WHUD.

Meredith automatically readied her hand to cast magic on whatever just ran into Juventas’ door, regardless of the sentence she was in the middle of. Their discussions had gone on long enough, but with the tension they’d both built, both girls jumped in shock when the small thud killed further words. The cat’s yowl of desperation came through the wood, and Juventas had furrowed her brow. Meredith knew by now she didn’t own a cat. Was it Fern…? No, not possible. Juventas looked back to Meredith and cautiously waved down her hand to strike, giving off a nervous laugh as she unfolded her legs and got up.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, probably,” she tried to say in comfort, but Meredith’s brow stayed furrowed in concern. She didn’t and wasn’t going to trust anything. Another yowl came, weaker and ever more desperate. The sound seemed to upset Juventas enough to motivate her to open the door faster. She took haste now in unlocking the door, opening it while the bloodied cat that scratched the door dashed inside. With a graceless warp of its body, the familiar pale Vera that Meredith remembered appeared in place of the cat, naked, bloodied and filthy. The girl fought to catch her breath, resuming an apparent sob she’d halted until she was deemed to shift back into a human. So she was a jinni. The confirmation wasn’t a big revelation on her list. Meredith’s bigger concern was what type of jinni she had to be to suddenly be subjected to such a condition she was now under. She reeked of the dead. There was no way, though, that she was such a rare…

“Vera!” Juventas cried amid Meredith’s thoughts, immediately slammed her door shut and throwing herself to the girl’s level to see her closer. “Holy shit, Vera, did you--?”

Vera only sobbed more at the question, her body curled in shame. “I was so hungry, Juju, I was --”

“Nonono, it’s okay, it’s okay Vera, try and calm down, okay?” Juventas was trying to wave off the jinni’s panic and shame without success, looking to Meredith and pointing frantically to her dresser. “Pajamas, pajamas, Meredith, please help --” She pivoted her gaze back to Vera. “Where did you eat?”

“S-south graveyard…”

Meredith only pursed her lips in mild shock, lifting herself off Juventas’ bed and putting herself to use by finding a long nightie. “She’s filthy, Juventas.”

Juventas wasn’t listening. “Your hair -- how did you get so bloody?”

Vera whimpered and held her head, knees pressed to her stomach as the questions made her relive it. “I was g-going mad--...”

Meredith paced over, more calm than either of them, and knelt down with nightie draped over her arm. “I’ll get the blood,” she murmured, feeling like an odd one out and a servant to a miniature calamity she had nothing to do with. A ghul, still surviving in this day? Insane. She held her hand over Vera’s head, simply coursing magic through the blood stains to remove it from her hair. When enough had been removed to where it looked like she was simply pulling it from wounds, she rounded it into a filthy bloody sphere held by a tiny magic bubble and quite literally dropped it into the nearest bin. Juventas was awfully brave to touch a being like Vera, and if they were so close, Meredith really wasn’t sure how long Juventas had been able to survive. This ghul must have really wanted to survive.

Juventas was improvising now, giving Vera a quick rubdown with a discarded pair of pants doused in a half-empty waterbottle’s contents. Vera refused to uncurl her body, though, and continued to sob. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” Juventas tried to calmly chant to her friend, sitting the finely curled naked girl up for a more dignified position. “Let’s put the PJs on you so you aren’t cold, Vera. You’re safe, I’m gonna protect you, okay?”

Meredith must have been expected to dress the monster. Well, she’d done worse before, so really -- this was only of the top ten most dangerous things she’d consider herself to have done. On her knees, she shuffled closer to the sobbing girl, her expression only of business and command. If Juventas needed help, sure she’d help. They were bound anyway. Vera’s legs began to give way, sliding limp to the floor as she accepted the clothing. This would’ve been a peaceful interaction, because the foreigner wasn’t one for unreasonable strife. But Meredith had seen the glint of solid red resting over Vera’s pelvis. It wasn’t blood, and within a flash of movement, Meredith had forced Vera still by pinning her by her chest against the wall and one of her legs flat to the floor. Vera let out a pitiful cry of desperation, and Juventas nearly threw herself on Meredith for scaring her friend and being so… violent.

But with a quiet ‘tsk’ and brutal expression on her face, Meredith released Vera to let her recurl into an even more immovable clamshell, tossing the nightie to the ground.

“She’s got one too.”

Juventas’ eyes widened. Vera was slightly stunned in her sobs, slowed by confusion. Meredith stood, holding her head.

“Fffffucking Nine.”

There was a silence.

“N-Nine?” Juventas managed, now cradling the tightly clamped Vera in her lap.

Meredith only pointed upward. Juventas still wasn’t in sync with the God’s name. Meredith couldn’t keep herself in line. “Vera’s one of us too.”

A choked up noise of absolute confusion came from Vera, and Juventas took a quiet moment to gently peel Vera’s legs off her chest to see the red stone protruding just above the jinni’s pelvis. “... So Jinn can get them too?”

“Looks like,” the witch replied.

