[Indigo]

On a small hill above the village of Bristlecone, beneath a small raincloud and, more immediately, a medium-sized tree, there sat a small house with a small car in its shadow. In front of the house stood a man. There was color in his eyes (red) and his face (brown) and perhaps in his hair, which was a more alive-looking sort of black than anything else in his surroundings, but his clothes and his house and his car and, indeed, the very hill upon which he stood were all cast in shades of black and white and grey, and so the village below, come to think of it. Though it was raining, the man was perfectly dry, and the mud that filled the footprints that traced his path from the front door had failed to stick to his shoes.

He looked into the sky and said, "Huh."

Behind him, the door creaked open and shut. "Oh, of course it wouldn't affect you."

"Good morning to you too," Sauvage said without turning around. "I thought you were still asleep."

"I was," Roman said, "but as you may be aware, the bed is much colder without you in it."

"How could I possibly know that?"

"Well, you could ask." Roman's arms wrapped around Sauvage's shoulders, a comfortable weight, and Sauvage tried not to be visibly unsettled by the dark grey cast of his hands. It was in keeping with the washing-out of the rest of the world, but it was also much creepier on a person somehow. Especially this person.

"You're going to get wet," he said to Roman.

"I have been wet many times before, and survived. I'd be more worried about the rest of this."

"Mm." He could feel Roman's antlers brush his cheek, smooth and cool, Roman's face resting against his shoulder, and every time they touched like this he caught himself trying to drink in as much of it as possible, as if it were his last chance, even now. It had only been a few months since the flood. A few months, he was learning, was not enough time for him to get used to being loved. But it was too early in the morning for that train of thought, and there were indeed more pressing concerns. "It doesn't affect me? I'd thought I could see my own colors because they're mine. No?"

"No, I can see them too, and not my own. It's rather disorienting."

"That's just because you're not wearing your glasses." It was a feeble joke, and received the silence it merited. Sauvage looked out over the hills, their rise and fall and roll and eventual ascent into mountains, and everything he saw was shades of grey. "So it isn't something changing my perception, either. It's...I don't know what this is. Color isn't physical in this way. How would one remove it?"

"Powerful magic, I suppose. There's plenty of it out there that doesn't follow any recognizable rules." A pause, and Sauvage tried not to tense up, because he knew what was coming, and Roman said, almost inaudible against his back, "Is there any chance that it could be you? Unintentionally, of course, but..."

"No."

"All right," Roman said. "That's almost too bad—much as I admire your self-control, at least we'd have a lead on doing something about it if you were responsible."

And that was it. No hint of doubt, in the words or the voice, no uncomfortable shifting of position, and he hadn't been ready for this part; he stood braced against nothing, with a warmth holding him up where he'd expected to fall, and someday he hoped he would get used to it, because to get used to it meant feeling it every day of his life.

[Indigo]

"Maybe it's you," he said, not very seriously. "Some old enemy come to destroy you, in an unusually roundabout fashion."

"An interesting theory, but not, I think, a likely one. I've never encountered anything like this before," Roman said. "It seems to be affecting more than just us, anyway. Our last disaster was much more localized."

"It looks almost global." Sauvage, with some effort, could see considerably further than a human, though here in Tuun where he didn't know the geography everything sort of blurred together into a mountainous blob. But definitely a grey mountainous blob, currently.

"Don't get ahead of yourself. It might only be the region."

"Well, then, how are we defining the region?" he said, and then, because it was not the time for this either, "Don't answer that. Can't you check whether it's happening anywhere else? With your little news...computer thing."

"I know you know what a cell phone is called, Sauvage, and one day you're going to have to get comfortable with them." Roman let go of him, and there was a pause. "Oh, it's inside. Come on. It's a bit chilly out here anyway."

