Sometimes people come to me because they know I can see the future. Problem is that my visions are nothing like that.
Not usually.
I am always afraid when it is. When I wake up sweating with blood on my tongue, unaware I’d even been asleep, and some portent heavy on my eyes…
But that is rare.
Well, not now. Current events have my dreams so spiked with crystals that I am currently a…hot mess, I believe is the term my cousins would use. I sleep little.
I have myself neck deep in death as it is, I would rather it not rise to eyeball level.
But my thoughts escape me again. I am not here to write about my portents. They are usually focused on the heat of the moment–I get a flash of what will happen five minutes down the path we take. Sometimes I have an hours warning of something near-certain. I give thanks to Raven that I do not know much further out, when all one can do is sit and dread.
Except, as I said, right now when–
Stop. Stop. Stop. Take a breath.
Ambrosine came to see me. She knows how my gifts work and came anyway. I do not think she was really seeking advice but just to talk. I am not one to come to advice on relationships, for one. I have a mate but if you ask me why he stays I cannot answer you, not when I am near married to my work. But it is his choice and I enjoy his company. I tell everyone I will neglect you when my work calls, and everyone tells me they will stay.
They do not all stay, but most do, which is a puzzle–
Stop.
Ambrosine came to see me. We are not close, but perhaps that is another part of why she came. I am distant enough from her problem to be clinical about it.
“My ex-girlfriend came back,” Ambrosine said. I know this woman she speaks of–she is a cousin of my mate’s, as it would happen. I often talk with that side of Drake’s family, the engineers. I like how they think. They are pleasingly linear. I can mostly not offend them.
“She had not truly left?”
“Well, I mean–you know. I know she’s been _around_, of course she is, she’s Jim’s sister. But I mean she came to my door. She is speaking to me, seeking to reconcile.”
I made some noncommittal noise. I tried to remember if I had been told why that had split up. It had involved my other cousin Rajisa? And that slip of an elementalist? Oh. Ambrosine, yes, she was one of close, tight bonds. And Jess had strayed. Yes. Impulsive, that one. No. An addict? That felt right. There was something–well. There was something that troubled Jess deeply.
I turned to look at Ambrosine. Then I Looked at her, and I shook my head. It wasn’t that I saw anything in particular, I just knew who she was, and even that did not take effort. She wore it on her sleeve. Others Before Myself.
“Can she change the rift that grew between you in the first place?”
“I believe she may finally have hit bottom hard enough to try,” Ambrosine said slowly, caution tangled with hope and hurt. I know Ambrosine has taken lovers since. I also know that the fact that she has not married yet is telling. She is very much the marrying sort. I am not sure Jess is the one to pursue but–well.
“You cannot fix her,” I said, patently aware of how obvious and trite this statement is. This does not mean it does not need to be said. “She must fix herself.”
“I know.”
I thought for a moment, rolling the future around on my tongue. There is no insight here. Just the wisdom my years have given me, but even that is mostly about necromancy, and the mists, and other things not pertaining to love.
So I thought of Ambrosine and the friends she has around her. “If anyone has the patience to stand by her while she does so, it is you.” And if anyone needs to tell you to stop being an idiot, Jim will do it, I added silently. Jim loves his sister but not enough to let Ambrosine bleed out for her.
Ambrosine shifted her weight from foot to foot.
“But this does not oblige you,” I said softly.
“Doesn’t it?”
I shake my head. “Save your burden of responsibility for your healing skills and your strong arm, Ambrosine. You have a weight of responsibility to help save the world, perhaps. Some of us must be moved to action. But you do not have to save every soul you meet, not at such a steep cost to yourself. There are professionals who are paid to help those such as Jessica as well. You are not her one and only hope.”
But I knew from the way Ambrosine bowed her head that she would try.
I should tell Jim, and they can keep an eye on her. Both of them.
But that must come after I go back to the oldest fragments I can dig up in the Priory. There may be some slip of information pertaining to the current state of the Underworld–
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