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When Adaine had learned that Aelwyn was the newest employee at the Compass Points Library, she had offered her a tricorn hat (pirate-y embellishments and all) that she had apparently pulled from her jacket when first visiting Leviathan
Aelwyn had, of course, refused.
Her employment at Compass Points, though she would never admit it to the occupants of that accursed therapy manor, was only by necessity. She had walked out of her job at Oakshield Middle, leaving (most) blackmail photos that she had on the Principal’s desk.
And admittedly, Compass Points was a much better place of employment. There were still painfully stupid people asking her endless questions, and unexplainable noises from down the halls, but at least she could cast a few cantrips at visitors of the Library without consequence. Though she would never wish to admit it, Aelwyn often found that she actually enjoyed her time spent on the pirate island.
That was, at least, until the proprietor of the Library had returned from her escapades through space and time.
It wasn’t as if Ayda Aguefort was unpleasant- in fact, Aelwyn found herself rather taken with the woman. She was refreshingly honest and never said a word she didn’t mean, which meant that Aelwyn didn’t have to try to spend her energy searching for pity or judgment (and there was very little of either).
No- Ayda was a perfectly acceptable boss, and easily in the top three of least-annoying members of Mordred Manor. She was just... a little bit too good at getting Aelwyn to say things that she regretted. Lulling her into a false sense of security with conversations about the latest eccentric patron of the Library, or impassioned theoretical discussions on magic theory, and then suddenly pointing out an observation she had about Aelwyn that the latter thought she had been doing a fantastic job of concealing.
It was during once such conversation, as evening turned to night in the back shelves of the Abjuration section, that one of Ayda’s matter-of-fact comments turned out to be something that even Aelwyn herself hadn’t noticed.
---
“Can you put the wards up now, or do you need to wait until tomorrow? I’m unsure how much energy you have left.”
Aelwyn looked up at the half-phoenix, instinctually searching her expression and words for any hidden meaning (though she knew she would find none).
“Now is fine,” she nodded, starting to move her legs to a more efficient position so she could stand, and failing to contain a soft groan as she did so.
“Here” Ayda reached a hand down to the Elven girl, but Aelwyn simply shook her head, tone slipping from her usual carefully controlled manner to one that was more akin to annoyance and anger.
“I don’t need your help”
Ayda simply grabbed Aelwyn’s arm anyway, her other hand grabbing the forearm crutch that rested against the nearby wall. As she stood, Aelwyn grabbed the crutch, but made no effort to use it to stabilize herself.
“I never said you did. This is simply what friends do”
Aelwyn shot her an annoyed look, but headed off towards the Friendship section nonetheless, pointedly ending the conversation.
-
The wards were simple enough, Ayda serving as support for the more difficult section in the middle, and it wasn’t long before the two women found themselves walking back toward the door to Mordred Manor in comfortable, if not a little stiff, silence.
Against her better judgment, it was Aelwyn who broke that silence.
“Two years ago, I would have bullied girls like you relentlessly”
Ayda, of course, did not flinch or back away. She simply nodded, as if this was a fact that was as well-known as the color of the sky.
“Fig and Adaine say you were quite a... a bitch”
“I still am a bitch” Aelwyn countered, tone laced with pride. Ayda slowed to a stop, pulling the other woman with her, and maneuvered her so they were face to face. Aelwyn simply raised an eyebrow, well accustomed to the analyzing gaze of others and never one to flinch or back down.
“Yes, I suppose you are. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t”
Aelwyn scoffed, though said nothing in disagreement.
“Not unlike your girlfriend”
This gave Ayda pause, as she tilted her head and squinted her eyes in a manner that Aelwyn recognized from when she was trying to analyze a situation that puzzled her.
“Fig is not a bitch.” It was not defensive in any way, just another fact. “Fig is herself. And herself is a bitch.”
“And I’m... what? A squirrel?”
Ayda laughed her sharp barking laugh, and Aelwyn found herself comforted at the sound, though she could not place exactly why.
“No, that’s ridiculous. You’re yourself, sometimes. And other times you are someone else, who is not yourself”
Aelwyn, for whatever reason, was not nearly as threatened by this psychoanalyzation as she was when it came from Jawbone. Instead, she found that her curiosity was slightly piqued. Ayda seemed to pick up on her silence, and continued.
