Samhain.

[Jacqui]

She abides the old ways on Samhain.

It's fond, the way she prepares the plate of food, opens the window enough to set it against the ledge, the blast of traffic below fluttering through her thin robe. Stirring the nuts and sliced slivers of apple. She lights a candle and lets it burn down as she draws her circle in the middle of their living room.

There's a wine glass perched just outside her circle of stones, she draws it in before she sets the last and lays out the altar. Draws in the wheel with chalk on a flat bowl, snaps out a match and lets it flicker hiss before lighting the little cauldron. Spirals of incense unfurl around her and fill the apartment with sandalwood and myrtle.

The blessing slips like a forgotten nursery rhyme off her tongue, the candlelight dances shadows across her collarbones, cheeks, eyes.

I mark the passing of all who have gone before, and all who will go after.

The knife gleams and strikes, pierces the flesh of the pomegranates, seeds bursting from inside and seeping out, staining the plate. She scoops a handful of flesh in her fingers and lifts it to her mouth, bursting seeds between her teeth and savoring the bitter flavor.

"From darkness, light", she sips the wine, leans back on a hand and watches the twin spirals of smoke. "From bane, good, from death, birth." She stays there for a good hour, careful with her body within the circle. There's a certainty to it, a wistfulness if not sincerity and when she leans in to snuff out the flame, she does so with a hand around the stem of the glass.

"Safe travels, Aisling."

It's a whisper and reminder, a greeting and farewell and she leaves the candle in the window burning, until it flutters and goes out in the early hours.

[Jacqui]

New York.

"You're pale."

She's standing with her shoulder braced to the window, eyes on the city below. She likes the height between her and everything else. He sets a hand on her shoulder, sliding it around her neck and she resents the presumption in it and slips away. Moving to reclaim a jacket from the chair.

"I'm fine."
"Are you?"
"Yes, Patrick. Fine."

His arms cross. "You were talking about that woman in your sleep again."

There's a lance of frustration in the turn of her body, the frown her mouth dips into, the defensive line of her brows. "It's nothing. It's just a -"

"Nightmare." He finishes neatly, echoing older sentiments. There's a weight behind the words and a judgement buried in his eyes. She meets them.

"Yes." Words chipped off like slivers of ice.
"But you don't want to talk about it."
"No. I really don't."

"We don't talk about anything, you realize? You come here, we - " An aborted gesture at the bed, sheets, her half buttoned blouse. "But we don't talk. Or, well," Laughter, abrupt. Some forced modesty at the degree to which he discussed himself. His work. His aspirations while she lay listening to his heartbeat and said nothing. "I talk and you find an excuse to leave."

Her eyes slide from his face downward, she half shrugs. Some abortive gesture, contained, controlled. "I don't come here to talk work with you, I come here to have sex with you." Quick, harsh, there's a brutality to the manner she says it that devices she means it to be as dismissive as it sounds. To harden his face the way she prefers it.

"That's all this is to you. Sex. Jesus, Kiara, I -"
"Don't." There's something close to panic for a second when he approaches, when the harshness fades into something softer. Touched with sensibility. "I don't do that. You know I don't. It's sex." She reaches out, brushes his shoulder, fixes the turn of a collar.

--

Feathers. They'd been floating in the air like weightless afterburn. The universe birthing Paradox through the destruction of pillows. Thrown and torn while the world was ripped in half.

How fast or slow had it been before it was over. Time had always been relative. Stretched out, pulled loose like taffy only to reaffirm itself. Not even time could altogether prevent inevitability. Throw the dice, play the odds. Or had she known before it happened, cast herself into her own timeline and glimpsed enough to see --

Her eyes were always closed until they weren't. A hand snatching her ankle.

Run, Kiara. As fast as you can, as long as you can. Run away and never look back.


--

Denver.

Six days after Samhain she wakes panting, skin slick with sweat, her legs tangled in bedsheets, fists balling covers between them. Falls into the bathroom and retches over the toilet, knuckles white.

Just a nightmare.

Always, just a nightmare.