Bane Seven - Worries

“Esme,” I said without looking up from my book. I was laying on a lounge chair in a corner of the library that had somehow become ‘our’ corner. I had a monster friend tucked up against my tummy, a fat, furry thing that radiated a soft warmth and that purred whenever I scratched it under the head. “Stop pacing so much, the floor can’t handle all the friction.”

Emse stopped, then glanced down. “The floor is stone,” she said.

“Yeah, and you’ve been pacing for nearly an hour,” I said. I finished my paragraph and placed my thumb over the spot I was at. “What’s wrong?”

My bookish friend puffed her cheeks out, then crossed her arms. “Semper’s right here,” she said. “The Semper! In the home of the dark goddess. It’s... it’s a lot to take in!”

“She’s just here for tea,” I said.

“No one visits the dark goddess just for tea!” Esme said. It sounded like she wanted to scream, but it came out as a desperate hiss instead. “That’s... it’s practically heresy.”

Felix finally sighed. She was upside-down on another sofa, legs over the back and a book held straight up before her. It wasn’t the sort of book Esme and I read. A bit thinner, and printed with a larger font. She was still learning how to read, but she was making good progress. Mostly by reading books about knights who fought great monsters and such. “Esme, we all heard Semper say that she was visiting. I don’t know how religion works, but I’m pretty sure that if the god of that religion says something, then it can’t be heresy, right?”

Esme grumbled. “You weren’t supposed to spy on us talking.”

“We did anyway,” Felix said. “I’m pretty sure you can do a lot of things here that you’re not supposed to. You know, consorting with monsters and stuff like that.”

Esme started pacing again.

“Why don’t you do something about it?” I asked.

“Do something about it?” Esme asked. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Ask Semper why she’s actually here?”

Esme gasped. “I can’t just question my goddess!”

“Sure you can. I do it all the time.”

“It’s not the same for you,” she snapped. “But... maybe we can find out what they’re actually doing some other way?”

I glanced up from my book. “Some other way?”

She grinned. “Yeah. I bet some of your monsters can find out where the two of them are hidden, then we can listen in on their conversation.”

“Weren’t you giving me crap for spying on you literally a minute ago?” Felix asked. “Now you wanna spy on Semper and Luciana?”

“It’s not the same,” Esme said. “You were spying on me because you’re both busy bodies who can’t mind their own business. I’m... listening carefully in case Semper needs help. Maybe Luciana ensorcelled her.”

I snorted. “Mom would do that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to defend your mom?” Felix asked.

“I mean, yeah, but she’d totally do that. I have the impression that mom was a bit, ah, lonely before I arrived. Even after, I guess. She spends a lot of time all on her own, just reading and sometimes making new monsters. She has a lab too, where she tinkers with stuff, but it’s not a focused thing. I think she’s both bored and lonely. I might have been too. But I had mom to distract me, and a lot of things to read, so I didn’t have time to get lonely. And now you’re both here, so I have friends to hang out with.”

“And Luciana has none of that,” Esme said. She clapped her hands. “That’s it. We’re going to find the goddesses and find out what they’re up to. Come on!”

Felix and I grumbled a bunch, but Esme continued to insist that we get moving. I set aside my warm monster friend and groaned as I got to my feet. I figured that maybe moving around a bit would help with the cramps I got from sitting around too long. A bit of exercise couldn’t hurt.

I stretched, then rolled my eyes at the impatient look Esme was giving me from the library’s entrance.

Finding mom and Semper wasn’t hard. I just had to ask a passing monster, and they pointed me up the stairs. A second monster a few floors up gestured towards one of the less-visited parts of the castle.

I had only been in this part a couple of times. There were guest rooms and a few lounge areas, but not not much of interest, so I had never really spent time exploring it in depth.

The three of us slowed down so that our steps wouldn’t echo as much, and we even managed not to bicker as we snuck across the corridor.

Mom and Semper weren’t hard to find. Mom had basically given Semper an entire wing of the castle where she could hang out. Part of that wing was a large room with a small library and a balcony that opened up onto the side of the tower. The view was quite pretty on this side, the churning ocean, the distant grumbling mountainside where splashes of red marked regions of active lava flow.

A magical semi-transparent curtain hovered not too far away, keeping the worst of the wind at bay while mom and Semper sat together on a small sofa. They were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, both of them leaning in to read a single book.

Esme, Felix and I pressed up against the doorway into the room, just the tops of our heads sticking in so that we could see what was up. It wasn’t the most stealthy approach. Esme’s huge poofy hair alone would easily give us away, but it was better than nothing.

“See,” I whispered. “They’re just reading. Same as we do, sometimes.”

“I guess,” Esme muttered. “What do you think they’re reading?”

I shrugged. “One of mom’s forbidden tomes?”

The two goddesses chuckled (because mom didn’t stoop so low as to giggle), and they both looked up at each other at the same time. Their cheeks were rather flushed, I noticed.

“Well, whatever they’re reading, it looks fun,” Felix said. “They’re both real cozy with each other.”

“Yeah,” Esme said. “Really... cozy.”

She slapped a hand over her mouth as she gasped, and I felt my clothes become quite staticy as I pulled away from the door. “What?” I whispered.

Esme’s eyes were wide and her hair was fritzing out. Instead of replying she shook her head.

“Come on,” I whispered. I touched her elbow, hissed as I got an electrical shock from it, then pulled her back down the corridor, then, just to be safe, we climbed down a level and found an empty room one floor down to talk in. “What is it?” I asked.

Esme started pacing again, this time a lot more frantic. “Valeria, did you ever hear your mom talk about Semper?”

“Yeah, a few times.”

“In what terms?”

“Huh?” I asked.

“Like...” Esme swallowed. “As though they’re friends?”

“Yes?”

She stepped a bit closer. “Good friends?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. “They read together. I’ve heard mom say that she’d have to give some books to Semper, or sometimes she’ll read something and make a comment about Semper. Why?”

“What kind of things was she reading?” Esme asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think... romance, maybe?”

Esme’s arms flailed through the air. “Oh by Semper’s name, Valeria! Don’t you see it?”

“See what?” I asked.

“They’re friends!”

I blinked, looked at Felix, who shrugged, then stared at Esme some more. “Yes?”

“No, not like that! Good friends. L-lady friends. With each other....” She flushed so hard her face practically steamed. “R-romantic friends.”

I snorted. “Nah.”

Esme grabbed me by the shoulders. “You can’t see it? There’s chemistry there, Valeria! Chemistry! I’ve read some of those books Gertrude hides under her bed. I know what I’m talking about!”

“I'm pretty sure you don’t,” I said.

“I’m siding with Valeria on this one,” Felix said. “Why would a goddess need romance anyway?”

I frowned. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with wanting romance,” I said. In reality, I was pretty conflicted. What if mom really was looking for someone else to love? Would she care about me less? What if that person wasn’t nice to me? Or my friends?

“I guess,” Felix said.

“But, maybe Esme is, just a tiny bit, onto something,” I said.

“Huh?” Felix and Esme said at the same time.

“I’m just saying, it doesn’t sound like it would be all that hard to investigate. And then we could figure it all out, and we wouldn’t have to make up wild conjectures or anything.”

Esme nodded. “That’s right. It would be awful if the goddess Semper were involved that way with the goddess Luciana.”

“What? Hey, mom would make a great... uh... nevermind. But mom would still be the best,” I said.

Esme sniffed. “Sure. You’d say that.”

I glared at Esme, and she glared right back.

“So, can we grab snacks, or are we gonna stay in this dusty, empty room and just argue about Val’s mom’s romantic life?”

***