Episode 71: Death & Other Things (Nell)

Weekends were always exciting; everyone in the palace seemed to get bored of not having anymore weekday and moved on to other things, like kidnappings and stealing bodies from other realms to take in as your own child.

Nell loved weekends. They were wild and unpredictable.

Today was not a weekend, it was the day following one, and as such had been a day of unfurling the various messes the weekend had created.

Except, the dragons had received a call for Nell to meet them outside. So, he was headed there to the most likely field based on several animals indicating where the alleged party was headed.

There was a girl there, alongside others. He could hear her mind calling out to him as the red man. The son of her angel.

She had met his dad.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about his dad sending him a message from the dead.

Good thing his dad was dead – he could mull it over halfway between then and never, and hope he lived long enough for his dad to forget him.

“Red man!” the little human yelled as she ran across the garden toward him.

Nell smiled at her, with her blonde hair flying in the wind. She was named after him, unintentionally. He didn’t tend toward an ego, but he loved her. He picked her up and spun her around. “Loud girl,” he teased her back.

Maybe it was his growing state about Aadya’s pregnancy. Her last four children were part of his family – by Konrad. The next two would be his, and this girl fell in the mix as a girl that he adored.

Nell held out a big basket with frilly feathers spewing from all angles and a nest of colored straw with markers, princess coloring books, animal coloring books, and secret candies in the bottom where no one could see them.

“Can I draw with you Little Princess?” Nell asked, bowing to her as she came to a halt in front of him.

She was the sort of girl he could see growing into someone wild and free and incredibly feminine.

“I love your wings,” she said as she wrapped her arms as far around him as she could. “Can I kiss them before we color?”

Nell hugged her back and lifted her into the air, “Sure.”

She pulled his wings over his shoulders and kissed each then looked at him and smiled.

He decided to prod the wound of his past, “I heard you met my dad? Kendall the red man?”

“He’s an angel. I met him, he’s nice but his house isn’t.”

“Can you think about him really loud? I can see what you’re thinking if it’s really loud.”

“Yeah, sure I can do that.”

Images and conversations began to fill her mind.

He let them slide into the abyss of the place he liked to call I’m considering if I should consider not forgetting these thoughts.

He reminisced in some of the Drey ones.

He begrudgingly smiled when one came around of his dad with a small female scrog next to him. He hadn’t known his dad well, in the span of his lifetime. He wished he knew him better.

While she shared her mind, they colored pictures.

“Can you help me draw their house for my new mom to make me a bedroom out of?”

“I sure can,” Nell replied.

Can help draw and will look good weren’t exclusive.

He began picking her mind for details and drawing the house his dad and Drey shared.

“Your daddy’s a nice man,” Nellie stated. “My daddy’s a wear a tie and be angry man.”

She couldn’t possibly be talking about Drey, so she must have meant her real dad – the one that had died in the wreck. It was selfish to bring just Nellie back and not her parents; they could have brought the parents back. It wasn’t his decision though. He stayed out of wicca magic for that very reason – it wasn’t about what you could do it was about what you chose to do.

“Isn’t your new daddy Drey? He hates ties,” Nell said, trying to sway himself from some sort of philosophical moment. They were dangerous; he could distinctly remember decades spent on one dilemma with Drey.

A dilemma that didn’t even impact them, such as the time when a pizza cart didn’t stop to serve them, and they wondered for over six weeks what the monetary implications would be and what sort of business repercussions he could have turning away two people that looked like they did at the time.

It was troubling how quickly someone would judge two men for trying to get pizza atop donkeys in an urban setting. Horses were allowed, and donkeys were part of the horse family.

That had sparked a three month long debate about what the term horse meant – family or species. It had also prompted them to procure some zebras.

The next image was a bed, and another red haired man was sitting on it. Nell recognized him after a moment – he had grazed hundreds if not thousands of Konrad’s dreams: Khale. He cleared his throat, even though no one was listening. Khale was sitting on the bed reading a story to a little girl, one that looked a lot like Aadya and Konrad. Their twins. 

He cleared his throat again, to choke back whatever emotions had escaped. He had handled their cremation. The girls were born incompatible with life, somehow, but the dragon in them refused to let them die for good.

