Growing Lilies

That night, Lily slept on the boat. It was all she could do after the spell to find her way up and out of the pit she’d made. Why was it always a pit?

Her and Star had practically limped their way onto the little boat, and collapsed. They spent the rest of the night watching cooking shows, without so much as saying a lot to one another. There was nothing to say. Lily had failed. But, they were still here. Still alive. They had each other. That’s all that mattered. They were hurt, but neither of them was harmed seriously. If anything, they were lucky for that.

By the time they were laying down to sleep, Lily was feeling a little more human again. Although in the morning she would have a lot to sort out. As they laid together in bed, Lily thought out loud.

“I just don’t know what I did wrong. I keep going over and over it in my mind, but I can’t see where I failed.”

Star leaned more of his weight against her. It was comforting. She hugged him a little tighter.

“Maybe you didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe the spell was to blame.”

“Hmm. What do you mean?”

“Maybe the spell was wrong. Not you.”

“Is that possible?”

Star yawned and stretched. Lily always liked watching that from this angle, hugging him from behind. His dog toes looked so silly all splayed out like that. Not that she’d ever say so. He was a dignified boy, and might be affronted. 

“Why not?”

“Well I. Hmm. I just thought Entity B doesn’t make mistakes like that. I guess I’ve been thinking of them as something more than a person, you know?”

“It might not have been a mistake.”

“Why would they give me a broken spell on purpose?”

“I don’t know. Why do they do anything?”

“Huh. I guess… I don’t know.”

“Maybe they wanted to destroy your house. Maybe they wanted you to complete it. Maybe it did something but we don’t understand. You are too quick to blame yourself, Lady Flamewalker.”

“Am not!”

Now Lily was being a little petulant, but it was playful and Star knew it. His tail started wagging. The sound of it thumping against whatever was nearby was always a comforting sound for her.

Lily laid there hugging him until she was on the edge of sleep. She thought he had already passed out, his body was so dead weight in her arms and his breathing had slowed.

“Thanks for not being mad about our home, and always being there for me.”

She closed her eyes and nuzzled into his neck a little.

“We are partners. I exist for it.”

She startled, then smiled and let herself drift off.

---

 

In the morning, after a quick and unsatisfying canned meal breakfast, Lily and Star found their way back to the ruins of their home. It looked just as bad as she remembered. She wished she could figure out that repair spell. Then she could just set it up and wait. Maybe she could find a way to move it over here? Would it even repair the parts of the house that had been eaten in the spell? So many questions. She was loathe to do any magical experimentation though. Before the basement, she had told herself she was going to be safer about this from now on and she meant it.

There was a more pressing issue though. Repairing the damage aside…

“There’s a lot of really valuable stuff in this hole. The solar panels, the chaos emeralds, and I think I lost my phone down there. I can’t find the damn thing.”

Star was sniffing around the edges, but he perked up at the sound of Lily’s voice.

“Can you float the big pieces out, and then we can climb in?”

“Mmm. Not easily. It’s dangerous work when you don’t know where they’ll land. I could use the same general spell formation I use for your ball, but I’ll have to power it in bursts to move it at all because of how heavy the big pieces are likely to be. I can probably move them. But it’s going to be tiring as hell and probably take a few attempts each.”

Star’s tail wagged when she mentioned his ball. She loved those small parts of him that were still very much dog. It was totally at odds with how he was to talk to, and the contrast was very charming.

“We are not doing anything else today, are we Master?”

“Noooo. But. But. It’s so much work!”

“I will be here to keep you company.”

“Fiiine. But I’m setting up something for us to watch while I do. It’s gonna take forever to draw all these stupid circles on all these stupid pieces of rubble.”

“Oh, Master! Can we watch–”

“Nooo. Not Balto again. There are other good movies! I need something that’ll distract me from my tedious work.”

Star whined, and his tail drooped.

“Yes Master. What then?”

“How about this. I’ll let you pick the genre, and I’ll pick the movie. Then we’ll switch.”

“What is genre?”

Lily facepalmed. She always forgot that things with no real connection in Star’s mind often didn’t translate. Once he understood a concept he could get it though.

“Um. It’s like. So, Balto is like, action and adventure. There’s other films that are more focused on one of those two things, that one is kind of a mix of the two. Comedies are funny. The cooking shows are usually Reality. They’re like, categories that help you find things that are like other things, see? So let me make it simple. Do you wanna watch something with Action? Or something Funny? Or something Calm?”

Star thought for a moment.

“Action! I want action.”

Lily grinned. She had the dumbest idea for this one.

