Page 16 of Inkpot Gods

BOOK IILead

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

I am the candle in your kitchen

I am the rain upon your face

I am the very best of reasons

For any man to fall from grace.

—Talis Kimberley, “The Finding of the Feather”

Cleansing

TIMELINE: AUGUST 21, 2018.

The air tastes like fall and the future, a glorious blend of possibility, promise, and—Lilianne pauses in her giddy inhale to cough into her hand, shifting her books to her other arm to avoid dropping them—leaf mold. Definitely leaf mold. Attending school on a campus with multiple creeks running through it and plenty of overhanging trees was not going to be kind on her allergies. She coughs again, then digs her inhaler out of her pocket and takes a throat-clearing puff, letting the vapor sting her sinuses before she tucks it away again and continues on her way.

She’s not the only new graduate student being welcomed by the mold off of Strawberry Creek: she sees at least two others taking hits off their own inhalers, their motions very different from the furtive care taken by the people who think they can stealth-vape after an hour spent without their drugs of choice. She’s not going to tell on them, but she still takes note of their faces. These are the people she’ll need to avoid in the future, lest their addictions become her asthma’s problem.

It’s not that she has an issue with smoking, per se. Back home in Alabama, more than half the kids she’d known through the school GSA had been smokers, and having too much of a problem with it would have cut her out of her only available social circle. Better to clutch her inhaler a little closer and have people she could talk to who would understand at least a little of what she was going through. Better not to burn any bridges she might need later.

She hugs her books a little closer, the shade of the overhanging trees suddenly much colder than it was only a moment before. She’s not that person anymore. She never has to be that person again. She’s a graduate student now, and she’s going to publish her thesis relating to her official major—American history—while she focuses properly on her true major, and she’s going to transform herself in every way that matters.

Squaring her shoulders, she walks briskly onward, shaking off the chill.

She’s so focused on walking briskly onward, on projecting the idea that she’s utterly untouchable and not at all disoriented by her new surroundings, that she doesn’t pay proper attention to those same surroundings. In a moment straight out of a college movie, she walks straight into an attractive-looking Indian woman roughly her own age but—and this is important to the physics of the moment—easily eight inches shorter, sending the stranger sprawling.

The woman hits the brick surface of the quad with a bone-rattling thump, her own books spraying in all directions. Lilianne gapes at her, momentarily unable to process what’s just happened. Part of her brain is reminding her that she was hoping to run into a pretty girl at school, another part is howling that knocking people over is not the best method of making friends, and a third is advocating loudly for sinking into the pavement, never to be seen again.

She decides—as much as she’s currently capable of deciding anything—to split the difference, and begins rapidly apologizing. “I am so sorry! I was about a million miles away, and I guess I just didn’t see you there—I mean, obviously I didn’t see you there, I don’t go around running into people on purpose—but I’m so sorry and are you all right?”

By the time she stops babbling out her half-coherent apology, the woman looks more amused than irritated. She still doesn’t move, resting her weight on the heels of her hands and just watching Lilianne, like she’s waiting for her to finish.

When she does, she lifts one hand, holding it up like an invitation to offer aid, and says, “You must be new around here. There’s always traffic on this part of the quad, even in the middle of the night. We have a terrible infestation of LARPers. They like to play vampires between the hours of ten and four. Can I get a hand?”

“Oh. Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry.” Lilianne scrambles to get her books firmly under one arm while she extends her offside hand to take the woman’s own.

Tugging the stranger to her feet takes what feels like no effort at all. Cheeks burning bright and hot enough to be actively uncomfortable, she lets the other woman go, taking half a step back at the same time. She’s tall enough that it can be upsetting, sometimes. She’s been told that she looms. Looming isn’t a great way to make friends, especially not with perfectly put-together women whose eyeliner looks like it could be used to stab God. She’s not sure the stranger is wearing any mascara; her eyelashes look like they may just be like that, thick and lush and charcoal-dark.

Some people get all the genetic luck. Lilianne realizes that she may not be looming, but she’s definitely staring. She forces her eyes away, the burning sensation in her cheeks getting even stronger as her ears join in the fun. She must be red as a fire truck by this point, so red she’s visible from space.

“I think your face is about to catch fire,” says the stranger, as she bends to start collecting her own books from where they’ve fallen, scattered all around her in a surprisingly elegant arc. Which only makes sense, really. Lilianne can’t imagine this woman ever doing anything inelegant.

“I’m so sorry,” she manages to say without stammering, and that shouldn’t feel like such a major accomplishment, but right now, it’s what she has, and she’ll take it. “Can I make it up to you somehow?”

“Smooth,” says the stranger, flashing her a smile like a searchlight. It’s almost too bright to look at directly, and somehow, it takes some of the sting out of Lilianne’s cheeks and ears, dulling the burn to an almost-tolerable level. “Is this always how you meet girls?”

No chance of answering that one without stammering. “I—ah— I mean— I didn’t—”