Sperantia was done. Done with fairies. Done with Mallos, especially. Done with the arbitrary half-life of a familiar, with being the sidekick of someone else’s story, with being excluded from the narrative. She had been spending the last month or so living the life of high freedom, doing all the things a cat – a real cat – was supposed to do. She chased voles, hissed at strangers, basked in the sun. She took full advantage of her borrowed powers to hop worlds, explore fantastical new places, taste exotic new riches.
And she was bloody miserable.
No matter how far Sperantia ran, it never made her feel complete. It was like the hole where Mallos had once been couldn’t be filled no matter how much she ate or chased or voyaged. Sperantia couldn’t quite bring herself to think of that hole as existing in her heart; more frequently she thought it was in the pit of her stomach or, when she was feeling particularly vicious, in other, grimmer parts of the body. When she was feeling more logical, she supposed it made sense. Sperantia was, had always been, the more practical and rational of the two. She was the one who faced problems head-on; he was the one who ran away. It was hardly surprising that his preferred tactic couldn’t fill her void.
It was difficult to know how to fill the hole when she couldn’t even work out what her feelings were. About half the time, Sperantia reflected savagely on Mallos’ many, many shortcomings, replaying with cruel mental commentary his more stupendous fuck-ups in her head. The other half of the time her thoughts were softer, creeping up on her unannounced, uninvited. She caught a rat one day and thought, I should leave this at the foot of his bed, before remembering. She encountered flowers with black petals on a distant planet and felt inexplicably overwhelmed. It was difficult to watch a sunset.
For the most part she was too distant from him, physically and mentally, to have any kind of telepathic contact. Beyond even his psychic reach, she was free to lift her mental guards. Occasionally, however, she felt flashes of emotions she couldn’t describe – usually negative, jumbled, confused. At these times she could only guess that Mallos’ feelings about whatever he was doing in his life were so strong, she was able to empathically pick up on them even in spite of the distance. Once, when she’d felt a shudder of garbled emotions wrench at her heart, she’d almost dropped what she was doing to teleport to his side. It felt like he was having a heart-attack. She conquered her reaction and the moment passed; presumably he survived, because she remained in the Realm of the Living too.
For the next few days Sperantia debated, agonised. Going meant finally throwing in the towel on her much-coveted freedom and admitting that she was a familiar first and her own person second, but could she live with herself if she stayed? She hopped a few planets, always dissatisfied with her choice, furious with herself for her own indecision. Finally, she went to Earth. The Americas. Far from Shaman, Spain and Egypt, the three places he was most likely to be. From here, she could run a careful psychic scan to find out exactly where he was, then teleport to where he was not and check in with a different, trusted fairy.
It took a few seconds, but she found him. China, of all places. Presumably talking to Tsi. Sperantia inhaled and exhaled slowly, mustering her courage, and teleported. She reappeared where she always did when travelling to Shaman: on the coffee table in their shared apartment in the castle. A quick scan told her the place had been barely lived in, if at all, for some time. Someone must still be coming in to clean because the room was immaculate, but it had none of the little signs of life which indicated Mallos’ presence. No papers on the desk, no dismantled mechanical objects, and some of the pictures had been knocked slightly askew and not corrected.
What now?
Sperantia leapt off the coffee table and exited, not pausing to give herself a chance to think or re-think. Who could she turn to – and did she really want to? She could leave. There was still a chance to leave and no one would ever know she was here.
She turned on the spot, hesitating, one paw raised. Left or right, back or forward? The agony of indecision felt like it was going to split her chest. Sperantia was never indecisive. She prided herself on her ability to think logically and take clear action.
She’d hesitated for too long. Movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned her head to see a very familiar figure turn the corridor. Morgana stopped when she saw her; Sperantia froze, flighty, her hairs stood on end.
Sperantia
la soledad es un tipo de veneno
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