“And even when you are yourself, you have to either be useful or dangerous. Or else you don’t feel like you’re you. Thus... bitch.”
This gave Aelwyn pause, and she immediately shook her head.
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say”
Ayda looked at her for a long moment, then grabbed her elbow and pulled her towards the nearest chair, almost throwing Aelwyn off balance in doing so.
“You don’t know, do you?”
Aelwyn gave her an incredulous look, but decided to humor her.
“Know what, Ayda? I don’t know if you know this, but a year alone in a magic orb does give one a lot of time for self-reflection.”
Ayda disregarded the last comment smoothly, instead gently guiding Aelwyn to sit down as she did the same”
“You don’t know that people can care about you even if they don’t need you. That you don’t need to scare people in order to get them to respect you. It’s okay, I didn’t know that for a long time either. There’s no shame in not knowing things. Fig once told me-”
Ayda kept speaking, but Aelwyn wasn’t listening. There was a sudden buzzing in her ears that was threatening to overtake her, and she was standing before she even had commanded her body to do so.
“I have to go”
---
Much to her pride, Aelwyn was able to avoid dwelling on this new observation for almost a week. Ayda seemed to be under the impression that the subject needed no further discussion, and Aelwyn certainly wasn’t going to disagree.
Life continued on like normal, work at the Compass Points once again predictably unpredictable and Mordred Manor still painfully comfortable, until one afternoon, shortly before Aelwyn was scheduled to leave for a shift at the library, there was a knock on the Manor door.
That itself wasn’t uncommon (though it was odd for someone to knock- most visitors just let themselves in the side door). And, Aelwyn supposes, the visitor themselves probably wasn’t a rare one at the Manor. But in her short time living at the Manor, both before the Bad Kids left on their quest for the Night Yorb, and her return recently, she had been lucky enough to be either incapacitated or absent when any of the Seven Maidens had come to visit.
Aelwyn had been in the kitchen when Antiope and Danielle walked in the front door, and the moment she recognized their voices, her head shot up, eyes wide.
‘Aelwyn? What’s up?’
Curse Sandra Lynn and her ranger-like perception.
‘Nothing.’ Aelwyn shook her head, standing suddenly and pushing away the book she had been reading. ‘I just realized I’m late for my shift at the Library.’
Before the older woman could respond, Aelwyn grabbed her forearm crutches and stepped into one of the hidden stairways, soon emerging onto the landing where the door to Leviathan lay. Below her, she could hear the faint voices of the two Maidens, and she shivered slightly at the sound, before closing her eyes tightly and stepping through the portal.
---
It was nearing midnight as Ayda and Aelwyn sat at the front desk of Compass Points, cataloging the usual inordinate amount of overdue books. Silence was not uncommon between the two of them, as Ayda seemed to find no discomfort in what others may consider ‘awkward silence’, and Aelwyn was more than content to avoid conversation. Tonight was no different, and Aelwyn had enough on her mind that the time passed fairly quickly.
In fact, she hadn’t even noticed she was speaking aloud until Ayda looked up at her, intense gaze fixed with rapt attention.
“I bullied girls like you because I knew they were smarter than me. I’m sorry”
“There’s no point in apologizing to me on behalf of those girls. That’s useless”
Aelwyn simply blinked at her for a long moment, then slowly nodded, turning her gaze back to the index in front of her.
“Right”
A few more minutes passed, Ayda returning to her task efficiently, but Aelwyn simply stared down at her hands, before speaking again.
“The awkward, nerdy girls never pointed out that they were smarter than me- never embarrassed me in front of my parents by getting higher scores than me- because they were afraid of me. I have this job because of my skills and abilities, because I bring something to the table. What’s the harm of being useful? Of being scary? It’s worked out just fine so far.”
Now it was Ayda's turn to gaze at the other girl in silence, before simply shrugging.
“Has it? Do you even know how to interact with people who aren’t afraid of you and don’t need you? Because if you do, I’d love some advice. I can’t say I don’t struggle with the same thing... though I have certainly never scared anyone, at least not on purpose”
“Of course I do” Aelwyn immediately defended, but even her ever-confident facade wavered as she looked back down at the counter.
“Okay”
Aelwyn huffed quietly as Ayda once more returned to her work, and it was only a few brief moments before Aelwyn once again broke the silence.
“I was early today because a few of the Seven Maidens visited the Manor without warning.”
