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Chapter Text

Shiny Things

The first bell of spring washed the halls in the smell of wet wool, chalk dust, and potting soil. Brenda Good’s classroom had always felt a little like a thrift store that learned to garden- kitsch posters, hand-lettered labels, a terrarium with a lizard that refused to be named anything but Marvin. However, since the winter’s incident, it had shifted. Vines had crept onto the windowsills in orderly trellises, glass buttons nested in saucers like dew, a small alcove of shining things tucked into the corner shelf: a pewter thimble, a smooth black stone, a length of silver thread looped like a moon. The children called it the shiny shrine when they thought she couldn’t hear. She always heard. She didn’t always correct.

Today, the shrine had company. Three ravens-one ragged, one glossy, one with a single white feather like a bad secret-dozed on the curtain rod as if they paid rent. Another leaned over the rim of the aquarium, clicking at Marvin. The fish tank across the room sent a net of light rippling onto the ceiling like water.

Kravitz knocked twice and the door still opened without him. He stepped in with the careful gravity of a man who has taken too many doors to too many thresholds. His suit was charcoal with a sheen that made Brenda think of midnight ice. In his hands, a small bouquet: hellebore bound with silver string.

“Miss Good,” he said, and his voice, if a voice could bow politely, bowed. “I hope I’m not early.”

“Never early for tea,” Brenda said, and meant it. She relieved him of the flowers as if he’d brought something dangerous and precious; which, to her, he had. “The children left a kettle note: ‘Please don’t poison Mr. Death.’ I told them good kettles mind their own business.”

“Mr. Death?” He almost smiled. “That will be popular at work.”

He would have followed her to the desk-he meant to-but a bright flare of light stitched along the aquarium’s curved glass and took him like a hook. He drifted two steps left, head tilting, eyes catching the glint the way, say, a magpie might. The glossy raven mimicked him with unnerving accuracy. Both reached out at once: man and bird, fingertip and beak, tap-tap on the glass. Marvin, unimpressed, contemplated algae.

Brenda placed the hellebore into a chipped pitcher, pebbles and water already waiting like a plan. When she turned back, she found Kravitz refocusing with the guilty composure of someone who knows he’s been sawed clean through by a second grader’s 'Oooooo shiny.'

“It’s all right,” she told him, pouring tea. “They actually like it when someone taps. It makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something mysterious.”

“Who, the ravens or the fish?”

“Yes,” Brenda said.

The door banged. “Krav-oh, good.” Taako swept in as if the air had been expecting him and was relieved to be right. He took in the room the way a tailor takes in a client: eyes dragged across every fabric and sin like a measuring tape. “Angus’s Miss Good. The sweater situation. The… altar. The birds. Why is your workplace a neighborhood witch’s Pinterest board?”

“Ravens prefer the term congregation,” Brenda murmured, and slid a cup his way. Taako stared down at the tea, arched an eyebrow at the honey pot, and, for once, took it without tampering. The cup had a knitted cozy. Of course it did.

He made it three strides into the room toward the tea before the first raven sidestepped along the curtain rod to be above him. He glanced up. The raven blinked. They both, somehow, looked like they had decided the other was a problem for later.

Kravitz took the other cup with gratitude and the caution of a man who had survived worse than hot beverages. “We came to see how you’re recovering,” he said, turning a fraction to keep himself from being abducted by a sunbeam sliding across the pencil sharpener. “If that’s all right.”

“Recovery is a sort of group project,” Brenda said. “The children make it easier to grade.”

“And the sweaters?” Taako said, suspicious.

She glanced down at herself as if she’d forgotten she was wearing one. Today’s was a deep forest green, moths embroidered along the yoke, their wings made of matte thread overlaid with tiny metallic stitches that caught the light in a scandalously non-educational way. The cuffs were ribbed and, if one looked closely, runed. Nobody looked closely unless they were invited. She rarely invited.

“They have… stitches,” she allowed.

“Those,” Taako said, leaning in to squint without permission, “are runes. Those are very specifically placed runes. Those are ‘a lich breathes on my kids and I would like it to regret existing’ runes.”

Brenda puffed. “Oh dear. The craft store clerk said they were for ‘bling.’”

“You,” he announced, “are a menace.”

He meant it affectionately. She took it that way. Kravitz held his tea with both hands, relieved to have something to hold that didn’t glint in the light.

“Yes, well,” Kravitz said mildly, eyes flicking to the shelf corner where the shiny offerings collected themselves into small, indecipherable arrangements. “Her Majesty appreciates your… curation.”

Taako’s head swiveled like a weather vane. “Her Majesty what now?”

A pause fell- the small, meaningful silence that opens when a bureaucracy crosses its wires with a family and both refuse to admit the paperwork is complicated. Brenda tucked a loose strand of her hair behind one ear. A raven did the same, preening her white feather.

Kravitz cleared his throat. “Miss Good is in Her service,” he said. “Paladin, since the incident.”

Taako’s mouth opened; nothing came out; then too much did. “So. Not only are you and I 'romantically entangled', Kravitz, but our patron goddesses are equally entangled, and somehow-somehow-you did not think to mention that my boyfriend’s boss’s girlfriend’s girlfriend's new paladin is teaching my adopted son basic spell theory while wearing death runes from Fantasy Jo-Ann Fabrics. (RIP)”

“Michael’s,” Brenda said, helplessly honest.

“Oh good,” Taako said, color returning to the world. “At least we’ve got brand loyalty while we’re conscripting homeroom.”

"You could have simply said my boss's new paladin," Kravitz set his tea down. A reflective ring of liquid slid along the porcelain and he followed it with his eyes the way some people follow comets. Brenda nudged the cup an inch with a soft noise; he blinked and looked up, rueful.

“Forgive me,” he said. “There’s… more of her in the world around you now. It’s like standing on a beach after weeks of desert. I keep listening for the tide.”

Brenda’s ears softened. “Then you may listen,” she said simply. “Just don’t knock over the fish tank.”

On cue, laughter and shushing shot down the hall like misfired cantrips. A cluster of small faces occupied the window narrow as stamps. They scattered when the door creaked open-one bold spy left behind. Angus McDonald, backpack slung over a shoulder too small for so much earnestness, peered inside, saw what he saw, and smiled like he’d walked into a particularly good chapter.

“Hi, dads!” he said.

“Professional setting,” Taako scolded, purely on principle.

“You told me it 'warms your cold wizard heart',” Angus said, innocent.

“It does,” Taako admitted, already defeated. “Proceed.”

Angus stepped in fully, offering Brenda a palm-sized quartz pebble. “I found your shiny rock in my pocket,” he said. “From when you let me lead the class to the courtyard. Sorry I kept it, Miss Good.”

“Borrowed, not kept,” she said, and curled his fingers around it again. “Give it to the shrine so it goes where it wants.”

He crossed to the little alcove with the grave solemnity of a boy given a job inside a story. The ravens tracked him like theatergoers follow a spotlight. He set the pebble among the thimble and the buttons and the thread. The white-feathered one croaked and dropped a paperclip beside it like an approving tithe.

“See,” Taako muttered, “this is how cults start. First it’s shiny rocks, next everyone’s in matching cardigans at the winter banquet chanting 'death but make it fashion.'”

“They aren’t matching,” Brenda said, affronted. “We have… a palette.”

Kravitz put two fingers to his lips, thinking. “They do glow,” he said, “when the children are behaving.”

“Performance-based enchantments?” Taako said, strangled by aesthetic offense. “You gave a schoolteacher a dashboard indicator for twelve-year-old morality?”

“Would’ve saved me time in the field,” Kravitz said. “If I’d known Barry’s lit-up cuffs meant ‘being a menace,’ I could have taken more vacation.”

Angus, caught between laughter and martyrdom, looked up. “Mr. Bluejeans says he has a healthy respect for Miss Good now,” he offered. “He used the word ‘respect’ like it was chalky vitamins.”

Brenda flushed under her fur. The ravens, very interested, leaned as one.

“Respect is a start,” Taako said, satisfaction transmuted instantly into mischief. “Fear is a seasoning.”

“Please don’t season my colleagues,” Brenda murmured.

The bell tolled, a pleasant, ripe sound. The corridor swelled with voices and feet. Angus tightened his backpack strap, then hesitated. “Miss Good?”

“Yes, Angus?”

“Are you… all right?” It was the question he’d been carrying since winter, the one she’d seen tucked into his posture like a folded page in a beloved book.

She knelt-she never made a production of her size, but she never hid it anymore, either- and met him there in the space where children learn grownups are just practice humans. “I am recovering,” she said. “And I am watched over. By your family. By my Lady. By the fish.”

Marvin, doing nothing to help, blew a bubble.

Angus nodded, satisfied enough for now. He saluted Kravitz. He hugged Taako. He waved at the ravens as if they’d pass along a memo. At the door, he turned back. “I like the new plants,” he confessed. “They make it look like the classroom is thinking.”

“It is,” Brenda said. “It’s learning.”

He left into the churn and hum of the school. Kravitz reached toward a dazzling patch of sunlight caught on a desk nameplate, and Brenda, without looking, slid the plate two inches to the left.