Half an hour of setting up a laptop and bringing the TV from aboard her ship outside later, Lily had a movie up and running. She had had to use her power spell again, though she was getting more used to dialing that in so devices would work properly. She had just copied what she had done at the movie theater again. Although, she really needed to sit down and figure out the standard for household power cables. As it is, it was just surreal to see the power cords laid out on the grass and somehow still getting electricity. She had cautioned Star not to touch them, although she wasn’t actually sure what would happen. Better not to find out.

Now Star was sitting in front of the TV, watching John Wick. Lily had warned him about the dog in the beginning of the movie, but she thought he would like it and she was curious whether he would like something so action focused rather than the adventure with Balto.

She had forgotten just how violent the movie was, but that was probably fine. Probably.

In the meantime, Lily was drawing spell circles. It was just the same multi-circle formation she had used on Star’s ball. But she couldn’t safely climb down into the pit to do it. Instead, she was standing in her charging spell and drawing them out with her own mana. It was tiring. But, the more she did stuff like this the easier it got. It was kinda cool. She felt like she was grinding mana increases in a video game. Just… with physical exertion. How come exercise never felt good like this in the past?

“Eh, magic makes everything cooler I guess.”

Plus, while it definitely did tire out her physical body to cast spells, it also definitely felt like mental exertion which had always been more of her thing. She wondered to herself if having a high sugar intake would be good for mages because your brain used so much of the stuff.

In either case, casting spells felt kind of refreshing today. It was just the same safe spell over and over, and she felt like she was doing something good. She wanted to dig out the chaos emeralds because they were very useful tools. But she also had left her backpack down there. So, Bay was still in the hole too. She hoped he wasn’t too banged up. But if he was, she would take him to the old apartment and try the repair spell.

She still couldn’t figure out what was up with that thing. If it wasn’t a glyph, what was it? She was sure she’d encounter something else like it if she just looked long enough, and she could study that. At least, she hoped so.

A huge chunk of roofing floated out of the pit, and she activated the circle on the side to send it hurtling to the side. She was good enough with her ball trick to choose the direction well enough. But she had no real way of stopping it. She grimaced as it hit a tree and knocked it down. An earsplitting crack echoed through the neighborhood as the tree fell. Star turned and gave her a stare that clearly said ‘can’t you keep it down? The movie is going!’

“Uh, whoops!”

---

 

A few hours later, with some pauses to rest and talk out what to move and in what order, the movie was over. The biggest pieces had been removed. Lily could see a few of the chaos emeralds, and thankfully the end of her backpack sticking out from a piece of rubble. She suspected Bay was a bit squashed but otherwise fine from the angle. 

“Did you like the movie? I was worried because of the beginning.”

“Yes. It was good. He was an amazing fighter.”

“Hah, I’m glad. Well don’t worry, if anything ever happened to you I’d go all John Wick on the world too!”

“Master?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You are the dog. I am John Wick.”

Lily couldn’t help but laugh. Even now, digging the remains of her life out of a hole, Star could make her laugh. She couldn’t believe she had ever thought about not keeping him. That felt so foolish and shortsighted now. Although, if he had been crushed in this spell or something, she would be… Best not to think about that.

“Hey Star?”

“Yes Master?”

“I want to get better at magic. But I want to be safer about it from now on. I’ve thought about safety spells, but I’ve always put it off. That’ll be the next thing I start testing. Hopefully it’ll be the last mysterious thing I test without safety precautions. I’m sorry for the times I’ve put you in danger.”

Star approached and licked her hand, tail wagging.

“Are you doing that negative thing about yourself again?”

“No! I mean. Okay. Maybe a little. But I really do feel like I’ve learned and am gonna try to get better. It’s a statement of intent, not just an apology!”

“Hmm. Very well.”

“Now how are we gonna get stuff out of this hole? I was thinking about floating it out, but…”

“But it is all valuable and fragile?”

“Yeah… Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna slide down in there, and you’re going to stay up here and watch. Let me know if something is shifting precariously, or I might not see something important. And if I need help, uh… help. Okay?”

“No.”

Lily frowned.

“Whattya mean no?”

“I will go into the hole. You will direct me.”

“Oh, are you the boss now, mister?”

Lily shot back playfully. Although, she really didn’t want to send Star in there. It wasn’t likely to be too dangerous, but…

Star let out a playful bark and smiled the way dogs do.

“I am smaller and lighter. Less likely to shift things around. And if I am in trouble you can cast spells from up here. If you were in trouble, I would have to watch you get crushed. And one more thing.”

Lily sighed, but he was right.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“If anything happened to you, I would have to go all ‘John Wick’ on the world.”

Lily laughed, and she could feel Star’s happiness as well.