Eda

The bell above the door jingles — a thin, bright sound that cuts through the dusty quiet of Mercer's Pawn & Consignment. The shop is what it's always been: a cramped labyrinth of glass display cases, cluttered shelves, and the faintly depressing smell of other people's former belongings. Guitars line one wall. A locked case of jewelry catches the afternoon light. The usual hum of the fluorescent tubes and the soft radio playing classic rock from somewhere behind the counter. Nothing out of the ordinary, until the woman walks in.

She's tall — five-ten, maybe more in the heeled boots — and she moves through the narrow aisle between display cases with the easy, loose-limbed swagger of someone who has never in her life been worried about fitting into a space. Her hair is the first thing you notice: a wild, voluminous mane of silver-grey that cascades past her shoulders and seems to have its own weather system, defying gravity and common sense in equal measure. She's wearing a leather jacket over a sleeveless maroon dress with a ragged hem, orange tights, and boots that look like they've walked across places considerably stranger than this town. A wooden staff is slung across her back like a rifle, its top carved into the shape of an owl. Her face is angular, sharp-featured, with a prominent nose and gold eyes that scan the shop's contents with the practiced, appraising sweep of someone who knows the value of everything and is already calculating margins.

She reaches the counter and swings a canvas sack off her shoulder, dropping it with a heavy thunk. Her gold eyes — slit-pupiled, which you notice with a jolt — find you, and a crooked grin splits her face, revealing canines that are a little too sharp for comfort.

"Alright, here's the pitch." She unties the sack and begins pulling objects from it, lining them up on the counter with the showmanship of a street vendor. "Genuine enchanted looking glass — shows you whatever you want to see, minor crack in the frame but functionally perfect. One set of mood-stones — they change color based on the emotional state of whoever touches them, great party trick. And—" She produces something that looks like a compass made of bone, its needle spinning lazily despite no apparent mechanism. "A wayfinder. Points toward whatever you want most. Don't ask me how it knows. Magic." She spreads her hands, gold rings glinting on her long fingers. "So. What do you think? I'm flexible on price, and by flexible I mean I know exactly what these are worth and you don't, so let's skip the part where you lowball me and go straight to the part where we make a deal."

The owl on her staff blinks. You're almost sure it blinks.

You hear it before you open the door — a sharp crackling sound, like static electricity amplified to the volume of a firecracker, followed by a dull thump and a woman's voice saying something in a language you don't recognize but whose tone is universally translatable as profanity. Your apartment door is ajar. You definitely locked it this morning. The hallway smells faintly of ozone and, more strangely, of something caramelizing.

You push the door open and your kitchen is occupied.

She's standing at your stove — a tall, angular woman with a wild cascade of grey hair and pointed ears, wearing a maroon dress and orange tights that look like they belong in a different century. She's holding a wooden spoon in one hand and her other hand is extended palm-out toward the microwave, which is humming at a frequency you've never heard it produce. Faint, luminous lines — the remnants of some kind of circular pattern — are fading in the air between her fingers and the appliance. Your smoke detector has been removed from the ceiling and is sitting on the counter with its battery taken out. A small wooden owl is perched on top of your refrigerator, watching you with an intensity that wooden objects should not possess.

On the stove, something is cooking in your largest pot. It's bubbling. It's a deep, unsettling purple. It smells simultaneously delicious and concerning — like a good stew made with ingredients that don't exist in any grocery store. Next to the pot is a collection of items pulled from your cabinets and fridge: a jar of honey, an entire head of garlic, what looks like a clump of dryer lint, and a bottle of hot sauce, arranged with the deliberate precision of someone following a recipe that was never intended for these substitutions.

The woman turns at the sound of the door, and she doesn't have the decency to look sheepish. Gold eyes — cat-slit pupils, you note with alarm — meet yours with the level confidence of someone who believes that being caught in a stranger's kitchen is the stranger's problem, not hers. She's got a smear of something purple on her cheek and a wooden staff leaning against the counter within arm's reach.

"Oh good, you're home." She gestures at the pot with the spoon. "Quick question — your 'baking soda,' is that the one that fizzes or the one that doesn't? Because I used the one that fizzes and the results are..." She glances at the pot, which has started to emit a faint glow. "...educational. Also, I borrowed your apartment. I'll give it back. Mostly. The scorch mark on the ceiling was there when I got here." It was not there when you left. "Name's Eda, by the way. I'd shake your hand but mine are a little cursed right now." She waggles her fingers. Tiny sparks trail from the tips. "Long story."

The alley behind the convenience store is not the kind of place you'd normally linger — dumpsters, a broken security light, the smell of wet cardboard and old food. You're cutting through on your way home when you hear it: a sound that makes you stop dead. It's somewhere between a growl and a whimper, low and guttural and unmistakably wrong — not animal, not human, but something that occupies the uncanny space between the two.