“The nameplate is for the ravens,” she said.

Kravitz’s smile was small and real. “Professional courtesy,” he said, and put his hands safely back around his tea.

Taako hooked a finger in his sleeve. “Come on, Crowbrain. Before you eat a shiny paperclip and I have to explain it to ghost HR.”

Brenda returned to the kettle, to the lesson plan, to the tidy chaos. The ravens shuffled and settled; sunlight thinned and re-thickened on the ceiling; the room held, as rooms sometimes do, more than it could reasonably contain, and did not complain.

•••

The Recalibration of Barry Bluejeans

They met in the teacher’s lounge because Lup thrived on disrespecting the idea of teacher’s lounges.

“You’re the one who made my husband say ‘ma’am’ in a tone I didn’t know he possessed,” she announced by way of hello, hips already draped over the counter, hair flame-bright even when it was only hair and not spectral. “I brought contrition cookies.”

“Contrition?” Brenda repeated, gently cowed by the sheer conviction of Lup’s entrance.

“They say ‘I’m sorry I argued for a necromancy unit for twelve-year-olds’ in chocolate chips.” Lup slid the carton across the table. “He baked. I wrote the apology with icing. Teamwork.”

Brenda opened the lid, blinked. SORRY, MISS G, the cookies announced, except the O was a skull and the Y had horns.

“The skull was his idea,” Lup added, pleased. “The horns were mine.”

Brenda laughed, an unguarded bray that made her cover her mouth with both hands in belated embarrassment. Lup grinned like a storm rolled its sleeves up. It was not, strictly speaking, fair to have that smile and that much eyeliner at ten in the morning.

“Thank you- and him, as well,” Brenda said, and meant the cookie and the laugh and the mercy of being treated like a person and not a shrine. “He didn't need to do all of this.”

“Oh, he needed to,” Lup said, plucking a crumb. “He respects you now. He told me so with the body language of a man who’s been spiritually suplexed.”

Brenda choked in the back of her throat. “Suplexed?”

“Your whole thing with the lich? He forgot how tall you were until his survival instincts remembered first.” Lup’s eyes danced. “You know how rare it is to watch a lich be intimidated by someone’s moral backbone and quadricep?”

“I didn’t-” Brenda began, took a breath, started again. “I didn’t mean to frighten him.”

“You didn’t,” Lup said. “You scared him straight. Not in the orientation way. In the ‘my husband must go apologize with cookies so he is allowed to continue existing in homerooms’ way.”

Brenda folded one hand around a cookie and one around her cup. The lounge hummed with ice machine growls and the fluorescent light’s attempt at existing. A potted plant someone had been assassinating slowly for two years listed toward the microwave. Lup hopped down to water it with her mostly-finished bottle before her attention came back with the force of a lightning return stroke.

“Okay, now let me look at you.”

Brenda froze, prey to a stylistic predator. Lup circled like a fashion vulture that planned to return the bones glittering. She pinched the cuff, lifted the hem, examined the moth embroidery with a reverence that would have set Brenda on fire if she hadn’t recently met a goddess.

“Is this metallic thread?” Lup demanded.

“It… might be.”

“Is this rune placement intentional or did you use a seasoning packet labeled Pallor & Protection?”

“I had… guidance.”

Lup stopped her circuit. There was the ordinary warmth of being seen and there was the sort that felt like a mirror gave you a compliment. Lup’s was the latter, but nicer. “You look good,” she said. “Like a woman who made up with our goddess and now expresses it with knives disguised as knitwear.”

Brenda made an undignified sound. The ravens had started visiting the lounge, too; one rapped on the little window as if confirming the minutes. Lup rapped back. “Hey sweetheart. You tell Momma Bird she’s got great taste.”

The raven fluffed like a praise-drunk pom-pom and flew off. Lup turned back, conspiratorial.

“So,” she said, somehow twinkling without glitter, “tell me how Kravitz reacts to your altar. He does the thing, right? The… crow head tilt? Taako calls him Shiny Boy and it has only made him worse.”

“He is very polite to the fish,” Brenda confessed. “And the pencil sharpener.”

Lup cackled. “I knew it. I knew it. The man is a walking engagement ring for reflective surfaces. Did he tell Taako first about your whole paladin situation or did Taako have to find out like a civilian?”

“He… mentioned it casually,” Brenda said, which was both true and generous.

Lup wheezed. “Perfect. I wish I’d been there. He probably did the face where his soul leaves the body, checks a coat at the existential desk, and returns with an agenda.”

“He did insist my sweaters have range,” Brenda offered.

“They do. They say, ‘I will nurture your joys and also sunder your skeleton if you endanger my kids.’ This is elite branding.”

Brenda, who had spent the morning moving a bowl of buttons so Kravitz wouldn’t absent-mindedly pocket six, rubbed the heel of her hand over her sternum. “I don’t know what to do with being… admired,” she said, quiet. “My clan valued obedience. I failed obedience. I left. Now there’s this-” She gestured vaguely: the ravens, the students, the way the air in her classroom sometimes felt like a held breath that decided to become a hymn. “This life that keeps saying ‘good job,’ and my first instinct is to duck.”

Lup’s smile gentled without dimming. “Duck sometimes,” she said. “And sometimes do this.” She reached out and, with the businesslike efficiency of a woman who has adjusted armor mid-battle, tipped Brenda’s chin up with two fingers. “Let it land. It’s not flattery. It’s inventory.”

Brenda swallowed. The lounge noise faded to a thread. “Inventory,” she echoed.

“Yeah. ‘Here is your courage. Here is your patience. Here is your sense of humor about quippers. Here are your murder-runes: tasteful, seasonal.’ That sort of thing.”

Brenda laughed into her wrist. “Tasteful.”

“Seasonal. Don’t make me get you a cardigan with crows for fall and snow-lichen for winter. I will do it. I will collaborate on knitwear with our goddess. It will be a whole thing.”

The door opened. Barry entered, took in Lup, took in Brenda, took in the cookies with his apology on them, and assumed the posture of a man in a courtroom who knows pleading guilty is his best route to lunch.

“I brought… milk?” he attempted, holding up a jug like a diplomatic envoy offering grain.

“Accepted,” Lup said. “State your contrition.”

Barry looked at Brenda, earnest to the point of pain. “I’m sorry,” he said, and the apology landed exactly where apologies should: not as a self-excusing paragraph, not as a performative curtsy, but as an offering. “You were right. They’re kids. I got excited about theory. I forgot… the everything else. Thank you for keeping them safe. And for… keeping me safe from my worst academic instincts.”

Brenda, who often wanted to fix the shape of other people’s guilt into something more comfortable and therefore less true, only nodded. “Thank you for the milk,” she said, because gratitude is also inventory. “And the skull cookie.”

“Skull was me,” he admitted, sheepish. “I panicked.”

“Skulls make me feel included,” Brenda said, with the precise politeness that made Lup snort.

“Okay,” Lup declared, clapping as if to settle the air. “Remedial boundaries are complete. Barry, eat your apology. Miss Good, drink your tea. I have an entire PTA to terrorize later.”

“Please don’t,” Brenda said, automatically.

“Oh I will.” Lup slid off the counter, already texting on her stone of far-speech. “But with style.”

As she swept out she almost collided with the principal, who had the quiet tread of a woman who could move silently and make a whole room stand up straighter. Missus Aurix paused, took in Lup, took in the cookies, took in the milk jug, the skull icing, the fact that the teacher’s lounge plant had perked despite itself, and smiled like a dragon tolerating an excellent circus.

“Miss Good,” she said, warmth threaded with iron. “A reminder that the spring showcase will be next Friday. Your classroom displays are… popular.”

“Popular,” Brenda repeated faintly, as if the word were a new stamp in a passport.

“Mm.” The principal’s eyes crinkled. “The Director is visiting as well. Do try to prevent the ravens from making off with her pen.” A pause. “Unless it would be very funny.”

Brenda, helplessly: “It would be.”

“Indeed.” Missus Aurix’s mouth tipped, a secret. “See you at rehearsal.”

She left in a pleasant wake of competence. Lup leaned in from the hall, whisper-shouting, “She and the director flirt like that for hours,” and vanished.

Barry poured milk. Brenda ate a cookie. The skull tasted like sugar and apology; it dissolved into sweetness. Outside the tiny window a raven landed and clacked, triumphant, at its own reflection.

Brenda raised her paper cup in a solemn toast to the glass. “Inventory,” she told the bird in beast-speech. “We’re learning.”

The raven approved with its whole body. Somewhere down the corridor a small boy laughed; somewhere else, two goddesses adjusted the seam between fate and endings with a weaver’s easy hands. In a classroom that smelled like green things and chalk and slightly burned tea, the buttons gleamed where the sun touched them, and nobody moved them. They were for the shrine. They were for the birds. They were for the work.

And the work, this late in the year, shone.

•••

Thread and Talon

By late afternoon the courtyard had become a polite riot. Paper lanterns breathed in the breeze. Banners-painted by helpful children and unhelpful ravens-ran like color across the colonnade. Someone had spelled the fountain to burble in harmony with the school song; someone else had slipped the fountain a handful of glitter. The ravens approved of glitter in principle and in practice; they approved of stealing it more.