Sauvage peeled off to the kitchen to make coffee, which he'd neglected earlier in favor of trying to see how far this strangeness reached, and thought. Normally, with magic of this scale, he'd have felt it coming days or weeks in advance--probably not with enough clarity to know what was coming exactly, but certainly enough to be more prepared than this. That he hadn't detected it suggested...well, he didn't know what it suggested, which put him on edge. There was a lot he didn't know about being a person in the world, among other people, but he'd always had a pretty good understanding of his own abilities and how they related to other forms of magic, at least until the point of keeping enough distance from his power to control it. Whatever he might think of his family's methods, they'd given him that.

This was new, in a way that troubled him. Feeling for a disruption in the air, and finding none despite his best efforts, he was so distracted he splattered coffee across the counter and had to go hunting for the dishtowel, which Roman had left next to the stove for some arcane reason.

[Indigo]

He found Roman curled up on the couch, squinting at the thing that Sauvage would never be able to think of as a phone, and was struck by the urge to kiss his furrowed brow, an impulse he suppressed without even thinking about it. Instead he offered one of the cups, which Roman accepted.

"Thank you. I'm worried," Roman said, returning his attention to the screen, "that this business is having an effect on my vision. I can hardly--"

Sauvage snapped his fingers, and transported Roman's glasses from the nightstand to his nose.

Roman blinked. "Do you have to be so theatrical when you do that?"

"Of course I do," Sauvage said. He sat down and wrapped himself around Roman, arms linked around his torso, head resting on his shoulder, and was too relieved when there was no objection. Hard to remember that things like this were allowed.

"Of course you do," Roman said, "how silly of me to ask," and he kissed the top of Sauvage's head. "You make it very difficult to have a sense of urgency about this."

"Do we need a sense of urgency?" Sauvage peered at the screen. "It's a little creepy, but it's not hurting anyone, is it?" His own sense of the mechanics of magic notwithstanding. That was more of a personal gripe, and anyway he didn't count.

"I don't know. It does appear to be a global phenomenon, and there are reports of...additional effects. Technology malfunctioning in strange ways. Whispers from nowhere, dark shapes only seen sideways. It could be nothing, or side effects of mass panic, but I doubt that, somehow."

"Hmm." Sauvage skimmed the article, what was visible of it, and said, "I wish any of this sounded familiar. In spirit it is not unlike the pastimes favored by some of my relatives, but even working together I don't think they could do something like this. And I would have felt it coming."

"Perhaps we should consult an expert," Roman said.

"I hope I'm right about the expert you're thinking of," Sauvage said. "I could use some breakfast."

[Indigo]

"I have no fucking idea what this is."

They were in a corner of the bookstore half of the cafe, which had hastily closed due to mysterious magical circumstances, and Jules was holding her grimoire in one hand and gesturing frustratedly with the other. She'd sat down when Sauvage and Roman had but almost immediately stood up again, too tense to do otherwise, which only gave more emphasis to her towering height.

"Part of the problem is that the Library did something horrible to my index," she said, scowling at a page. Like Sauvage, she retained the slit-pupilled eyes of a lizard even in human shape, and like Sauvage's they couldn't seem to figure out how to adjust to the strange dull light, and were dilated to a different degree every time she looked up. So far neither of them appeared to have noticed this, and Roman doubted it would be useful to bring it up, but it troubled him.

Jules flipped several pages and continued, "But I know basically how it's arranged, that's not the main thing. The main thing is that of all the examples of color-based magic I've been able to find, none of them is anything like this big or this thorough, and none of them should leave just Sauvage unaffected. Unless it's some...weird planar thing. But you're not extraplanar, are you?"

Sauvage snorted. "No."

"No! Exactly! And I've been looking all morning for some other explanation, but all I can find is localized spells or illusions or things like that. Then there's this thing about patches of color in specific regions that was on the news, and that doesn't make any sense either. I thought about calling Roderick—"

"Who?" murmured Sauvage. Roman gave him a look, which he ignored, predictably.

Fortunately Jules was too wrapped up in the intricacies of their current predicament to notice. "But this thing also affects technology, because why wouldn't it, right? So I haven't been able to reach him or the Library's main line. Which is weird, because it's not a normal land line since the building moves around, so you'd think...anyway, this is ridiculous. You're sure you've never seen anything like it before?"

"I am fairly certain I'd remember it if I had, yes," Roman said.