Eowyn’s life was a miracle, because Aadya never struggled to carry Konrad’s sons. It gave depth to Konrad’s claims about the ongoing differences between his race and the undines. It made him worry about Konrad and Aadya’s living children and what the union of races would do if the sea knew, if they didn’t already. 

As he tucked those feelings back away, Nellie’s eyes widened and her mouth opened, “Yeahh! He’s my new daddy!”

Nell shaded in a series of shelves, “So no matter where you are, you will always have a mommy or a daddy with you. You won’t be alone anywhere.” It was a nice thought.

“And two red men,” Nellie said. She pointed to one of the pictures, “This one sent you a bunch of animals, the red angel.”

Nell wondered where they had gotten off too. He let his mind wander around the minds of the dragons and through the eyes of various animals – the cat that followed Konrad around – and found them in Zero’s apartment playing with Cora, Spaden’s bear.

Nell laughed under his breath.

“I don’t know how to draw a slide,” Nellie stated.

She wasn’t doing much of the drawing anyway, but he wrapped his arm across her back so his hand could hold her pencil with her, and he guided her through the motions of drawing something he hoped she would think resembled a slide.

While he had her hand, he drew his name and then hers. He had pulled hers from her mind: Nellie. “My name is almost your name, so we have to be friends,” he demanded. “It’s the rules.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “‘Cept my name’s really Cornelia, so we have to be extra friends because that’s the rules.”

“I like the rules,” he said, moving on to an ornate statue of armor he couldn’t imagine Drey having any use for except pride in his own memory.

Nellie needed that suit of armor.

He would teach her about its history and importance and when she went back to wherever Drey had run off to, she would hopefully have a strong enough sense of humor (she did carry his name, after all) to laugh about the gross overstatement he had made.

Drey would be amused, at least. Perhaps he would get the joke from across the veil and carry on with it. It could become an icon, sealing both realms together like his own genetics.

Nell gave a moment to watch Khale in Nellie’s mind. He wondered how much of himself was reflected in the man, since the two greatest loves of his life had loved this man too. He wasn’t sure he was capable of that level of self-reflection.  

He heard Spence’s mind building in the background, while he added the tea table Nellie was thinking of.

“I’m gay now. I had a wife,” Spence said.

Spence had an edge to his thought, annoyance that it seemed like such a shock that someone from Sylem would have tried to force the straight thing.

He kept coloring, because really they were just reliving every detail that defined who each person was and yet said very little about them. It was the kind of conversation Nell didn’t care about.

Aadya, the optimist, offered to marry Rhyss to his missing girlfriend.

Aadya liked to marry people. Everyone new was surprised when she cheerfully offered, but she had this secret satisfaction in seeing a romance come together.

She made Meldrick handle divorces, which amused and didn’t bother Meldrick.

Aadya had been a sore subject. Konrad was bent on leaving her, and his relationship with her, just when Nell was attaching more than he had before. He had become close to her for Drey, because she had no say in their marriage either and really – he liked her.

Then, he had become entwined in her. He loved seeing Konrad’s kids with her, and he wanted his own. He had Einin and Eiron, with his wife Rylena.

He struggled with Rylena. His Enny. They’d been married on his father’s death bed, when Enny was still a baby. His dad was the last of their parents, and the two lines were fated to be united. It must not have crossed anyone’s mind to see if the young Nell liked girls or boys.

Raising Enny had given him a deep love for her. He had never wanted to cross the line of raising her and creating children, until after Drey had died and she had longed for attention. He’d selfishly assigned Drey the job, as his lover. He refused to push Konrad into that role, and so Einin and Eiron were born.

He glanced at Konrad now. At some point he would have to admit how he felt about Enny, that moving toward a physical relationship had incited feelings.

He wouldn’t leave Konrad; Drey, Enny, and he had always been a group. 

Then there was Aadya, and the twins she carried. They were conceived of the gancanagh curse. Though not cursed directly, every feeling Konrad held for Aadya during his own exposure to it had been felt through the pixie marriage. Letting her go, when Konrad decided to end the relationship, had become a uniquely painful reality.

His desire for men had been clear for nearly a thousand years, until his marriage to Konrad. It was hard to believe someone was truly gay, with how much Nell had changed in a dozen years. It worried Nell about the longevity of their marriage.

“We need tea and princess popcorn,” Nell announced to Nellie. “What color of glitter covers princess popcorn?”

