to make, a nothing promise; I would be extremely happy to never set eyes on Scarlet Edge again. “—but I will also help to bridge whatever gulf exists between you and your sister, whatever form it takes, whatever your aims.” Bright’s eyes twitch. “Or,” I hasten to add, “if you prefer, I will simply do nothing, if you’d rather I not know. Your choice, Burning Bright.”

Negotiated courage does not come as easily as acting like a zoog. My words feel false, a child’s play-acting, though I’m not bluffing; if I could redirect Scarlet and Bright’s attentions toward each other, away from myself, I would have two problems less.

Bright can’t figure me out. She glares, squints, three wet breaths rattling down her throat.

“You’re mocking me,” she growls.

“I’m offering to help you.”

“You don’t understand anything, dream-bait—”

“You love her, don’t you?” I ask. “Or have I misunderstood that? Is it really so difficult to make peace with me, for her sake? If it is, then I don’t think that’s love.”

A big gamble, on a risky outcome. If I’m wrong, I’m probably about to get my throat torn out.

Bright’s expression crumples.

She sags toward the bed, slumps back onto her side, draws her knees toward her chest, starts to curl up, only gets halfway there. Her eyes mist with tears.

“I’m so fucking tired,” she murmurs. Tears trickle from the corners of her eyes. “I just … I want … want it to stop.”

“I know,” I say. “Me too.”

Bright’s tears slide downward without so much as a single sob, staining the pillowcase, leaving wet tracks on her face. She curls tighter, fists bunched in the sheets. I take another, albeit smaller risk, tuck the blankets around the back of her shoulders. She doesn’t resist.

“Octavia,” she mumbles. “Fine. Not even your real name yet.”

“My magical girl name, you mean?”

“Mm.”

“Can I call you Bethany?”

“No,” she grunts. Then, weaker, almost plaintive, “Why? Why you? Why is it you she’s so … so … ”

“Scarlet Edge?”

“Mm.”

Because Scarlet Edge thought me a cripple and a weakling, but then I landed a punch on her gut and took her sword in my belly and lived to tell the tale. Because I stole a blood-soaked kiss from her bitten lips. Because I refused to lie down and die.

“I don’t know why,” I lie. Bright doesn’t need to hear that truth. “I’d rather she wasn’t. I have enough stuff of my own to worry about.”

Bright blinks away her tears, buries herself deeper in the sheets. “Mmmm,” she grunts. “You do. You and your Dreamer.”

“She’s not mine.” I bristle. “Willow is not mine. I don’t want her.”

“You were hers.”

“Were.”

Bright’s eyes crinkle, as if she’s about to rouse herself to attack my one weak spot. But the flash of expression passes. She slips into a long silence, half-awake, adrift on the edge.

“What happened on that rooftop,” I say at length, “that wasn’t what I wanted. But thank you. For coming to help.”

“Wasn’t for you,” she murmurs.

“I know that. But you still did it.”

Bright says nothing. I harbour no illusions; she was not there for me. But the words form another way in, perhaps for later.

“I would happily have handed Scarlet over to you in a heartbeat,” I say. “Grimgrave had to hold her off all by herself, and you can’t blame her or me for that. If anybody, you should be blaming Azure Infinity, she’s the one who tied you up. You and her went toe to toe, and you couldn’t get around her. She bested you for a while. There’s your obstacle. Not me.”

Bright’s face twists with a pinch of anger. “Yeah,” she growls. “Yeah, her. Both of them.”

That’s right, Bright. Remember our actual enemies.

“Perhaps the three of you … ” No. “The four of us, I mean. Perhaps we need to figure out how to work together, so then you can have Scarlet all to yourself, next time.”

Don’t believe a word of it. Platitudes for the angry dragon.

Bright seems to hear the lie in my voice. Her eyes turn back to mine. “You still punched her in the face.”

“Scarlet?” I almost laugh. “Yes? And I would do it again. I did that to defend Grimgrave.” A truth, surprises even myself.

Bright snorts, weak and clotted. “You and chuckles. Both of you. Fucking idiots.”

“How many of us has she killed?”

Bright squints, like she doesn’t know what I’m asking.

“Magical girls,” I explain, as if talking to a particularly slow child. “Nerys’ magical girls. Us. How many has Scarlet Edge killed?”

Bright shrugs with one shoulder, an awkward gesture on her side. “Dunno. A few. Lost some good ones.” A bitter smile twists her lips. “Wish she’d kill you.”