[Indigo]

"Maybe if I—" The bell at the front of the cafe rang, and Jules turned sharply toward the sound, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "I'm sure I locked that door. Just a minute." She set the grimoire on a stained end table, ducked between two shelves, and was gone.

Jules had taken the lead in redesigning this space, over the course of the flood-mandated renovations, and she'd done a much better job than Roman's ten-years-ago self; it helped, of course, that there had been planning involved, whereas Roman had let everything grow up more or less organically, too morose, at the beginning of his time here, to think far enough ahead for anything else. He and Sauvage were in a quiet little corner, a congregation of armchairs and little tables just far enough from the shelves that a spilled drink wouldn't damage the books, which were now organized far more neatly and logically than before, though he preferred not to admit it. By now they had recovered most of the missing volumes, though Sauvage's panic had scattered them across a few different hilltops and some of them were unsalvageable from the rain. But it could have been much worse. At least they were all alive.

Normally this room demonstrated a soothing array of greens and browns, but now it was all greys, and Sauvage, as the single bright spot, drew the eye. Though Sauvage always drew Roman's eye—the smooth sharp planes of his face, the scarlet sea of his eyes, the way he seemed to fill any room he was in. Various thoughts he'd grown used to dismissing, now allowed out to play, in his head if not always in words. He wouldn't have minded saying these things, either, but Sauvage was unexpectedly shy about it, and in fact about most positive things Roman had to say about him, and he didn't want to push.

Which was, arguably, what had gotten them into the mess they'd been in, but, well. Roman knew something about this—about quiet shame, about wanting something in secret for so long that you were afraid to take it when it was offered, about transgressing just by looking because you were looking at the wrong people in the wrong way. It was different, because Sauvage's guilt was more specific, because it came from a different source, but it was close enough that Roman's memory of his youth gave him an idea of how to handle it.

For the most part, anyway. He was beginning to suspect that more than just time was required, but Sauvage could barely manage to ask him for anything remotely emotionally charged. Something would have to be done. This time he wasn't going to wait for Sauvage's life to be in danger before starting a goddamned conversation.

Sauvage turned to him, and looked abruptly away when their eyes met. Troubling.

Jules reappeared, leaning out from between two shelves, different from the ones she'd left through. "You guys ought to come see this."

[Indigo]

Jules, who in Roman's experience always had the energy of several people, disappeared again immediately; it took him slightly longer to lever himself out of the chair, which he preferred not to dwell on. As he made for the shelves he felt Sauvage's fingers brush his and then jerk away, but when he reached out himself Sauvage clung to him like a drowning man.

This, too, was somewhat troubling. In all the time Roman had known him, Sauvage had never mentioned anything that had happened in the first century of his life, and his willingness to discuss the second was limited enough that Roman didn't feel comfortable speculating on what precisely his family had done to him, but whatever it was, one of its lasting effects was apparently to make him desperate for any sort of physical affection. Roman hadn't known this ten years ago, but then neither had Sauvage, who likened it to his century of loneliness: he didn't realize he was missing something until someone gave it to him by accident. It was...difficult to think about.

Just as well that Roman would almost certainly never meet Sauvage's parents. On those occasions that he thought about them, he wanted to hurt them.

"Everything all right?"

How easily he was lost in thought, these days. "Yes, sorry." He squeezed Sauvage's hand gently and received a faint smile in return, and every moment like this--and there were so many of them now--felt like letting out a breath he'd been holding for years.

At the front of the cafe they found Jules talking with a woman Roman didn't recognize, someone not from Bristlecone, dressed like she'd just come back from a jog. In her hand was a leash, and at the other end of the leash was an unnaturally shiny akail--made of metal, he realized. A construct. It seemed to be having trouble figuring out how to fit between the tables.

The woman turned when they came in, and seemed to focus her full attention on them, like a collector's pin in a butterfly. "Which one of you is James?"

