I sat in my chair by the window, the oh the leg I’d had to repd the back that I tied an old cushion to. It was falling apart but every time I fixed something it felt more like mine and less like trash that I dug up. That was what most of my things were after all, trash I dug up from the dump. ____ and I worked hard to make sure anything we had in our little apartment above the fe at least felt like us. It mostly worked.

  She pulled her own chair over, simirly trashed and repaired as mine, and sat. She leaned against me and I fought to make my heart stop rag. “Thank you.” she said, taking my hand in hers.

  I shrugged, gng down as I wove my fihrough her own. Her skin was always so soft, ever siarting to work with the scribe at town hall instead of hunting scraps with me. Letting Lord ____ use my body was disgusting, but he did give me favors for it. Favors like getting her a job that fit her brilliant and ind. She wasn’t sure how I’d do at first but a few weeks in she seemed to have figured it out.

  “You don’t have to go that far for me.” Her other haly turned my head to look at her. Dark eyes peered into my own and a smile rested on her face.

  I always loved looking at her, she was the most beautiful being in all the world to me. Others took loo adjust to her, if they ever did at all. Her skin was so dark it was nearly bck, her dark hair in curls so tight that even she had difficulty taming it, she didn’t look like other people. Even finding out her parents had been from Orunta, where everyone looked like her, only made people accuse her of being a Hegemony spy.

  Truthfully, we didn’t know why her parents had e so far from their home. They died to a flu only some weeks after arriving in town and trying to make a life for themselves there. No real friends yet, no tacts anyone knew of, so she was a Dawnlight infant like me. Raised knowing only the temple orphanage priests as caretakers.

  “Lietri. I mean it.” She said after I was silent for a time. “I appreciate it but-”

  “You’re the smart one, you deserve to use that big brain of yours.” I cut her off. “Besides, I help you out and once you have some pull you help me out iurn. That’s how it works, yeah?” I smiled.

  “Yeah, you aogether forever.” She kissed my cheek. Chaste. Friendly. I hated it as much as I loved it. I knew she did too. “I have to get ready for work, taxes from the outlying properties are finally ing through and there is way more work than usual.”

  She ed up, dressed, and headed out. I took a breath, knowing that I didn’t care if she was able to help me. As long as she got the life she deserved it would be worth it. I could survive, she o LIVE. I wouldn’t accept anything less.

  Looking in the window at myself, I could feel my heart tearing in two both in my ow and the memory me’s. I could remember what she looked like now. But somehow that made the pain worse.

  Wait, no, that wasn’t why I was hurting so much. Something else had- CARMILLA!

  “No! Noooo! Carmil!” I screamed, knowing I was dreaming, knowing she probably couldn’t have heard me here even if the tract hadn’t-

  “Calm yourself my Saint.” the voice spoke from behind me and I turo see my night sky goddess. She looked, pained?

  “What happened!? Where is she!?”

  “Sleeping. She fought against beied from your anima so hard it was going to hurt or even kill one or both of you. I had to make her dream to keep you safe.”

  “Safe!? I need her! Give her back!” I screamed at her, anger and pain and loss tearing holes in my mind.

  But then fear overwrote those feelings as she became a mountain t over me. Her skin burned with falling stars and her hair raged with a terrible storm. She stared down at me with eyes that promised destru. “I have beeremely tolerant with you thus far. You have deserved it with what has been doo you, I will never deny this. But you will speak to yod with some level of respect. You will not make demands of me. Do you uand, my Saint?” her voice was raw divine anger and rolled over me like thunder and I felt my soul tremble in respoo her power.

  I nodded slowly “P-please, please give her back.” I bowed to her, kneeling doressing my face to the floor in submission “I will do anything you ask of me to the best of my ability, please.” tears fell from me and my face grew unfortably wet, but I didn’t dare do anything but bow and beg.

  Her voice returo normal, a small sigh of frustration from her. “That will be difficult. She grew more thahought she would when she received her Adva. Though plications should have been expected. Elementals do not receive Advas naturally after all.”

  I lifted my head to look at her, she was me sized again and I risked sitting up. “You did this?”

  “It was not my iion to sever her link to you, my Saint. In fact, it threatens some of my pns, though not so badly that I ’t adjust. That is the only saving grace of this absolute shit show of a day.” she rubbed her temples and curled up on herself in the air.

  “B-but… what do I do? My goddess, please, I need her. I love her.” I whimpered, it hurt so bad knowing I didn’t have her. I really would do anything to have her back.