“Rainbow sparkle!”

Nell looked at the group, as they watched some molten black liquid ooze its way across maps.

It gave him chills. Living things moved, that that ooze was only enchanted dead things. Dead plants, but still dead things.

“We’ll be back,” Nell said. He picked Nellie up and hoisted her onto his shoulders. She wrapped her legs around each side of his neck and rested her hands on his head. He tucked his wings against her back to stabilize her.

As he walked toward the kitchen, he passed by Konrad.

“Having fun?” Konrad asked, his footsteps light on the ground and his wings letting the breeze playfully dance around them.

“We are,” Nell replied. “There’s goo over there if you’re interested.”

Konrad glanced at the goo, his eyes wide as it moved across the ground. “We should go flying later.”

Goo and flying…

“We can go flying later. Do you want some princess popcorn?”

“I need to speak with them first,” he replied. Nell couldn’t make sense of what aspect annoyed him most – being around Aadya again and they way she glanced over at him when he looked that direction or having to work.

Something about it bothered Nell, but Konrad settled his hand on Nell’s back, below Nellie, and asked, “What’s the matter?”

“My hair,” he replied as he pushed all doubts of Konrad away. He had been ill in some way, the line of thought was useless.

Maybe been married using the pixie magic had made Nell gay. To feel Enny’s attraction toward males as she went through her youth. He would have to yell.at his dad about it, someday. He actually didn’t even remember what his dad looked like until Nellie’s mind.

Konrad looked at Nell confused.

“Maybe Beatrice can comb it,” he said. Beatrice was his alligator. Konrad seemed to nod in whatever delirium he was experiencing. Nell used the chance to move toward the palace, a step away from Konrad.

He was starting to wonder if Konrad had been drinking that morning or if his state was deteriorating. He didn’t want to attribute it to Cecily, but she had been hiding for weeks. Cecily was Konrad’s sidhe. She didn’t like existing, acknowledgement of her existence, or surviving as it turned out. He would speak to her about Konrad.

“Go speak with them,” Nell insisted of something deeper. “We’ll be right back. Save me some sprinkles.”

Nell shook his head. The last part was Konrad’s thought. He tried to unmuddle the two.

“Can we manage that?” he asked Nellie.

“Uh-huh, but we have to sort the purple ones for the purple man!”

“The purple man?” Nell wondered what about Konrad implied purple. It wasn’t his hair, though it could be considered the color of a dark and well aged wine, in the right light.

“He seems purple,” she replied.

Konrad kept walking toward the group, which was now silent as they puzzled over what the ooze was trying to communicate.

Nell would have reminded them it was dead, but they all believed in Wicca.

They found the machine that popped the corn kernels much faster than a flame and set to work filling it. He let Nellie pour everything in while he found rainbow sprinkles.

As they distributed the sprinkles evenly, siphoning off purple ones for Konrad and chatting about what a princess tea party would look like (so he could add it to the drawing) Konrad stirred his mind, Aadya would like you do die when you have a moment.

It seemed like a reasonable request.

It’s revenge for you killing off her only successful marriage partner, he replied, Drey ever on his mind. I will if you can get wiccan magic, for the duration of my death and revival. I want you to be the one calling me home.

Not only did it seem romantic, but he was almost certain he would ignore a summons from someone else if he was with Drey.

You’ll get it when we elixir, Konrad assured him.

Elixir.

Nell tried not to fixate on the fact that while he was, apparently quietly, worried about divorce and who liked what sort of person, and if he had ever been just himself or if who he was had been created from a lifetime of fitting other people’s pieces into his own identity puzzle, Konrad was thinking about spending forever together.

Nellie was good company. Her mind was stuck on ponies and unicorns and ladybugs with pink shells.

And he had princess popcorn. Distraction achieved.

He heard Aadya call Konrad King Konrad as he carried Nellie, who was using his head as a table for the popcorn, out to the lawn.

“I have razed more kingdoms than I care to count, and drawn new leaders from the ashes. You are the only one who has ever been my queen,” Konrad said, his posture tight and closed.

“I,” Aadya began.

It was adorable when she was speechless.

“Nell agrees then?” Aadya asked.

“Nell agrees,” Nell said, in third person just to fluster her more. It worked: her cheeks looked hot from fire, her skin flush. He missed the feel of her body… no that wasn’t a proper line of thought.

