The light of curiousity returned to Zoe's eyes once again. "So," she said. "If you weren't thinking about him, what were you thinking about?"
Jon frowned. She could hardly tell her sister about the stone...it had been enough of a struggle deciding to share the secret with Karyn. Zoe was a good kid, underneath her peculiarities, but if she found out, Athena was sure to find out, and...well, Jon didn't know that Athena was a gossip or anything, but that was because she didn't really know Athena much at all, aside from the occasional hello.
"Just some stuff we were looking through at the bookstore," she said, unable to keep her exasperation out of her voice completely. "We were just trying to find if anybody had pusblished information on the sun's changes, that's all."
Zoe nodded, but seemed skeptical. "Huh." Kind of mundane to be acting like this about. The last time she'd seen Jon lost in thought with that excited look was...not long after Grandpa died, actually. Huh.
Muriel chuckled to herself as she looked at the bleary-eyed little girl before her. "How late was she up?" she asked Mrs. Gordon.
The older woman smiled. "I sent them to bed a little after ten, but I'm afraid they were up a lot later than that. Kids that age just don't really go to sleep until every last thought has been taken care of...put two or more together and it's practically exponential."
The policewoman laughed. "Well, as long as it's on a weekend. She'll have plenty of time to catch up on her sleep before school tomorrow."
"M...mommy?" Jenny asked, her eyelids hanging half-open as she tried to stay awake. "If...'f I did something bad...would you f'rgive me?"
"Of course I would," Muriel answered, picking her adopted daughter and holding her in her arms.
Jenny wrapped her arms around her...her mother. "Even if it was really bad?" she asked, taking no notice of anybody present but Muriel.
Muriel regarded her curiously. These times she got this guilty look in her eyes...what was she thinking about? She didn't for a moment believe that Jenny could have done anything as bad as she seemed to think, but it seemed like something had really made an impression on her. "Doesn't matter how bad," she said, kissing her on the cheek. "You're my little girl, and I'll always love you, no matter what."
Jenny pulled back, looking deep into her eyes, like she was looking for something within them, then sank back into Muriel's embrace, sighing contentedly. Muriel gently rubbed her back for a while before realizing that Jenny had fallen asleep.
Sue looked across the table at his transformed husband. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
Andy sighed. The concern was evident in his voice...how was she feeling? "I...I dunno," she said. "Confused, I guess. Still trying to process it all. I feel like my head's going to explode just thinking about everything that happened yesterday...but I'm okay, I think." She smiled at the naga-man. "D-don't worry, Sue. You...you didn't break me, honey."
He sighed in relief, tension that he hadn't even realized he felt washing away. If he'd done anything to her...he would never have been able to forgive himself. The rabbit-woman place a hand on his arm, and he smiled, feeling a little tingle run through his body. Nothing wild or uncontrollable, just...pleasant.
"I...I am sorry about not thinking of protection," he said. "That was...that was a pretty big oversight. Could've been..."
She shrugged. "It was both our faults, Sue. We'll remember next time. Besides, it was...for a first time, I don't think I'd have had it any other way."
He smiled. "Me neither...still, if you hadn't just changed..."
Andy nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. "God, that's so weird even to think about..."
Susan laughed. "Tell me about it. But...how are you feeling otherwise?"
"...okay, I guess," she said. "Still...still kind of discouraged about...the job search. And...well, the doctor was right. The need is gone, but the habits..."
The snake-man placed a firm hand on her arm, and she sighed. "You can do it, love," he said. "I know you can."
She smiled. "Thank you..."
In another part of the house, Alex gently knocked on Sally's door. "Come in," her sister's voice said, and she entered.
Sally smiled. "I don't think you need to knock anymore, Alex..."
The dragon-girl raised an eyebrow. "Well, I...it's probably good if I do anyway." She shuffled her feet, feeling weird about even approaching the subject she'd come to discuss.
"...sis?" she asked. Sally nodded, and Alex sat down on the bed next to her. "S-Sally," she said, "do you think...since we're twins, do you think it'll be synchronized or something?"
Sally couldn't help but feel a little flattered that she was the mentor-figure here, the one who knew what there was to be known and was approached for advice. Usually Alex was the one who knew stuff, being older, and she'd fight to keep up with him, and then he'd get uncomfortable about her being so competitive...
But she was getting off on a tangent. "I...I dunno, sis," she said. Alex seemed a little confused by the term, but didn't look to be offended. "I...I've heard of stuff like that happening," she continued. "But...I dunno if it really does or not. Guess we'll see..."
