Who: Gryff (immoveable) & Em (wordsaremusic) What: Checking in. Where: Haven. When: Sometime current.
Cass made good on his promise: Easter basket supplies, drink enough to conceivably drown in, a sequined pair of rabbit ears angled jauntily atop his head. They’d started their evening sat across from one another on Emily’s bedroom floor, the prophet and the polyglot feeling each other out for unspoken issues and well-shielded wounds. All their intentions were good; the music played on and ran its hidden fingers down both their backs, they talked of real things between the deliberate nonsense, and morning saw wild-haired young man and woman sprawled across Em’s bed like pair of sleepy puppies.
New habit overrode old hedonism. She was awake before the sun quite dare force its presence back into the world, arm slung over Cass’s side, her head ducked up against the narrow line of a shoulder blade. She was motionless, breathing shallow and quiet as Em first put the pieces of the night before back in proper order, then allowed herself small frisson of pride at waking with lack of choking panic. (How long since the last time she’d slept beside someone else, barring Gryff’s brief attempt at humoring her sickbed self? How recently had the thought of waking bleary-eyed and unsure inspired a sense of dread? Progress, then, self-deprecating and true all in the single blow.) With Cass yet down for the count -- no twisting, no turning, no crying out for safety from dreamt-of monsters baying after blood, he was soporific-still -- she untangled herself from around blankets and body, slipping feet to floor and eventually out into the empty hall.
Haven continued to sleep, for what it was worth. There were bound to be a handful of rubbed-raw souls up and shuffling uncomfortably through waking nightmares, but by and large silence reigned supreme. Morpheus was yet king of the castle, and with church walls scrubbed clean of bad memories, Emily relished a morning which, for at least a little while, was hers to own. She padded along cat-quiet, fingertips trailing across stone walls before Haven’s wordsmith ducked into the galley kitchen once deemed Gryff’s territory, only to be commandeered by an Andley. She didn’t think; Em wouldn’t let herself think, wouldn’t go through the motions of pulling on clothes and running through the cool pale light of morning as part of routine. Not quite yet, when her hand still sometimes found itself splayed across her belly as if searching out remembered hurts, or when the aftertaste of too much rum stuck heavy in her mouth.
Success was the gradual reinstatement of ritual. It was Emily sat straight-backed atop spare scrap of kitchen counter, bare legs dangling down the distance, ankles crossed in mindless faux modesty. While the bulk of Haven and its mangled magicians had yet to greet the day, its jealous smaller half kept eyes closed, head canted as if listening for far-off music, shoulders strung through with the tightness of tension which refused to venture far. Haven sighed around her, and she only kept both hands wrapped tight around a mug of tea, taking in the moment to be still and determinedly not think. The others -- Nives and Ophelia, Toby and Lily, all of them -- would get their turn. But in a bit. Not quite yet.