Page 77 of Bizarre Bonds
I can’t stop a giggle from popping out of my mouth. “I couldn’t even if I did want to.”
“That’s the whole point, though, isn’t it?” Sorsha arches an eyebrow at me. “You’re beating yourself up over doing a little damage, but you could have powers capable of a whole lot worse. You’re hardly the most dangerous shadowkind out there. Your mistakes aren’t that horrifying. You’ve got plenty to be grateful about.”
She snuffs out the fire beneath her fingers.
I can see what she’s getting at, but her story doesn’t comfort me much. “It’s not just about the damage I did. It’s the damage I didn’t stop from happening. Ever since I came to the mortal realm, I’ve hurtsomany people without meaning to, and every time I have the chance to balance things out… No matter how much I try to only bring people happiness, more things go wrong. The men I care about can’t use their own powers effectively because our emotions get all muddled now. How many more people will Viscera hurt because I couldn’t stop her—and maybe riled her up more?”
Sorsha considers me for a few moments with a pensive expression. “I might have a few ideas about that too. Let’s head over to the Everymobile. We’ve gotten our thoughts moving around plenty. Now I think the conversation needs drinks.”
Having something filling my throat other than uncomfortable words sounds good to me. Especially when my feet are starting to twinge with familiar aches.
As Sorsha leads me to the hulking vehicle parked down the road from the trailers, she slings her hands in her pockets and murmurs a couple of lines of a song I can’t make out. Then she glances over at me. “How are you normally thinking about your powers, Peri? And, well, everything else around you? What do you mean by ‘balancing things out’?”
I grope for the right words to explain. “I’ve had so many accidents, and the sorcerer who held me captive forced me to use the harmful side of my powers to blast peoplehewanted to attack. I feel every single being I hurt. I have… sort of a list, in my head, of the total number. Whenever I can make someone feel happy instead, I can knock that number down.”
“I assume you’d eventually like it to be zero.”
“I’d like it to be in positive numbers. More happiness than hurt.” Imagining that brings a bittersweet ache into my chest—the joy I’d feel if it happened, the fear that I’ll never get even close.
Sorsha nods. “So you’re always trying to make people happy and encourage other positive emotions.”
“Yes. I don’t know why it’s so hard.”
“Probably because both human and shadowkind beings are too damned complicated.”
Before I can ask what she means by that, she opens the door of the RV we’ve just reached. It swings out with a jangle like a phone ringing in an old movie and a brief flash of rainbow strobe lights.
I peer at the doorway. “What was— Does it normally do that?”
Sorsha laughs and beckons me inside. “The Everymobile has been with us through a lot of adventures. Even passing through normal rifts into the shadow realm leaves it a little warped—in interesting rather than dangerous ways. Usually.”
The RV’s front room holds a tiny kitchen across from a padded bench that forms a semi-circle around a narrow table. Some of the cushions are a neutral beige; others sparkle with a silver gloss. A pinwheel spins on the ceiling between two light fixtures.
I sit down at one end of the bench, and a little green creature comes hurtling out of a doorway at the far end of the vehicle. It looks like… a tiny dragon?
The shadowkind creature freezes at the sight of me and lets out a squeaky sort of grunt.
Sorsha clicks her tongue at it. “Now, Pickle, you know to be nice to guests.”
The little dragon studies me as if sizing me up. It’s so cute I can’t help smiling, even though I’m not sure there’s anything nice about the trickles of smoke that puffed from its nostrils.
All at once, the creature flings itself onto my lap and flops there. I rub the smooth green scales on its back tentatively, and it gives a raspy rumble that’s almost like a purr.
Sorsha grins. “There you go, already making friends. Now let’s see…”
Grabbing a mug, she turns on the tap at the kitchen sink and makes a face at the sand that hisses out. She turns the faucet off, waits a few seconds with her foot tapping, and tries again.
This time water burbles into the sink, but apparently that’s not what she wants either. She gives it one more try, and on the third gets a gush of steamy, dark brown liquid.
When she sets the first mug in front of me, the scent that reaches my nose immediately soothes my nerves. “Hot chocolate! I need a sink like that.”
“If only it came with different faucets for every flavor.” Sorsha sits across from me, cradling her own mug. “Before we talk about how to fix your problem, let’s touch on how I solved mine. How do you think I managed not to burn the world down?”
I pause. “You… decided you liked it better when it isn’t charbroiled?”
She barks a delighted laugh. “I guess that’s the gist of it. But I think you know that with these things it isn’t as easy as deciding, or you’d just decide never to hurt anyone.”
“True.”