Alex nodded. "If...if it was," she asked, "um...you...um...?"
"How soon?" Sally offered. Alex nodded, blushing. "'Sokay," she said, "you can ask. It's a while yet...little over a week, probably. If things haven't changed with us, anyway..."
Alex gasped. A...a week? God...
But a moment. Just a brief time to decide...that's what she'd said. After all this time they'd spent in getting here with the sun seeming to barely move, why was it now of all times that there was suddenly such a hurry? He didn't trust her...this had to be a play, something to panic him into suspending his judgement, to accept her demands unquestioningly. If she weren't trying to hide something, why wouldn't she just tell him the truth?
But at the same time...this whole place was tricky. The hill that had turned into a mountain while he was in the middle of climbing it, and become impossibly high as she took him up it by leaps and bounds, the sun that seemed to stand still indefinitely but must eventually rise, the vast plain that he had crossed in a shorter time than could possibly account for the apparent distance...this whole place seemed designed to mess with him. Maybe she was right after all...maybe in a minute or two it would suddenly be high noon, just as suddenly and unceremoniously as the mountain had appeared on the horizon...
Could she be controlling this place? Running this whole little world by her own will, to confuse him into following along? But if that were the case, why did she give him a choice? If she wanted him exposed to the light, why couldn't she will the sun into position and conjure up a little crevice like the one just above them? And if her aim was to deceive him into pledging allegiance to her, why didn't she come up with better deceptions? Even the worst liars he'd encountered could make up a more convincing spiel than she had given him. She was like no cult leader he'd ever heard of.
But still...the fact of the matter was that he knew the sun would change him, she claimed it could destroy him, and yet she wanted him to expose himself to it anyway. He couldn't do it! He wouldn't! Not for her. He had to hold onto himself! Flaws or no flaws, he had to hold onto...
...onto what? Onto the life of a cold-blooded murderer? Onto the soul of a man who'd killed people for no cause other than a few thousand dollars? Onto someone who'd used and discarded so many identities that he no longer even had a life outside his work? How appropriate, after all the names he'd gone through, that he could no longer remember his own...
What did he stand to gain here? If he turned and ran, hid until the sun was gone (if it ever was,) and somehow worked out a way to return to the real world, to his own life - or whatever the sun had left him of it - he'd just be...a killer. Not someone who killed out of need or to protect, but someone who killed for profit. (Why did it bother him to think of that now? After...what, fifteen years? He didn't know.) A contract killer so divorced from anything that could be called a life that...hell, he hadn't even seen his mother in the better part of a decade.
But still...it was him, wasn't it? To abandon what little he did have just because it wasn't much...wasn't that basically suicide? He wasn't going to do that, no matter how badly-off he was.
But...what if she was telling the truth? It was hard to think that, if the landscape could reshape itself while he wasn't looking, he could ever really hide from the sun. It was probably inevitable that...he would be exposed, and if she was right then he'd be ripped apart, obliterated...or, if she was really telling the truth, then he could retain some small part of himself by...by jumping the gun, beating the sun to its own damn punch.
It was insane. It was madness. But this whole place was mad. He didn't intend to abandon himself to fate, yet he was told that the best way to avoid being destroyed was to give himself up. And what about Jenny? If it really was true that this was the way to help her...if it was the life of an underpaid hitman balanced against the life of an innocent girl...
He turned to the woman. "You won't tell me what will happen to me, or how it will help," he said. "At least tell me...what do you mean when you say it'll take away my sins? What will I be then? An angel or something?"
She shook her head. "You will be forgiven. Innocent again. But you're asking if it will take away your capacity to do wrong, aren't you?" He nodded. Eerie...
"It won't," she said. "It can't. Even the angels themselves have that choice to make. But you will have the chance...to make it again, to choose the right path." She smiled a little, wistfully.
He sighed. A clean slate, huh? Quite a promise if she really knew what his life was like...and he almost suspected she did. He knew better than this...it was all lies, it had to be. This was some hallucination, or prison in which some force was attempting to break him, bend him to its will. He should stand fast, refuse this, even if it was out of sheer stubbornness instead of any illusions of moral superiority. Under no circumstances should he even consider stepping up into that light.
Yet...there seemed to be no better option.
"I'll...I'll do it," he sighed.
She shook her head. "You can't do it because you're resigned to it," she said. "You have to be willing, not just not unwilling."
So many qualifiers to this... He hung his head. "Be honest with me. Will it really help her?"
