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In the still air of an Okhema living beyond the end of time, no breeze rattles the chime hanging atop the door of the small house serving as a makeshift home to what remains of the Twilight Courtyard. Its exterior betrays nothing, but when Castorice opens the door, so gently as to permit only a light tap against the bell, there’s no doubt in her mind that she’s in the right place. Inside, the otherwise barren walls are draped in pastel fabrics, and a makeshift sign in the entryway, written in pink and decorated with scribbled stars and swirls and doodles of small animals.
Castorice smiles at the purity of it, and for a moment her anxiety abates. She’s just here to see her friend. There’s no need to feel so uneasy.
She’d wanted to make a quiet entrance, but no sooner has she stepped inside than a trumpet sounds, and from around a corner flies a rainbow-hued blur, crashing directly into her chest.
She’s still getting used to not leaping away at the slightest touch but laughs nervously as she hugs Ica. “Hey there, little guy. Good to see you, too.”
“Du du~”
It’s not her first time holding the little pegasus. Hyacine had practically thrust the marshmallowy pony into her arms the moment everything had settled down following the reformation of Amphoreus inside the Eternal Page, insisting that there was no feeling more important to experience first. She can’t deny the pleasure of petting the beast’s squishy head.
“Ica?” comes Hyacine’s voice, approaching from a distant room. “Do we have a— oh!” Hyacine freezes for a beat as she sees Castorice. Castorice, Ica still in hand, finds herself staring at the lively curls of her friend’s hair and wondering how their feeling might compare.
Both recover and start to speak at the same time, then fall into silence again. Hyacine is the first to make another attempt. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, Cassie!”
Has it really been that long? Keeping track of time in this new world where time holds no meaning has been even more difficult than in the eternally sunlit Okhema of old. Castorice kept meaning to stop by sooner, but as each day passed, it seemed harder and harder to break out of her inertia.
“I’m sorry,” she manages to say. “I should have…”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m well, thank you.” She hears her own voice and hates how formal it sounds. “Lady Aglaea asked me to come. She said I ought to get a physical checkup now that I can.”
“Oh.” Castorice isn’t sure, but Hyacine’s face seems momentarily overcome with… annoyance? Perhaps disappointment. It’s erased quickly, replaced with a flat professionalism. “Well, come in then.” Hyacine turns and struts back into her office. “Ica, come along and prepare the exam supplies.”
Left standing alone in the entryway, Castorice walks quickly after the two. “No—” Moving into the next room, she sees Hyacine and Ica already at work. “No,” she says again, her certainty faltering. “I don’t… I don’t want you to do it.”
Hyacine goes still, then turns toward her, and this time there’s no mistaking her expression: hurt. “You…?”
“No!” Castorice rushes out, fumbling to explain herself. “I didn’t mean— I don’t want you to be my doctor.” She shakes her head, failing to put feelings into words, but is hurried on by the sight of tears ready to leak from Hyacine’s eyes. “I’ve never been touched by a doctor, by any stranger, and I don’t want that stranger to be you.” Still not good enough. “I only want you to touch me like a friend.”
It's not the whole truth, but it’s all she can manage yet.
Seated together a foot apart on the edge of the exam table, Castorice watches Hyacine’s legs dangle back and forth. “Where have you been?” Hyacine finally asks.
“Nowhere. Staying home. Trying to put together all these memories of countless lives.”
“You didn’t have to do it alone,” Hyacine says softly. “We’ve all felt the same way.”
“I had to. Or… I didn’t know how else to.”
“Did you figure anything out?”
“So much was the same,” Castorice says. “All those cycles, yet the same things happened so many times that it’s hard to tell where one ended and another began. But so much changed, too. The people I saw die. The… ways I died.”
Castorice nearly jumps off the table as Hyacine’s hand falls over her own. Hyacine makes the move like it’s nothing, like she doesn’t know how much it means. She does know, of course, but she’ll never truly understand. Not when she’s never had to go without.
It’s warmer than Castorice expected. And smaller. She can’t help focusing on how small Hyacine’s fingers feel against hers, and she resists an urge to clasp them tightly, lest they ever disappear again.
Her mouth suddenly dry, she continues, “The way you treated me never changed.”
“Why would it?”
The sweet innocence in Hyacine’s voice belies the countless hardships she’s gone through, and it tears away at Castorice’s resistance. “I can’t have been easy to get along with,” she says. “I was always so sad and cold… I wouldn’t have blamed you if you got tired of being around me.”
“I would never.”
“You never did. Not once in thirty million lifetimes. In each one, you were always… a light to me.”
That’s how she’d thought of Hyacine in every recurrence – a warm presence who was her only true and dearest friend. In all those lives, that’s what she became, each and every time around. But now, with the hindsight of all those friendships in combination…
“I saw it,” she continues in a whisper. “When I looked back on every possible life I could have lived, and you were there in every one of them…”
Hyacine’s palm turns sweaty, and she pulls it away. “What are you saying?”