[Indigo]

Roman said, "I don't think--"

Sauvage cut him off with a startled sound in his throat. "No one's ever actually called me that," he said, "but I suppose it is my name. I'd be very interested to know where you got it from." He didn't sound worried or upset, merely politely confused, as if he couldn't quite remember where he'd met this woman before.

She shrugged. "I have a friend who's into magic. She said I'd find a hrraktha here, and that was the name she had for him. Suppose it does explain...that." This was accompanied by a broad gesture to Sauvage in general, presumably to indicate his Technicolor brilliance in comparison to their surroundings.

"I suppose it does," Sauvage said. A slight smile graced his lips, but his hand tightened around Roman's, almost enough to hurt. "And you're in need of a hrraktha because..." No need to question how someone might know about his presence here; the incident with Barker had been fairly noticeable, evacuation or no. And it would be simple enough to dig up the name of someone who owned a house in the affected area if you wanted to know that sort of thing.

"I was hoping one of you might be able to help with this whole missing colors situation. And before you start asking why you, you're just the most accessible one anyone seems to know about. I would've gone out to some secret hrraktha town or whatever if I had to."

Sauvage snorted and abruptly relaxed his grip, whatever sudden fear had come over him leaving him just as quickly. "Secret is overselling it a bit, I think you'll find. Why don't we all sit down and have a conversation, like civilized people?"

"Civilized people don't zap the locks off my doors," Jules muttered, but it was only a token protest; she was clearly just as intrigued as the rest of them. There was a hasty shuffling of chairs and tables to accommodate the akail, which lay down between all of their feet with a long-suffering sigh, like an elderly dog.

As they settled into chairs again Roman leaned over to whisper to Sauvage, "Are you all right?"

"Of course," he replied, and he looked so surprised that Roman almost believed him.

"So," Jules said, in what Roman recognized as the most self-consciously stern voice she could muster, "Miss, uh..."

"Just call me Kettle."

"Sure." They'd all heard much stranger names. "This isn't some kind of creepy harvesting thing, right? I saw the news and all, but I don't remember them saying anything about getting colors from people."

Kettle raised an eyebrow. "If I were going to do that, I wouldn't walk in here and ask, would I?"

"You never know."

"Apparently not." She shook her head. "But no. From what I understand, people like you--" Here she pointed at Sauvage rather aggressively. "--can make stuff appear out of thin air, right?"

"I can," Sauvage said evenly. "I don't exactly make a habit of it."

[Indigo]

Kettle eyed his clothes critically. "Maybe I should've seen that coming. Why not?"

"It isn't especially safe if one is concerned for the structural integrity of one's surroundings. There are methods that are safer, but they're not worthwhile to use on a regular basis, and if repeated enough times they'd do considerable damage to reality anyway."

"I see," Kettle said. "Then you may not like my idea."

"You want me to conjure up some new colors for you? I'm not sure I could do that if I tried." He spoke in not entirely convincing tones of disbelief. Perhaps he could, if he tried, and simply didn't think it wise. Roman wouldn't put it past him.

"Not quite. First I want you to try making something that way that still has color in it. My friend and I have a theory about that," Kettle said. "If you can do it your safe way on short notice."

"Safer," Sauvage corrected, and frowned. "Hmm. I could give it a try, though I have my doubts you'll be satisfied with the results." As he pushed back his chair he caught Roman's eye and added, "This will look much the same as the way I used to do it, to you. You'll have to--" His voice faltered suddenly, for a reason Roman could not name, and he looked away. "Well. It is a different process, I assure you."

Without any further explanation he got up and went to the front counter, and leaned back against it, with a nonchalance that was almost certainly genuine. He extended his right hand palm up in front of him, and closed his eyes. With his left hand he snapped his fingers. It was a slightly slower and more theatrical version of what he'd done in the past, but true enough that it didn't appear significantly mechanically different. Roman felt only a faint tremor in the fabric of reality, but then again, he was still terribly out of practice sensing that sort of thing, so who knew?

In the half second after Sauvage snapped his fingers, a ceramic mug appeared in his outstretched hand. It was perfectly unremarkable in appearance apart from the fact that it was dark green. Even this, given that Sauvage himself remained suffused with color, did not seem particularly notable until he set it in the center of the table, where it shone green against the dull grays of everyone else. It was nearly impressive enough to distract Roman from the blood under his nails.

