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The new girl at school seems odd, somehow. Elle can’t place a finger on it, besides the fact that besides her, she’s the only one to have such brightly colored hair, her pink mane making her stand out in the crowd more than even her height. Nonetheless, she doesn’t seem to be a troublemaker, always wearing her uniform properly and doing the homework for class. They aren’t in the same year, so she only hears whispers from her classmates the day that she turns up to school with a bloody nose and a black eye, which she swears upside down, inside out and backwards are from protecting an elementary schooler from a bully. Elle tries her best to ignore her, focusing instead on studying for her college entrance exams so she can finally study what she wants and focus on art.
She doesn’t think about the new girl, not at all, until she sees the streak of pink hair from the rooftops when she’s walking home late at night. She would have thought it was the cherry blossoms if it was the season, but it’s late in the fall, the trees long having shed their leaves, and she’s alone on the darkest part of her walk home when she sees it. She could swear that there’s someone up on the rooftops, but the silhouette disappears almost as quickly as she spots it. She turns back, trying to focus on the last quarter-mile of her walk home, when she hears the gravelly voice behind her, a chill running down her spine.
“Hello, pretty girl. Why are you walking so quickly?”
She tries her best not to turn around, but she can hear the heavy shuffling footsteps behind her, can smell the sour beer on the breath of what she is already certain is a drunk salaryman, stumbling through the alleys looking for easy prey. For a high school girl, like her, walking home. Just as the steps pick up, as she starts weighing leaving her bookbag with her camera in it and sprinting away, there’s a cry from up above and a heavy thump. She whirls around, heart pounding, to see –
“Katie?”
The man on the ground, whose face is thoroughly smashed from the force of a boot coming from the rooftops, groans in pain. Elle ignores him, thoroughly stunned by the girl before her, resplendent in a light-blue dress, pink hair pinned up in intricate twists and swirls. She seems to be holding… some sort of sword, a rose motif emblazoned across the handle. As Elle watches, the sword disappears into shimmers, and the girl tuts, kicking one high-heeled blue boot towards the man, who is rapidly approaching unconsciousness.
“Are you all right? I couldn’t let that evil-doer hurt you, I’m sorry for startling you!”
Elle shakes her head, not sure if she’s hallucinating the hand extended to her, delicately cloaked in a white glove.
“Aren’t you Katie? From school?”
The girl laughs, shaking her head. “I am the Rose Protector! I am tasked with protecting this city, making sure that those I care about stay safe.”
Elle stares at her, trying to map the surface of her face. She claims not to be her, but there’s something that is just so familiar about the Rose Protector as she shakes Elle’s hand and then jumps, jetting back to the rooftops. As she picks her bag off the ground, she tries to shake off the feeling that there’s something wrong with the scene.
The new coffeeshop down the street has been putting out increasingly terrible puns on their sandwich board outside, Elle notices. Today’s is “We’re a match-a made in heaven” with some wonky hearts and an arrow pointing, which is just bad enough to make her snort as she punches in her door code and lets herself into her apartment. She doesn’t give the coffee shop a second thought as she walks the five floors up to her apartment, cursing every step that she hadn’t searched just a little longer for that rare New York City apartment that was either less of a walk-up or less of a shoebox.
Birdie yowls at her through the door as she fumbles with her keys, finally shouldering the door open with one foot blocking the entrance so the angry cloud that has taken up residence with her doesn’t make a mad dash for it. She drops her bag and picks Birdie up, burying her face in his soft fur while he purrs and mewls, singing her the song of his people. He parades away the moment she puts him down, off to investigate one of the corners of the tiny studio. She follows, pulling her phone out of her bag and checking her messages. There’s a few messages from her boss on Slack, several emails from clients or colleagues with attachments of half-baked designs, some increasingly urgent work to do on an advertising campaign that the firm is getting off the ground in the next week. She ignores the notifications in favor of a hot shower, trying to scrub the sweat from her early-morning yoga off her skin before she really begins to work in earnest.
It's while she’s in the shower rinsing out her conditioner that she hears the loud pop-thump, and she instantly knows what happened. Well, she knows because she’s suddenly in total darkness in her shower, the only light the tiny glow of her phone screen where it’s playing music from YouTube. She curses, fumbling for the tap and turning off the water before wrapping herself in a towel and grabbing for her phone flashlight. The apartment isn’t totally dark, light from outside illuminating the space well enough, but the lack of a hum from her refrigerator is enough to confirm her fears. She texts her super as she searches for a t-shirt and jeans, then grabs her bag and pets Birdie on the head.
