Page 8 of Dry as a Fish (Chaos God Sugar and Spice Companion Shorts #3)

Chapter

Six

SLOANE

T his was a mistake.

The gravel from the driveway pressed through the thin soles of the lightweight dancing shoes I'd borrowed from my roommate to wear to the party.

The sirens didn't wear shoes, so there wasn't anything to replace them.

With some help from Orcalia and Delphon, we had managed to rig up several sarongs to cover me enough that the modesty of my outfit wouldn't be in question.

We also covered up Delphon enough that his strange-looking skin was obscured by the fabric to some extent.

I stared at the prefabricated double-wide home my parents had plopped down on the land they had gotten when I was young, my eyes gazing over the pale gray siding and the paint peeling on the uneven porch my dad had built out front.

The wood was already starting to rot. He had gotten a deal on it and only later realized that he should have done something to treat the wood to make it resistant to the cold, wet winters.

I rubbed my hand against the familiar ache in my chest, the feeling I never really understood when I thought about home.

It felt like I was missing something, like there was something I'd lost that should be there but wasn't. That strange ache never made sense to me, as why would I miss my own home when I was standing in front of it?

I thought about how Delphon's sister was so happy. She was a bubbly bundle of energy, of happiness that exploded out of having the same and the freedom to be her over-the-top excited self. No one compressed her or tried to fit her into a mold, at least not that I could see.

This was a mistake, because what I was about to put Delphon through was downright cruel.

I heard the hum of the portal closing behind me, and I glanced back over my shoulder to see Delphon using a knife to carve runes into the two trees he'd used to anchor the portal on this side.

"Hey!" I said. "You're hurting the trees!"

He paused, halfway through carving a rune. "Trees don't feel pain?"

"They can get infections and things like that if you cut into them like that," I said. "It's not about pain, it's about bacteria and fungi."

"I can heal them afterwards," he said. "So they are protected. I just wanted to get the return portal set up in advance so it is easy for me to go back and forth."

I let out a sigh.

"Is that unacceptable to you?" he asked, still not moving his knife .

"No, it isn't that, healing them is fine," I said. "I just... it doesn't matter."

"Your feelings matter," he said. "Tell me."

Those words surprised me in the fact that I wasn't sure I'd ever heard them before.

"I was just wishing that I knew how to heal trees," I said.

Not just trees. I liked trees because there weren't enough of them, and they were the absolute best way to get clean air, but when it came to healing, that would just be useful.

Being able to heal a horse suffering from colic or a calf that was struggling to thrive with a spell would have saved me a lot of anguish in my life.

The fact that the school made it pretty clear early on that we were there to be glorified batteries and a service workforce made everything so much worse.

"Want to learn?" Delphon said with a grin. "Come over here."

I stepped off the gravel driveway and walked back over the mowed grass that separated the driveway from the line of trees running up its half-mile length.

The edge of the electric fence was just past them, the metal stakes that had the flimsy-looking fencing tied to them, the grass growing up around it on the edges.

My parents had managed to get enough land that we could rotate the cows through it, pasture raising them for the most part.

Though a few years ago, my dad got tired of moving them around and just mowed the grass and fed it to them while keeping them standing in a small pen around the barn.

Still called them grassfed even though they stood in mud.

The fence was still there, unpowered, sitting unmoved from where we last put it before my dad decided we were done shuffling the cows around.

"This rune I'm carving is the same one you would use in a healing spell," he said.

"It takes some practice to get the circle right, so you'll want to practice for a while with a string to make sure you're getting the curves.

" He drew a circle, then another, intersecting them just a little bit into each other so that they overlapped, creating a petal on the edges.

He did it over and over again, until the circle was surrounded.

"Why is it used in both spells?" I asked.

"This shape is a way to anchor Chaos magic to structure," he said.

"If you learn Order magic, they use runes that have specific meanings that form sentences for the magic to follow, like a formula.

For Chaos magic, you just have to set the intention and draw what you will.

Each spell can be unique, but this particular shape helps anchor that uniqueness into the geometric mathematical principles that shape all magic. "

"Math?" I asked. "What does math have to do with magic?"

"Science and math are just ways of explaining the magic of reality in a different language," Delphon said as he returned to carving runes down the sides of the two trees.

"I've seen it described in mundane media, so I know you guys know about it in some sense.

For example, you have these gatherings where everyone goes once a week and focuses on their love for a deity.

You're all told to think about that love and focus on it all the time, you're told to send it out to that deity. You know what that is like?"

It dawned on me what he was talking about. "It's like in my cultivation class where Reileen was teaching us to send out our energy and she just kind of sucked it up."

"Yes, she fed on you," Delphon said. "Some mundanes are already primed to be drained easily. You're already taught some of the basics of being fed upon in your religions."

"You're saying love is magic?" I asked.

"Attention and intention," Delphon said as he finished carving.

"They form the basics of all magic. You sent your intention, and you directed your attention to fulfill it.

Now, you shouldn't try to power this rune as the magic in the mundane is weak right now, but let me show you how I cast my healing spell. I use song."

He closed his eyes and put one hand over his heart.

"I quiet my thoughts and I focus on the feeling of love, of health, of wholeness," he said. "I focus on it, breathing into it, until it is the only thing I can feel. Then I send it out."

He took several deep breaths, and I stood there, watching him.