Missus Aurix directed the chaos with one hand and a ledger. She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. When she pointed, tables moved; when she smiled, tempers remembered they could be put away. The last of the sun caught along the delicate scales at her temples, and the students-who had stopped being afraid of her and started being impressed-worked faster just to see if they could make that smile happen again.

“Lanterns along the west wall,” she said to a cluster of sixth-years carrying a string like a captured river. “No, higher. Consider the perspective from the lawn- good. Thank you.”

A raven, ambitious, attempted to lift an entire reel of ribbon. Missus Aurix plucked it neatly from the air mid-heist without looking, then handed the ribbon to a child and the raven a paperclip. Justice, at this school, often looked like a paperclip.

“Principal,” someone called, “the lemon bars are missing.”

“Not missing,” Lup said, strolling in with a tray at shoulder height like a celebrity caterer. “Redistributed to the people. Calm down, the people are you.” She slid the tray onto the refreshment table with a flourish and a wink and- because her brand insisted on it- a candle that spontaneously lit itself and then, chastened by Missus Aurix’s glance, politely went out.

Behind her came Lucretia with a clipboard thick enough to qualify as a novella. She wore her competence the way some people wore jewelry: visible, intentional, and quietly devastating. The white stripe in her hair caught the lantern light; a pen hung on a slender chain at her throat like a small sword.

“Principal Aurix,” she said warmly. “You’ve turned a courtyard into a map of civic joy.”

“And you’ve turned a PTA into a functioning government,” Missus Aurix replied, equal parts admiration and mischief. “I’m choosing to see that as parallel progress.”

They stood in the middle of the churn like two stones in a stream, the water deciding to behave itself for as long as it brushed their edges. Around them, banners wrinkled into cooperation; eighth-years practiced their string quartet under a tree; Brenda’s friends, the ravens, having determined that glitter was a finite resource and therefore boring, had moved on to reorganizing the clothespins by an inscrutable system of their own.

“How is Miss Good?” Missus Aurix asked, turning to the business they both shared.

“Recovering, I'm told,” Lucretia said. “Guarded by her ravens, her children, and an alarming amount of metallic thread."

Lup cackled, then, like a campfire combusting dry wood, "Kravitz keeps drifting toward her pencil sharpener like a man lost at sea hearing bells.”

“Only him?” the principal asked, amused.

“Only him. It’s the crow brain. He’s got the shine-seeking setting turned to ‘husband who wandered away in a jewelry store.’ Barry and I are immune.”

“Because you’re liches?” a PTA parent asked, then blanched, realizing both the indelicacy and the accuracy.

“Because our benefits package is different,” Lup said sweetly. “We got the ‘ignore glitter, respect boundaries, unionize the undead’ upgrade. Krav got ‘ooh, reflective surface.’”

“Mm,” Missus Aurix said, weighing this against her experience of all three and finding it both true and deeply funny. “I will reposition the trophy case.”

“Please do,” Lucretia murmured. “The last time he visited the bureau, he apologized to his reflection for hogging the view.”

A small commotion at the east gate marked a cart arriving with folding chairs. Missus Aurix gestured. The chairs unfolded themselves and stacked politely. Lucretia watched them with the calm of a woman who had once filed paperwork in a collapsing universe and had been denied reimbursement for the pen.

“I’m glad you’re here,” the principal said, more personal now that the major logistics had been tamed. “The children like it when you take notes and then those become policy.”

“The children are my favorite policy,” Lucretia said. “And your school is an addiction.”

“A healthy one, I hope.”

“The healthiest.” Lucretia’s fingers, absent-minded, touched the pen at her throat. The gesture looked like a habit and felt like a vow. “It’s good work, Aurix. Work that… holds.”

They stood in that for a breath: two women who had spent significant amounts of time preventing the end of things, now deliberately midwifing the beginning of many small ones. The lanterns made soft shapes on the brick; the fountain, convinced of its own harmony, burbled smugly.

Missus Aurix broke the silence. “Will you walk with me?” It wasn’t a question she asked lightly. Lucretia nodded as if she’d been waiting for the asking.

They made a circuit of the courtyard that looked like inspection and felt like courtship. Lucretia noted everything: the angle of the easels to the sun, the way the chalk dust would drift across the west tables if the wind turned after dusk, the pinch points where parents would bottleneck and how to unfurl them. Missus Aurix, who knew the precise capacity of every child’s attention span and every staff member’s patience, matched each observation with a solution and every solution with a small smile.

“Stage here,” Lucretia suggested, “so the quartet can bleed into the readings, and the readings into the science demos. It keeps the crowd braided instead of chopped.”

“Braided,” Missus Aurix repeated, savoring the word. “Weavers’ language.”

“Appropriate for a place that teaches children to stitch themselves into a world,” Lucretia said, then caught herself, embarrassed by a metaphor in public. “Pardon me. I’ve been spending too much time with Brenda.”

“She’s contagious,” Missus Aurix said. “In a good way. Like laughter, or lanterns.”

They reached the refreshment table. Lup had negotiated a ceasefire between a PTA faction that believed in napkins and a faction that believed in “experience.” She saluted the Director and Principal with a lemon bar and went to menace a parent holding a clipboard in a different corner. A raven, bored with clothespins, landed in front of Lucretia, cocked its head, and presented her with a button like a challenge coin.

Lucretia’s eyebrows lifted. “For me?”

The raven did the slow blink of a creature that had learned bureaucracy through osmosis. Lucretia accepted the button, turned it once in her palm, and tucked it into her pocket with the care of a woman who understood offerings. Missus Aurix watched her do it and felt, absurdly and accurately, that a vow had moved across the courtyard like a shadow and found a perch.

“You handle them well,” the principal observed.

“I’ve learned to respect the rites of small kingdoms,” Lucretia said. “The PTA, ravens, six-year-olds with glue-it’s all the same theology. Do not insult their gods. Provide snacks.”

Missus Aurix laughed, low and rare. “I should embroider that on a banner.”

“I’ll put it on the agenda,” Lucretia said, cool as a mint sprig. Their eyes met for a half beat that contained, unhelpfully, several other beats. They looked away in the same breath and pretended they hadn’t.

Across the lawn, Brenda shepherded a group of students carrying poster boards, her green sweater catching the dusk and answering it. She paused to gently extract a glitter-crazed raven from a paint cup. Kravitz, in attendance as a parent this time, standing at the far edge of the crowd, drifted two millimeters toward the brass plaque on the dedication bench; Taako snagged his sleeve like a fisherman hauling in a shiny, distracted trout. Barry arrived balancing a stack of folding stools and an apology; Lup stole the apology, turned it into a joke, and handed it back wrapped in affection.

Lucretia watched the knot of them with an expression soft enough to be dangerous. “It’s a good thing you’ve built,” she said to Missus Aurix, voice gone late-evening. “It keeps insisting on itself.”

Missus Aurix followed her gaze. The lanterns had come fully into their own; the courtyard was now a shallow bowl of gold. “We’ve built it,” she corrected. “You, with your lists that make the air behave. Brenda, with her shrine that teaches the children to give. The Birds, with their—” a small, helpless gesture that meant chaos and casseroles and resurrection and the kind of love that shows up with chairs-“constancy. The children most of all.”

Lucretia’s hand drifted toward Missus Aurix, barely, as if testing the distance between acknowledging and touching. She did not complete the movement. Missus Aurix felt the ghost of what it would have been like if she had.

“Spring showcase begins at six,” the principal said, suddenly practical because she had to be. “If you stand by the east entrance, the parents will do whatever you tell them without resenting you for it. It’s your superpower.”

“And yours is making dragons out of kindergartners,” Lucretia said.

“Only on Fridays.” The smile was quicksilver. “Will you stay after? There’s tea. And quiet.”

“I like both of those,” Lucretia said, which was agreement and something else folded neatly into it. “Yes.”

A PTA parent hustled over, panic clinging like tinsel. “We’ve run out of thumbtacks,” she gasped. “We have nothing left to attach with.”

Missus Aurix pointed to Brenda’s ravens, who had, as it happened, sorted the entire supply into piles labeled by a system only divinity and birds understood. “Ask nicely.”

The parent, dubious but obedient, did. The ravens considered, conferred, and dispensed exactly the right number with the bored benevolence of minor gods. Lucretia made a note on her clipboard that read, simply, more thumb tacks and drew a small raven beside it because she could.

Families began to arrive: hands smoothed hair; hair smoothed hands. Someone tuned the last string; someone else found their courage where they’d left it by the lemonade. The fountain, having mastered harmony, attempted a countermelody and, chastened by a glance from Missus Aurix, thought better of it.

“Shall we?” the principal asked.

“Let’s,” Lucretia said, as if the word were a spell.

They moved into the opening moments together, the way two people step into a dance they’ve practiced at separate mirrors for years. Brenda, in her classroom for more supplies, placed a new button on her shrine; across the yard, Kravitz saw the lanterns go from pretty to holy and squared his shoulders against the urge to drift toward their light. Taako held him steady with two fingers and a smile. Lup heckled a budget line item with love. Barry handed out programs like absolution.