“I— I don’t know. Sorry, I—” Castorice starts to push herself off the table, eager to avoid this conversation she’s been rehearsing mentally for weeks, but Hyacine’s hand comes back and grabs her arm.
“Don’t run,” Hyacine commands. “It’s just me.” When Castorice hesitates, she repeats herself more calmly. “It’s me. Please, tell me? So that I’m sure I’m hearing you right?”
Castorice lets herself be pulled back but doesn’t answer immediately. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I think I…”
It’s a word she never once let herself believe she had any right to use. Not Castorice, demigod of Death. She could bring only misery. She didn’t deserve any better herself. But now…
No, not just now. Hyacine had told her she was enough thirty million times, but she had never listened.
“I think I love you.”
The grasp on her arm loosens but doesn’t fall away. “You don’t only mean as a friend, do you?”
“…I don’t know. I don’t know what the difference is, only that this is new.”
Hyacine pulls herself away, sits up straight and swallows, then licks her lips. “Is that why you haven’t hugged me once in all the time since you could?”
“I didn’t think it would be fair without you knowing.”
“Will you now?”
Castorice barely nods, still stunned in place by her own confession.
Since shedding her curse, Castorice received hugs from many friends, new and old – and spent no small amount of time petting every animal she could get her hands on – and while their comfort was exactly as wonderful as she’d always dreamed, she hadn’t expected to be able to feel in them so much more than touch alone. No two were the same, from the relief in her sister’s hug or the care in Aglaea’s to the pure-hearted happiness she felt from Tribbie’s or the lonely sadness in her first, shared with Stelle back in another life.
This one is different too, its warmth seeming to skip her skin entirely and fill her from the inside out. “I lied a moment ago,” she admits, buoyed by the power growing in her chest and eased by not having to look into Hyacine’s face as she says it. “I know I love you.”
On the verge of letting herself finally, truly relax into the moment, she realizes with a jolt that Hyacine hasn’t returned the sentiment. “Do you—” she starts to ask.
“Cassie,” Hyacine interrupts, scolding. “You’d better know that I always loved you. I’ve only been waiting for you to be able to love yourself.”
And she does know it. Of course it’s true. Her light has been there with her in every lifetime, loving her like nobody else. “Yes,” she says. “I know.”
Then Hyacine asks, “Can I kiss you now?”
“I don’t know how,” Castorice says, a new worry starting up in her heart, but her panic is cut off by Hyacine leaning toward her.
“This one’s new to both of us,” she barely hears before she finds herself closing the distance.
Somehow, it turns out she knows everything she needs to. And later, thinking back and trying to relive the moment, the sensation she’ll remember above all others is the soft fluff of Hyacine’s hair under her fingertips, like a pillow made of the clouds themselves.
Eventually, time spent in quiet contact is interrupted by a bonking at the closed door, followed by a sad tooting. The two girls share a giggle, and Hyacine stands up to let in Little Ica, who promptly leaps onto Castorice’s lap and settles in, humming happily.
“Ica~” Hyacine whines, returning to her seat, “that’s my spot!”
“I think you’ll have to share,” Castorice says with a smile so irrepressible that she can feel it.
“So…” Hyacine says seriously, the earlier mood lost, but all those weeks of tension evaporated as well, “I suppose I’ll have to find someone else to give you that checkup.”
“Are you really the only one here?”
“The war’s over.” Hyacine shakes her head. “No one’s sure yet what the future holds for us. If ‘future’ even means anything anymore, or even if we’ll still get sick.”
“If that’s true, you might not have a job anymore.”
“I would be so happy if you’re right, but I’m sure people will need a healer eventually. I have to keep that knowledge alive until then. I’m sure I can round up a few old contacts to hire soon enough.”
“There’s no hurry. I feel better than I’ve ever been before,” Castorice says.
“Why’d Aglaea suddenly order you to get checked out, then? She hasn’t sent anyone else to me.” Hyacine looks at Castorice intently as if searching for some truth on her face that she herself isn’t aware of, then her eyes pop open wide. “Aglaea…!” She hops to her feet and stomps a couple steps before spinning back around. “You think?”
“Think…?”
“Our Lady of Romance, making good on her title?”
“Ah…” Castorice processes the meaning of Hyacine’s words, then feels herself blush as they sink in. “Ah! She knew this would happen?!”
Hyacine laughs to herself and shakes her head. “Of course she would. I guess I owe her a ‘thank you’ for getting you to finally make your move.”
“I didn’t make a move,” Castorice insists, embarrassed.
“You did,” Hyacine grins. “You really did. And I’m so proud of you.”