Ariel

  The trip through the Hugteikn was rougher than before, a tumble through light and shadow that left Ariel gasping as her feet struck solid ground again. She staggered, hand braced against the wall of the building she landed next to, her vision swimming with fragments of green fire until, slowly, the world settled around her.

  She stayed braced a heartbeat longer, palms slick, the pavement under her shoes feeling a fraction too smooth, as if the texture hadn’t quite finished loading. Air rushed into her lungs in clipped, shallow pulls. A high, glassy whine receded from her ears, and with it came the ordinary chorus of the street: tires whispering through damp asphalt, the distant thump of bass from a passing car, a barista’s knock of metal on metal somewhere behind glass.

  The Hugteikn had never flung her so hard; her stomach lagged a step behind the rest of her, a mild vertigo that made the vertical lines of buildings wobble and then snap true.

  She blinked and a small gasp passed her lips. She was standing on the familiar sidewalk outside of Java Junction. The bell above the café door chimed faintly as someone exited, and through the wide windows she caught sight of Jordan behind the counter, expertly pouring a latte, steam curling up around him. Milk spiraled into a leaf as Jordan’s wrist flicked; the machine exhaled with a cat’s patient hiss. Cinnamon hung in the air with scorched sugar and that deep, dark scent of espresso that always wrapped itself around Ariel’s memories of mornings: screens waking, code blinking alive, Holly’s laughter in the kitchen. The sight tugged a small, wistful smile to her lips; something achingly ordinary after everything she had endured.

  But the warmth in her chest didn’t last. Memory surged back, sharper than the comfort of routine. She wasn’t here to linger. She was here for Holly. The thought steadied her; the softness of the moment folded up like paper and slid into a pocket she could return to later... if there was a later.

  Turning, she scanned down the sidewalk. Holly, her blonde hair catching the light as she walked, a half-smile on her face, was strolling just a little way away. But she wasn’t alone. Another woman walked beside her, tall and soft with a plush figure, red curls framing her round cheeks. The woman’s gait matched Holly’s without effort, like two lines in the same song; when she laughed, she tipped forward a little and touched Holly’s elbow with the back of her hand. It was easy... familiar... practiced. Ariel froze, her head tilting in confusion. She didn’t know this woman. Her heart gave an unfamiliar pang, sharp and hot in her chest.

  Ariel quickened her pace, but not enough to draw attention. She followed a few steps behind, listening. Holly’s voice carried clearly in the cool air, talking about dinner plans, laughter tucked between words. The other woman, "Heather" Ariel overheard her called, answered easily, their conversation weaving with a comfort that stabbed deeper the longer Ariel listened.

  “We could try that place on Fourth,” Holly said, voice warm. “The one with the neon fork?”

  “The neon fork that blinks ‘EAT ME’ like it’s flirting with everyone?” Heather teased.

  Holly’s grin ghosted. “That’s the one.” She nudged Heather's shoulder with hers, a gesture so ordinary it felt like a knife in Ariel’s ribs.

  Ariel’s throat tightened. That feeling inside her... an ache, a weight she hadn’t known in this world... unfurled, and she recognized it for what it was: jealousy. Bitter and raw, it scraped against her ribs. Had Holly… moved on? Was this what she had found in Ariel’s absence? Someone else’s arm to brush against, someone else’s laughter to fill the spaces Ariel once had?

  The thought alone made her legs feel heavy, her chest tight. Anxiety pressed in, sadness thick as smoke, threatening to choke her. A reflexive inventory sparked to life, her mind cataloguing Holly’s tells the way it always had: the thumb press against her index finger when she was choosing words; the way she skimmed the curb with her eyes before stepping down; the half-second delay before a joke landed because she was already lining up the next kindness. Ariel had memorized these like constellations. Seeing them traced here beside someone else made her chest seize.

  And then something shimmered. A street sign across from them flickered, the letters bending, the metal frame blurring at the edges until it snapped back into place. Ariel stiffened, scanning quickly. There... another flicker. A passerby whose outline blinked like a faulty light. A row of lampposts that seemed to stretch and shorten in a blink. The world itself, glitching. A pigeon hopped mid-step and froze, one eye flat and glossy, then resumed with a stutter. Color washed thin from a mural and crept back in from the edges. The air pressure pressed on Ariel’s eardrums and then released, as if the fabric of reality had just seized for a moment.

  Her gaze darted back to Holly, and her breath caught. Holly had noticed. Her brow furrowed, her eyes drawn to a trash bin that had half-faded from sight before returning, confusion and unease etched across her face. Ariel felt Holly’s turmoil, the way she had always felt her moods as if their hearts were tethered.

  Without thinking, Ariel stepped forward, her hand trembling slightly, reaching out toward Holly’s shoulder. She wanted to anchor her, to soothe that confusion with her touch, to whisper that she was not alone.