Above, the ravens settled themselves along the beam of the evening, eyes reflecting small worlds. The courtyard waited, then didn’t; the showcase began.

Tea and quiet would come later. For now, it was enough to stand beside the person who made the air behave and ask the world to hold still long enough for children to show it what they’d learned.

•••

After the Lanterns

By the time the courtyard emptied, the lanterns had gone soft.

They hung in the air like low stars, their flames small and stubborn against the dark. The banners drooped, paper damp with evening, and a hundred chalk-smudged footprints traced loops across the stones. Somewhere near the fountain, Magnus was finishing what remained of the lemon bars, his laughter carrying like the last spark of the party. A raven landed beside him and stole the final crumb. He saluted it with genuine respect.

Missus Aurix stood near the stage steps, her ledger closed at last. Her scales caught the residual light-less fire now, more the reflection of fire, like embers seen through glass. She breathed in the aftermath: wax, sugar, the faint ozone scent of overenthusiastic spell craft. It was the smell of things well-done.

Lucretia lingered at the refreshment table, dismantling the lemonade apparatus with the precision of someone closing a library. A pen hung from her fingers by its chain, twirling absently in rhythm with her thoughts. Lup’s laughter still echoed faintly from the PTA meeting space - something about “tax write-offs for necromancy electives”-and then the door thudded, leaving the night clean again.

“You stayed,” Missus Aurix said.

“I like the part after,” Lucretia replied. “The exhale. The proof that things existed.”

They fell into step along the flagstones, unhurried. The ravens had gathered on the railing, black commas against the dim gold. One tilted its head as they passed, a punctuation mark approving the sentence.

“Your students shone tonight,” Lucretia said. “Literally, in some cases.”

“The potion experiments were meant to be bioluminescent only internally,” Missus Aurix sighed, not unhappily. “Still. Nobody exploded. Growth.”

“I’ve always admired your definition of success.”

“It’s practical. And yours?”

Lucretia thought about it. “I measure success in silence. When people leave without fear. When no one checks the sky to see if it’s ending.”

Missus Aurix’s expression softened into something like reverence. “You and I have lived through very different apocalypses.”

“And survived them both,” Lucretia said. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? To build something that will keep surviving after we’re finished watching it.”

They reached the fountain. The spell that made it sing had quieted, leaving only the small sound of water convincing itself to fall. A pair of ravens hopped along the rim, drinking and gossiping in low, satisfied croaks. One of them dropped a button into the basin. Missus Aurix fished it out delicately, drying it on her sleeve before handing it to Lucretia.

“For your notes,” she said.

Lucretia held it in her palm-a plain pewter circle, unremarkable until the lanternlight found it and revealed a faint etching: a spiral, precise and unfinished. “Brenda’s work?”

“She leaves them everywhere,” Missus Aurix said. “A quiet contagion.”

Lucretia smiled. “Recursion. Lup’s influence.”

“And preservation. Barold’s. You see? Even their chaos finds symmetry.”

They sat on the fountain’s edge. For a moment, neither spoke. The ravens re-sorted their feathers, pretending not to listen. Far off, the last parents gathered forgotten jackets; laughter thinned and dissolved.

“I keep meaning to ask,” Lucretia said softly. “When you invited Brenda to teach here, did you know?”

“That she would tear a lich in half?” Missus Aurix’s eyes gleamed. “I suspected she had the potential. One can often tell which souls will bend toward divinity. But no-I didn’t foresee that.”

Lucretia huffed a small laugh. “You sound like someone who’s learned to enjoy surprises.”

“I’m learning,” said Missus Aurix. “The old ways of control were efficient but lonely. Letting things grow imperfectly-it’s messier, but it breathes.”

She turned her head then, and Lucretia realized she was being studied with the same patient attention the principal gave her students. It wasn’t scrutiny; it was curiosity given form.

“And you?” Missus Aurix asked. “Do you still write everything down? Even now, when nothing’s trying to vanish?”

Lucretia looked down at the pen in her hand. “It’s habit,” she said. “And a promise. The world likes to forget its own tenderness. Someone should keep minutes.”

The dragon smiled-small, dangerous, kind. “Then perhaps I’ll dictate some to you, one day.”

“That sounds like a story,” Lucretia said.

“It could be.”

She poured tea from a thermos she’d produced from nowhere, steam curling between them. The cups were mismatched; one had a chip, the other a constellation of hairline cracks filled with gold lacquer. The Raven Queen’s birds watched as if tea were an act of prayer.

They drank. The silence was companionable, thick with unspoken jokes and parallel regrets.

Lucretia set her empty cup down on the fountain’s edge. “You know,” she said, almost shy, “I think the children have started calling you the Dragon of the Lanterns.”

Missus Aurix arched an eyebrow. “Do they. And what do they call you?”

“The Archivist of Good Snacks.”

“An illustrious title.”

“I earned it. I bribed a small army of eight-year-olds with muffins to stop trying to teach the ravens algebra.”

“I will add that to the curriculum review.”

Their laughter met halfway, collided, and settled. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Overhead, a raven lifted into the air, circling once before vanishing toward the forest. Another followed. The third hesitated, looked at them both, and hopped closer instead, landing between their feet. Its head cocked sharply. In the dark of its eyes, Lucretia saw both her reflection and Aurix’s-two faces overlapping like twin lanterns seen through water.

“Balance,” Missus Aurix murmured, as if the bird had said it first. “Even the goddess can’t resist symmetry.”

“Nor can we,” Lucretia said.

When she rose to leave, she hesitated, smoothing her skirt as though to buy time. “You’ll be at the staff meeting tomorrow?”

“I’m always there early.”

“Then perhaps I’ll be late on purpose.”

It was, objectively, a ridiculous thing to say. The kind of thing only someone who’d survived apocalypse could admit without blushing: that lateness might be a kind of permission. Still, it made Missus Aurix’s eyes glint like candlelight caught in amber.

“As you wish, Director,” she said.

“Lucretia,” came the reply, softer.

“Lucretia,” she repeated, testing the word like a gemstone.

She didn’t look back as she crossed the courtyard-she didn’t have to. The ravens lifted, swirling above her like punctuation marks rearranging themselves. One peeled off and dropped something shiny at her feet: another button, this one gold. She smiled, pocketed it, and kept walking.

Behind her, Missus Aurix watched until the lanterns guttered out, until the ravens settled into their night roosts, until the courtyard was just a quiet geometry of things preserved.

She closed her ledger, finally, and whispered into the dark, “Let it breathe.”

And somewhere in the distance- perhaps in a cottage that smelled of moss and honey and tea leaves- Brenda stirred, smiled in her sleep, and did.

Chapter Text

The Dragon’s Garden

When Brenda wakes, the world smells like gold.

Not metal, though the walls around her glitter with it, but the warm, living scent of it: sunlight on stone, honey poured over something ancient. It takes her a few moments to realize she’s lying on fabric, not treasure. The fabric’s so fine it feels like breathing on her skin. Her shoulder still aches, bandaged in something that hums faintly with magic.

She blinks blearily, the cavern ceiling far above her, streaked with veins of quartz that pulse like distant stars. And there- movement. A mountain of gleaming scales shifting, the whisper of breath like wind across the moors.

The dragon.

She almost screams again, but her throat’s too dry. It comes out as a squeak instead, which somehow feels more humiliating.

“You’re awake,” the voice says- that same melodic rumble, too deep for words but shaped into them anyway. “Good. You were fevered. The infection’s gone now.”

Brenda sits up, clutching the blanket to her chest like it’s armor. “You-you didn’t eat me.”

The dragon tilts her head, a gesture oddly human. “I rarely eat guests. You were half-dead, and your blood smelled of prayer. It seemed… impolite.”

Brenda tries to bow, but her shoulder protests. “Thank you, great one. I didn’t mean to trespass-”

“I know.” The dragon’s voice softens. “You came here to die quietly. I don’t blame you for that. But you are not dead, little firbolg. I prefer that outcome.”

Brenda’s eyes sting. “I didn’t mean to run away from Her,” she blurts out before she can stop herself. “I just- I couldn’t stay. Everyone said I’d serve the cycle, but the cycle-” she gestures helplessly, “-it doesn’t want me. It ate me. All the prayers, all the rules. I couldn’t hear Her anymore.”

The dragon hums, a sound that vibrates through the floor and up Brenda’s bones. “And yet you kept speaking to Her in your fear.”

Brenda blinks. “You mean when I was crying?”

“Prayer by any other name,” the dragon says. “You asked for help. I heard.”

Brenda tilts her head, frowning. “You’re not- You’re not Her Majesty, though.”

“No,” the dragon admits, amused. “But we are old friends. And sometimes the gods outsource their errands.”

That earns a tiny laugh from Brenda, shaky but real. The sound startles her; she hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d made it.

The dragon stretches one enormous wing, gold veined with rose light. “My name is Aurix,” she says. “You may call me Missus Aurix, if that comforts you. And you are Breandán, yes?”

Brenda hesitates. The name tastes too heavy now, a relic of black robes and beetles. “Brenda,” she says softly. “Just Brenda, please.”