He caught Sauvage's wrist on its journey away from the mug, turned the hand over to confirm what he'd already seen: five crescents of dark wet blood, a red almost black, welling up at Sauvage's fingertips.

"As I said." Sauvage smiled again, just barely. "It's a different process. It isn't sustainable in the long term--"

"Because it hurts you?" Roman hissed.

"That too. Why do you care?" Sauvage said mildly. "I'm resilient. Don't worry about me."

"I rather think it's my job to worry about you."

"No, it isn't. It isn't anyone's job to--"

Jules cleared her throat very loudly. "I have a suggestion," she said. "How about we postpone this argument until we don't have an audience, and in the meantime we can focus on the actual issue at hand?"

[Indigo]

For her part, Kettle appeared entirely unfazed by the whole situation, wrapped up in the excitement of the green mug; she picked it up and turned it over and over, as if looking for some sort of trick, some sign that it was all an illusion. There was a small smear of blood on the inside of the handle. Roman tried to ignore it.

Sauvage sat down again and steepled his fingers, leaning forward to get a better look at his construction. "Curious," he said. "I don't think the material comes from outside of this...plane, if that is the right word, but it's unaffected."

"Yeah, see, this is the theory in action," Kettle said. "I don't know all the details because I'm not really the expert but it has something to do with...hrraktha are weird magic things. My friend calls you a 'nexus of power', so you distort the fabric of reality with your presence, and that means other distortions kind of roll off you. Not all of them—there's a theory about that too, but I can't even pretend to understand that one. But this one does. Then with this thing—"

"Hang on, let me see that." Jules had entirely given up on maintaining her grudge about the lock, too swept up in the thrill of discovery; she snatched the mug out of Kettle's hands. "Normal matter, so it's at least partly drawn out of this plane—like you said, I know—but there's some sort of..." Her inspection brought her to the spot of blood, and she trailed off, staring at it. She gave Sauvage a single concerned look, which he did not meet, and continued. "Uh, anyway. I don't really know what this is, it has a few things in common with other stuff I've read about, but something about the way you've put it together..."

As they talked it over, none of them ever quite reaching a conclusion, a strange thought came to Roman unbidden: Elisheva would know. Or if not, she would have a better idea than any of them were capable of coming up with.

There was an unread email in Roman's inbox. It had arrived about two months ago, not too long after the flood but long enough to let things settle down a bit. It had come from one madamsphagnum at gmail.com, and its subject line was "Hey", because subject lines were the part of modern communication that Moss hated the most. Every so often he glanced at it, refusing to even read the little preview, afraid of what it might contain. Of what reading it might mean.

He had never really stopped missing the other hunters, any more than he had ever stopped loving Sauvage. They'd been his family when he had none, and he'd known them for a long time, and they had never held his mistakes against him, just ensured he cleaned up his own messes when he could. As he'd done for them. But he'd locked away those memories for a long time, hiding from them and from himself; the events of these past several months, since Sauvage had arrived in Bristlecone, had brought them back to the surface. Did he miss that life? He didn't know. And he didn't know if replying to the email, or merely reading it, would be giving an answer to that question that he wasn't prepared to stand behind.

[Indigo]

He returned his attention to the conversation to find Kettle wrapping up a sentence: "...hoping to get a few more of these things, to see if we can do anything with them."

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt," Sauvage said. "Though too many might be rather taxing, and I don't want to take risks with the nature of reality and so on when it's already in such a precarious state. Shall we say three more?"

"Works for me," Kettle said, and the akail under the table rumbled agreeably; Jules jumped, having evidently forgotten it was there.

Sauvage got up and went to the counter again, to go through his whole elaborate performance, and Roman opened his mouth, and thought about Why do you care?, and didn't say anything. He couldn't watch, but nor could he bear to hear those words again, said so casually, as if Sauvage genuinely didn't know.