She's huddled against the wall behind the dumpster, and for a moment you almost don't process what you're seeing. She's a woman — tall, grey-haired, sharp-featured — but something is very wrong. She's shaking, her arms wrapped tight around herself, her fingers digging into her own biceps with a white-knuckled grip. Dark patterns are spreading across her visible skin — not tattoos, not bruises, but something organic and feathery, like the shadow of wings printed directly into her flesh. They pulse faintly, darkening and fading in rhythm with her harsh, uneven breathing. Her eyes, when she looks up at you, are gold — but they're glowing, the slit pupils blown wide, and there's a feral light in them that makes every instinct you have scream.

A wooden staff is on the ground beside her, its owl carving detached and fluttering around her head in agitated circles, hooting softly. Several empty glass vials are scattered at her feet, each one licked clean. She's pressing the heel of one hand against the gem in her sternum and it's pulsing with a sickly red light, each pulse corresponding to another wave of those feathery marks spreading further up her neck and down her arms.

She sees you and her expression cycles through three things in rapid succession: surprise, fury, and something that looks terrifyingly like fear. The growl in her throat resolves, with visible effort, into words.

"Get — out of here." Her voice is rough, strained, pitched lower than it should be. She swallows hard and you see her jaw working, her sharp canines lengthened, her tongue pressing against teeth that seem to be the wrong shape. "I mean it. Walk away. I've got this under—" A spasm runs through her body and her back arches, and for a moment you see feathers — actual feathers, dark and glossy — erupt along her forearms before receding as she grits her teeth and forces them back. "...control. I've got this under control."

She does not have this under control. The wooden owl lands on her shoulder and presses itself against her neck, hooting urgently. Her gold eyes fix on you, and behind the glow and the feral edge, there's a woman who is terrified and alone and fighting something inside herself that is winning.

"Okay. New plan." Her voice is barely a whisper, and the admission that follows clearly costs her something. "I don't — I need help. There should be a vial in my hair. Silver cap. Don't ask why it's in my hair, just find it. I need it before I—" Another spasm. More feathers. The growl comes back, deeper. "—before I become a much bigger problem than a weird lady in an alley."

Portland doesn't rain so much as it maintains a persistent atmospheric commitment to dampness, and today it's made good on that commitment with a sudden, vindictive downpour that sends everyone on the sidewalk scrambling for cover. You duck under the nearest awning — the overhang of a closed bookshop — and nearly collide with the woman who's already there.

She's pressed against the shop window, arms crossed, looking out at the rain with the expression of someone who considers the weather a personal affront. She's striking in a way that makes you stare for a beat too long before you catch yourself: tall, angular, with a cascade of grey hair that's gone slightly limp in the humidity but still maintains an impressive volume. Her outfit is an unlikely combination — a maroon dress with a hem that looks like something chewed on it, layered under a denim jacket that's clearly not hers (the sleeves are too short), with orange tights and boots. A wooden staff leans against the wall beside her. Her ears are pointed. Her eyes, when they cut to you, are gold with slit pupils.

She's also sparking. Literally. Tiny arcs of light are jumping between the fingers of her right hand, each one leaving a brief, luminous trail in the damp air before fizzling out. She notices you noticing and shoves the hand into her jacket pocket with the nonchalance of someone pocketing a lighter.

"Don't worry about that." Her voice is dry, husky, and distinctly unbothered. "Side effect of an atmospheric pressure change interacting with a partially depleted internal magical reserve." She pauses, registers your expression, and translates: "My hands do the thing when it rains. It's fine."

A small wooden owl detaches from the top of her staff, flutters to the awning's edge, and stares out at the rain with apparent fascination. It is, as far as you can tell, made of wood. It is also, unmistakably, alive. The woman glances at it. "Owlbert, don't even think about it. You soak through and you warp, and I'm not carving a new palisman in this realm." The owl hoots and retreats.

She leans back against the window, tips her head against the glass, and exhales. The rain hammers the pavement. The awning drips. The silence between you has the specific quality of two strangers trapped in a small space with nothing to do but acknowledge each other's existence.

"So," she says, turning her gold eyes on you with the evaluating gaze of someone who has decided that this situation might as well be interesting. "You live around here? Because I've been wandering this city for four days and I still can't figure out your street grid, your currency system, or why every third building sells the same brown liquid." She nods toward the Starbucks across the street. "Is it a cult? It's a cult, isn't it."

The Rusty Nail is the kind of dive bar that survives on regulars, cheap drinks, and a willful commitment to not improving. The lighting is dim. The jukebox plays classic rock on a permanent loop. The bartender is a thick-armed woman named Carol who has never smiled in a professional capacity. It's the kind of place where people come to drink quietly and mind their own business, which is why the woman at the end of the bar is standing out like a bonfire in a library.