“Sorry baby boy, but I’ve got to find another place to work. I need wifi, baby.”
He meows petulantly and sticks his entire back paw in his mouth without breaking his direct eye contact with her.
“Yeah that’s, that’s fantastic Birdie. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
The coffee shop is surprisingly nice, Elle realizes. She didn’t think she was judging it that harshly by their advertising, but she’s pleasantly surprised by the understated décor, all earth tones and light wood, and the smell of coffee beans and butter pastries. There’s a dark-haired woman at the counter who waves at her as she comes in.
“Hello, welcome to Bloom Coffeehouse, how can I help you?”
“Yes, could I just get a soy vanilla latte please? For here, and a croissant.”
The woman rings her up, pleasant but cool in that New York City way that Elle finds more comforting than anything else she’s experienced.
“Here you are, the wi-fi password is on the receipt. We just ask that you purchase every few hours if you’ll be camping here all day,” the woman smiles at her, handing her the croissant. Elle reads her nametag – Nightingale. Just the kind of name she expected for a barista in a boutique coffeeshop in Greenpoint.
Elle finds a spot by the bar and pulls her laptop out, starting with the emails from clients that are waiting for a response. She sends off a quick ping to her boss, letting her know about the electricity situation, and then slips her headphones on. She’s in the middle of explaining to a client that, as much as she likes orange, they need at least one contrasting color to keep her ad from being a graphic disaster, when she sees maybe the most beautiful person she’s ever seen in her life.
Nightingale is talking to another barista who just emerged from the back rooms, a goddess of a woman with bright pink hair pulled into a ponytail that threatens to burst the scrunchie that’s holding it and several piercings in her face and ears, who is tightening her apron in a way that shows off every muscle in her arms. Elle takes a moment to realize she’s fully staring and reverts her gaze back to her laptop screen, blushing furiously. She goes back to her email inbox and stares blankly at her cursor for several minutes before she’s realizing there’s a shadow cast over her.
She looks up only to make direct eye contact with the barista, who’s looking at her with, if she didn’t know better, a devious twinkle in her green eyes.
“Would you like a refill on your latte?”
Elle looks down, realizes her cup is empty.
“Oh, actually, that would be great. I can come up and order it, I think I’m due for another order anyway,” she says, trying her best not to mumble to herself and actually articulate her words. What has come over her – she’s been into women since she could think about these kinds of things, and she’s never been brought down to the level of a stammering teenage boy by anyone before.
The barista – Katie, she sees on the nametag – simply reaches out one tattooed arm across the half-barrier and scoops up Elle’s empty cup.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.”
Before Elle can protest she’s already swept away to start the espresso machine and grab the soy milk out from the fridge. Elle watches her work, mesmerized by the easy way that Katie throws herself into the routine of coffee-making. Within moments, there’s a fresh latte being delivered to the same spot by Elle’s elbow. Invigorated by what she has to believe is flirtation, she finally feels emboldened enough to ask –
“So do you give all your customers free refills on their fancy coffees?”
Katie snorts, “No, just the cute ones.”
There’s the blush again, Elle buries her face in her hands as she hears the other woman laughing from the other side of the counter.
“Listen, I’ll tell you what. I can tell you’ve got something to work on,” Katie gestures to where Elle’s laptop has started pinging threateningly, “But I’m off in four hours. If you’re still here by then, want to grab some lunch?”
Elle nods, head still in her hands where she’s trying to hide her best impression of a tomato. Katie just laughs again and drops something papery by Elle’s hand before going back to the register to greet a customer. As Elle finally moves past her mortification enough to look up, she sees that what Katie had dropped was a napkin with ten digits hastily scrawled on it and a wonky heart that looked suspiciously like the ones on the sandwich board. She tucks the napkin into her pocket, even as she gets this uncanny sense of déjà vu.
In the two months since the outbreak had begun, Elle’s world had so totally gone to shit that she had given up on any of her little routines of normalcy. She spent her days in the makeshift camp that the campus had turned into, pinned to the dinky radio that had been fashioned out of the meager supplies they had found, scanning the airwaves for any other survivors. For the first week, there had been so much noise in the channels – official reports being blared by FEMA or NATO or whatever the acronym was for the government agencies that were running tanks through the cities, the last few news stations running that would give periodic updates on the outbreak, a few other encampments that had similar ideas to them and were broadcasting their locations and needs in hope that someone, anyone would get to them. Now, Elle just tuned through layers of static, occasionally punctuated by an official report crackling down the lines.