“Oh?” Ayda looked back up at Aelwyn, gaze searching for the clear hidden meaning. Aelwyn continued, uncomfortable under the scrutiny.
“For all that I did to them, the Maidens aren’t afraid of me. It’s honestly a little bit embarrassing, that they know that I am so much less powerful than I was back then. Physically, at least. But I... I’ve only seen them a few times since I returned to Solace, and the few times that I have, they... they don’t even hate me. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
Ayda said nothing, as there was no question being posed to her. Nothing for her to respond to. She simply waited, only slightly put-off at Aelwyn’s next non-sequitur.
“Do you know why I quit teaching at Oakshield?”
“Because children are terrifying conundrums who are far too perceptive of weak spots for as small as they are?” Ayda asked, genuinely. Aelwyn smiled weakly, but shook her head.
“The middle schoolers didn’t give me anything I couldn’t take, anything I didn’t deserve. And I always gave it back in full force. It wasn’t like I would be fired. No, I... I made a mistake. There were these seventh-grade girls having a petty fight on the blacktop, probably about a boy or something moronic like that, and I stepped in, telling them off and threatening detention if they didn’t break it up, and... one of the girls started crying”
There was another long moment of silence, Aelwyn hoping just a little bit that Ayda would say something, anything to make the conversation any less awkward, but to no avail.
“I... slipped up. Back into my old, cruel, ways. Not just bitchy... straight up awful. And I snapped at her- said she was being dramatic, trying to make me feel bad for her, and she ran off into the school, the other girls glaring at me as they ran off after her. I didn’t even think anything of it, until the next day when I received a nasty phone call from Bonnie Luckstone, saying if I ever made her daughter have a panic attack again, she didn’t care what her eldest said about me- she would track me down and kill me herself.”
“Luckstone. As in Penny Luckstone, one of the Seven?” Ayda asked, though it wasn’t really a question. Aelwyn sighed.
“The very same. And if I had any doubt about that, it was quashed when I spotted Katja and Sam outside my apartment building the next day. They didn’t do anything... I think it was just a warning, but...” Aelwyn trailed off, then whispered, almost imperceptibly, “I haven’t felt that scared in a long time. Completely unsure of myself. So I quit my job, and it was only a few days later that Adaine offered for me to move back to the Manor. Anything to avoid the Maidens. These people that should hate me... should want me dead... they just wanted to talk to me. To smooth things over. But I have no idea how to talk to them. What am I supposed to say? ‘Sorry I kidnapped you and set you up with a dragon and my evil ex to have you sacrificed for the end of the world?’ That’s ridiculous”
“At least it's something.” Ayda stated, shrugging slightly. “Better than hiding away every time your sister’s friends come over because you can’t control how they react to you”
Aelwyn huffed, rolling her eyes.
“I’m not trying to control how people react to me, I just like to know what to expect.”
“And what they expect of you?”
Aelwyn gazed at Ayda for a long, silent moment, before suddenly deflating and nodding every-so-slightly. The divination wizard continued.
“I’ve heard a little about your parents. About your experience at Hudol with the parties, with Kalvaxus, with Kalina. If you know what people expect of you, then you can’t disappoint them. And if you know what to expect from them, you can avoid pain. I understand”
“Do you?” Aelwyn shot back, reflexively. Ayda recoiled, almost imperceptibly, and Aelwyn immediately felt ashamed.
“I do. I really, really do.”
“I’m sorry”
“I forgive you”
The two wizards sat in silence, staring at each other, for what felt like eternity, before Ayda stood and grabbed one of Aelwyn’s crutches, holding it out for her.
“Go back home. The people there who love you... they would still love you even if you had nothing to offer them. And as for the Maidens, if they haven’t already killed you in revenge, they certainly aren’t going to now.”
Aelwyn hesitated only a moment, before accepting the crutch from Ayda, grabbing her arm for support as she stood.
“I think, maybe, I’ll be able to believe that soon. And I hope you can too.”
Ayda simply gave her a soft smile, before turning away and making her way further into the library.
Aelwyn stood alone for a moment, before making her way back to the Manor, towards the people (people, plural, not just Adaine, she reminded herself) that loved her.
And they loved her just because she existed. A concept that years ago would have seemed ridiculous- weak, even.
But now... now it was almost thrilling.