Re: The Woods: Pesha/Tandy
Billy was firmly into fretting territory as the other guy staggered out of the confines of his trailer, which, yes, had been built by less-than-giant hippies with little regard for vertical gentrification. And he’d pegged Tandy for more Middle America than himself, although he supposed he hadn’t been allowing for temporal disparity in culture between alternate realities. A rookie mistake, clearly.
“I begged my parents to send me to public school so that I wouldn’t become a snob,” he said, wryly enough as he set down the wooden bottle and the rosewater against the dewy grass at his feet. “Then I got the shit beat out of me on my first day and transferred as soon as my face healed up. They didn’t even have the decency to lord it over me.”
He sidestepped around the handicapped Polyphemus and jumped back up the steps of the trailer, reaching out to pluck at Tandy’s sleeve and reeling him back in. “Shut up, you’re going to be quiet and do as I tell you,” and if Billy was channeling his mother who had devised the strategy of standing on the staircase in their brownstone in order to yell at his brothers once they started to tower over her, then so be it. He reached out one hand before Tandy had a chance to protest and gently cupped it over the place on his hairline. He knew that the press of his palm was fever-warm while he summoned just a fraction of his magic up from the depths.
“Vindeca,” he mumbled, lips buzzing around the practiced accent of his Romanian. He felt a tingle of heat run through the lines of his knuckles and how quickly it turned to cooling, soothing at the lump that was already threatening to turn into a goose-egg. He was looking up at the moon while the magic worked, feeling her pull against the place in his belly where his witch was rooted.