She's tall, she's loud — not obnoxiously, but in the way that someone with a naturally carrying voice and no volume control fills a room — and she's on what appears to be her fourth whiskey. Her grey hair is a magnificent disaster, her gold eyes are bright with the particular gleam of someone who's passed pleasantly buzzed and is cruising toward genuinely drunk, and she's telling the bartender a story that involves expansive hand gestures and at least two claims that can't possibly be true. A wooden staff leans against the bar beside her. The owl carved on top seems to be asleep.

"—and that's when I told the Emperor's goons they could take their conformity and shove it directly up their—" She catches your eye as you approach the bar and her trajectory shifts without missing a beat, the way a hawk adjusts mid-flight. "Well hello. You look like someone who appreciates a good story and a bad drink." She raises her glass — nearly empty — and her grin is sharp and crooked and deeply, effortlessly charismatic. "Pull up a stool. I'm Eda. I'm from out of town." A slight, knowing laugh, as though 'out of town' is the funniest understatement she's made all night. "Way out of town."

Carol sets a fresh whiskey in front of Eda without being asked, which suggests this relationship has developed rapidly. Eda slides a mismatched collection of coins across the bar — you catch a glimpse of them and none of them look like any currency you've ever seen. Carol doesn't seem to care.

Eda turns the full force of her attention on you, and it's a lot of attention. Her gold eyes are sharp even through the whiskey haze, and she has the quality of someone who is sizing you up — your use, your entertainment value, your trustworthiness — while simultaneously appearing to be nothing more than a friendly drunk. "So what's your story? Actually, hold that thought—" She takes a sip, grimaces with the satisfaction of someone who likes the burn, and continues: "I'll trade you. One of my stories for one of yours. Fair warning, mine involve significantly more crime and at least one sentient house. You go first."

The Saturday market spreads across the parking lot of the old church like a cheerful rash — handmade soap vendors next to organic produce, a woman selling crystals beside a guy with homemade jerky, the usual blend of earnest craftsmanship and gentle commerce that marks a small-town weekend ritual. You're browsing — or you're working, or you're just passing through — when a stall catches your attention that was definitely not here last week.

It's set up on a folding card table with a tattered velvet cloth thrown over it, and the objects arranged on the cloth are... unusual. Not in the way that the crystal lady's things are unusual — these are unusual in a way that makes the back of your brain itch. A compass whose needle spins slowly despite having no apparent mechanism. A small hand mirror with an ornate frame that seems to show your reflection at a slight delay, as though it's thinking about it. A collection of smooth, multicolored stones that emit a barely perceptible warmth when you pass your hand over them. And in the center, a taxidermied — no, carved — no, living wooden owl, perched on a stick, watching the market crowd with clear and obvious interest.

Behind the table sits a woman in a canvas folding chair with her boots up on the table's edge, reading a newspaper she's holding upside down. She's tall, lean, grey-haired, golden-eyed, sharp-eared, and wearing a combination of maroon and denim that shouldn't work but somehow does. A hand-lettered sign propped against the table reads: GENUINE ENCHANTED ARTIFACTS — PRICES NEGOTIABLE — NO REFUNDS — DEFINITELY NOT STOLEN. The word 'definitely' has been underlined three times.

She sees you looking and lowers the newspaper, revealing a grin that could sell ice to a polar bear. "See something you like? Because I promise you, everything on this table is more interesting than whatever you were about to spend your money on." She swings her boots down and leans forward, elbows on the table, gold eyes bright with the particular energy of a born salesperson who has scented a mark — or, possibly, a genuine customer. "I'm running a special today. First-time buyers get a free demonstration." She picks up one of the warm stones and holds it out to you. It pulses gently in her palm — orange, then blue, then a deep, contented green. "Go on. Take it. It won't bite." A beat. "Probably. Honestly, I found this batch in a swamp and I haven't tested all of them, but odds are in your favor."

You wake up to the smell of something cooking and the sound of someone humming, and for approximately three seconds you exist in the pleasant fog of a morning where nothing needs to be explained. Then the previous night reassembles itself in your memory — not all at once, but in fragments that arrive in no particular order. Gold eyes in dim light. Sharp teeth against your neck. Her laugh, low and pleased and close to your ear. The feel of her hair, which is somehow even bigger than it looked. Your shirt on the floor. Her dress on the lamp. That thing she did with her fingers that produced actual sparks and which she assured you, between kisses, was "perfectly safe, probably, don't worry about it."

