I’d once asked Ida if the mushrooms growing along the bases of the trees were edible, but she didn’t know. I could vividly remember the look of horror on her face when I mentioned I’d walked through those trees. Turns out the fear of the grove creatures was deeply ingrained in the local culture, and I’d violated a long-held superstition by bringing it up—much less walking through one. Of course, the taboo only made me more curious about the alluring turquoise glow and what lived within it.
“What’s with all the demons around here?” I asked casually, the topic on my mind.
I didn’t think Theo would bat an eye at the conversation since he wasn’t from around here, although I’d avoid specifying the night creatures to be safe.
“Demons?”
“The dead things that live in the forest. Are they demons? Ghosts? Some kind of fucked up forest fairies?”
“They’re simply wild beasts. Nothing supernatural or inherently evil to my knowledge.”
A hyena-like cackle in the distance disagreed on cue.
“How do people explain the weird clouds floating around their skeleton? Or the life sucking thing? It kind offeels like it has to bemaaaagic,” I sang contemplatively.
He hummed, the corner of his mouth pulling into a soft, amused smile. “Can you explain how your heart beats?”
“I think it’s… muscle?”
“And what causes your muscle to contract?”
“I—I don’t know. But someone else definitely knows,” I stumbled over my words, a little surprised to realize I didn’t know that answer. “I dropped out of high school to work, Theo. That’s not a fair question.”
“What do you think people believed about the heart before they figured it out? That the soul was magic and made it pump?”
“Point received,” I chuckled.Somebodyapparently isn’t into conspiracy theories.
“Don’t get me wrong,obviouslymagic exists. Shit, I’m walking through the woods with a literal goddess… But I’m not sure these beasts are ‘magic’ as much as they are something we can’t explain yet. They can be killed like any other living thing. Even Silvates, popular ‘dead’—” he used all four hands to make air quotes, “—pets originally from the south are alive in their own ways. It’s just different.”
“Is it a southern thing? The death and bones and stuff?” I waved my hand through the air, gesturing at nothing in particular.
“Pretty much, yes. The southern tip of the Western Continent is mostly in that category.”
“What’s the rest of the continent like?”
He snorted out a laugh. “Fleshier.”
An unexpected cackle escaped me. “Nice.”
“Sorry I can’t say more about it. I don’t have much education in biology. It’s not my specialty.”
“Did you go to college?”
He hummed. “Gonna need a definition for that one, darling.”
“Oh, sorry. Complicated school for adults.”
He nearly choked on his laugh. “I guess that’s one way to put what I did.”
“What’s funny?”
He coughed a couple of times as if to clear the amusement from his voice. “It’s hard to explain. I did receive a certain education for my last job, and that’s a funny way to look at it.” He paused before adding, “I really don’t want to go into it.”
“Damn, I wanted to be in on the joke,” I teased.
“It’s a bit of a dark one.”
“A dark joke, at that? Now I’m even more bummed.” I elbowed him playfully. “You’ll have to fill me in whenever you decide to stop being allmysterious.”
