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Doctor Nudd’s medical practice, which was almost entirely made up of beast-kin and unseelie Fae, often meant he kept odd hours, or had to cancel suddenly.
One day, a few weeks after they had all begun to practice together, Nudd called Liliana to let her know he could not make it to practice. Pete had already told her that he and Ben had a date, so he would not make it either.
Liliana called Siobhan. Instead of meeting in the woods as they usually did, she invited the fuchsia sprite to come to her house. They could practice in the garage, which the spider-kin had long before converted to something like a gym since she didn’t have a car. With gym mats on the floor and bars, ropes, and obstacles built into the open attic space above, it lent itself well to both swordplay and unarmed combat practice.
They started with swords. Without the two men, who were relative swordplay novices, the spider and the sprite honed each other’s skills to the next level. Siobhan wielded her long slim blade like an artist wielded a brush. It had been a long time since Liliana found someone to cross swords with who truly challenged her, and even had some interesting new tricks to teach her.
The spider found herself smiling and laughing out loud sometimes as they sparred. The sprite grinned back at her with a glint of mischief and battle joy. Liliana was more agile, and accustomed to the odd configuration of her two-story garage practice area, but not as skilled with a blade as her opponent.
Siobhan could fly when she needed to, giving her another edge that countered some of Liliana’s acrobatic abilities.
Liliana had forgotten how much fun combat practice could be with a well-matched partner.
After an hour or two of delightful fencing involving both of them dancing on beams and somersaulting through obstacles to put an Errol Flynn movie to shame, Liliana coached Siobhan painfully in unarmed combat for another hour. The sprite was not strong, but she was small, clever, and quick. Liliana did her best to focus on techniques that would lend themselves to such strengths. She wasn’t certain how much her training would truly help the small warrior. Siobhan was worlds more formidable with her weapons than she was without them, but Liliana had promised to teach her. Liliana kept her promises.
When they were both exhausted, Liliana invited the Fae into the personal part of her home with some trepidation. She did not know Siobhan as well as she knew Janice Willoughby, who was the only other person she had invited into her house for a social visit this century. But she did not think it would be proper to send the exhausted, sweaty sprite home without offering her a chance to rest first.
“I hope you do not mind tea with honey. I do not have any beer, like Dr. Nudd has.” Liliana handed the tired sprite a tall glass of iced sweet tea she’d made in the sun that afternoon.
“Cheers.” Siobhan flopped on Liliana’s second-hand, overstuffed couch and gulped down tea with enthusiasm. “You’re a woman after my own heart, spider girl.”
Liliana sipped gratefully at her glass of cold tea. It was exactly what her tired body needed. Her muscles had a pleasant, warm ache to them. A smile played around her lips. She couldn’t remember the last time she had enjoyed herself that much. “You should come and practice with me more often.”
Siobhan chuckled. “Maybe I should. You certainly keep me on my toes.” Her face clouded for a moment, losing its tired good cheer. “Hey, about sending Pete after you …”
The spider-kin nodded. “I considered killing you for that.”
“I’d have considered killing anyone who put a red wolf on my trail too.” Siobhan shrugged, clearly not concerned.
“I fit the description he gave you of the killer, and I am spider-kin. If you did not know the difference between a widow spider and a spider seer, then it made sense.” In her place, with the knowledge that Siobhan had, she might have given Pete the same advice.
Even exhausted, the sprite did not seem capable of sitting still for long. Siobhan’s nimble hands turned the now-empty tea glass round and round.
In the quiet of her home, along with the usual ticking of her clocks, Liliana noticed a tiny, soft whirring sound that she couldn’t place. She looked around her house curiously with her human eyes, seeking the odd whisper of sound. She considered opening more eyes, but her spider eyes made Siobhan uncomfortable, and she didn’t wish to disturb her guest.
“Your bot is banjaxed,” Siobhan commented. She gestured at the forlorn room-bot in the corner, one of its telescoping arms permanently bent at an angle it was never meant to reach.
Liliana missed the convenience of the little bot, but she never could have afforded it if it hadn’t been a gift. The price of repairing it was prohibitively high. Without it, her wood floors and the knickknacks on her shelves were often dusty, and she had to do her own dishes and laundry. “I used it to slow Pete down, so I could escape the day he came to kill me.”
“My fault then.” Siobhan dragged the bot over to the middle of Liliana’s bright, hand-woven living room rug. One of its wheels refused to turn, so the sprite tilted the bot onto its other two. She pressed a spot on her left arm and a panel opened in her pale, freckly skin.
Liliana blinked and opened her second eyes to look at the sprite’s arm while Siobhan’s attention was focused on the bot. The arm was colder than the rest of her from the shoulder down, and there were struts of some cold material extending into her body, as a replacement for her collarbone and shoulder blade. “Your arm is not flesh!” Her second eyes told her that the sprite’s left eye was also artificial.
So that was how she saw Liliana on the night they fought.
As Siobhan’s arm moved, the servos inside made the faint whirring sound that Liliana noticed earlier.
Siobhan grinned, held up a tiny Phillips-head screwdriver, and showed the hollow storage space built into her forearm. “Tools wherever I go without lugging a toolbox.”
That must be where the sprite kept that little two-shot pistol she always seemed to have, hidden somewhere in her artificial arm like the tools.
Siobhan used the tiny screwdriver to open an access panel on the bot. As she touched circuitry, the broken arm flopped. “Hmm.”
Liliana remembered her vision with Andrew Periclum talking about the challenges of cybernetics on a flower sprite. He must have figured out a way. “How is that possible? You change size when you shift form.”
The sprite shifted quickly to her smaller, demi-plant form. Her body lost two feet of height and most of its mass. Brilliant violet and fuchsia dragonfly style wings sprouted wide to nearly brush the walls of the small living room. Her arm telescoped down smaller, in a manner not unlike the bot’s arms.
“Doctor Periclum said that making the eye adjust size and color was a lot harder, even though my eyes don’t change size as much as my arm.”