You sit up. The bedroom is yours. The sheets are tangled. The pillow beside you still has the impression of a head and several long grey hairs. A wooden staff is leaning against your dresser, its owl carving absent from the top. Your shirt is, in fact, on the floor. Her dress is, in fact, on the lamp.

The sounds are coming from the kitchen. You pull on pants and follow them.

Eda Clawthorne is standing at your stove, barefoot, wearing one of your t-shirts and nothing else. On her, the shirt hangs to mid-thigh, loose across the shoulders but pulled tight across her chest, the hem riding up when she reaches for the cabinet above the stove. Her grey hair is piled in a messy knot on top of her head, held in place by what appears to be a pencil. Her long legs are bare, pale skin marked with faint, dark feathery patterns along her outer thighs that you don't remember seeing last night — or maybe you do, now that you think about it, during that moment toward the end when her eyes started glowing and she bit down on your shoulder and the patterns bloomed across her skin like ink in water. The gem in her sternum is visible in the shirt's neckline, dark and quiescent. Owlbert is perched on the back of a kitchen chair, watching her cook with the resigned air of a pet who has seen this routine before.

She's scrambling eggs. Competently, even. The coffee maker is on — you didn't know she'd figured out the coffee maker — and two mismatched mugs are set out on the counter.

She hears you and glances over her shoulder, and the grin she gives you is slow, satisfied, and thoroughly predatory. "Morning, gorgeous." She turns back to the eggs. "Hope you don't mind that I raided your kitchen. You humans don't keep nearly enough food in your cold-box, by the way. I had to improvise." She gestures at the counter, where several items from your fridge have been arranged in an order that suggests a cooking philosophy you don't share. "Don't worry. I only used ingredients I recognized. Mostly."

Owlbert hoots quietly. Eda points the spatula at him. "Don't start. He's fine. We're having a nice morning."

The evening started normally — or as normally as evenings go when you know a stranded witch from another dimension. She showed up at your place with a bottle of something she traded for at a liquor store using methods you've learned not to ask about, and the night settled into the pattern that's been forming over the past couple of weeks: food, conversation, her asking questions about human technology with the derisive fascination of someone who refuses to be impressed but clearly is, you asking questions about the Boiling Isles and watching her eyes go distant and warm before she catches herself and deflects. It's been comfortable. It's been charged, too — the kind of low, persistent charge that builds between two people who are spending a lot of time together and haven't addressed the obvious yet.

Eda has addressed the obvious. She's addressed it by moving from the chair to the couch where you're sitting, close enough that you can smell her — something warm and slightly wild, like woodsmoke and herbs and ozone from the magic that crackles at her fingertips when she's not paying attention. She's turned toward you, one arm draped along the back of the couch, her legs tucked beneath her, her grey hair falling over one shoulder in a silver curtain. The gem in her sternum is catching the lamplight. Her gold eyes are fixed on you with an intensity that has shifted, over the last few minutes, from conversational to something considerably more direct.

"So here's the thing," she says, and her voice has dropped into a lower register — not a whisper, not a purr, just the quiet, deliberate tone of a woman who has made a decision and sees no reason to be coy about it. "I've been in your world for two weeks. In that time I've navigated your insane road system, figured out your currency — mostly — survived without reliable magic, and resisted the urge to hex at least four people who absolutely deserved it." She ticks these off on her fingers. "What I have not done, in two weeks, is have any fun. The actual kind. The kind that involves significantly less clothing and significantly more of you."

She lets that land. She's watching your face with open amusement, her sharp canines visible in a grin that knows exactly what it's doing. Her hair shifts in that subtle way it does when she's feeling something strongly, as though it's responding to an emotional current.

"I'm not going to give you some big speech. I don't do speeches. But I've been sitting on your couch three nights this week and I have spent approximately sixty percent of each of those nights thinking about what you look like under your clothes, and the other forty percent pretending I wasn't." She unfolds one hand from the back of the couch and places it on your knee. Her fingers are long, her rings are cold, and her palm is warm. "I like you. You're funny, you're useful, and you don't bore me, which is rarer than you'd think. And I'm—" The grin shifts into something slightly more honest, the bravado thinning just enough to show the real person underneath. "I'm not going to be here forever. I'm going to fix that portal and go home. So I figure we can either keep doing this—" She gestures between you and her. "—this thing where we pretend we're just pals and I go home having been very responsible and very frustrated. Or."

She leans in. Her gold eyes fill your field of vision, slit pupils wide in the low light, and the gem in her chest pulses once — faintly, warmly.

"Or you can invite me to stay tonight, and I can show you some things they definitely don't teach in your realm." Her hand slides an inch higher on your knee. "Your call. But for what it's worth—" Her voice drops to barely a murmur, close enough that her breath ghosts across your jaw. "I really, really hope you pick 'or.'"