“Why are we getting these… rocks on us? I understand the person you hear has these freaky plans, but...”

Meredith’s expression curled into something close to irritated. She didn’t want to show them. It was embarrassing. “It’s kind of predictable. The stones… They, ah… Contain a massive amount of power.”

“What kind of source would allow them to be so powerful…? I mean, I’ve read books with deus ex machinas, but those make absolutely no sense for reality...”

“Do you… remember how you got yours, Juventas?”

Juventas paused. It was only the previous night, of course she did. “My heart was hurting.”

Meredith thought it over. “Whatever hurts us… Crystallizes where it hurts the most.”

Juventas looked to the nude ghul in her lap, who was finally beginning to calm down. “So… Vera’s was… Hunger?”

“I’m guessing.”

Juventas’ face twisted, like she was increasingly doubting the new witch who knew so much about a God who never spoke to the population on Enid. “You call the god Nine.”

“She calls herself Nine.”

“She. Um… But I thought, the White Jann of the North…”

“They’re not wrong. They’re able to speak with her, but she doesn’t care about them. She didn’t think that… Anyone would be able to hear her, but I somehow did.”

“You got a stone too, why did you..?”

“Punishment for hearing her.”

“Punishment? Is this all punishment?” Juventas was beginning to sound fearful.

“No. Yours are gifts. I know that much, I think,” Meredith replied a bit rushedly. She didn’t want the real Borne to be scared of their own job. Nine hated her enough as is. “She’s got a plan… The only person being punished is me, ‘cause I heard too much on the plan. I doubt I was even on her mind when this idea for the world came up.”

Vera had calmed down by now, simply flooded by confusion over the conversation beside her, staring at her crystal in a daze. She held her head gently, no longer crying. She was too taken aback to still cry. The mention of the Jann up north still made her tremble.

Juventas looked down to Vera, her mind shifting to something she could grasp more. “We need to focus on Vera right now, I think, until we can understand this nonsense more later. If a higher power’s at the ropes, we can’t do anything until they show us what else we have to do, right?”

Meredith gave a hesitant nod.

“Let’s, uh, start with where Vera’s clothes are… Vera, um…?”

“... The veil behind the school…”

“Meredith, can you…?”

“Fae, I know the drill. I’ll go get them.” Why she was siding and aiding a ghul was beyond her, but the only thing she could tell herself was because the poor thing had a stone just like them. The witch let off a small breath, opened the balcony door and stepped out, yet again summoning her gem wings. She turned back to Juventas and Vera. “This is a thing you can probably do with your gems. We’ll figure it all out later.”

“We’re gonna be really tired tomorrow,” Juventas remarked with a small laugh of humorous defeat, her expression rather unchanged despite the dazzle of Meredith’s wings. “Aren’t we…?”

Meredith gave a nod, vaulting over the balcony’s rails and fluttering off.

We’re going to be a lot of things.

Merediths wings carried her as fast as she wanted right now. She needed to get to the school, and it wasn’t far at all by flight. She seemed frustrated, lips puffed in a pout that was full of irritated thought. She was definitely waiting.

Leisurely flying, there.

“You’ve allowed a ghul to survive, and you’ve given her a stone,” Meredith spoke, not hesitating to speak to that indescribable voice. He wings fluttered to keep her in the air, gaining altitude she’d lost in gliding. “You’re not planning something safe if that thing’s involved.”

I mean, I’ve tried a lot to kill her. She goes against the fates, so I decided I’d make use of her.

The girl grit her teeth, finding it disgusting for that God in her head to refer the jinni like she was some tool. Then again, she did it too. She wasn’t really getting anywhere with a head like that, but it wasn’t like Nine was about to change that.

She feels a ton of pain anyway, you know, seeing her race die out and managing to not die alongside them -- perfect candidate. Alone, hungry, scared. You should make friends with the ones you think are enemies.

“Why is that?” She scoffed.

She can kill you almost as quickly as I can. She’s just afraid to do it.

Meredith faltered in her flight, despising how every chat with Nine would morph into a threat or bad omen. She absolutely couldn’t call bullshit. She looked down at the aerial view of the academy, able to hear the nearby chatter of fae within the wooded area just behind the school. She could hear it just enough to know where to go, angling herself to descend comfortably into the trees. She landed slowly, her wings vanishing with an odd tinny ethereal chime. She glanced around, unsure of where exactly Vera would have put her things. She probably should have asked first. She didn’t have any silver, but beneath her school shirt was a charm she’d worn since the day she first learned of fae deterrents; fae were driven away by it, and it kept her safe from most of them in a veil. It did the trick, and most faeries would know to pick and choose their fights and live another day. And yet…

Shuffle. Rustle.

Someone still had the gall to come near. Meredith wasn’t about to play games, because she was kind of keen on getting some form of sleep tonight. It was probably already one in the morning -- she hadn’t cared to check. Her critical eyes narrowed, and her body became poised to attempt to handle any sort of jumping she could possibly experience in the next moment.