“Brenda, then.” The dragon lowers her massive head until her eye, bright and gold as noon, fills Brenda’s view. “You said you couldn’t hear your goddess anymore. Perhaps that means you were meant to listen elsewhere.”

Brenda swallows hard. “I’m not sure anyone else would want me.”

The dragon’s laugh rumbles like a hearth being stoked. “You’ve already been claimed, little one. By the forest that misses you. By the creatures that follow you. By me.”

Brenda’s ears twitch, pink with embarrassment. “You mean… you want to keep me?”

“I said so, didn’t I?” The dragon’s grin shows too many teeth to be gentle, but her voice is fond. “You needn’t serve death to honor it. There’s balance in tending, too. Gardens, classrooms, children, small things that grow. Stay. Learn. I’ll show you the way of those who build instead of bind.”

Brenda’s heart stutters. “Build? I’m not good at building. I break things.”

“Then you’ll start small.” The dragon gestures with her claws. “The cave’s north alcove needs sweeping.”

Brenda stares, certain she misheard. “Sweeping?”

“Every apprentice begins somewhere,” Missus Aurix says, smugly, and turns away to preen one radiant wing.

Brenda looks around at the glittering piles of treasure- no, not piles. She realizes now it’s all arranged deliberately: coins sorted by mint, gemstones grouped by hue, tools nestled between them like seeds in soil. It’s organized. A hoard turned into a garden.

When she rises to her feet, dizzy but determined, she can feel the pulse of the place- the heartbeat of something alive, enormous, benevolent. The dragon hums as she works, the sound filling the cavern like sunlight fills a clearing.

By the time Brenda finishes sweeping, she’s smiling.

Later, when the dragon finally shifts into her humanoid form, a tall woman with burnished-gold skin and sharp eyes, Brenda nearly trips over her own broom trying to curtsey.

“Still afraid?” Missus Aurix asks with a gentle smirk.

“Respectfully intimidated,” Brenda admits, clutching the handle like a staff. “But grateful.”

“Good,” the dragon says, and rests a clawed hand (still faintly scaled) on Brenda’s good shoulder. “Respect will serve you well. Fear, we’ll work on.”

Brenda exhales, slow. “What should I call this place?”

The dragon looks around her shining hoard, then back at the firbolg with a glint of humor. “A school, perhaps. For both of us.”

And Brenda, who has never belonged anywhere that didn’t demand her body or her blood, feels something new stir in her chest- something warm, something golden.

She thinks: maybe this is what being kept means.

She doesn’t yet know that one day she’ll teach children in sweaters embroidered with beetle wings and prayers disguised as buttons, or that the goddess she fled will call her back in the least cruel way imaginable.

For now, she only knows that the dragon’s laughter sounds like sunlight- and that she’s alive to hear it.

•••

Spirit Cookies

Kravitz knocked on the front door out of habit before it swung open on its own and he stepped in smelling faintly of ozone and a little like decay though he tried to mask it with a fragrance Taako liked. Sure, he could just portal into the house they shared on this plane, but that still seemed rude and Kravitz was nothing if not polite.

He carefully removed his shoes at the door, his scythe disappearing to wherever it goes when he's not using it. He hung his cloak next to Taako's cloak of the manta ray, though it was technically a part of his form and he could just make it go away the same way a living human might expel oxygen. This was more comfortable- a way of showing how soon after the story of song his life (or afterlife) had intertwined with Taako's.

For a brief moment Kravitz watched Taako flit about the kitchen, enjoying it as its own performance, before stepping in and gently brushing Taako's shoulder with his cool hand, watching as Taakos hair stood on end- not out of fear, just at the temperature difference between the warm kitchen and Kravitz' skin.

"It smells lovely in here." The more time Kravitz spent with Taako, the more his human senses returned- his heart beat again, he could taste Taakos cooking, and most importantly right now- he could smell the cinnamon in the air. "What are you making?"

Taako half-turned with the little flick he always did when he was pretending not to be startled. “Babe, you can’t sneak up on me like some kind of sexy frost elemental,” he said, but the corner of his mouth twitched into a grin. He gestured with a wooden spoon that was trailing batter like it was a wand. “You smell like work and cologne and you’re still the second most intoxicating thing in this kitchen, okay? Don’t let it go to your head.”

Kravitz laughed at Taako's compliment, the deep rumble filling the kitchen with a warmth Kravitz was unused to, but enjoyed. He held his hands over the stove top to warm them before wrapping his arms around Taako to hug him and set his shoulder on his while Taako stirred. "I'm going for second-most distracting, as well."

Taako went back to stirring, flour haloed in the air around him like glitter from a spell misfire. The bowl was large, half-filled with a pale batter flecked with gold sugar.

“Snickerdoodle cake,” he announced, proud and off-hand all at once. “Technically experimental. You remember how you said souls have a ‘taste’? I’m trying to capture that, but, you know, without the ethics violations. So it’s cinnamon, brown butter, a little nutmeg, and a glaze that’s got this hum to it when you whisk it counter-clockwise.” He tapped the bowl once, grinning wider. “Basically, a cake that tastes like you walking into a room and saying something romantic before I can ruin it.”

He leaned back against the counter, eyes sparkling. “So, what do you think, Mr. Death’s Plus-One? You ready to risk your immortal palate on some baked pseudo-necromancy?”

"I would love to taste your potentially haunted cookies, Taako. Though don't let her majesty hear you calling them baked necromancy. You were forgiven for your past but not your future delves into necromancy and I'd hate to mix work and life like that. I'm just going to call them spirit cookies- for like 'wizard-school spirit week', even though we both know its the other kind of spirit."

Taako leaned into him without even pausing the stirring, their hips fitting together like they’d done this a hundred times before. The spoon made slow lazy circles in the bowl.

“Spirit cookies,” he repeated, tilting his head so his hat brushed Kravitz’s chin. “Yeah, that sounds way more marketable than ‘baked pseudo-necromancy.’ We could sell these at a PTA bake sale without getting smote. Maybe I’ll make a whole line: soul snickerdoodles, afterlife angel food, rest-in-peace pie…”

He turned his head just enough that Kravitz could feel the smile against his jaw. “And don’t worry, babe. I’m not about to start raising the dead... again. I leave that business to you and your boss. I just-” he tapped the spoon against the rim of the bowl, “-miss the texture of it sometimes, you know? Magic that feels like a heartbeat.”

"I don't really know what you mean by 'texture.' As a bard, my magic doesn't really work that way, even with the gifts of Her Majesty" Kravitz hesitated, "but I can imagine how transmutation would not quite have the same soul to it- forgive my pun." He kissed Taako's cheek, brushing the flour from both their sleeves in the same movement, presuming his lips had warmed up enough to do so, before stepping back and allowing the chef-wizard to do his magic.

Taako reached back and slid his hand over Kravitz’s wrist, flour dusting the cuff of his sleeve again. “If you’re volunteering for quality control, I promise not to tell RQ. You can just say you’re conducting... spiritual research.” Then, a wicked grin: “Besides, I’ve already died plenty of times, so if these cookies kill me again, that’s on you.”

"Yes, I will take responsibility if the cookies kill you this time, as I am the one to check them for poison," He joked, a mock seriousness in his tone. "Though... does everything still taste like lime gogurt to you or was that curse lifted?"

Taako made a scandalized noise, like Kravitz had just accused him of serving instant pudding at a royal banquet. He tapped the spoon against the bowl for punctuation.

“Excuse you, lime Go-Gurt was a temporary palate hex and I will not have my legacy reduced to dairy-based trauma.” He shot Kravitz a look over his shoulder, all mock offense and barely hidden affection. “And you know what I mean by texture-magic that hums in your teeth, that pushes back a little when you touch it. Yours hums like a cello string. Mine’s more… like the hiss right before sugar caramelizes.”

He turned back to the batter, flicked his wrist, and the oven door opened with a neat little shimmer. He slid the tray in, closed the door, then leaned his elbows on the counter and grinned up at him. “But you-you’re out here talking about puns and sunshine, pretending you don’t have a sense of humor. You sure you’re not warming up a little too fast, babe? Might start getting used to this whole ‘life’ thing.”

Kravitz gave a pleased little hum himself at Taako saying his magic hums like a cello string and the air sparkled a tiny bit unbeknownst to him before he said, "I'll take your word for it, flip wizard," his words entirely full of warmth. "I maintained my sense of humor in death, just very few people to tell jokes to until recently," he said honestly, closing his eyes to enjoy the warmth of the kitchen like someone may do in front of a fireplace.

"...and I'm not alive, but if, when I am not being an emissary for the Raven Queen," he spoke with a reverence few possessed, "your lady of fate- Lady Istus- wishes to give me the gift of spending some of my afterlife with you, I am not going to object."

The oven ticked softly behind him; the smell of cinnamon and butter thickened. “Now come on, Mr. Quality Control. If you’re volunteering to test the cookies, you’d better be ready for the critique section afterward. I do grade on presentation.”

Kravitz opened his eyes to look at Taako fondly, "The judge is being graded by the chef on his presentation? Very well, shall I go get changed?" He laughed again, the rumbling kind that made his chest flutter.