  She looked at me and I could see the flict rolling through her, her face twisted up in the way only a person fag an impossible choice manage. “Damn it my Saint, you make it so fug hard to say no to you!”

  “S-so, you bring her bae?” I felt my heart rising.

  “Teically? Yes. But…” She let out a heavy sigh of frustration and rolled into her back. “You remember how I told you st time that anything I do for you be dangerous for us all? This is a big one. Potentially devastating.” I swallowed hard, Carmil would cost them safety. Why would she risk her group just for otle mortal, even her Saint? I started to cry anew. “Oh no, no no no! Don’t do that! Dammit! Fine! Okay I’ll fix it!”

  My eyes locked on hers and she’d started g too. Just a bit. “Wh-what will it cost?”

  She reached out to pet my head softly. “I’m going to give you a boost. Whiy patron of a champion give in theory. But the strength of what you need for this one is, uh, big.”

  “Big?”

  “Big enough that anyone who sense and uand such things will know that your patron is a god. Without question. The Fae-Lord cover will only work on the average folk. Other Champions, high priests, any Arch-Lord, higher level mages who know what to look at, they’ll all figure out the truth. Which sounds like rare enters but anyone of importaneet is likely to have access to someone or something that fits the bill.”

  “And people of importance are already chasing after me.” I sighed and nodded.

  “Worse still, ods might, MIGHT, be able to notice you just because you exist and figure things out. It’s a very small d some gods might actually be okay with-… uh, what we’re doing. But it’s still much less ‘on the down low’ than we were hoping to be for a while longer.” She grunted with annoyance “Also, the extra power is just going to draw more things to you in general.”

  “Things?”

  “Demons and angels and elementals and fae for the most part. The mortals call them mana-infused beings. Magic races. They will feel that you have somethira going on underh even if they won’t be able to figure out what.”

  I took a breath and nodded “I deal with that if I have her with me.”

  She smiled “You’re worth the risk, you know that my Saint?” she floated closer and kissed my lips softly. “This isn’t a gift though, it’s something that will make your life even harder from this point on, and all because we messed up again.”

  “I don’t bme you f to survive.” I rather knew how messy that got after all.

  “Maybe, but I’m still going to give you a few little rewards and apologies.” She stood up and took on a regal stand smiled softly down at me. “Firstly, I am Vei’Ryn Tayaloddess of Dreams.” my heart leapt to my throat, I knew my goddess’s name now. “My mothers were a goddess of storms and a goddess of lust so my Dreams do lean towards the ‘wet’ variety.” She giggled at her own terrible pun. “But dreaming is my domain and here I am at my most powerful. It’s why I’m the one in charge and doing the talking and stuff. This is almost pletely secret, someone would have to be another dream god and kly what to look for to find these dream pockets of mine and that’s not currently possible. So this is secure unication.”

  I nodded “Makes sense.” I forced myself to say something, it felt somewhat disrespectful to not respond somehow.

  “Sedly, some advice. Look at your Status more you idiot. You’ve missed some notable ges because you fet about it! Or notable ck of ges in some cases.” She shrugged and gave me a smirk.

  “I… will do that, I promise.”

  “Lastly…” she paused and looked down at the memory, still hanging there but it had ged. Me and the girl were dang to some soft music pying from a radio in the fe downstairs. My goddess, Vei’Ryn, floated over close and whispered in my ear. “Her name is Tendri.” and I cried again.

  “Th-thank you.” I sniffled and fought back the sobs. It felt like parts of my heart I didn’t realize were gone were slipping bato pce. I turo my goddess’s fad smiled through my tears. “And th-thank you for the other stuff too. Like Henna’s dreams and whatever you d-did to Jaina’s Adva.”

  She crossed her arms and huffed “Dangit! I was gonna try ahose as surprises! Didn’t expect you to be so good at getting people to talk. Oh well, I still have other things going on you haven’t noticed yet.” She said with a wink. “Now, brace yourself, even in dream form this is going to be intense.”

  “Okay?” I said as she raised her hands and gathered stars and lightiween them. “Ooh, pretty~” and then it all smmed into me and it felt like every cell in my body was firing off sparks.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!” I screamed as I sat up in pain, only for it to fade instantly.

  “You stay away from my mother then.” I heard an unfamiliar voice speak nearby and turhere was a woman there. A green, naked woman, sharpening an axe.