2022-03-13 - How Della Found (Her) Fire

The world is ablaze, and it's beautiful.

Spider didn't want Fire unleashed. To permit humans to make use of it, if only to stymie Skookums, that she had agreed to; but this?

Humans, now, use fire directly very little. But Fire has made the leap, has transformed, into what Della sees and works with and plays with every day: electricity, inspiration, joy. (Even if Fire, being Fire, will also burn.)

She stretches her arms (if not a Kali's worth, still so many arms), grateful to no longer be frightened by destruction (if also gratified by having overcome a bad creature, and the prospect of lunch). Her sheets give way, and her nightgown's sleeves fall back, and fresh air finds her from the cracked-open window (just a little, there are heating bills to pay).

It's beautiful.

She can, she can, and that's beautiful too.

She arches her back, stretches further, rolls to one side: languid in the best of ways. Her eyes are open, surely: to the candles she'd extinguished so long ago (and why would she do such a thing?), to her screens no longer shut, rippling with continuous light. It's new, and she's known it always.

The rug is cool and then the boards are cold beneath her bare feet. That's all right.

The wicks burn and the wax melts and incense is in the air, rising. She holds her hands to it, the air stirring the fall of her hair (hadn't she braided it back, before going to bed?), the sheer curtains, the house's own gossamer tresses.

The air shimmers as her web shimmers. So beautiful.

Is that a good idea, to come closer, to try this path? Perhaps it isn't, if Della doesn't take care; perhaps it is, if she does. The world is wide; all that power... amazes her, delights her, but isn't in the end her temptation. She doesn't want to tame it. The way it breathes through the world, that immanence, that feels right and true: in balance, as the web is in balance.

Part of that balance is welcoming a tendril to live with her, a strand that curls and interlaces and meshes with her life -- or rather recognizing, finally, that one has all along, and she hasn't seen it, hadn't known. Part of her web. Hers.

Fire.

She opens the window wider.

Beautiful.

She'll remember this forever, she's sure in the moment; gossamer whiteness and glow and --

-- and then that acrid smell kicks in and Della hisses, batting at her head --

-- and then she grabs for the window, leaning forward for leverage to slam it down --

-- on, as it happens, her still-burning hair --

Safe. 'Safe.' Breathing hard, her heart racing, scrambling up and out for air.

Out and out and out. Out of the fire-dream, out of her covers, out of her bed -- that smell, though, that follows her -- out of her not-burning room and down the hallway and... banging on Una's door and then just plain trying the knob anyway because, "The hell? What the hell?!"

Una's still half asleep; Una's still recovering from the vestiges of Dream-- not Della's near Dream-within-a-Dream, but still Dream-- and banging on the door leads to an 'eek' that translates itself, when the door opens (door's unlocked; it's always unlocked) to an Una-on-the-floor, peering sleepily up at the intruder.

Peering sleepily, and then bug-eyed because: "Holy shit, Della, you're fucking awake. What the hell happened to your hair?"

Una glows, too, in that kind-of-like-an-aura way: not a blazing fire, but a steady glow.

Della's waving her arms in the air, which can't help stability any -- "It's on fire! It caught. on. fire -- " as if to say everything did, and not just her hair, which is a whole lot shorter on one side and not in a fun punk way either, and yet Della isn't calling 911 or anything, she's standing in Una's room and then doing a double take because, "Did you get into the glow in the dark chalk?" for drawing things on sidewalks, not on faces. "Seriously! Fire!"

"Della," says Una, very patiently, from the floor. "Come and sit down. You're ok. The fire is out now. Did you... did you make the fire?"

It's not fire that she makes, though: instead, the tired-looking pot-plant sitting atop Una's dresser abruptly bursts into bloom.

Her eyebrows raise; she waits.

Della is not patient. Della is not sitting down. Della is doing a dance that... is not the have-to-pee dance, but more of a pumped-fist what! the! hell!!! But she's also not shrieking, so there's that. "Why would I make the fire?!" Which isn't to say she's quiet.

"How do you know it's -- " she scrubs her palms against her head in irritation and then completely misses that she's shedding because, somehow, she's caught sight of the plant and, "What the actual hell?!"

Okay, so maybe the plant was a miscalculation. Una makes a face.

"We-- well, some of us, anyway-- call it the shine. Glimmer. Power. Magic, I guess. You... had a dream last night, right? You were, um, Spider, I think? And I was Squirrel." She waits for a moment, brows raised hopefully. "And I think something happened on the way back, because you woke up." And not just, it seems, from sleep. "I'll explain as much as I can, though... fuck, I don't know, I'm not sure I know enough to really help. You're not crazy, though. That's the key thing. You're not."

Della is still staring at the plant -- there's a literal wave of her hand for magic -- and says over the last part, "You made that do that?" followed by, "How come it didn't look like that before?" i.e., why was it allowed to not look like that before? followed by, "Did you do the yard?!" Then she's striding for the plant, which hopefully does not entail literally walking over Una, just to check everything's still attached the way it should be and isn't plastic or fake or made out of frosting because that would be just like Una to do that.

Luckily, there's space enough around Una for Della to pass, the redhead following her passage with an expression that's falling a little bit closer to straight mirth, now.

"Ava did the yard. Doctor Brennan. I don't think you've met her yet. My new boss-- or will be, once her clinic gets fixed." The itty bitty little explosion in the Bauer Building put a temporarily hold on that. "Though-- she was in that dream last night, too. Anyway, she did the yard, and now the faeries are maintaining it. I did the plant just now, and... I guess I just usually try and let things grow on their own, but it was a good demonstration, right?"

She stands, though mostly just so that she can sit down on the bed instead of the floor.

"Wait, you have a job?" Should Della sound so startled, but also so proud? Except, "Faeries what now?" The woman with the half-fried hair looks puzzled, along the lines of, 'Is that what they want to be called?' "And has all this been happening all this time?! And what about my hair?!" because, evidently satisfied with the plant -- for now -- she's looked back up and spotted her own reflection in the mirror.

"It'll grow back," soothes Una. "And we can probably-- well, no, you can get a professional to-- cut it nicely, for now."

She hesitates over the rest of it (where to start?) and finally opts for, "Yeah. All this time. And it's been the absolute worst, because you didn't know any of it, and... shit, you don't even know about our ghost."

Deep breath, Una, deep breath. "There's... a lot. Um. Coffee? And then we can talk?"

"Can you make it grow back, like now?" Della demands. Because her hair's sort of like a plant, right? Maybe the professional can make it green! Then -- still literally bristling -- "A ghost?! And what about Jules? And -- coffee. Fine. Coffee. And your buns."

Una pauses, as if she's not entirely certain on this whole 'growing back' thing, but ultimately shakes her head. "I don't think I can," she says. "There's healing, but that's-- I can't heal your hair. I don't think."

Again, she gets up, this time so that she can reach for her robe (it's a good thing she doesn't sleep naked, or this might be enormously awkward) and slippers. "Coffee and buns," she promises. "And-- I really don't even know where to start."

"Can you heal other things?" Della, again with the demanding. But then she cuts herself off with a slice of her hand in the air, whirling; "Tell me then." Tell her all the things. But after she has her robe and slippers and... maybe not a hair-chop: mustn't destroy the evidence. Yet.