“I hope we get lucky with this idea,” Aadya said as she gave Konrad magic.

Nell tried not to laugh, at Aadya’s dry joke and that Konrad didn’t understand it at all, as he made sure everyone had some popcorn, then he turned to Nellie. “I don’t think I’ll ever have your room perfect unless I visit your angels myself. Is there anything you want me to tell them?”

“I’m glad he doesn’t like ties,” Nellie stated.

“How would you like to do this,” Konrad asked.

Nell was about to die and he was supposed to pick how? It was asinine.

“An honest match,” Nell requested. He doubted he would ever see Konrad in the full glory of battle, against him, again. It was a rare opportunity to see what four thousand years of training felt like, and to also see if Konrad was capable of going all out on him.

Maybe it would be hilarious to watch them sort of fight and sort of avoid injuring each other.

“Without holding back,” Nell added, to make sure Konrad got the message.

“Alright,” he replied.

Nell lowered Nellie to the ground and she ran off to Aadya’s side; Indigo started talking to her about the pool and the leopards.

She followed Indigo and Aadya.

“This one is better,” Konrad said as he handed Nell a sword.

Nell positioned himself to fight Konrad.

Part of him realized this was going to be a bad thing – he was a king and it would break his marriage to Rylena and to Konrad. Rylena would notice; she might panic.

But an air of fog made it impossible to care enough to stop it.

Sweat formed on his brow. His sword sliced across the shoulder line of Konrad’s leather shirt.

Konrad’s sword ripped open the skin near his thigh, a testing jab to divert his attention.

Nell kept his focus on Konrad, despite the pain.

He had trained Talise in pain management her entire life, but he had never subjected himself to it. He knew pain through being a pixie, but the exquisite feeling of Konrad’s blade as it made various lacerations and blood dripped and stained his clothing and the ground was new.

Konrad wasn’t unsquathed, and Nell was proud of how long he held his own, but after a few moments, when their blades were falling heavier on each other and the sun was waning on the horizon of his mind, Konrad’s blade met his chest.

Konrad pushed deeper, and Nell could feel the bones in his back caving around the pressure of the tip.

Konrad kissed him, once the blade was deep enough that he could reach easily, and lowered him to the ground as he withdrew the sword. He held Nell in his arms until spots turned to darkness, and pain and fear faded into a sinking abyss of relief.

   “Visiting?” Drey asked, his body hovering above Nell’s, his white hair just as fluffy and straight as ever, arching toward Nell, his skin light and glowing and full of…

Something other than life.

He radiated.

“What are you doing here?” Drey asked. “You dad’s out….”

He was actually looking for his mom…

“Well… Princess Nellie needed you to know she is glad you don’t like ties, and, I assume, other neck confining attire.”

Fortunately for Nellie’s reality, he suspected Drey would never have need for black-tie attire while she was around, or she would be old enough to have forgotten the little lie. Drey didn’t love ties, he just loved looking well dressed for outings. And he loved outings.

Nell felt his chest, where the hole should be, to make sure it had healed.

Not healed- this wasn’t his body. He could feel subtleties in the difference.

He felt clear and crisp.

He felt guilty. He had just left Enny alone. She would have felt his death with no context. He wanted to go home, to promise her he was safe. Something was wrong with his body in the Dells. He needed to remember that.

“The UR? Are they interfering in the Dells?” Drey asked.

Nell wasn’t sure what he was talking about anymore; his mind was consumed with other things like how wrong it was that he was here.

He hadn’t been the best father for awhile. Something was going wrong; Einin and Eiron deserved more. How had he even come to fathering them, after a thousand years refusal. Who was he, who did he love.

Drey extended his hand, his brow furrowed.

“How are you,” Drey asked.

“Dead. I’ve been better.”

He laughed, and pulled Nell into an embrace.

His body remembered Drey too clearly to care about possible things that had occurred while Drey was dead. He melted into Drey’s arms, despite usually being the one being melted-into. It was different, nearly seventeen years later.

He breathed in the smell of books older than their combined ages.

“I’ve missed you,” Nell and Drey said simultaneously.

He would be back in the Dells soon. He needed these moments with Drey. Whoever Khale was for Drey, it wasn’t who Nell had been. Perhaps it meant Konrad had regressed in life, and Nell was the before you needed more person. He wouldn’t doubt it. He had run from his duty and himself for his life.