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  But her hand slipped through Holly like mist, leaving only the ache of absence in its wake. A tiny static crackled across her skin where her hand passed through, the after-image of touch burned into her palm the way a missing tooth insists on being tongued. Ariel’s chest clenched, frustration and longing crashing together.

  She was about to try again when movement froze her.

  Heather’s eyes flicked. Not at Holly. Not at the street. But at her. The redhead’s head turned, the faintest narrowing of her gaze like she had seen something she shouldn’t have been able to. Ariel’s stomach dropped, the hair on her arms prickling.

  Heather had noticed.

  Ariel hesitated only a moment before reaching out again, eyes fixed on Heather this time. Her fingers swept harmlessly through Holly’s shoulder once more, but as her arm lowered, the back of her hand brushed against Heather’s sleeve. Solid contact. The jolt of it made Ariel still, her breath sharp in her throat.

  She lingered there, staring at the back of Heather’s head, a new, unsettling feeling rising in her chest. Softly, controlled, she whispered, “Can you hear me?”

  The answer did not come from Heather. It slid instead into her mind, pale and hollow, like breath over glass.

  “…Yesss… I hear you. You are loud in your longing.”

  Ariel froze. Her name balanced on her tongue and would not fall. The voice was ethereal, monotone, stripped of warmth. It coiled in her thoughts like fog.

  “…How you reach… how you ache. Do you wonder if she remembers? Do you wonder… if she still wants you?”

  Ariel’s hand hovered, her gaze never leaving Heather, every muscle taut. The voice persisted, unhurried and unfeeling.

  “…She will slip away. As all things do. As you will. What will you do, Minnithrall, when even memory betrays you?”

  Ariel’s lips curled into a snarl. “You don’t know her. You don’t know me.” She raised her arm, willing the ground to answer, to split, to send vines lashing upward—roots threading through rebar, life breaking stone. Nothing happened. The pavement remained still.

  Her jaw tightened. She inhaled through her nose and reached the way she had in the grove, in the cavern, past muscle, past breath, where the old green current usually waited. She pictured the deep braid of the Veyra’s roots, the pulse of the Eiranth, the simple miracle of sprout and leaf. Her hand trembled as she tried again. Still nothing. The silence under the sidewalk was not the silence of winter; it was the absence of a channel. The world here offered no purchase. Not even a shiver of life answered her call.

  The voice rippled through her skull, cold and unyielding. “…See how empty you are. How small without your forest. This place is mine, little spark. Your channels end at the curb. You are nothing here.”

  Ariel spat back through clenched teeth, “And yet you’re the one hiding behind a false face. You can’t stand in front of me as yourself.”

  There was a pause, then that whispering monotone again. “…I will keep her. She is safe here. Fed, held, praised. No pain, no doubt, no endings. Wrapped in a world that never fades. A perfect dream she will never wake from.”

  The words hit harder than any blade. Ariel’s throat burned. Images smashed together: Holly’s hands flour-dusted. Holly’s head tipped back in sleep. Holly stepping into a shaft of morning light with a mug in each hand.

  Ariel had crossed death for those seconds.

  She would cross worse.

  Ariel staggered, her pulse pounding in her ears.

  “…She will forget you. Even now, you see her smile for another. Soon, she will not remember your name. Your face. You will vanish from her, as all things do.”

  The air grew thin around Ariel, her breath catching in her throat. The sidewalk seemed to tilt a fraction, the edges of things oversharp, the center a little too bright. A rage began to swell, deep and molten, fighting past the ache in her chest.

  “You don’t get to take her from me,” Ariel spat into the empty air. Her heartbeat thundered, each thud rushing heat into her veins; sound scraped along her skin like sparks skating a forge.

  “She’s mine. My Holly. You’ll never keep her.” Heat threaded her fingers; her nails ached as if embers had taken root beneath them.

  “I died, and I still came back for her. What the hell makes you think you can erase me?”

  Her arms tingled, then her legs, until every limb felt as though it were trembling with heat. Her breaths came harsher. Faster. Each exhale a roughened note, as if a low animal sound were trying to shape itself in her throat.

  “You will burn before I let her go,” she growled, voice raw and breaking, her words spilling out with the heat surging in her veins.

  And still the voice whispered, unrelenting. “…She is mine now. Not yours.”

  Ariel’s eyes burned as if lit from within; the world haloed at the edges, Holly and Heather silhouetted like cutouts against a field of glare. Her chest heaved, every exhale hissing. The rage swelled, unbearable, until she felt it: flame blooming beneath her skin, crawling outward, consuming.

  She was beginning to feel like she was on fire. A rising, ordered conflagration. Lines of heat tracing veins, an architecture of flame assembling inside her, purposeful and terrible.

  And then, through the roar of her own pulse, another voice cut in. One that did not belong to Heather. Soothing yet firm, a single note struck into her mind like a bell.

  “Burn.”

  The word reverberated, neither command nor suggestion, but a truth.

  Ariel gasped, her eyes widening; the heat inside her suddenly answering with a flare that nearly stole her breath.