Taako leaned back against the counter and watched him the way he sometimes watched sugar spin into glass-like he could burn himself if he wasn’t careful, and maybe that was part of the fun.

“See, this is what I mean,” he said, pointing the spoon like an accusation. “You come in here smelling like ozone and good intentions, dropping lines about fate and afterlife like a poet, and then you act like I’m the dramatic one. I’m just over here baking cookies. You’re out here auditioning for a ballad.”

He set the spoon down and crossed to him, brushing a bit of flour off Kravitz’s sleeve where he’d already brushed it clean. His fingers lingered, cool warmth meeting literal warmth.

“And yeah,” he said, quieter now, “you should change. Not because of presentation-because you’ll get butter on your cuffs and I’ll never hear the end of it from your boss if you start smelling like my kitchen.”

Then, with a grin sharp enough to cut sugar: “Also, if you’re gonna be my taste tester, I want you to look like temptation incarnate. It’s good for morale.”

He reached up, tapped a fingertip against the corner of Kravitz’s mouth. “So go on, cello string. Suit up. I’ll pull ‘em from the oven, and then you can tell me if my spirit cookies are good enough to wake the dead.”

"My clothes are part of my construct, Taako. Unless I wear your clothes, if I get butter on them, they'll smell like your kitchen no matter what I look like I'm wearing." He grinned, though he left the kitchen anyway to head upstairs to the room they shared when Kravitz was in the material plane. He could just snap his fingers and be wearing something else, but he found himself enjoying mundane habits more now that he was actually living as a person and not spending all of his time with the gods and goddesses in the astral plane.

•••

Kravitz went skeletal for a moment and shifted between a few options in the mirror before deciding on one that Taako would appreciate as 'temptation incarnate' returning to his more human-looking form without clothes and pulling on the outfit he chose. Unlike his usual black suit, he had decided on tight-fitting black jeans, a green button-up that brought out the gold in his eyes, and tied his locks back with a gold ribbon. He also carefully put on vaguely fantasy-Egyptian inspired gold liquid eyeliner.

Taako was correct- it wasnt just Taako that had a flair for the dramatic. He decided on a few gold pieces of jewelry last minute, as well, before going back down the stairs and showing Taako a glimpse of his outfit before throwing on his own apron. "Do I pass inspection? Will this sufficiently improve morale?" He joked, floating in Taako's orbit again, not at all hiding the fact that he was interested in tasting more than just 'spirit cookies'.

Taako froze mid-gesture, halfway through sliding a tray from the oven. The cookies stayed perfectly suspended by a levitation spell- because priorities.

He let his gaze drag slowly from Kravitz’s boots to the ribbon in his hair, eyes widening in exaggerated appraisal. “Okay,” he said finally, voice rough around the edges of laughter, “first of all, you can’t just descend the staircase like that when I’m holding molten sugar. Second, holy crap, green looks illegal on you. Third-” he twirled the spoon like a baton and pointed it at Kravitz’s chest, “-you’re cheating. You don’t need morale, you need a runway.”

He stepped closer until the scent of cinnamon and the faint metallic chill of Kravitz’s magic met halfway in the air between them. “You know, when I said 'temptation incarnate', I was thinking, like, a wink and a smile, not a full-on campaign for divine jealousy.”

"I thought the morale boost was for you, not me, so I wanted to dress to impress." He chuckled, knowing exactly what he was doing as he leaned into Taako briefly before the oven went off.

Then the oven chimed and broke the moment; Taako caught the tray with a flick of his wrist and set it on the counter. “All right, reaper boy. Taste test time. You get the first one because-” he broke off a cookie, steam curling from it like breath- “if I’m going to die again in one lifetime, I want it to be over something this pretty.”

He held it out, eyes still dancing. “Go on. Tell me if they taste like cinnamon, or love, or whatever it is that makes you float around looking like an advertisement for resurrection.”

As Taako held out a cookie to try, rather than take it from him like most people would, Kravitz held Taako's wrist with his cool hand and then grabbed the cookie with his mouth, smirking into it before letting go of Taako's wrist to hold his hand over his mouth politely while chewing. His eyes lit up as Kravitz still marveled over the fact that he could taste anything at all again, much less the cooking of the Chef Taako Tako Fromteevee.

"They taste amazing, Taako." He said breathlessly after swallowing, almost forgetting he had planned a joke, and it came out softer than intended, "...No poison, I promise. They taste like..."

It took him a moment to recall the names of flavors, not only because he hadn't tasted anything for generations before meeting Taako but also because he was getting lost in Taako's eyes, "...cinnamon, butter... and something a little bitter, but in a good way. It's not chocolate, but something like that. And some lemon juice, I think."

Taako looked properly stunned for all of two seconds, the kind of silence that came only when his ego was caught between “thank you” and “I know.” Then his grin slipped back, crooked and slow.

“See, that’s why I keep you around,” he said, voice dipping low, “because you say things like ‘they taste amazing’ and you mean the cookies and me.” He leaned in until his nose brushed the cool line of Kravitz’s jaw, cinnamon and ozone colliding in the air.

“That bitterness?” he murmured. “That’s burnt sugar. I left it just long enough that it hurts a little first. Makes the sweet hit harder after. You, of all people, should appreciate a balance like that.”

He stepped back just enough to pluck another cookie from the tray and bit it in half, still smiling around the crumbs. “Lemon’s for the snap. Reminds me not everything has to taste like perfection. Little reminder that even the best stuff-” he licked a bit of sugar from his thumb “-is still alive while you’re eating it.”

Then, catching the look in Kravitz’s eyes, Taako tilted his head and smirked. “So, what do we think, Mr. Death? Do they pass the test, or do I have to bribe the judge with a second round?”

•••

Spirit Cookies II

Kravitz opened his mouth to continue flirtily complimenting his boyfriend when a 'caw' noise sounded. At first he looked puzzled before he realized it was coming from the window followed by a tapping. He opened the window then and a raven all but shouted in his ear before flying off.

"Your sister and her Barold would like to know if you and I want to come over for dinner. They've finished their mission early. That or Lup set something on fire again and Barry was laughing. Or both, but they do the second one often enough that I don't know why they'd send a raven to tell me about it."

Taako blinked, then groaned the way only a man with a sibling could- head tipping back, hands spreading in theatrical disbelief.

“Of course it’s both. She probably burned down a tavern and invented a new branch of evocation while she was at it. That’s my girl.” He flicked his wrist; the last cookie floated obligingly onto a cooling rack. “You’d think after centuries of hijinks, the goddess of death’s favorite reaper would be spared from emergency dinner invites, but nooo, apparently family comes with infinite respawns.”

He leaned against Kravitz’s shoulder, looking out the open window. “You know she only sends the ravens to you because she likes that you take it seriously. Half the time when they show up for me, I feed them crackers and they go home offended.”

Then, softer: “But… yeah. Let’s go. It’ll make her happy. And Barry’ll get that face he makes when he tries to act casual about seeing you-like he can’t believe his undead friend brought home someone even more undead than him.”

He bumped Kravitz’s hip with his own and smirked. “You, me, dinner, two walking fire hazards. I’ll bring dessert. You can bring the polite death aura that keeps them from setting the table on fire until after the soup course.”

"You'd think after working with them as reapers for several months now they would be less affected by the 'polite death aura' but I'm glad it still prevents soup disaster." Kravitz found himself nuzzling into Taako with a fond sigh, his so-called 'bird-brain' making some of his mannerisms more raven-like.

"Also, I'm quite fond of the emergency dinner invites, actually. I even get to put them down as work events in my paperwork, though I don't actually know where the papers go. I suspect Lup is just setting all of her paperwork on fire and hasn't been affected or chastised for it. Barry, on the other hand, I know for a fact, keeps submitting requisitions for more magic components without completing his mission reports and so the requests are denied and he just picks the materials up from this plane anyway." He shakes his head, "I think with everything they get away with, you may need to remove 'goddess of death's favorite reaper' from my title."

He flicked his fingers, wiping flour off the counter with a snap that left the air smelling faintly of citrus and magic. "Don’t even pretend you’re giving up that title. You’re the favorite, babe. You show up to work on time, your reports don’t catch fire, and you make the afterlife look good. That’s rare company.”

Reaching for the last cookie before Taako swats his hand, not wanting to ruin himself for dinner now, Kravitz says, "Lady Istus feeds the ravens the astral plane equivalent of crackers instead of listening to them, too. My lady has begun sending an emissary or going to visit your Lady herself if she has a message instead. I think Lady Istus just prefers company over letters."

Taako made a noise that was half laugh, half pleased hum, the sort of sound that rolled straight down into Kravitz’s bones.

“Yeah, that sounds like her. Istus loves an audience; she probably starts monologuing before your boss even sits down. I bet the other gods have a whole spreadsheet for scheduling those visits now—‘Tuesday: Fate brunches with Death, pack extra patience.’”

He moved closer, brushing a stray crumb from Kravitz’s collar that definitely hadn’t been there. “But, sure, let’s go see them. I’ll grab the travel wands. You can file it under ‘family outreach’ or ‘chaos containment,’ whichever sounds more bureaucratic.”