“Oh? I thought we had a truce.”

Bright snorts, half-closes her eyes, drifting off toward the edge of sleep. No answer. Leaves me to wonder.

Moon-wind whispers against the distant roof of Plato Base. Down in the deeps, unseen things rattle and scrape, perhaps mere imagination. Nearby, the zoogs pad closer again, exposed claws tapping on concrete.

“Bright.”

“Fuck off,” she grunts. “Let me sleep.”

“Would you fight for Grimgrave?” I ask. Her eyes open beneath a frown. “Would you have done what she did, up on that roof? Would you die for her? Or Signal?”

“I couldn’t even die for myself, dream-bait.”

She stares me down. Dares me to press.

Half a shrug, half a nod, stand up from my chair, ready to leave Bright in peace for her much-needed sleep. But then I pause, taken by a perverse impulse. I lean down, over Bright’s bed, so I’m half in her face. She recoils in slow motion, lips peeling back to admit a reproach.

“One last thing,” I say before she can speak. “Don’t ever sucker punch me again. If you want to fight, tell me, and then we’ll fight.”

“Or what?” Bright spits.

The perverse impulse peels my lips back from my teeth, a hint of a laugh trapped in my throat, an echo of how I felt standing before Bright’s sister. I have been humiliated, but you will not do so again, or else I will cackle in your face as I break your bones.

“Or you’ll find out what,” I say, “when I’ve got my right arm back.”

Before Bright can muster a response, I straighten up, reach out with my left hand, and pat her on the head. Once, twice, three times, pull back before she snaps at my fingers.

“But neither of us want that,” I say. “So be good, go to sleep.”

Big scary dragon girl. Pat her on the head and put her to bed.

Bright watches me with a suspicious squint as I back away from the bed and scoot the chair toward the desk. She watches me the whole time, perhaps finally aware of what I’m doing to her; though that would come as a surprise, since I’m not entirely aware of what I’m doing either. Some of the zoogs move toward the door, but others linger, a couple of them close to my ankles. I wave my hand toward the corridor.

“Come on, out, out,” I say. “Bright needs her sleep. If you don’t move, I’ll close you in with her.”

That gets the rest of the zoogs moving sharpish. I follow, closing the door behind me, turning to look.

Bright watches. One arm snakes out from beneath her covers and switches off the bedside lamp, plunging her into deep gloom. Her arm slithers back into her nest, a whisper of cloth on linen.

Her eyes glow a dull topaz, even in the dark. They narrow, grow thin, never stop watching.

Close the door, step back. A tightly clenched bolus of tension finally leaves my throat. Have I successfully negotiated with a dragon, or merely put her off for a time, until she rouses herself to renewed fury?

Hopefully by then I’ll have my arm back.

A dozen zoogs follow me back down the corridor, oddly subdued. Perhaps they didn’t expect to witness an attempted taming. Perhaps the way the wind is picking up outdoors makes them want to huddle down somewhere snug and warm. Perhaps they just want to be picked up, but I’ve only got one arm.

Back in the Big Room, Grimgrave has still not returned. My zoog escort rejoin the others in the domesticated corner, most of them dozing or lazing around after their big meal. I cross to my makeshift workspace, nodding absently to Gregory, suspended in his glass tank of thickly clouded fluid.

The plate and coffee mug are both gone, replaced with a note printed on blue plastic. Smooth, wafer-thin, warm to the touch.

Not plastic, after all. Does Tissy extrude these?

Pleased that lunch was to your pleasure. The besmirchment of your bedsheets is being mitigated, but much time may yet pass before they are readied again. New fittings will be fitted, new softness ensoftened. Locking the door will take longer; metals are not my favourites. If you require additional vitalities or intermediate bedclothes, speak your needs aloud and they will be provided for.

No sign of Tissy herself anywhere, peering from behind a pillar.

Is this how Plato Base continues to function, with servant labour from the Dreamlands? I struggle to imagine Grimgrave or Bright doing laundry, let alone cooking. Signal should be more than capable though, what with all those skeletons.

Revolutions are built on the back of such things; but why would a Dreamland native care? Maybe it’s all for Nerys.

“Thank you, Tissy,” I say out loud, at a normal speaking volume. “I can cook, just so you know. If you want any help, I would be happy to.”

Sit down, check my laptop.