“It’s not the worst thing that can happen,” Drey said, as he pulled away from Nell just enough to breathe.

“I hid from it for a long time, until Spence died,” Drey said. “It’s not the worst thing that can happen.

He wasn’t sure what Drey meant for once, he was too trapped in his own mind. 

He was dead for now, not for long. He wasn’t sold on returning though. 

“When I saw how much had changed, while I was still the same…”

Nell’s mind was lost but he realized he had eyes – became aware of them, because they had observed that Drey had his bronze wings back; the ones that mimicked Nell’s and brought out the veins of yellow in his blue eyes. The same wings that had been torn from his body by his mother. Come to think of It, Nellie had given Drey and Khale wings. Nell turned his own a shimmering black to see if it were possible, then let them fade back to bronze. Black wasn’t his color. 

“You thought you would experience more growth in death?” Nell joked.

Dying, choosing to die, must have been an awful thing. Nell had done it and he felt terrible.

For Drey, it was permanent. Nell got to go home, he had a body waiting for him.

“I thought I should at least experience it,” Drey mused.

Death was something new, in some ways. Drey was prone to immersing himself in things.

Nell looked around the room, his body longing for something. Maybe it was Drey, and he just needed to crack his shell to open up. He felt like a crab, hiding from everything. Nell looked at the books and robots and piles of thoughts Drey had filled his afterlife with. The animals and the decorations and the little things he suspected represented his dad and Khale, more than Drey.

“So you’re doing well?” Nell asked.

“Well enough,” Drey said. He paused and followed Nells eyes to some small metal pieces in a pile.

“You aren’t,” Drey stated.

Nell met his aquamarine eyes.

“It isn’t just the death,” Drey deduced. He pulled Nell into an embrace that by some standards could be seen as smothering and deadly, but in death realm was more loving. 

Nell sighed.

“What?” Drey asked.

There was no point in avoiding it. Drey knew him too well. “I think I messed life up.” Then, Nell ducked out of Drey’s arms and began exploring the space, more away from where other people seemed to exist… not exist… be…. And toward a hallway lined in oversized picture frames full of art and smaller frames of all the family. Nell scanned each image for accuracy and edited as required. 

“There’s something desirable about here,” Nell added.

“It grows on you, especially if you belong here. What part of life, specifically?”

“The living part.” Nell wasn’t even going to argue the belong here stuff. “Can you fail at living? Enny…” he felt sick and cold at once. “She’s alone right now. I didn’t warn her I was doing this. I didn’t think about her at all.” or much of anything. “I’ve all but abandoned her, and our kids. At least most of yours are around, working at the palace. Mine are only six. And Aadya…”

Drey tilted his head a bit. “Go on…”

Drey didn’t know Nell had impragnated Aadya. How to explain it…

“I need to marry her. But I’m dead. I can’t be there for Enny and Aadya and Konrad. I don’t know who I like anymore, what I like.” 

Nell’s legs stopped working. What was the point in standing anywhere, when the floor was so hard and sliver-causing.

“I don’t want to go back,” Nell said to his own surprise.

Drey hovered like a white angel, then sat beside him. “Did you put yourself here.”

“Konrad did, by a mess of a decision. We’re not well. I think it’s Cecily.”

He wasn’t sure Drey knew about Cecily, but it didn’t matter here. What did matter was that he get going on the whole purpose of dying part. 

“Konrad killed you? I thought you had married him.”

“We decided a visit to death realm was needed, to ask about the United Realms and Ionia. You have access to that information.”

“Yes, but you…if I share, will you let me help you?”

Nell leaned against him, “I miss you.”

Drey kissed his head with lips Nell hadn’t felt in nearly two decades. How could he love Enny… except Drey had loved them both.

“Right now we don’t have to miss each other. So you had kids with Enny?”

“Einin and Eiron.”

“I didn’t think you were capable.”

“I didn’t either. I think I love her, more than I’ve admitted. I don’t know how it’s possible.” It wasn’t her body that he craved, like he did with Konrad or Drey before him. It was something else, something just for Enny and the hundreds of years they had been married and she had stood beside him, no judgement or condemnation. Except, probably a bit over the past few years. He had really dropped the ball on Einin and Eiron.

