The funny thing about time was how quietly and quickly it slipped by. Varus continued his scribbling of words on pages, pausing briefly when it felt like his characters objected, ‘I may be a villain, but I am not that villainous…’ The slender but muscular antagonist said from over Varus’s shoulder, his scar riddled chest must have itched, because it seemed the bare chested man was prone to scratching it…another detail to add into the final version, and Varus mentally apologized to him.

  ‘Understood, I’ll edit the flesh eating part out, you’re right, you would never do that. You may be evil, but you are lawful about it, not ‘awful’ about it.’ Varus remarked in his head, and for a moment it seemed that the shade of the villain hovering over his shoulder was about to accept his apology…

  Until the triple snore broke the concentration of the undead author and snapped him back to the present moment.

  Varus looked over his shoulder and saw the blonde valkyrie had nodded off after wrapping herself in her cloak. Her head was slumped forward, the book closed at the back and sitting at her side, she didn’t seem to mind her back being against the wall.

  ‘She’s probably slept in worse conditions. Besides, she’s strong, even if she is naive.’ Varus told himself, but even so, he felt a twinge of guilt for his relatively lackluster hospitality. ‘Just because she came to kill me, that’s no reason for me to be rude about it, I’m the one who decided to make her a guest, and I did sort of ask for her help…alright, I did ask for her help.’ With that thought, he resolved to offer her an additional gift, another book to read on her way home.

  Not far away, Tuesday and Hannah lay slumped against the wall, their heads leaned toward one another, their legs stretched out, their tails lay limp, and both held a feather quill that they’d dozed off while making.

  A candle flickering on the table was almost down to the nub with a pool of wax around the base waiting to receive the wick in its final minutes.

  The pair hadn’t even gone to their improvised beds, the pair of furs lying only a few paces away from a pile of feathers. Varus stood and walked on silent feet over to the pair, he bent forward, skeletal face looming above them, he stretched out his hand and took one of the feathers between his fingers. Unbothered by the dimness of the light, he examined the feather’s tip and saw that, true to his instruction, they had turned it into a proper quill. His red eyes went briefly over the pile as he set the new implement back with the rest, and saw that they had somehow miraculously finished their work. He exhaled through his nostril cavity, “I hadn’t meant for you to do it all so quickly. I thought you’d finish…some.” He muttered so softly that even with their sensitive hearing, they did not stir at the sound of his voice.

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  One by one, he slid his hands beneath their legs and behind their backs, and moved them into place on the wolf furs that had been turned into bedrolls.

  They murmured and clung to his robe, rubbing their cheeks against the soft cloth to stir uncomfortably against his thick, hard rib bones. Their discomfort was clear to him, and his mind spun off into ideas of how to make them more comfortable.

  ‘I’ll need to make proper beds for them, and get them their own rooms, and…’

  A noise. A little murmur from the far wall where Lithia dozed. That was all it took to shatter that thought too. He glanced up at her as his gentle hands finished covering the sleeping Tuesday with a cozy fur blanket that had been made out of her would be devourer. His thought stopped dead as a charging soldier struck by an arrow in flight.

  Lithia was still asleep, but her very presence, and the reminder of it, brought him back to reality.

  ‘No, I don’t need those things. I don’t need any of those things. Not a spare room, two rooms, not two beds, not a little farm to grow more food for them, not… anything. They’re going to leave tomorrow. They’re going to leave and I’ll never see them again.’

  He straightened and looked toward the cottage door. For a moment it was all flashing through his mind, the day he broke it, the fixing, the little scraps along the way, their desperation, their…everything, from that moment until the making of the quills.

  He walked to the cottage door and wrapped his fingers around the handle. His feet told him to move forward.

  The rest of his body told him to stay still.

  His head looked back instead, toward the door he clung to, and the grip of his fingers slowly relaxed.

  ‘They are really cute.’ His left eye turned toward the manuscript that waited for him to return, and it seemed that his hero character along with the rest of his party were emerging from the page. His love interest looked at the pair with pity, the ghostly shade as he pictured her, stood over the pair as she spoke, ‘I guess I don’t mind us being ignored for a little while for their sake, but… are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Her question haunted Varus’s mind, and he had no answer.

  True to form, the protagonist chimed in with a heavy shrug of his armored shoulders, his hands out and palms up, he was decisive in his tone in Varus’s head, as if there were no doubt about the truth of his words. ‘Of course he is. He said it himself. He’s an undead living in the middle of nowhere. He has no idea what the rest of the world is like, he hasn’t an antagonist’s chance on the page of raising them into functioning adults. Best case scenario, they go out into the world and fall harder than a wall hit by a mangonel’s boulder. Worst case scenario, they die horribly. Their only real chance is to be raised by living people who understand what they need and how to help them grow.’

  ‘A-A-Are you s-s-sure you’re not just eager for Varus to finish writing our story?’ The priestess asked, a faint hint of rebuke in her voice and a steady stare in her bright, youthful eyes.

  ‘I am. I mean, I want him to finish our story, but I’m also right, and so is he. If he keeps them, it’s because he’s selfish and just wants them around, not because it’s good for them.’ The protagonist replied, and Varus moved away from the door and over to the table.

  He sat and looked down at them where they slept. “Go away. I need to be alone.” He muttered and with a sharp wave of his hand, he dismissed his imaginary characters and watched them disappear like mist in the wind.

  Varus did not move for the rest of the night.