My new foot shell still has over an hour left to print, but then it’ll have to be annealed, so I’m not going to be testing it anytime soon. I settle down with the CAD files for the replacement parts of my prosthetic arm, go through the rather pathetic notes I made earlier, revise many assumptions, form some new ones. At some point a fresh mug of coffee appears at my elbow, along with a clean glass and jug of cold water; I thank Tissy out loud again, but still she makes no appearance.

Caffeine, CAD files, new thoughts. What if I reinforce the arm, rather than just replace and repair? What if I make it so Scarlet’s blade can never do that again, transformation or not?

As I work, I can’t stop looking up. Fifteen minutes, Grimgrave? More like fifty.

I’m not truly alone though, not when surrounded by zoogs. The zoog Grimgrave placed on the table is still at her post, though with her eyes closed, settled down very comfortably on the cushion, fast asleep and snoring softly.

But Bright walked in here, straight through the front door. What else wanders the Luna overlap? And didn’t Grimgrave tell me to watch out for anything which wasn’t one of them? What might slink in through the open doors of Plato Base, to surprise a one-armed magical girl who can’t even transform? My confrontation with Bright has clarified certain risks.

“Nerys is right there,” I mutter. “Stop being stupid.”

But Nerys is wounded and fast asleep. Grimgrave hasn’t returned. Bright is shut away in her room.

Moon-wind whispers against the roof, little eddies and gusts scraping along the concrete, setting the antennas and dishes to wailing at the edge of one’s hearing, a far-away chorus of injured banshees, the faintest half-heard whistle. The deep parts of Plato Base seem to flex and moan, a creak and a clatter more felt through the soles of one’s feet than heard with one’s ears. Phantom pain aches in my long-lost right arm. A fresh bruise slowly stiffens on my left cheek, throbbing to the beat of my heart.

My eyes drift to the Big Room’s main entrance; what would I do, right now, if in walked Willow?

“Stop,” I hiss at myself. “Stop.”

Eyes on my laptop screen. Work is not working. I distract myself with another visit to magibooru, another refresh of the front page, a scan for new art, a self-indulgent glance at the pictures of me, the two masterpieces by ‘4en4’.

They’re gone.

Not just the one on which I left a comment, but the other one too, the illustration from days ago, of me facing off against Scarlet Edge. The tag for 4en4 shows nothing. Navigating back to the original urls shows why: ‘Removed by uploader.’

The account still exists. 4en4 has not entirely scrubbed her presence. But the pictures are gone.

“Huh.” I sit back. “Huh!”

The hurt is strange, subtle and difficult to name, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Those two pictures were beautiful, they were of me, and now they are gone.

Good thing I saved them.

I run both the pictures through a reverse image search, to confirm that ‘4en4’ has not uploaded them elsewhere on the internet, at least nowhere notable enough to be indexed. Then I return to magibooru and reupload them myself, under my own account. Spend a couple of minutes re-tagging them correctly, including with the artist tag.

You’re not getting out of this, Scarlet. How dare you? How dare you cut off my arm, then flee when I find you? You put these images of me out into the world. They’re mine now. You want them? Come take them.

When I’m done, a strange tremor has entered my chest. Hand sweaty, clammy, cold. Eyes hot, head heavy.

Have to take several deep breaths. Look away from the laptop, across the dozing zoogs. Listen to the distant whisper of wind across Luna’s surface. If ‘4en4’ really is Scarlet Edge, and Bright told the truth about her being locked in her bedroom for days, then perhaps I’ve just provoked a change.

But I’m still up here, and she’s down there. Which is good.

Grimgrave has been gone too long.

She told a lie, didn’t she? A little white lie, so she could get away from me without guilt or tears or a confusing argument. I’m supposed to pretend there’s nothing wrong; that’s the polite, sensible, civilised thing to do, the thing done by nice young ladies who understand and accept that sometimes these matters unfold in such a way. A gentle, silent, easy decoupling of stillborn friendship. Next time we see each other, later today, I am meant to pretend that I noticed nothing amiss. She has left, and I am not to raise complaint. I am to understand. In silence. Alone.

Then I snort. Out loud.

“That’s not Grimgrave,” I say. The zoog on the table cracks one eye, looks at me. “It’s just not. If she wanted rid of me, she would … I don’t know exactly, but it would probably involve calling me a cunt and hitting me with something.” Deep breath. “I’m projecting. I’m being a child.”