Jackson returns from his sweep of the perimeter, Theo hot on his heels. The two of them, as much as they had been pacifists in the world before, had picked up weapons without a second blink after the first surge of undead at the borders of their little camp. Elle was grateful – she wasn’t sure she’d be able to fend off much of anything on her own. The waves had slowed down, too, just a few undead every few hours now that would trigger one of the traps they’d rigged outside of camp and send the survivors equally sprinting to grab weaponry or to a hiding place until the wave was dealt with. There had been a harrowing few days somewhere a few weeks ago when it felt almost relentless, when she had hidden with Marie in one of the enclaves of the old fallout bunker, the two of them shaking with silent horror, their breath ghosting over each other’s faces the only reminder that they were here, alive.
Marie was gone now, too. They didn’t actually know if she’d been turned, but one morning she was gone from camp, no note, no sign of where she’d gone. Elle tried not to think about it for too long, certain that if she did, she’d be taken in by the same despair.
The few remaining settle at one of the tables in what had been the student union, uneasily picking at the rationed canned mean and vegetables that they had unearthed and hoarded in the first few terrible days. Max appears from where they squirrel themselves away during the day tinkering with whatever bits and pieces they can find. They were the one that had put together the radio for Elle to man, and she is infinitely grateful that they were able to give her a connection to the world, a way to at least appear useful.
Conversation is stilted, all of them staring blankly down at the table as they pick at and don’t quite eat the food in front of them. Elle is doing her best with what she has, but it isn’t the same as their elaborate group dinners from before in their apartment, just spam and canned green beans she tried to fry and ended up more seared-almost-burnt. After twenty minutes of this heavy silence, something that Marie would have been horrified by, filled with her absent chatter about whatever she could think of, they all break, heading back to their respective locations. She can see in everyone’s faces that Marie’s disappearance is weighing on all of them, she had watched Theo scouring the camp for the entire day after she had left, yelling her name until he’d gone hoarse even as Jackson had tried to stop him, to gentle his screams so as not to attract undead attention.
It was too late now, even as Elle took her seat by the radio again, one eye scanning the landscape that she could see. She started the contraption back up, hand-cranking it to generate any little spark of power that might run it for the rest of the day. It’s as she’s doing this, listening to the tinny whir of the internal mechanisms, that she hears the commotion from outside. She grabs the hockey stick that lives next to her at this point and slowly slides out of the building, listening for where she hears yelling, ready to slam the splintering wood in her hands into the first face she sees.
It's only when she hears voices – more voices than she’s heard in weeks – that she realizes what they’ve found. She takes off in a sprint towards where she can hear Jackson yelling for her.
There are other survivors – eight of them, battered and bruised but not bitten, not really hurt, that are standing on the other side of the pits they’d dug. The leader, Elle assumes, is wielding a sickeningly jagged piece of sheet metal, which seems to have been molded and shaped into the approximation of a broadsword. She’s saying something to Theo, gesturing to a member of her group who’s limping, one foot elevated, and then to the pits in front of them. Elle grabs a plank of wood at the edge of camp that they keep for specifically this purpose, dragging it over to Jackson and Theo.
It only takes a few hours to incorporate the eight survivors into their little community. They had come with some supplies, thank God, because as much as Elle’s heart had soared seeing others, she was too pragmatic not to count their heads and start thinking through how many cans they had left. They had been some kind of athletic team, though the details were unclear. The leader, Katie, had immediately gotten the limping girl sitting on the folding chair in the radio room, elevating her leg and giving her a strip of weathered leather to bite down on before resetting her ankle with a nauseating crunch. Elle had watched, fascinated and horrified in equal measure, from the doorway, as the other girl had wiped tears from her face before pulling Katie into an embrace, letting Katie pick her up and set her back on her feet.
