Page 57 of Inkpot Gods

Someone nudges her left arm. That gesture should send an explosion of pain through her shoulder. That it doesn’t makes her suspect that while this is really happening, it may be happening to her after she’s already dead. If the afterlife is some sort of strange private library, she’ll … well, she’ll be pretty much okay with that.

It’s just a pity that she got Smita killed, too.

“I’m sorry,” she manages to rasp. Getting her jaw to move takes everything she has, and she’s suddenly, deeply relieved to already be lying down. She sighs, closing her eyes again. Sight or sound. If she has to choose between them, right now, she needs sound more. “Didn’t mean to … kill you.”

“No one’s dead here, Lily,” says Smita urgently. Cool fingers wrap around her own, twining through them and tugging, like their owner believes they can fix everything if Lily will just sit up. “This isn’t the afterlife.”

“If it were, I’m sure someone else would do the laundry,” says the dry voice from before.

Smita scoffs. “As if you’ve done a load of laundry since we moved in here? I keep telling you, there aren’t any little fairies who come in at night and take care of everyone’s washing up.”

“But somehow I never run out of clean underwear,” says the other voice. “Check and mate, Smita. Give up and admit the laundry fairies are real.”

“I will not. Now stop distracting me.” Smita tugs on Lilianne’s hands again. “You’re not dead, you didn’t die in the lab, you’re in my house—”

“Your house?” asks the dry voice.

“—and I just need you to wake up so I can be sure that you’re okay,” says Smita doggedly. “Come on, Lily. I just met you. You don’t get to go and die on me yet.”

“Plus I really don’t feel like dealing with a corpse tonight,” says the first speaker. “We’re not alchemists here. Body disposal is not our strong suit, and if you make me try to contend with yours, I’m going to put it someplace really embarrassing, just to make you feel bad about dying in my house.”

Lilianne opens her eyes again. The rest of her body still feels like an immovable object, something so far outside her control that it might as well be back in that lab, disconnected from the rest of her, but at least she can open her eyes.

“Good job.” The owner of the dry voice finally leans into view. It’s a woman, pale, with unsettlingly gray eyes and hair that must be the product of a ridiculously talented stylist given utterly trite directions. Why else would they have dyed it to look like she’s a candy cane? Shocking red and equally shocking white combined is not a good look on anyone outside of Santa’s village, but this woman doesn’t seem to realize how ridiculous it is, only eyes Lilianne with detached curiosity.

“Thanks for not being dead,” she says. “Smita would have been utterly impossible to live with if you’d been dead.”

Lilianne stares up at her, silent and motionless.

The woman sighs. “I’m Dodger, by the way. Dodger Cheswich. This is my house, if you care, and it was my kitchen floor you were bleeding all over earlier. You’re welcome, by the way. My usual response to people bleeding on my floor is expulsion, not medical care.”

“She’s not serious,” says Smita. “Dodger, tell her you’re not serious.”

“Oh, I am entirely serious,” says Dodger, deadpan. “My parents should not have been allowed to name their own children. But they were, and so my name is my unrealistic cross to bear.”

“I meant about throwing people out when they’re injured.”

“Oh, no, I was serious about that, too. I don’t like blood. Too many bad memories. Lucky for your alchemist here, my brother is a soft touch who never met a stray he didn’t want to save.” Dodger shrugs. “So, you’re welcome. And now that you’re awake, you should figure out how your arms and legs work and come downstairs for something to eat. You need to replace all that blood you’ve lost.” She steps away, quickly vanishing from Lilianne’s field of view.

Smita tugs on her hands, trying to pull her into a sitting position. “You get used to Dodger, I promise,” she says. “She’s brusque, but she cares more than she tries to let on. I think you might like her, if you gave her a chance.”

Lilianne snaps her attention back to Smita. She’s wearing a fresh shirt, something clean, and her hair has clearly been washed and brushed out since the lab. She’s still the most beautiful woman Lilianne has ever seen. It’s hard to think of anything that would change that.

Really, it’s hard to think right now, and so Lilianne gives up trying and focuses instead on her body, which is weak and sore but not actually injured in this moment. It should listen to her when she tells it what she wants. Even if it doesn’t want to, she’s strong enough to make it listen. She’s been overcoming worse obstacles than a little blood loss her whole life. She’s been forcing her way through locked doors since the day she became aware of what locks were, and she can beat this.

She can beat this. She can.

She takes a deep breath, rolling slightly to the side without letting go of Smita’s hands, and tightens the muscles of her core until they lift her off whatever she’s on top of, raising her inch by agonizing inch into a sitting position. Smita never lets go of her hands, not even when her grip becomes too tight, not even when she almost pulls the smaller woman down on top of herself. Finally, she’s sitting up, and can see that what she’s sitting on is a reading couch, one of the ones that looks halfway to being a really strangely designed bed, and she’s definitely in a library, although not one she’s ever seen before.

Which makes sense, since that Dodger woman said this was her house. Lilianne’s never met her before; she obviously wouldn’t have been in her house if she hasn’t met her. She slumps against the back of the couch, finally releasing Smita’s hands, and waits for the world to stop spinning around her.

It feels like it might be quite a wait.

Smita sits down next to her, nudging her legs until she swings them around to put her feet on the ground. “I was worried about you,” she says, earnestly. “You passed out before we got up to the street. Erin and Artemis had to carry you back here.”

That name … Lilianne’s eyes widen fractionally. “The woman with the bow and arrow,” she says. “You called her—but she can’t be.”

“A Lunar?” asks Smita. She smirks a little, like a kid with a secret too good to keep for long. “Yes. She’s one of the current incarnations of the Roman goddess of the moon. There was a period where we had her and an incarnation of Diana in town. That got messy.”