“She loves you,” Drey interrupted.

“She loved me. I abandoned her.”

“Have you stopped loving me?”Drey asked.

“I think my feelings for you have shifted. We’ve been apart so long, and I’ve healed from that, but I don’t care for you any less.”

“And yet you think Enny gave you up, over something anyone could have guessed you’d do? You’ve never cared to address your deepest emotions.”

That wasn’t a fair assessment. He had cared specifically not to address them. It required substantial effort at times.

“And Konrad? I don’t want to lose him. We’ve worked too hard to build up our marriage, against everything. We have a son.”

“Konrad.” Drey laughed, a rumble through his chest that left and dissipated into the endless space of death. “Baffles me. You adopted a son?”

“We adopted two sons. A genetic son happened by our door. Our son.”

“What makes you think you’ll lose him?”

“I don’t. I just am selfish. I want both.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t?”

“He is ill,” Nell said. “I think Cecily is bothering him. She’s a sidhe.”

“Of course he has a sidhe…how tightly is she bound to him?”

“Tightly. She can’t escape,” Nell added. Cecily had made it clear she wished she could leave, but that her bond to him was eternal. 

“I’m sure you know that in three thousand years he never pursued anyone, until you.”

“Thousands of years, and they found us,” Nell teased. It was astounding that Konrad had found Nell, and Khale had found Drey. It seemed to defy odds, except there was something that bound them all together like an invisible fabric. “ Are you happy?”

“I’m dead, but besides that, I am.”

Nell stood, and Drey mimicked him.

“I think I’m in love with Enny.” he declared.

Drey grazed his jawline. More than anything, he missed the soft touch of Drey’s hands. They were hands that knew exactly what was too much and what was too little. He’d perfected touch.

“I’m happy for you, that you realize,” Drey said.

Sure, just took death. Death was the worst time to realize something important. At least Nell would have another chance, if he revived. He wasn’t sure how he would use it, but more than he had used his first. 

He would figure out how to be less cryptic and dodgy about his emotions.

They walked through the death house again, and talked about what to do about Konrad (kill him) and Drey’s kids. Nell knew the best option was to free Konrad of Cecily, but he also knew he would have to catch Konrad off guard. A clean strike through the heart would do, perhaps during a casual encounter.

Nell told Drey about Faily, his oldest son with Rylena, and how he had blossomed into a king.

Then, Drey stopped him before they could enter the main area where others were. “They won’t let you fall.”

Except when he asked for it.

He took a deep breath. “Can I meet this Khale of yours?”

“He’s just in the other room,” Drey said. They began moving, then Nell stopped. Meeting Khale, admitting Drey didn’t need him there, was going to be hard. They’d never formally divorced, they’d just stopped being together because of Aadya and the mess that followed Indigo’s trial.

Nell caught his breath. He was finally free to be with Drey, and someone stood in the way. Someone that might be better than he was. 

Drey’s arms were around him. He must have been showing some of the pesky emotions.

“Never forget you are a gift to all who have the honor of knowing you.”

A gift, without someone he had hoped to spend eternity with.

Too much had changed, too quickly. The pace of the first seven hundred years of his life was far preferable to this one.

But, things had changed. He nodded. “You are too.” Then he tried to admit things. “I don’t think Talise realizes how lost she is without you. But, as an authority on the matter, I’ve tried to be useful.”

Close enough.

“Who are they?” Drey asked as they entered the room. “Nell, this is Khale. Khale, Nell.”

“It’s about time,” Nell said. He hugged Khale, because they were ultimately family. “I’ve only had dreams about you for two decades.”

Konrad’s dreams had, upon occasion, been particularly difficult to get through. 

Khale laughed, “It’s nice to meet you, Nell.”

And from there, they talked. About Talise, Acheron, Nim, and Terren. They talked like there was nothing between them, even if Nell knew he would never have the comfort of Drey back.

He was glad that Drey wasn’t suffering. It didn’t stuff the hole, though, and he just ached to be home with Konrad again. To see Rylena, too. 

As he sorted through his own mess, he noted Drey who had closed his eyes. 

Drey’s eyes were closed.

“I’ve…” he began.

Nell let his hand slide across Drey’s side.

Whatever Drey was doing, to cope and survive being dead at such a young age, Nell could handle. Friendship, somehow, would have to be enough..