That night, they start a big fire, larger than the few of them had felt comfortable with before, but now with twelve of them together, they feel confident enough they won’t immediately perish from the comfort of some warmth in the late October night. Elle finds herself sitting next to the other group’s leader, Katie, who is actually as young as she had thought – just turned nineteen, already the captain of their team which had apparently made her their leader by default when everything went wrong. She’s charming, even though she has that dead eyed look of someone who has seen far too much death. Elle finds herself watching her eat, observing the little details of the other woman, the faded pink of her hair chopped just above her collarbone, the mousy brown roots making themselves known, the stretched skin where she can imagine a silver barbell once took its place. It’s dead simple, as the survivors take their night watch shifts and find their nooks of buildings to try to sleep in, for Katie to tail her, to wordlessly stretch herself out alongside Elle, gathering her in her arms as they try to doze in the eerie silence. They don’t talk about it, don’t have to. Katie had seen how Elle had looked at her, clearly knew what that hollow gaze, that obvious want had meant. Even as she drifts away into another night of fitful sleep, Elle focuses on the line of heat along her back and thinks surely not like this.
The humming has been coming from outside for well over two hours now, and Elle’s given up on trying to focus on the book in front of her in favor of staring at the floating yellow spots on the curtains, circling continuously as they have been for the last several minutes. Her father had gone outside over ten minutes ago, and she hasn’t heard anything since, so she’s sitting paralyzed in the armchair of the farmhouse as she listens for anything besides the humming. There had been some warning that crackled ominously over the television set before being knocked out entirely, and with how bad the storms had been the last few days, she hadn’t been surprised that any signal they were getting was patchy at best. She’d ignored it in favor of trying to finish this reading so she could write up something satisfactory for her English class and call it a day.
It was in the middle of the afternoon that the sun had disappeared. She hadn’t even bothered to look outside then, so used to the heavy clouds that had been blocking the light as they rained hard and heavy on the land. Then came the humming, and she thought about glancing outside but figured it was either dad doing the mowing or a neighbor stopping by to ask for some mechanical help, which was a weekly event at the most infrequent. However, when all the dogs started barking in eerie unison, her father put his newspaper down and stepped outside ‘just to check.’ Now, she’s listening to the humming, to the dead silence of any animal that rings almost louder than the humming itself, watching the lights flickering on and off.
Finally, she gives up, setting the book down and grabbing the baseball bat that lives next to the door of her bedroom, an heirloom of an ill-fated try by her parents to get her onto the softball team. She slinks down the stairs, pressing herself to the walls of the hallways and feeling, even through her terror, a little silly, like a final girl in a horror film. However, as she gets to the bay window downstairs, the fear surges renewed. Her father and dad are gone, the dogs cowering in the yard watching an enormous steel machine setting itself down in the field. It’s like nothing she’s ever seen before, seamless metal with huge lights that don’t seem to have any setting, that just exist on the surface. The thing lands, blowing all the tall grass around it straight to the ground for a good hundred feet in every direction. It’s only then that the humming stops, and she realizes, truly, just how quiet it’s gotten.
She braces herself against the front door before pushing it open, and she notices immediately how the air itself seems to be charged. Her hair stands on end, and she finds herself futilely reaching to push it back down before giving up, grabbing the bat with both hands and advancing towards the craft. Her heart thunders in her throat, every instinct in her body throwing her backwards, and yet she pushes on. When she reaches the flattened grass, she sees some sort of portal open on the machine, and some sort of creature peer out of it.
She stops in her tracks as she sees three bodies emerge. One is clearly inhuman, towering easily above the other two, and it takes a moment for Elle to rip her gaze away from it to realize the other two are her parents. Instantly, before she can will her legs to move, she’s sprinting across the grass, throwing her arms around her parents, baseball bat forgotten by her feet. They embrace, the two of them sandwiching her between them like she’s still a kid and not their adult daughter, and Elle forgets for a moment what is going on, until she hears a strange trilling sound from the creature and opens her eyes.
It's staring at her, head tilted the same way her dog does when she’s trying to understand something. Now that she’s up close and personal, Elle can finally see what this creature looks like. It’s tall, too tall, like a Gumby that’s had its limbs stretched to cartoonish proportions, though otherwise it appears fairly humanoid. Its skin is a disconcerting bright pink, and its eyes pure black, and though it has a mouth, it seems only to make strange hums and trilling noises. As she looks at it, trying to piece together its appearance, it hums again and she stumbles backwards as she hears a voice inside her own head.
Hello, child of Kobayashi and Simon.
“What the HELL.”
I do not wish to startle you. I merely wanted to communicate with you. I have learned that you do not speak my language, but that I can speak yours this way.
“Okay. That is terrifying. How do you know my name?”
The being pauses, listening to her speak and considering her words for a long moment.
These creatures, which I protected. They are your guardians? I learned their names. It is my understanding in your custom that you are given the names of your guardians. They said your name is Elle, child of Kobayashi and Simon.