The woman lifted his chin and looked him in the eye. "I promise you, on my own soul," she said. "This is the only way, the best possible way, to help Jenny."
He sighed again, and it was like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. If he had one last act before the sun consumed him, if he did nothing else, even if it didn't save him...he wanted to help her. He could see that maybe he deserved to be here. Maybe even the woman did. But Jenny? It wasn't possible. There was no way she could deserve to be trapped in this place...or wherever she was. He wanted to help her...wanted to free her, if it was at all within his power.
The nameless man lifted his head, took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. It didn't really help. He didn't feel heroic...he just wanted...just wanted her to be okay, no matter what happened to him.
One last job... He stepped up to the ledge, gripped it, and scrambled up the last few feet.
He was very near the top now, on a little flat space at the top of the long, the impossibly high cliff. At the end, at the peak, near a pool of water and sandwiched between two mounds of rock, was the crevice. The sun's fire streamed up out of it. If he stepped into that light...it would all be over. Whatever happened to him, there would be no turning back. No undoing what he had done.
You have to be willing. He didn't feel willing. But...if he could help her...
"Do it," he murmured to himself as he approached the crevice. "I don't care what happens. Take whatever has to be taken...just get her out of here."
The sun was upon him. It didn't burn, it stabbed. Like every atom in his body was being gutted with a knife. It was beyond even the capacity of a scream to convey...so he merely clenched his teeth. He could feel himself being torn away...this must be the end. Farewell, then, to the nameless m-
It was over. The pain was gone, and he was merely staring into an uncomfortably bright sunbeam shooting forth from the crevice like magma from a volcano. He felt weakened, hardly able to stand, diminished like everything possible had been purged from his body. It was like the emptiness after vomiting, magnified infinitely. He blinked in the light, then turned to go back down. What...what would happen now?
As he stepped down from the crevice, he was surprised by how strange everything felt. His body felt...lighter, much lighter, and the landscape loomed around him like it had grown larger yet again. Curious, he leaned over the pool, to see what had happened to him, and gasped in surprise.
"I think you begin to understand," the woman said, as she approached the pool.
"Th-this can't be real!" the newly-cleansed transformee said. "It...it's not true!"
She stared into the pool, at her reflection. That gentle face, the bright eyes, the snow-white hair...and four nipples, too, caressed by the cool morning air...among the things that had been purged were her clothes. The girl, the little girl who looked back from the water...
"It's as true as it seems," the woman said. "This is the answer to everything. How it will help Jenny, why I could not tell you, how it will help you."
The new girl turned and stared at her. "Y-you mean I'm...I'm..."
"In a sense, yes. In another sense, not yet."
The enormity of the realization crashed over her, and she sank to her knees. "J-Jenny can't know...she just can't..." To burden the little girl with the knowledge of...of her true past, that would be...it would be worse than to simply have been a bad influence on her...
The woman knelt down next to her and placed a big, grown-up arm around her little shoulder. "The truth will come out," she said, a certain sadness in her voice. "It's not something that can be hidden from her forever. But...she won't be troubled with it until she's truly ready to handle it."
"H-how can that...how can that be!?" the girl yelped. "How could she ever be ready?"
"When she's grown," the woman said, picking her up, "she'll understand that what's past is past, that she cannot and must not carry old guilt around in her heart." The little girl wanted to protest, but...to have the woman cradling her...she felt reassured, somehow.
"B-but it's true, it's all true," she said. "I...I really did...I..."
"You've been forgiven," the woman said, shushing her. "You've been cleansed. You just haven't learned to accept that, is all."
She frowned, confused. How could that be true? The people she'd killed...they were still dead. The lives she'd ruined...she shuddered.
"It will pass away, in time," the woman whispered. "Until then, you can sleep, rest in the comfort of a new life. See? Here she is now."
The girl looked up to see Jenny, the Jenny she'd met in this place, standing over her. Their bracelets were still chained together...but of course they were. She stood and stared at...at her counterpart, lost for words.
Jenny smiled. "I'm so glad you're okay!" she said. "I knew you could do it! But we gotta get home now...Mom is gonna want us back soon."
The girl was confused. "Mom?" But knowledge she hadn't possessed was beginning to seep into her mind, and she recalled the woman, the one with the armor plating that felt hard to the touch, but warm with life, the policewoman who'd rescued her from the remote, unsafe neighborhood...the one she'd lived in...
She turned to the woman. "W-will I see you again?" she asked. She thought she knew the answer, but if she was wrong, and this was their last meeting...