“No,” Nell replied. “Things are changing.”

He held Drey’s side, instead of running from feelings. Drey needed him just as much, and he would be there. 

As the conversation shifted, he saw a few animals trailing a path. His father, Kendall, was with them.

“Nell,” he said, his voice impassioned with longing. He cleared his throat, “Nell?”

His dad had died shortly after his wedding, when he was only nine years old and Enny wasn’t even one.

He was the last living relative between their four parents, and when he passed Nell had been handed the throne and a baby-wife.

Nell stood and imagined himself in other clothes, ones that were wrinkled and required straightening. The gesture felt right.

His dad approached him, a bit bemused.

Nell hugged him first, because he knew his dad wanted to.

“You’re here?

“Just visiting. We have problems we needed answers to.”

Both looked at him attentively, and Nell took a deep, unnecessary, breath.

Nell went through his list of questions, about the UR and the wiccans and everything they might know. They answered quickly: Terren was still alive, the United Realms was a group that rested just above the realm, like a dimensional plane, and poached souls. There was another group that poached souls, an ally, they didn’t know much about. They hadn’t seen Tarragon, but they would look for him if he ever visited again, and the child Aadya had lost a few years ago, Aadya, was alive.

Not alive, and peeking out from behind a plant, were Aadya’s twins she had lost only a few years ago – from Konrad.

Nell hugged them, and let a few drops of water release from his body. the years, knowing how their lives had ended, tore at him. They looked at him like he was insane (who didn’t?) and he promised himself not to grow too much more attached as they sat with him and looked through books and he finished talking to them.

Nell updated Drey on all of his kids – his with Rylena and his with Aadya. Aadya’s life and divorce…

“Einin played a joke on me. She put clay pretzels in my new pretzel machine,” Nell told them.

His dad and Drey laughed. He wondered where Khale was.

“Who is she?” Drey asked.

“My daughter.”

“Enny?” Drey asked. “How many have you had?”

“Twins. And Aadya is pregnant…” he added. “Einin and Eiron are six. She’s covered in spots. I told Enny she may need to see Zero about it,” he joked. He loved her freckles and they way they seemed to cover every inch of her. “He just has her hair, otherwise he’s flawless.” And  full of jokes and games of his own.

“I’ve heard it’s an impure condition,” Drey joked back, about Einin’s freckles.

His dad stayed beside him, but Drey got up and went over to a bench. While he was away, Edyn – Aadya and Konrad’s Edyn – handed him another book.

He wasn’t sure he should tell them about their deceased twins, when he revived, but they might appreciate the little bit of solace.

It would bring up the issue of Daphne, and he wanted to talk to Zero alone to see if they could track her and find out if she was in the same place as Emily. It seemed likely.

It hit Nell like a train pummeling into a brick wall; while Drey brought over six little robots he realized he had just died because of some guy – Indigo and Zero’s son, that they didn’t know – to find out about some group that stole souls.

It was one of the riskiest things he had ever done; Konrad needed to be woken from whatever he was under. It might be wicca. Nell would learn wicca to protect his family.

His mind wandered back to the elixir and their marriage. Perhaps Konrad didn’t want him. Maybe everyone was destined to grow away from him.

Drey didn’t need him anymore – he was dead for one, he was moving on himself for another.

Enny… he imagined the pain she must feel. He would continue to love her, always, and be her king. Be Whoever she needed him to be. It was his duty, and his desire. He would be better for her in his second life: more.

“What does Aadya being pregnant have to do with how many kids you have?” Drey asked.

Nell laughed, “Because she’s pregnant with my third and fourth children.”

His dad and Drey looked at him in shock.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed in silence, but after a few moments he could feel his body being tugged away from this place.

They were doing the spell already.

“Take these with you?” Drey said, handing him six small robots.

“For whom?” Nell asked.

“You and Aadya and my kids?”

His kids with Rylena were all adults, and there were only four robots, so he suspected they were for Talise, Acheron, Nim, and Terren.

“I’ll make sure they get them, but Terren….”

“He’s alive,” Drey repeated. “If they don’t make it out, I made them wrong.”

Animals swarmed Nell. His dad embraced him again, “Travel safe.

Nell hugged the two girls, tiny images of Konrad and Aadya mixed in with the personality only Drey could instil in someone.