Then, softer, playful: “And for the record? If the soup does end up on fire, we’re leaving with the good silverware this time. Last time Barry kept it ‘for study,’ and you know what he gave me in return? A spoon that whispers. Whispers, Krav. It says ‘hi’ every time I pick it up.”

He laughed, looping his arm through Kravitz’s. “C’mon, cello string. Let’s go make sure dinner’s only mildly cursed.”

•••

After Taako grabbed the travel wands, Kravitz summoned his scythe and cut a hole in reality to temporarily join their living room and the front door to Lup and Barry's place in the astral plane, or what could be called a door. Things were more abstract in the astral plane.

As Taako took his arm, Kravitz belatedly remembered he was still dressed in the 'temptation incarnate' outfit Taako had requested of him before with a bit of flour and butter smudged at the sleeves, but he just shrugged. Lup only had a physical body 45% of the time and Barold wore blue jeans like they were the answer to the universe's ultimate question, so it's not like they had room to judge.

They started toward the front door that shimmered like heat on glass. “You ready? Odds are fifty–fifty she answers the door corporeal and wearing oven mitts, or incorporeal and still somehow holding a glass of wine.”

He turned to Kravitz, grinning. “Yeah, come on, cello string. Time to see how long it takes before they start telling embarrassing stories about us to distract from whatever they actually broke this time.”

•••

The scent of dessert floated into the astral plane's air and somehow tasted instead of smelled and its taste was of emotions- joy, care, love.

After stepping through the portal, Kravitz steadied Taako for a moment as he got his bearings (traveling by portal was not for the feint of heart) before asking, "so did you decide to bring the cookies or something else for dessert?"

Taako steadied himself with both hands on Kravitz’s chest, eyes squeezed shut for one theatrical second, then cracked open one eye and grinned.

He reached into the enchanted bag slung over his shoulder and pulled out a tin that gleamed faintly under the astral light. “Cookies, yes. But also-” he lifted the lid just enough for Kravitz to smell the tang of burnt sugar and buttercream-“a test batch of spirit cupcakes. Cinnamon, a little bourbon, a swirl of meringue so glossy you could check your eyeliner in it.”

“And ugh, I hate when you do that so effortlessly,” he said, voice somewhere between dizzy and delighted. “Like-‘oh, let me just bisect the veil of existence real quick, honey.’” He shook his head and straightened, still holding Kravitz’s arm. “Next time I’m making you use a broom. It’s got a better aesthetic.”

Kravitz just fondly smirked at Taako's complaints about portal travel saying, "the scythe is faster. Otherwise I have to construct a portal out of the glass discs in Lucas' lab on the bureau of benevolences fake moon and I don't even know how one gets to the moon manually these days. Some of us can't transmute portal discs out of the ground," he joked, remembering briefly how Taako had rescued him during the end of story and song by transmuting a whole destroyed city into a disc, though he hoped he hadn't touched on a nerve by saying so. "Or is it just the scythe aesthetic you object to? It's kind of the reaper brand at this point but I can change it into a broom next time if you prefer."

•••

Taako looked down at Kravitz’s sleeve, spotted the faint smudge of butter, and smirked. “Judging by your cuffs, you’re already pre-flavored for dessert. Which, incidentally, might give Lup ideas about you helping in the kitchen.”

"I don't think anyone should trust me in the kitchen, least of all your sister. Ah yes, let's have the man who deals in death and hasn't had tastebuds for nearly a century cook in this lovely home in the astral plane where the idea of cooking barely makes logical sense since most beings in the astral plane don't need to eat." He nudged Taako gently, careful not to throw him off balance if he was still getting steady. "I'm sure that wouldn't end in explosion, though perhaps Lup would enjoy that. I think Barry has a 'no explosions near the gas kitchen appliances' rule though."

Taako squeezed his arm and whispered, “I’m absolutely telling my sister you used a scythe for a doorbell, too. She’ll love that.”

He took Taako's free hand as his scythe disappeared and he led his boyfriend to the door. "Your sister and her husband use scythes for worse things than doorbells, I'm not ashamed." He chuckled, but instead of the scythe he did ask the quote unquote 'front door' to open in a sing-song, magical voice in a language people didn't speak anymore.

The air shimmered where Kravitz’s voice hit it, sound rippling through the door’s geometry until it gave a little sigh and swung inward. Astral light spilled out in that weird, cozy way it did here-everything both too bright and too soft at once.

Taako arched a brow, impressed. “You just sweet-talked the front door,” he said, tone halfway between mockery and awe. “I think you’re officially the most polite non-necromantic force in the multiverse.”

He stepped through and into the strange comfort of Lup and Barry’s home: part laboratory, part living room, part reality hiccup. The kitchen gleamed metallic and wild; half the wall shimmered with wards and scribbled notes that looked like they’d been written mid-theory, and there was a faint smell of ozone and buttercream-evidence Lup had probably mixed pyromancy with meringue again.

“Hey!” came Lup’s voice from somewhere unseen. “Don’t just stand in the threshold being hot and mysterious, get in here!”

Taako leaned sideways toward Kravitz and murmured, “See? Told you-oven mitts or incorporeal wine glass. My money’s on mitts.”

Then, louder, “We brought dessert! And Kravitz only used his giant death implement as a doorbell, not a home-renovation tool, so everyone can relax!”

Kravitz heard Taako murmur his joke and felt Taako lean into his side- he really did- but the words were delayed as they hit his ears and he registered Taako's warmth after it had already left and Taako had begun walking into the home toward Lup. The gleaming metal kitchen in Lup and Barry's immediately drew his attention, as it always did, and the shimmering wards didn't help his attention span.

He literally patted his face to stop being distracted as he finally heard Taako say 'come on, cello string' and followed belatedly. "Right. See... whatever broke."

Taako shot him a look over his shoulder, smirk tugging at his mouth. “You’re adorable when your processor lags,” he teased, catching Kravitz’s sleeve to tug him the rest of the way inside before the door could decide to close on him out of pure astral mischief.

“Lup, Barry, he’s doing the spacey reaper in a shiny room thing again!” he called.

From the kitchen came Lup’s cackle and the unmistakable whoosh of something briefly catching fire. “Tell him that’s how you get burnt sugar, babe!”

“See?” Taako said to Kravitz, sotto voce. “Explosion count: one. We’re ahead of schedule.” He reached up to smooth a bit of Kravitz’s hair that the portal wind had ruffled, hand lingering for just a second at the back of his neck before he turned to greet their hosts.

"S-sorry!" Kravitz shakes his head again with a flush, "Lup and Barry can back me up that it doesn't happen in the field. They won't, because they're menaces, but they could." He joked, already losing some of the stiff politeness he used to have around Taako's family- found family or otherwise.

As Taako joked about the explosion count and fixed Kravitz' hair, Kravitz politely took off his boots. Luckily they were constructs of himself, so the astral plane wouldn't make them disappear on accident, but Taako kept his shoes and coat on for that reason. Plus the astral plane was chilly, even with all of Lups explosions and mostly functioning kitchen.

Barry appeared from behind a fridge-sized stack of notes, waving a spoon. “Oh hey! You made it! We’re… uh… almost ready? The casserole’s fine, the wards aren’t on fire anymore, and Lup only kind of offended our boss once this week.”

"I don't think Lup actually offends her majesty. The raven queen, like most of the pantheon, can sense intention. Lup is not trying to be malicious." Kravitz managed to intone, though he wasn't sure if it was meant as a comfort to Taako and Barry or to himself.

“High marks,” Taako said, clapping him on the shoulder. He tipped his chin toward Kravitz, eyes glittering. "You see? Totally normal dinner. You can relax. Nothing in here’s gonna bite unless you count the food.” Then, lowering his voice, he added, “Unless you want to.”

"I was not worried about-" Kravitz cut himself off with a half startled half embarrassed cough, masking nothing as Taako's "unless you want to" hit him and he hissed "Taako!" Though there was no fight in it, just a fond note of surprise.

Taako grinned, wide and unrepentant, like a cat that had just discovered both the cream and the applause.

“What?” he said, all mock-innocence as he stepped past him into the kitchen proper. “I was talking about the casserole. Probably. Unless I wasn’t.”

Lup leaned against the counter, flames flickering lazily through the tips of her hair as she waggled her eyebrows. “Oh no, keep flirting, this is great entertainment. Barry and I bet how long it would take before one of you forgot we were in the room.”

Barry, dryly: “I said five minutes. I win.”

Taako flicked an invisible speck of dust off his coat sleeve, tone breezy but his ears flushed pink. “You guys are just jealous because our brand of domestic chaos doesn’t involve minor planar damage.”

He turned back to Kravitz, voice dropping to something gentler. “And babe, I know you don’t glitch in the field. I’ve seen you swing that scythe with, like, surgical precision. But here—” he gestured to the messy, glowing, laughter-filled house “—you don’t have to be ‘field you.’ You can lag a little. It’s cute.”

Lup threw a kitchen towel at them both. “Alright, lovebirds, grab some plates. Dinner’s ready before something else ignites.”