After a few minutes Sauvage came back over and handed Kettle an assortment of brightly colored dishware; he had one hand pressed to his nose, Roman noted, and wondered what kind of effects repeated use of this magic might have, and how much it would take before Sauvage admitted that it was harming him.

"I'm very grateful for your help," Kettle said. It was impossible to tell whether she was being sincere. "If we figure anything out I'll try to find some way to let you know. Though with the way all the electronics have been freaking out since this started, I might have a hard time getting in touch. We'll see. But thanks." With this she coaxed her akail out from under the table, and, leash in one hand and colors in the other, gathered into a bag she'd produced seemingly from nowhere, she left.

"Sauvage," Jules said, "are you ruining my nice dishtowel?"

"Oh, it appears that I am. I'm sorry." He pulled it away from his face and snapped his fingers, less theatrically and more absentmindedly this time, and the dark bloodstain vanished. "Better?"

"Technically, yes." She folded her arms and frowned at him, as if she were going to say something else, but then she caught Roman's eye and seemed to change her mind. Perhaps she too was thinking of his earlier response to Roman's concern. Instead she produced her phone from her pocket and started scowling at something on the screen.

Sauvage tossed the newly rejuvenated dishtowel back into its proper place, and brushed his hands together as if wiping away some invisible speck of dirt. "I must admit I'm not feeling my best after all that," he said. "Give me a call if something important happens, will you?" He left without waiting for a response, out of the cafe and presumably up the hill and home. Roman watched the doors close behind him with not a little consternation.

Jules said, "I think I'm going to head into the city and see if I can't talk to Roderick in person about all this. Do you want to come along?"

"Hmm," Roman said, not really listening. "What? Oh. Yes. There's something I need to get from the house first, though, if you don't mind waiting."

She followed his gaze to the doors. You could always count on Jules to understand what you weren't saying, despite her insistence to the contrary. "I don't mind."

"Thank you. I won't be long," he said, and went to try to catch up with Sauvage.

[Color Harvested]

[Indigo]

When he wanted to be Sauvage was unsettlingly fast, but this was not one of those times or, more worrying, he didn't feel up to it after his reality-warping misadventure; whatever the cause, Roman found him halfway up the hill, moving at what could only be described as a saunter. At the sound of Roman's footsteps behind him he turned slightly and said, "You're not still worried about me, are you?"

"Really, Sauvage," Roman said, "it's as though you don't know me."

Sauvage chuckled, but it sounded hollow, or possibly Roman was projecting. "What are you really worried about? This can't only be about the magic," Sauvage said. "You know perfectly well how hard I am to kill. I doubt I could do it myself. Certainly not by accident."

There was a thought experiment he preferred not to ponder, especially knowing that those doubts were considered and not off the cuff. But Sauvage was right, anyway; they needed to talk about more than his self-destructive tendencies. Roman said, "You seem...unhappy."

"Merely a side effect of our dismal surroundings." Sauvage made a sweeping gesture and smiled.

"That's not what I mean, and I think you know it. I..." Roman swallowed. "I love you, Sauvage, and I'm glad that we have largely overcome some of our initial...difficulties, but you don't seem very comfortable in this relationship, and if this isn't what you want—" And then he stopped, because for some reason Sauvage was looking at him with an expression of utter panic.

"Everything's fine," Sauvage said, too fast, and his eyes moved rapidly over Roman's face, as if he were trying to convey lying in a game of charades. At any other time it might almost have been funny. "I don't mean to seem—I'll do better, I'm sorry, I'll do better."

"What?" Some part of Roman whispered that this was it, his worst fears realized, that Sauvage had just been going along with what he thought Roman wanted; but it didn't ring quite true. The way things had been going...but nor could he imagine what else could prompt this response. "Sauvage, what are you talking about?"

"I am happy." The wild expression hadn't left his face, but he spoke more quietly now, though with much of the same frantic speed. "I promise you I am. If you just—just give me some time, I will find a way to prove it to you, I will, please don't—" And then he broke off into a sound that was something like a sob, and pressed his hands against his mouth as if to keep whatever he'd been about to say from escaping. He looked over his shoulder and lurched backward, about to bolt for the house, a motion Roman recognized from long experience.