The woman smiled and picked her up, Jenny getting dragged in a little closer by the chain. "Of course you will," she smiled.
The woman kissed her, full on the lips. It was...it was intimate, but not in a man-woman kind of way - indeed, the memory of her previous reactions to this woman was already fading. It was like the love between sisters, only closer still. And then it was over, and the woman set her down.
"Go now," she said. "Go home. Be whole. We'll meet again, in time."
The girl turned to Jenny, who smiled warmly. This, then...this was it. This was the end of her time here, the end of her life...and the beginning of a new one. She gently reached a little hand toward Jenny, afraid even to touch her, but the other girl grinned and launched into a hug that nearly knocked her backward. She smiled in spite of herself and returned the hug, sinking into Jenny's embrace...
...and then sinking into Jenny. In a moment, without a sound, without a sign, there was only one little girl standing atop the mountain. She smiled at the woman, and the woman smiled at her, and world dissolved into haze around them.
David looked up at the church. How old was it, anyway? It looked old, made out of old weathered stones...you didn't see too many of those around here. But the interior...well, that had looked old too, but not quite so old as it did from the outside. And it was in good repair. She shivered at the thought of the time she'd spent in there, the terror of being changed, and the shock when it finally did happen.
"Hey, hey!" Rachel said. "Isn't this the place with the tree-guy...thing?"
The angel-girl turned to her. "Huh? Tree-guy?"
Rachel nodded vigorously, breasts bobbing gently with the motion. "The cemetery here, I recognize it. The other night, when you were doing your thing...he's out by the far corner. He's a tree, so he can't move...we talked for a while. It was...interesting. I think he's the pastor here?"
David shrugged. "...huh. We didn't see anybody when we were here...but we never really explored the cemetery."
"Oh," the devil-girl said. "...what were you doing here, anyway?"
She cringed. "It was...it was a stupid dare...it went all kinds of wrong, and we..." She shuddered. "I kinda...don't want to talk about it." She could feel her sisters comiserating; they didn't know her thoughts, but the emotion probably wasn't hard to place.
"Mm." David was a little surprised that Rachel didn't press the issue further; she could tell the devil-girl was curious, but she seemed...a little better about respecting boundaries after...after the kiss, and how she'd reacted. Still so strange, so confusing to think about...
Or perhaps she wasn't so hesitant after all. Suddenly Rachel was back on the edge of her personal space again, leaning in toward her and wearing that impish grin, hands folded behind her back. "So," she breathed. "Ready to enter into...unexplored territory? A new world awaits..."
David couldn't help but smile in spite of herself, though she did edge back a little bit. "Guess so," she said. She went up the step to the church door and gently pulled it open, surprised to find it unlocked after the police had apprehended them. The old oak made a pleasant creak as it swung outward, and though the interior was dim, it wasn't an ominous sort of darkness.
She hesitated briefly and then stepped inside, the soft glow of her halo gently illuminating the interior - not a powerful glow, but enough to see by. She heard Rachel chuckle behind her as she noticed the effect, and heard the door creak again as the devil-girl pulled it shut behind them.
"So, Forty-Watts," she said, "where to?"
The angel-girl hesitated, trying to figure out, to sense...could she sense anything? Rachel had led them to Hell's Kitchen almost at random, following after some scent...
...actually, she did think she smelled something. Something like...bread, maybe? Something baking, at any rate. She closed her eyes and tried to place it...
David thought she found the direction it was coming from and headed down the side-wing of the church. At the end, by the bathrooms, was a side-door that she opened, which went to what seemed to be the custodial closet. Except it was a good bit larger than she'd have expected; it seemed to run back down the length of the wing toward the foyer.
They went down to the far end, where there was another door. David hesitated, but the smell was stronger here, and she pulled it open. There was a stair, an unadorned plank staircase that wound around...oh, this was the bell-tower! The stairs looked old, but a cautious test step revealed them to be surprisingly sturdy, though they creaked alarmingly.
Did...did she really want to do this? But Rachel had led them through what looked not to be a very nice neighborhood and back out without getting harmed...surely a heavenly place couldn't be more dangerous, could it? She took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves, and began to climb the staircase, Rachel following behind.
The stairs were narrow and steep, steep enough that she began to subconsciously lean into them, hardly noticing what she was doing until she was nearly on all fours. "You know," Rachel spoke up from below, "you look pretty cute doing that." She blushed and straightened up - a bit. They seemed to go on forever, curving around the tower again and again...what, twelve times? Maybe it was just that it was one continuous flight and there were no landings to serve as markers, but it seemed like they'd covered more than the actual height of the tower to her.
