Page 13 of Icy Heart, Empty Chest

I rolled my eyes. “Head out of the gutter. I mean, we’re told the heart is roughly as big as your fist, right? But, it’s still an organ. It needs a case, something to protect it. Something sturdy. I can’t believe I forgot about those till now.”

He looked disgruntled, shooting me a cranky look.

“Damien what do you want me to say? That it could be anywhere? I’m working on my knowledge of fae behavior and this industry.” I shrugged.

He shot me another look.

“Your face will stick that way,” I said, sipping my now lukewarm coffee.

“I don’t like this, Cor. Too many uncertainties.”

I put the mug down, resting my head in my hands. I was getting tired of the back and forth.

“How is this any different from your job? No certainties there either.” I argued.

“Have you ever been told that you’re absolutely maddening?” He squinted at me, annoyed.

“At least once a week, twice on weekends.”

“Did you also consider it may break a few legal, moral, ethical boundaries of mine to break into someone else’s house?”

I sent him the stoniest glare I could muster and followed it up with a glacial tone. “You took out your heart. I may have done follow up damage but you were the catalyst here, not me.”

He opened his mouth briefly but closed it and let out a deep breath. I think he knew it wasn’t worth it starting a fight with me right now. Not over this.

“Are you ever going to tell me why?” I folded my hands in front of me.

He put his hand over his scar site. “Not yet, but yes.”

I nodded. “Fair. I can’t ask you to be forthcoming with me if I can’t do the same. Even if I’m dying to know.” Occasionally, I am able to be an adult.

He raised an eyebrow. “You always were a curious little nymph.”

I snorted. “I’m surprised I wasn’t kicked out of more places.”

“You certainly had your interests. I remember that day when you grilled that curator for close to forty-five minutes on his own specialty and he was very confused that a ten-year-old had as much knowledge as a PhD.”

“They used to call me precocious.” I waved my spoon in his general direction.

He snorted. “Because all the other adjectives wouldn’t sum up how scary smart you were at that age.”

I smiled. Despite my mother’s death and my father’s depression, my childhood had been full of libraries, books on end, reading till I got yelled at to go to bed (repeatedly), science experiments, exploration of the universe around me.

Collecting knowledge was like breathing for me.

My father was my ringleader as much as he could be, setting up obstacle courses in the backyard, looking at flora and fauna in the parks, leaf and flower identification.

He reasoned that I’d never be bored when learning, and he wasn’t wrong.

I remembered pulling Damien into everything that I did from as early as I knew him.

We got into every natural science there was, pulling up rocks, observing animal behavior, planting gardens and vegetables and waiting for them to grow, looking through the telescope on the balcony for constellations.

“We did everything in my neighborhood, didn’t we?” The memory felt nourishing.

Damien nodded and returned the smile. “Up and around every tree, coated in sidewalk chalk and mud, showered in leaves, collecting bouquets of weeds.”

“You had a gift for that.”

“Should being a cop go up in flames, I’ll look into being a florist,” he proclaimed decidedly.

“That’d work, the dandelions were lovely,” I remembered fondly. I’d even put them in a vase at home with a grin from my father.

“Gods I missed you.” The sudden statement came with a note of bitterness.

I stared at him frankly. “I missed you so much too.”

I took his hand, laced my fingers in and squeezed it, and with that squeeze came a hard ball in my chest. This wasn’t the same old Dae I’d known.

He was smarter, more evolved. It was odd.

A week or two ago I would have considered him public enemy number one but this Damien, the one sitting in my kitchen, had aged.

He was a man now but he was still reaching back for me, like he had done as a kid.

When we were younger, I don’t think I considered that he might have been going through some shit, just as I was. I should have. At least age lends perspective. Same stubborn horsey though. He was never the first to let go.

We were ten. I had dragged Damien to the museum over the summer to see my father at his work. I knew he’d take off his apron and give both of us a squeeze, delighted that my friend liked his work. My father loved Damien.

“Oh, Cora, good timing. I’d like you to meet Dr Francis Bedwin. He’s a visiting scholar from a few cities over. He wanted to see our collection!” My father was beaming. His colleague was obviously a bit confused at the extended introduction to a few ten-year-olds.

Glancing down at his watch, my father looked up in surprise. “Cora, could you entertain him for a bit? I have to grab the curator for a moment.”

“Shall I go with you?” asked his guest.

“No, it’ll only be a moment,” my father replied and disappeared.

The good doctor looked at us awkwardly, not knowing how to talk to kids.

“What’s your specialty, Dr?”

He looked a little startled that I was addressing him.

“Oh, um. My thesis was relics post Golden Age. But you probably don’t want to hear about something like that.”

I shook my head. “I’d like to hear more. You’d be focusing on the time period after my father, right?’

He nodded. “Why yes.”

“What did you think about the use of the darker colors, the blues and greens, the greys in the immediate years after?”

His eyes bugged and jumped to Damien who, after all, was also only ten.

“Well, um…the Golden Age of the Fae was obviously a period of productivity. Afterwards they started to use those darker tones to show an uncertainty in the future. While the world had great periods of growth, it also had a lot of the unknown.”

I nodded.

“What’s your opinion on Mather’s pixie paintings?”

He snorted. “A bit derivative, don’t you think?” He hastily looked back at me. “I mean, not if you like them.”

Damien just stood next to me while I asked him everything I could think of. I could see my father behind him, smirking.