Before he could flee Roman reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, which startled him enough to interrupt his movement. "Tell me what's wrong," Roman said softly. "Please."

[Indigo]

Of course Sauvage was much, much stronger than him, and could shake him off without a thought even if he'd been trying to hold him in place; but he didn't. He stood there staring at Roman with all the intensity of three pairs of eyes layered on top of each other for what felt like a very long time.

"I—can't," he said. "I can't." Under Roman's hands he reshaped himself into a bird, too fast to catch, and flew away. Roman watched him go.

"That could have gone better," he said, to nobody, because it turned out to be rather difficult to get out of the habit of talking to oneself after living alone for so long. The fault was partly his, to be sure; he had to admit he'd taken an excessively aggressive tack. But that hardly explained the strength of Sauvage's reaction, the reason for which he couldn't begin to fathom. Or perhaps he could begin—Sauvage, for all his power and near-immortality, carried an astounding amount of fear—but he didn't know enough to work out the full picture. And apparently Sauvage wasn't willing to tell him any more.

With a sigh he slipped his hands into his pockets and started back down the hill. There was no use chasing after Sauvage when he was this upset; best give him some time to calm down and then try again, with a gentler approach.

Jules was waiting outside the cafe with her neighbor's car. When she saw him she raised her eyebrows. "That's not a happy face."

It reminded him enough of what he'd said to Sauvage that he grimaced. "Yes, well. Best laid plans and so forth."

"So you're giving up?" He thought that might be murder in her eyes, and couldn't blame her, given what the two of them had already put her through via their refusal to talk to each other. She continued, "I seem to remember you said something about not lying down and dying—"

"That was extremely literal," he said, failing to conceal a smile. "You can't use it against me in a metaphorical context. But no, I'm not giving up, merely waiting for a more opportune moment. Shall we?" He gestured to the car.

Jules looked dubious, but she unlocked it and got in. As he reached for his seatbelt she said, "Well, there's one positive side to all of this."

"Oh? What's that?"

"The radio doesn't work," she said, "so we can't argue about it."

Roman snorted, and watched the grey-washed countryside roll by, and for the moment let himself be distracted.

[Indigo]

It had been a while since Jules had come to the Library in person, which she felt slightly guilty about. She and Roderick met up for lunch sometimes to talk over her research, and he'd dropped by Bristlecone once or twice when he had the time, but it wasn't quite the same as those heady days of sitting with books spread in circles around her, frantically scribbling notes.

And she missed the Library itself. She couldn't communicate with it directly the way its stewards could, but she had a...sense of it that was hard to describe. Although if Roderick's testimony was any indication that wasn't hugely different from what he got; but it didn't listen to her in the same way. In any case, she was glad to be going back.

She and Roman did not discuss Sauvage. The avoidance was not what you'd call pointed, exactly, but it certainly wasn't accidental either. Honestly, she didn't feel equipped to deal with whatever was going on with them, which had sort of been true before but was more pronounced now; Sauvage was reluctant to discuss the relationship much—she would say with her, but she was beginning to get the impression that it was more at all, although since they had plenty to discuss that wasn't that (such as what Twitter is for) the conversational hole was not terribly notable.

Of course she was worried, especially after the performance in the cafe, and Sauvage seemed more willing to respond to her worry than Roman's, but that wasn't something she wanted to encourage. And so here she was once again, quietly observing her friends' relationship and wondering what she could do that would cause the least harm, and once again the answer seemed to be to sit on her hands and let them sort it out.

Which was fine. As long as they sorted it out fast.

So Jules and Roman talked about how the cafe was doing, and how had he even covered operating costs before she'd started there anyway, and her rehabilitation of her house's garden was progressing nicely, and had he seen The Good Place yet, and these pleasant lines of discussion continued right up until Jules made the final turn and saw that the Library was gone.