Taako caught the towel, grinned, and held a hand out toward Kravitz. “C’mon, cello string. Let’s eat before my sister sets dessert on fire out of spite.”

•••

Used to judging Lup and Barry's antics by now, Kravitz helpfully asked, "Does the bet still count if it's not Taako that was distracting me? I feel like if the bet is about us flirting, not my 'shiny object syndrome' Barold shouldn't win... yet." His flushed face betrayed that he *was* also affected by Taako calling him cute, though.

He sat at what was probably supposed to be a dining room table after holding out Taakos only slightly spectral chair and pushing it in for him, as a gentleman, as well as giving the chair a glare until it remained solid.

Barry looked up from carving something that may once have been a casserole and grinned. “See, that’s a fair point. I’ll take a technical loss if Lup admits she cheated by setting the light fixtures to sparkle mode.”

“They’re mood lighting,” Lup protested, but the firelight behind her eyes brightened anyway. “You can’t prove I did it to distract him.”

Taako brushed Kravitz’s arm as he sat, smirking. “You’re throwing off their entire betting system. You’re chaos with good posture.” He let Kravitz push his chair in, adding, “And that was very gallant of you, babe. If the chair bolts for the ethereal again, I’m just gonna ride it like a carnival ride.” He glanced at the now-still chair and winked. “Guess it knows who’s boss.”

•••

Across the table, Barry was already serving plates, and Lup conjured a bottle of something that glowed faintly violet. “Okay, everyone’s seated, no one’s on fire yet, and Kravitz is making the furniture behave. I call that a successful dinner start.”

Taako leaned on his elbows, eyes dancing between the three of them. “So what’s the special occasion, huh? You call the god squad home early just to feed us, or did the astral kitchen finally achieve sentience again?”

Kravitz was literally preening at Taakos compliment and the fact that, despite Lups light show, he hadn't been sucked into staring at the silverware. "Mmm, this does seem more formal than your usual dinners where you try to subtly tell us about an explosion you regret or regail us with stories of souls you've captured, not that I don't find both of those topics interesting."

Lup leaned on the table, chin in her hands, eyes sparkling like a forge. “Formal? Babe, this is me trying to look civilized. I even used the plates that still exist on this plane of reality.”

Barry coughed around a laugh. “Technically that’s true. None of these have winked out of existence since last Tuesday.”

Taako sipped from his glass, doing that deliberate slow nod that meant he was enjoying the chaos far too much. “Yeah, but I’ll give you this, sis-between the candlelight and Kravitz taming the chairs, it almost feels like a dinner party and not an incident report.”

Lup snapped her fingers; the candles flared, scattering tiny sparks of harmless flame across the air. “See? Ambience. And for the record, there’s no explosion to confess tonight. We finished a job early. No spectral infestations, no hauntings, no near-misses with divine retribution. Just… wanted company that isn’t dead. Yet.”

She shot a grin toward Kravitz. “Present company excluded, obviously. You’re grandfathered in.”

Barry nodded, pushing a plate toward Taako. “We figured, we all keep saving reality, we deserve a meal where the only thing that dies is the casserole.”

Taako laughed, bright and unguarded. “Aww, you missed us. Admit it.”

Lup clinked her glass against Kravitz’s. “Maybe a little. You’re the only ones who bring dessert and existential dread to the same table.”

Then, more quietly, “Mostly though, we just wanted to see you. We get tired of being the scary side of the afterlife all the time. It’s nice to remember why we bother keeping the lights on.”

"While I appreciate the gesture, I don't think I'm overstepping when I say you're welcome to join us at Taako's on the material plane whenever you need living company. I realize it's not my house, but I would think family has an open invitation." Kravitz empathized with the couple, though. He hadn't realized how much he had been missing out on life until he met Taako, but now that he had, it would be a difficult existence to live without it- without him- again.

"And for the record, I do not think you are the 'scary side of the afterlife', unless you're speaking from the perspective of someone you're arresting."

Lup blinked at him—just once—and then the usual mischievous light in her face softened into something that looked a lot like warmth. “Look at you,” she said, voice quieter than usual but still carrying that familiar crackle. “All manners, all heart. I’m stealing you for the holiday season, just so you know.”

Barry grinned into his plate. “Called it,” he murmured. “Knew you’d jump on that chance as soon as he said ‘you’re welcome to join us.’”

Taako leaned back, smirking but obviously touched. “You would adopt my boyfriend like a lost puppy. And fine- open invitation stands. Just promise to call first, yeah? Last time you and Barold just phased into the living room while I was in the shower, and I’m still not over it.”

Lup threw up her hands. “We knocked! On the window of the third floor! You didn’t answer!”

Kravitz’s laugh slid in between them, low and genuine. “I’ll make sure they text your stone next time.”

Taako rested a hand over Kravitz’s, thumb brushing idly along the cool metal of his ring. “See, that’s why I keep you around- you make even my family sound reasonable.”

“High praise,” Barry said.

Taako grinned wider. “And as for the scary side of the afterlife? Nah. You two are like… the stern-but-cool camp counselors of eternity. You get to decide when the bonfire’s over, but you also make sure everyone roasts a marshmallow first.”

Lup snorted. “That’s the weirdest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

Kravitz squeezed Taako’s fingers lightly, voice calm and sincere. “It’s accurate, though.”

And for a moment, between the flickering candles, the half-mended wards, and the smell of something buttery cooling on the counter, the four of them sat in a comfortable hush that even the astral plane seemed to honor.

•••

Kravitz spoke in a way that somehow seemed to add to the comfortable hush rather than interrupt it, his low voice continuing, "I'd offer an open invitation to my home here in the astral plane, but I'm afraid you'll find it terribly boring." He glanced at Taako fondly, as if to say 'that goes for you, too, if you ever find yourself here more permanently.'

"Though... now that I think of it... I suppose it is self-repairing. It might be enjoyable for you if you had a sudden need to light several hundred out of date books on music theory from the 18th century on fire. Unfortunately, they'll just keep coming back. No matter how often I try to remove or replace them."

Taako gave him the kind of grin that said challenge accepted.

“Oh, sweetheart, you can’t just drop a line like ‘hundreds of self-repairing books on music theory’ and not expect me to get ideas.” He shifted in his chair, leaning toward him with an elbow on the table, eyes bright. “You realize you’ve basically described my families' ideal vacation: arson with a rhythm section.”

Barry nearly snorted wine through his nose. “Don’t encourage him,” he said, dabbing at his sleeve. “You’ll wake up one morning and the entire astral plane will smell like singed parchment.”

Lup wagged a finger at Taako. “If you burn them, at least film it on your stone or with magic. I wanna see if they reform in canon or counterpoint.”

Taako pointed back, triumphant. “See? Scientific curiosity.” He turned to Kravitz again, tone softening around the edges. “But seriously, if they’ve been hanging around since the eighteenth-whatever, maybe they’re sticking because they’re tied to you. A reaper’s house reflects the reaper, right? You’ve been listening for so long that even the paper learned to echo.”

He reached out and touched Kravitz’s wrist, the gesture small and grounding. “Could be your afterlife’s way of saying you don’t have to erase everything that came before. You can just… improvise over it.”

Lup smirked. “That’s disgustingly romantic, bro.”

Taako grinned sideways at her. “Yeah, well. He brings it out in me.” And there it was again—the easy warmth that made eternity feel almost domestic.

"...and you said I was the poetic one this morning, wow Taako." Kravitz brushed his fingers along Taako's knuckle where their hands met, his own form of grounding. "I suppose it would make sense if those old books were tied to me," he sighed, thinking of how often he tried to get rid of them, "I always thought it was the astral plane playing some sort of prank or telling me I'm old. I wish the books would at least reform to reflect current trends. As it stands, they just take up shelf space I would very much like to use for other, more recent books. Or photos or... well anything else, really. But, improvisation over the past, hm? You've given me a new perspective on them, thank you."

Taako’s expression shifted from teasing to something gentler, the kind of softness that crept in when he thought no one was watching. “Yeah, babe. You don’t have to torch the past just to make room for the future. You can just… stack some new chapters on top. That’s literally how cookbooks work.” He turned his hand over so their fingers threaded together, thumb brushing lightly against Kravitz’s cool skin. “Besides, those books sound kinda like you anyway- old, mysterious, refusing to stay gone, and probably full of notes in the margins nobody can decipher anymore.”

Lup groaned, loud and dramatic. “Ugh, you two are gonna rot my teeth.”

Barry, grinning, nudged her plate toward her. “Then you can blame dessert, not them.”

Kravitz’s smile widened despite himself. “If it helps, I think the books are quite harmless. They don’t even fall on me when they reappear anymore.”

Taako squeezed his hand, smirking. “See? Growth. Next step, we make them reappear alphabetically.”

“Impossible,” Barry muttered.

“Not with enough spite,” Taako countered, sitting back in his chair and tapping Kravitz’s knuckles twice like punctuation. “We’ll swing by next time we’re in the neighborhood. Me, you, a bottle of wine, and a little constructive chaos. We’ll teach those ghost books a new tune.”

And the way he said it- half a joke, half a promise- made it sound like the most natural kind of eternity.