“Whatever you are, show yourself before I spear you,” Meredith announced, her voice unenthusiastic. There was a long pause, and it irritated her. Leaves didn’t just rustle in the veil. She left off a slow, growling sigh, clapping her hands together to cause her stone on her palm to quickly come alight with a deep blue energy. “Right then, so we’ve chosen pain?”

A nervous voice quickly sounded, a boy staggering from the bushes with hands out. “No -- nonono, no pain, no pain needed, human here, just --”

“You seen a discarded Julien’s female uniform set anywhere around here?” Meredith interrupted, waving her palm like she was shaking off water, the glow in her palm slowly dimming.

“Um. I think. Do you, um, perchance have a bandage --”

“No, dude, I just came here for the uniform my friend left here and whatever else she left behind,” she replied with abundant impatience. ‘Friend’ was testing it, but she wasn’t willing to explain everything to some boy in the woods. Besides, if he was in the veil, he’d clearly have some magic to help himself with. “Can’t you just heal yourself?”

The boy shook his head, features dimly lit by the moon through the trees. “No, I don’t, um,I don’t know magic.”

“The fuck kinda trick is this…?” She muttered, now fully concerned that a normal guy was in a veil. “Are you lost or something?”

“Um. A-a jinni attacked me after I saved her from a boggart and --”

Oho. Vera had some explaining to do. Jinni didn’t just attack people. It was definitely her. “I’ll heal you when you show me where the discarded clothes are. A lost guy like you’s surely seen them if you’ve been wandering.”

The guy was hesitant, but he agreed like a captive and murmured something akin to ‘follow me’ before waving her forth and moving off. He stayed along the edge of the veil, and it seemed like this veil wasn’t his first.

“You saved the jinni from a boggart.”

“Y-yes, well, I-- I was trying to, um, purge some… Bad fae.”

“So you like killing along a blurred line,” Meredith replied, not fond of this new bit of information.

“No, it’s just, I’m going to be attending Julien’s for the first time tomorrow and I couldn’t bare to think of being near any fae that could be dangerous…”

“They’re all dangerous, you idiot. How are you even killing these things?”

“... Um, oh -- h-here’s the bag I saw and the uniform, just over here,” he suddenly said, pointing and jogging a bit ahead of her. He knelt to the ground and began collecting the goods and gathering the clothes. “C-can you heal me now?”

“Shove it all in the bag, hand it to me, and come here.”

He obeyed quickly, clearly nervous from Meredith’s unwelcoming nature. He neared the young woman, held out the bag, and let off a small gulp of anxiety. Meredith took the bag, hefting it over her shoulder. She pulled a necklace out from her collar, drawing energy from its charm. Her hand glowed lightly. She drew it back and clapping it right over the boy’s cheek, the wound vanishing almost instantly. She didn’t have to do it like that. She just really wasn’t enjoying how shifty this guy was being, especially with his bambi ordeal, and she really wanted to slap him. The kid let off a small yelp, but calmed down when he realized she’d done the trick to heal him. “Scarring will still occur, so use like, that healing oil they sell at the store.” She turned away. “Seeya.”

“Y-you’re wearing a uniform too --” he called off, still bamboozled by the healing-slap he was just dealt, but apparently curious for connections.

“Sure am, bye now,” she called back, awfully exhausted. With the bag roughly in hand and buckled shut, she summoned those same wings from her stone and rose from the ground, leaving the veil with ease.

As she flew, she checked the bag for its contents. Vera’s uniform was absolutely filthy, and had small drops of blood on it around the collar of the dress shirt. What a champ. Buckling the bag shut back, she finally took the rest of the flight home to ponder what the hell was up with some bambi-acting guy in the fae territory. Vera also had some explaining… Meredith was really wondering if she’d want to really question the ghul though. She stifled a cranky yawn as Juventas’ house came into view. She landed on the balcony slowly, Juventas warily having left the sliding door unlocked. Vera had fallen asleep on Juventas’ lap on her bed looking much cleaner and comfortable in the oversized nightie, so there wouldn’t be any interrogations tonight. The bright-attitude girl straightened up as Meredith entered.

“They're filthy, so I hope you’ve got a washing machine,” Meredith said first, rather than a hello. Juventas carefully slipped out from beneath the jinni, gently taking the goods from Meredith and nodded. She mouthed a quiet thank you and nodded to a plush looking layout of cushiony blankets and pillows in the floor beside the bed, apparently set out for the new witch. “In the same room… as a ghul…?” She muttered with a small tinge of disgust.

“She’s full, remember?” Juventas replied softly.

Meredith guessed that was reasonable enough. She was too tired to really care right now. She let off a grumble and flopped onto the floor-bed. “We’ve got a new student, and Vera attacked him,” she informed Juventas through the muffle of the fluff the girl had set up for her. “I get my real class schedule tomorrow. If you need me I’ll give you a copy to tell you where to find me.”

“No phone?”

“Smashed it. Need a burner.”

“... Got it,” Juventas slowly replied, giving off a tired laugh. “Gonna wash these now. Wish me luck.”