Then he looked to Drey.

Drey crossed the few inches they were separated by and hugged him.

He felt the tugging, heard his name, and knew he needed to go.

“Talise the musician, Ach the book-lover, Nim the traveler, Terren the insatiable mind,” he said to Drey.

He looked to his dad, “Einin has your eyes.”

“Tell Aadya Meldrick’s an ass,” Drey added.

“I love you, too,” Nell said.

The once dark abyss sucked him into a vortex of light until he was looking up, into Konrad’s dazzling fire opal eyes and broad smile. His arms were full of robots and his body was encompassed in animals.

“I’m happy to see you,” Konrad said.

“Did I talk in my death? Or just limited to sleep?” Nell asked. He wiggled his toes and flexed his fingers until he felt like he could sit.

“Limited to death. Sleep implies you breathed.

His chest. He felt it, and it was still healed. He felt it, and he wanted to be alone. He’d hurt Enny. He’d been reckless. He’d been an ass, more than Meldrick. Aadya had conceived the twins before their divorce. Enny… 

There was something eerie about travelling from life to death and back again.

The fog didn’t return, his marriage was broken, and Rylena stood a few dozen feet away.

“No one said I would stop breathing,” Nell said, offended that such a huge piece of his death was left out.

He was joking, of course.

Konrad helped him the rest of the way up, and then wrapped his arms around Nell.

“Did you learn anything?” Konrad asked.

“They’re called the UR, Daphne is alive somewhere, there are soul poachers so everyone needs to have pets now from Magenta,” he lied. It was a good chance to replenish the pet population though. “They’re dangerous and interfere with people.”

Rylena shook her head, and vanished into nothing. He was torn, between worry about Konrad and worry about Enny.

“What about Emily?” Rhyss asked.

“Alive. Terren too, if anyone still wondered. Emily is most likely being used for some experiment. If she had a job, she may manage experiments. Kids. Jay may be related.”

“Jay. Is his brother there, do you suppose,” Konrad asked. No one replied, but his own mind puzzled the idea over. Dying seemed to have sharpened Konrad. The fog was there, but he was navigating through it at the moment.

“Did you ask about our friends in the desert? I realized after you left,” Konrad said.

“Titania has a twin sister, Ionia. She wants to lead a war against us,” Nell said.

“She’s been on my mind. Was Tarragon there?”

“He was not,” Nell informed them.

Aadya reacted. He didn’t have time to delve into it. 

Meldrick was still excluded, which said a lot about how Aadya felt about things at the moment.

“Can we move this to the conference room? Meldrick should be included. The garden should not,” Aadya said.

Maybe she could read minds.

“You are welcome,” she offered to Rhyss.

“Alright,” Konrad agreed.

“Thanks,” Rhyss said.

He had never seen Rhyss before. His other name was Zach, but he could hear the name Rhyss echoing through the kid’s mind.

Everyone began to leave the garden, but Konrad held back.

“I don’t think anyone should dare that again,” Nell stated. He pressed himself into Konrad’s arms and breathed in the leather and layers of emotion building beneath the surface of his work-persona.

“I love you, and I want to elixir,” he informed Konrad. “But I need to see to Enny first.”

Konrad nodded, and held him close a bit longer. It was everything Nell needed, after what he had been through. He didn’t want to call it traumatic, but it was an experience he knew would leave a lasting impression on him.

He also knew, despite all the good he could see between him and Konrad, he had lost his marriage to Enny. He would never remarry her, and in some ways it would free her, but it was a loss nonetheless.

He chose not to dwell too long on it; he had to move. Zero needed to help Konrad, he had babies to prepare for, a wedding to plan, and a war or three to survive.

All was right though – because he still had his family. Just as Drey would always be his best friend, the people that surrounded his life would always be his family. He would get through it, and he would help them through it. There would be plenty of snow cones and pretzels and pranks.

He would be there for Einin and Eiron, for his upcoming children, for his existing children…

And, despite what he thought would be a long argument against it, he would find the missing pixies and he would fight.

His mom wasn’t in death realm; she was out there.

The pixie population among the dead was low – he senses it in the background of his visit with Drey and other inquisitions he made.

His mom was out there; maybe the rest of his people were too.

And someday, if Konrad’s fog lifted, he’d admit he was lost.

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