Dundalk, Maryland. Tampa, Florida. April 11, 2006.
Tink must have read Rosethorn's e-mail a thousand times. Or, at least, sitting in the dinky public library it felt like a thousand times. Her mind caculated the amount of time it would take her to read it a thousand times while she fretted over the message. She read it one more time. One thousand and one.
That's really quite awesome, Owl's Cry.
You hear that, Crane? Someone who does the
skin-itching like Fiacre. Maybe one day when you grow
some testicles you could ask him to do yours.
For the third time she hit the discard button on her reply. Her brother wasn't a Thyrsus, he'd never know. Unless someone told him. And they would. Mages did nothing but gossip with each other. Except for fuck each other. And yell at each other. She sighed; it all blurred together.
She stared at her cell phone and wished for Orpheus to call. Hell itself had to be better than this. Everyone had been talking about going to this thing, some stupid ball, in Kentucky. Tink had been bullied into it. But now he was going. She just couldn't go. For one thing, Smoke would come with her, and she already knew how that ended. It was nothing she wanted to live through twice. Or, really, nothing she wanted Owls to live through twice. And it would be awkward. What would she say? "Hi" just didn't feel like it would cut it. Besides, she had nothing to wear.
That last thought brought her up cold. She couldn't think like that. Smoke would kill Owls, and really kill him this time. There was no Jou on her ever-present white horse of do-gooder-ness to save him. Tink tried to push him from her mind. Her eyes fell back on the e-mail. He's got these beautiful feathers, and I've got... Her mind clamped down on the thought. Work. I have work. For hell. Hell is distracting. She forced herself to focus on the book next to her. Unlike the past dozen she had read, this one was not about Archmages that had killed their wives. This was about the entrance to hell, but it could have been about Goldilocks and the Three Bears for all she noticed. Tink's eyes slid over the same paragraph repeatedly.
Her phone finally vibrated as a text came in. Ready to port? She breathed a sigh of relief. Finally. Something to do. Her fingers flashed over the keyboard with the practiced dexterity of a teenager in the digital age. Yes. God, yes. Give me 5. Tink placed her tome in her bag. The library had nothing like it, but they did have something the house didn't - internet access. As she started to shut down the computer, her eyes fell again on that e-mail. Sometime in her failed reading of the book, she had 'accidentally' re-typed her reply.
If he'd consent to do it, you should let him. Owls' ink is beautiful.
"Send" was so close to "discard." She stared at it for a long moment. She likely could have stayed there all night, but her phone rang again. With alacrity, she clicked discard, logged out, and shutdown the machine. Some part of her soul laughed at her; Coward.
It was her last thought before the darkness enveloped her. Orpheus's blue eyes pulled her forth. He frowned when he saw her expression. "You okay?"
She nodded, letting the thoughts float to the top of her mind where she knew he could hear them. Yeah. Fine. Great. I just want to blow something up.
His touch on her mind was tolerant and slightly amused although he answered outloud. "I hear the Underworld is good for that. Which way?"
Tink looked around and fell into step beside him, jutting her chin in a direction. As the two old friends walked willingly into Hell, gorgeously inked feathers were all that filled the young girl's mind.