At last they reached the top. The church-bell hung there, old but intact. Rachel, ever impulsive, reached out across the gap and rapped her knuckles on it. It was hardly enough to get much sound out of the bell, which seemed larger than a little church like this should have, but there was a faint, warm ring from within it. The devil-girl smiled, and David couldn't help but smile too, once her friend was no longer leaning over empty space with only a rickety-looking railing holding her back.
At the top of the stairs, there was a door. David knew the bell-tower didn't have a balcony, or even a maintenance hatch that she'd seen, and she could smell a savory aroma wafting out from around it. It had been one thing to find a devils' restaurant in an actual restaurant building, but this? Finding a place where there was quite literally no place for it was a little weirder. Still...she opened the door, and ushered her friend inside.
They were in a cozy little place that seemed not unlike the dining-room down in the church basement. It had a largish open area with multiple long tables, and a counter at one end that opened to the adjacent kitchen. However, where the church basement had cheap plastic tables and folding chairs, this place...well, the furniture wasn't fancy, it was simple varnished pine, seemingly hand-built. But it was nice, in a homey sort of way.
Nobody much was here, at the moment; there was one angel-woman setting out dishes on the tables, and another in the kitchen, working on something that smelled wonderful; meaty, savory, but simple rather than rich.
The dish-setter looked up at them and smiled. "Ruth!" she called. "Guests! How's it coming?"
The cook came over to the counter and smiled. She seemed like an older woman...there was no sign of the decay of age in her face, but somehow she gave the impression of being in her late fifties, gently wrinkled in ways that looked pleasant and with little threads of silver in her brown hair.
"Good morning, girls," she said. "You're a little early, so you might want to start with an appetizer...I'm afraid the stew won't be ready for a while yet. Naomi, will you get them a menu, please?"
The other woman nodded and went to a cupboard on the far end of the room, under a bookshelf, retrieving a menu from it. She seemed younger than Ruth, maybe in her mid-forties, and a little more matronly. "Here you go, girls," she said, handing David the menu. "Take your time; sit anywhere you like."
David nodded, and she and Rachel sat at one of the tables near the kitchen - mostly because the smell was pleasantly strong there. "Huh," the devil-girl mused. "Not what I expected..."
"And what was that, may I ask?" Naomi said, as she went about setting dishes at their places. Rachel felt a little nervous, but it sounded like a friendly inquiry.
"Well, I kinda thought it would be all...you know, airy and ethereal and such."
"You're just saying that because you haven't seen the pastries yet," Ruth interjected from the kitchen.
Naomi laughed gently and nodded. "Of course...we do get into that, but this place...we find it's easier to have fellowship in a less formal atmosphere."
"D-did you make this?" David asked curiously. She was still so unsure of what she really was - were these really angels, or were they transformed people, like herself?
The angel-woman shook her head, smiling. "We just volunteer here, honey. Figure out what you'd like yet?"
Jenny yawned and snuggled into the covers, trying to get back to sleep, but the sunlight wouldn't let her. She had felt so tired...but she was feeling better now. She tried to shake the sleep from her brain...she'd had a very strange dream. Something about a mountain, and the sun, and a pool...but it was already fading. That was okay, it was kind of a boring dream...but she felt like whatever had happened in it, it was good. She smiled and wriggled out of bed, finding that she was in her pajamas...Muriel musta dressed her.
She went into the kitchen, where her mommy was sipping a cup of coffee. She smiled as she saw Jenny in the doorway.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," she said. "You were pretty tired this morning. Did you sleep well?"
Jenny nodded. "I'm better now...I slept nice."
"That's nice," Muriel said. "I hear you had fun with Billy last night."
Jenny grinned. "Yeah! We played, an' we watched a movie, and she let me name her! I called her Lily, 'cuz it sounds like Billy but it's a girl's name!"
Muriel raised an eyebrow. She wondered how the squirrel-girl's parents felt about that...but Abigail had given no sign of being angry or upset, or even mentioned it. "I see," she said, diplomatically. "Lily is a pretty name, all right."
Jenny nodded. "What happens t'day?"
Her mom smiled. "Today you can just rest up a little bit, but tonight we're going over to Grandma's."
The little girl's eyes went wide. "Grandma?"
Muriel nodded. "My mom. Now that you're my little girl, she wants to meet you."
"Ohhh..." Jenny breathed. She hadn't even thought about Muriel having a mom. What was she like? Did she look the same, or was she different? She couldn't wait to find out.