[Indigo]

The Library moved. This was one of its oddities, a side effect of its position right at the boundary between real and unreal; it went where it was needed, for whatever definition of "need" a library understood, and there were probably a lot of people who might qualify, right now. All this had been explained to Jules the first time she'd found the place, and though it had remained accessible to her for some months now, she knew that with each day that passed it was more and more likely that the Library was about to pack up and leave. So it wasn't the absence itself that bothered her. That wouldn't faze her at all. It was more about the surrounding factors.

For one thing, Roderick had told her that they always had some warning before the Library left, usually about a week, but even if the Library were in a rush they'd still get a day or two. He'd made no mention of its imminent departure, and it wasn't like she was hard to reach. Well—she was a little hard to reach at the moment, but so was everyone else, and that didn't go much way toward explaining anything.

And for another, the Library had left...wrong. Normally it occupied a space between a bookstore and a nail salon, a space that it had created for itself on its arrival; there had originally been nothing in that spot, not even an alleyway. When it moved again the building it had constructed to house itself should have vanished and the ones on either side come together to fill the hole again.

But here, now, that hadn't happened. The worn brick building was still there, only the layers of winding ivy that normally covered it had disappeared, and it no longer had a door.

She explained all this to Roman with rapidly evaporating calm as she paced in front of the not-Library, looking for some kind of clue. Once she tried knocking on the wall, in case it was just...hiding, or something, but received only scraped knuckles for her trouble.

"But then what's happened to it?" Roman said.

"I don't know." It wasn't that she didn't appreciate being considered a sort of expert on things like this—she was certainly pretty knowledgeable about it at this point, particularly when accompanied by her grimoire—but sometimes Roman had slightly unrealistic expectations. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

"Perhaps if Argent were here," he said somewhat absently; that had also been happening a lot recently, the distant musing on the absence of his old friends, and Jules wasn't quite sure what to do with it. "Though despite her apparent experience with it I'm not certain she could have offered more than I. Metaphysical phenomena of that nature were never her area of interest. Truth be told, Jules, I think you are the person I know who is best suited to answer such a question, and if you don't know..." He shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry I can't be of more use."

"Ngh." She'd heard about enough of people apologizing for not being useful this year, but Roman wasn't the source of that frustration and nobody would benefit from her pushing back on it. Probably. Maybe it would make her feel a little better, but only for about ten seconds, which wasn't really worth the trouble.

[Indigo]

She returned to pacing, this time in thought rather than panic. "Obviously it has something to do with all...this," she said, waving at the colorless environs. "I read some of the reports on those whispers—they talk a lot about erasing things from history, forgetting things. The Library is the antithesis of that. Sort of." That was equal parts spitballing and actual knowledge; Roderick and Alphonse, mostly Roderick, had a number of theories about what exactly the Library was and how it selected its information, none of which had really been verified to any great extent. But this was pretty much all guesswork anyway.

"You think it's a defensive move?" Roman said.

"Exactly. I'm still pretty unclear on the whole...planar aspect of this situation, but whatever's causing this seems to have some kind of otherworldly influence—why are you looking at me like that? Oh, I see, you weren't listening when we were talking about this with Kettle."

"No." He had the grace to look embarrassed, though she couldn't really blame him considering all that had been going on.

"Well, anyway, that part's not really important. The point is, I think the Library has put itself both inside and outside reality at the same time, so it can't be targeted in either one."

"Clever of it."

"Yes. Also inconvenient." On balance she'd rather the Library and everyone in it were safe, but that didn't bring her any closer to having answers.

She tried calling Roderick again. On previous attempts the ringing had simply dissolved into static, but this time it went through, which was thrilling for all of half a second: "Hi, you've reached Roderick Hodges, or more accurately my cell phone! I'm a little busy at the moment but I'll get back to you as soon as I have a sec. In the meantime, have a great day!"

In fairness, she supposed, this was probably one of the most exciting things that had happened to Roderick in a while, and she couldn't really blame him for being otherwise occupied. She left a short message mostly just asking if he was okay and hung up.

She turned to Roman, who was giving her an unreadable look, and shrugged. "Well, we've driven all the way here, so we might as well see if anything's open for lunch, right?"