He opened his mouth and began to sing.

There were no words to express the sound that came out of his mouth, or the way it made me feel when I listened to him.

It was unearthly, the sound of angels singing in the background of my heart, the place where all aches faded, and the body was filled with a joyous light.

It was the sound of tears pricking at the eyes from the surge of sudden joy, the sound of flowers reaching up to the sun and crying out their thanks, the sound of fresh berries being stuffed into the mouths of chittering birds.

When he finished, the runes he had carved into the tree had fresh bark in their place, a different hue that still held the shape of the spell, without the damage.

Delphon crouched down and plucked a yellow dandelion from the lush sprout of life that surrounded the base of the trees, life that had been shorn short just moments ago by the regular passing of a lawnmower.

He held out the flower to me.

I took it from him, staring at the soft, resilient petals.

"You can really sing," I said, my own voice softened with the edges of my emotions .

"One day, when you're ready, I would like to sing for you," he said.

"What will you sing?" I asked.

"Our heartsong," he replied.

"What on God's green earth are you wearing?

" a loud voice shouted out from the porch, shocking me out of the moment.

I didn't need to look to know that my younger brother Noah was standing there, seventeen years old and wearing the same dirty jeans he liked to put on every day to do the yardwork.

"MOM!" he yelled back into the house. "Sloane's back and she's joined a cult! "

"I haven't joined a cult!" I shouted back at him.

My mom emerged from the house wearing a polka-dotted dress, her hair freshly curled, and her makeup absolutely perfect. She was holding her selfie stick in one hand, the camera up and lifted.

"Stay right there!" she said. "Let me get the shot of you walking up to the house!"

"MOM!" I yelled back, sounding just like my brother. "Delphon doesn't consent to be filmed! Don't film us!"

"If he doesn't want to be filmed, why does he have makeup on?" she called out.

"He was born like that, Mom!" I shouted. "Stop it!"

"I'll fuzz out his face in post!" she cried out.

Then she tapped her phone. "I can't believe it!

" she wailed, holding up the camera. "The prodigal daughter has returned!

Sloane ran away months ago, and she's returned wearing.

.. what are you wearing? Have you joined a cult?

Oh my galoshes, my daughter was stolen away by some cult!

Thank the Lord she is safe and back with us! "

"MOM!" Noah said, reaching out to tug on her selfie stick. "Sloane doesn't want to be filmed. "

"You're ruining the shot!" My mom glared at him, pulling it back. "It's fine, I can use it for B-roll. Ok, let's get the two of you walking up to the house."

"I'm leaving if you don't put that down and talk to me!" I said. I hesitated. "We can film it later. Let's talk first."

My mom let out a huge, overexaggerated sigh and tapped on the phone before letting it drop down to her side. "It's so much better to get this raw and live than to act it out later. Noah, you'd better go get your father. The two of you better come inside."

Noah jumped down off the porch and headed out towards the barn.

She crossed her arms and stared down at us as I trudged up to the front porch, Delphon beside me. "You need to go change."

"They're sarongs," I said.

"I don't care what which way those are," she said. "You better go put on some real clothes before your father sees you in that getup. Now, who is this... I'm sorry, young man, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone who quite looked like you. Are you wearing body paint?"

"Mom, haven't you ever seen vitiligo before? It isn't contagious," I said.

She looked at me and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "Vitiligo?"

"I was born this way," Delphon said.

I could just send him away now and save him from this.

I could do this on my own and pacify them enough.

My mom would be happy if she could get some high views on her videos out of the incident, and as much as her subscribers liked her sourdough and calf birthing videos, they would love the drama that would come of a prodigal daughter story and she would drag every second of video she could out of my earning my families love and forgiveness.

The only thing Delphion could do was take some of the weight of it all off of me, and the cult angle was actually a good way to go.

Plus, Delphon kissed me without even the slightest bit of my consent, so now he needed to help me deal with my dad.

"Mom, Delphon rescued me from the cult and brought me back to you," I said. "He came to ask Dad something."

"Praise his name," my mother said, throwing one hand over her chest. "I never thought this day would come! You're back safe and sound, and of course, you are welcome, come on in, young man. You come with me while this foolish girl goes and gets herself into some proper clothes."

She ushered us into the house, and I peeled off to head into my old bedroom.

It was a small room, a tight room, and it had a twin-sized bed shoved into it that took up half the space.

The other half was a dresser, which I got to keep my things in the drawers, though I had to keep the top clear for laundry, because the rest of the space was taken up by the vertical washer and dryer.

When my third brother was born, I was told they needed the space, and so, being the eldest and only daughter, I got the laundry room.

I changed quickly, pulling on the long-sleeved shirt and leggings that went under my pastel colored dress.

When I came out, my mom was in the kitchen with all five of my brothers.

"Slooooooane!" my youngest brother cried out. He ran out, threw his arms around me, hugging me tightly as the side of his face pressed into my belly.

That only lasted a moment before my mom grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him away from me. "That's enough of that. Leave room for Jesus."

My stomach turned the way it always did when she said something like that, subtly scolding me for being affectionate with my younger siblings, most of whom I'd been taking care of the moment my mother decided I was able to hold them without risk of dropping them.

"Where is Delphon?" I asked, my heart rate jumping up as I already knew the answer to the question.

"He's talking to your Dad," she said.