She looks at her parents, who seem not to be reacting to the being speaking at all. It must be only speaking to her then. Tamping down on the part of her brain that is fascinated, she tries to focus instead on trying to wrap her mind around what is going on.
“What do you mean, protected them? This whole thing,” she gestures vaguely to the being, the craft behind them, the clear crop circle they’re standing in, “looks more like an alien abduction than any kind of protection. Wait, shit, are you an alien?”
I merely transported them temporarily. There was another celestial in the area that I had detected, and I felt the need to keep them from its path. Us Keistun are peaceful, but other celestials are not.
Elle stares, her mind boggled by this interaction. She can’t quite tell why she’s so calm, speaking to this creature – a Keistun, it had called itself.
“Oh… kay. So you protected them, then. They’re unharmed?” She looks at them again but doesn’t see anything out of line. They similarly don’t seem spooked by the being, just watching her interact with it with curiosity.
Yes. I would be deeply ashamed if they had come to harm with me. I apologize for your distress. I know that guardians are important in your culture.
She’s ready to ask several more questions when the being turns its head sharply, its jet-black eyes tracing something in the sky that she cannot perceive.
I apologize, but I must leave. The being I was tailing appears to still be here. Thank you for your grace.
As it starts to turn away, Elle finally gives up and yells after it, “Wait? What is your name?”
The being tilts its head again, a behavior that Elle is finding increasingly endearing the more she sees it.
We do not have names, necessarily. But my cohort calls me K8T. You may do the same.
With that, K8T turns fully, disappearing back into the craft and a moment later, the mechanical humming returns in force as the ship hovers momentarily and then blinks out of existence with a gust of wind that sends Elle staggering backwards into her dad. The three of them stand out in the field, watching the sky in vain, and all Elle can think is No, this isn’t right either.
The sick ward is blessedly empty as Katie sits at her love’s bedside. She’s been there for days, turning away attendants who bring her food and water, increasingly anxious messages from the court. She doesn’t care. Her lover is pale, her chest barely rising and falling under the silky bedsheets that Katie smooths over her. She no longer has tears to cry, she merely stares blankly, willing with all her infinite power for the woman’s eyes to open, for her to cry out in joy or anger or any emotion besides the emptiness of her normally ever-expressive face.
“Lady Katherine,” intones a voice from the end of the bed, and she tears her eyes away long enough to see the mender who has been tending to her lover, watching her with a haggard expression.
“Mender Dearheart,” she nods, rising from the bedside. “Is there any news of the antidote? Anything that can be done?”
Dearheart’s face tells her everything she needs to know, but she waits nonetheless, hoping against hope that there is some kind of prank, some joke that is being played at her expense. She will forgive anything to have her open her eyes again.
“Katherine, my dear. The antidote does not exist still, no matter what we have done. It is best now to let her rest, carry out this dream to its completion.” The mender’s eyes are glassy as she watches Katie’s face for the mule’s stubbornness that she’s known for. Katie can hear the second half of the sentence, though it hasn’t been uttered since Eleanor, Elle, her betrothed, had fallen ill.
You should have known, taking a mortal for a lover. Fae ought to be wise enough not to fall for such treachery of time, Katherine.
She hadn’t cared then, and she still isn’t sure she cares now. She looks back at Elle, her face sallow and drawn in her poison-induced slumber. Mender Dearheart hovers at her elbow, waiting for her to make a choice.
She doesn’t want to, wants to stay here and bear all her hope in her heart to her love, push her with the power of her magic to open her eyes. But, she knows that Dearheart is maybe the only person left in her court who is on her side, who had been secretly speaking to the two of them before this, about extending Elle’s life, about what they could do. She wouldn’t give advice if she thought there was still a chance.
“Is there a way, at least, to quiet her mind?”
Dearheart nods, gently guiding her back to the bedside.
“Your magic, though it cannot wake her, can still make it into her dreams. You at least deserve your love to be happy.”
Katie nods, laying her hand on Elle’s cold shoulder. She doesn’t look up at Dearheart again, listens to her shuffle off out of the ward, no doubt to let the court know that Lady Katherine would be bereaved and unable to complete her duties.
She waits, listening to the vast stillness of the chamber, punctuated by Elle’s tiny huffs of air. Finally, she presses her lips to her eyelids, letting her tears fall.
“In every timeline, in every universe, my love. I will never forget you, please never forget me.”