Stand up, stretch my left arm, massage the stump of my right, probe my bruised face. Before I can think twice, I walk the length of the domesticated corner, out beyond the end of the big metal table, eyeing the blank corridor mouth where Grimgrave went. Check my phone is in my robe pocket, check the time. Grimgrave has been gone just shy of an hour.

The corridor mouth tells me nothing, not even up close. It simply stretches off, branching left and right, more grey concrete. The inside of Plato Base is a maze.

I turn back, walk to the zoogs, address them all. “Do any of you know where Grimgrave went?”

A few look up. The zoogs on the table, Nerys’ honour guard, raise their snouts. Nerys sleeps on. Nobody offers an answer.

“She said she would be fifteen minutes. She’s been gone a lot longer than fifteen minutes. I’m getting … ” I can say it. Nobody’s here but the zoogs, and they understand. “A little worried about her.”

Lies. Lying to myself.

Some zoogs share odd looks, swinging their snouts aside. All of them avoid my eyes.

“Alright then. Is it somewhere you’re not supposed to go, or somewhere you’re afraid of going? Or did she specifically instruct you not to follow her? Is that it?”

A wave of hushed mutters passes through the zoogs. A few snap and hiss at their neighbours. A tail is pulled here, an ear bitten there, an argument lurking just beneath the surface.

Finally a little scrum of zoogs breaks free from the general pushing and shoving. Six of them, ones I vaguely recognise, the same ones who led the way when Bright collapsed, a half-dozen from the twelve who ventured to Bright’s room. They stop a few feet shy, eyes upturned like children who know they’ve done something against the rules.

Heart rate rising, sweat under my armpits. Phantom limb clenched tighter than ever.

“Did Grimgrave go somewhere dangerous?” I ask. “Is she … ”

“Mm—mmmmm.” One of the zoogs shakes their — his? — head. “Not danger danger,” he rasps.

“Then what?”

Another zoog raises a snout, looks me in the eyes. A female? Still can’t tell the differences.

“Graveyard,” she rasps. “Don’t like it. Don’t like!”

“You don’t like it, or Grimgrave doesn’t like it?”

A shared look between all six zoogs. A hissing of low zoog voices, claws scraping on concrete. They don’t like it.

“How do I get there?” I ask. “I’m not trying to force you to come with me. Can you give me directions?”

The six zoogs confer a little longer, nipping at each other in a cycle, the rules and purpose of which I cannot figure out. There’s no structure to it, they just shove and hiss and bite and whap with their tails for a few seconds. Then they’re done, just like that, and move forward in a solid furry blob of grey, trundling right past my ankles.

“You don’t have to lead the way,” I say, walking beside them. “I told you, I’m not trying to force you to—”

“Shut-shut!” one of them snaps. “Shut fuck up!”

“We lead you follow,” another one rasps. “Follow close, close close close.”

With no idea what to say, I do as I’m told, approaching the mouth of the concrete corridor, where it plunges deeper into the structure of Plato Base, kinking off into grey shadows.

“Like Grimgrave,” one of the zoogs rasps. “Like her too.”

“Look after you!” another says.

“Grimgrave looks after you.”

“Like us?” another suggests, briefly confused.

“Shhhhhh-shhhhh!” another hisses. “Shhh.”

“Graveyard graveyard.”

“Graveyard grim.”

“Grimmy yard.”

They all fall silent as we pass beneath the archway, huddled close in trepidation, forging onward and ahead with each tiny paw-step. They keep glancing back and aside, little black eyes rolling upward, to make sure I’m following close.

Which I do, because we all want to see Grimmy, and I’d rather not get lost in the bowels of Plato Base.

Home, one day. But not yet.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Dragon: tamed(?). Zoogs: gathered. Cheek: bruised. Unwanted homoerotic rivalry: unresolved. That’s right, it’s magical girl time. *Cue anime OP*.

This chapter was weird to write; Octavia and Bright both would not do any of the things I had actually planned for them, and managed to make everything worse. Hooray! I’m not complaining, I’m cowering before them. I’m not big or scary enough to tell them no when they wanna go off and do whatever this was with each other. And now Octavia is going to do a little exploring and hopefully not stumble across Grimgrave in the same way Grimmy stumbled across her. You know. Hand down underwear style.

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

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And thank you, dear readers! I know I say this every week, but I mean it none the less. Thank you all for being here and reading my little story! I couldn’t do any of this without all of you!

Next chapter, Octavia goes to find Grimgrave in the graveyard grim. As the zoogs so clearly said. That is, if they have a good sense of direction …