Chapters
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I still can't believe I'm doing this. Lotus stared out the shadowy windows of her old pickup. As insane as this plan was, they'd still made it all the way out here, a short run from the gas station.Now the QuikTrip lights glowed against a foggy night, joined only by the occasional flash of headlights blazing along the highway. Almost no one stopped, and seconds turned into minutes of relatively uninterrupted peace. "The longer we sit here, the more time for somebody to roll up," Gus said. The truck was off…-
133.2 K •
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Lotus watched the flashing lights speed past outside. They came much more frequently now, at least a dozen she had counted so far. The police zipped down the highway from both directions, converged on the gas station—then split up again. Some shot down the farm road connecting the old asylum, others weaved their way down its other tributaries.Gus snored away in the other room now, content that “someone has to be awake, but it doesn't have to be me.” So, it fell to Lotus to pace back and forth next to…
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133.2 K •
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Lotus trotted along behind Iron, keeping pace with him despite the debris. She kept her horn at a low, constant light, the same as she would've done for a flashlight if she still had batteries. Even after all this time on four legs, she wasn't quite coordinated enough to trust herself with a gallop, not in such close quarters. The last thing she needed right now was to faceplant her horn into a wall."He thinks it's the police?" she prompted. Somehow, she managed to keep from losing her breath. But then she…
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133.2 K •
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Lotus couldn't see out the window, so she had no way of knowing exactly where Gus decided to stop. Not until he gave the command, and she took her leg off the pedal. He switched off the engine, plunging them back into the silence. A few seconds later the lights went off too, and they were cast into near-total darkness.Lotus didn't try to say anything, didn't even move—anything might make her think about what she'd lost. What you took away. This wasn't an accident. You knew the risks, you took them…
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133.2 K •
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Lotus woke to the birds, whistling and singing to each other from the other side of her tent. The shiny blue fabric did nothing to mute the sound, and almost nothing to keep the light from shining in and blinding her.Lotus crawled a little lower into her sleeping bag, sinking past its edges. The birds were as loud as ever from that angle, but at least the bag did something about the light. The light couldn't get her inside, but the shame was just as strong inside as out. She remembered…
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133.2 K •
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Lotus had been on extended camping trips before. Or more accurately, Eric had. He had always enjoyed a chance to be in nature and get away from the stress of a modern life. Getting out into the wild meant there was no one around to judge, no one whose standards he could fail to meet. Lotus could enjoy many of those same things. There was no fear of neighbors noticing her through an accidental gap in the blinds. If the police or some shady government organizations were going to find her, they would have a…
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133.2 K •
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Gus was the first to emerge from cover. Despite the trees, his feathers and fur still looked a little scorched around the edges. Some part of Lotus still remembered what it was like to feel pain from heat, but that was a distant memory now. As distant as being human, and a dude."I was going to say you did that without blowing up," Gus began. "But you dropped the ball on that part, right at the end."She scooped the spell book up into her magic, then stomped out the embers burning on what was left of her…
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133.2 K •
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Eric had broken his leg once. Those memories of pain were some of his first, when he was too small to understand the world and his sister could still walk. Being bitten by a wolf of wood and fury wasn't quite as bad, but it was definitely similar. But there could be no trip to a hospital for skilled doctors to tend to her wounds—instead, she had to make do with the best ministrations a horse could provide.She could do worse than Iron Feather to look after her. The stallion seemed to know what to do—how…
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133.2 K •
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Another few days passed. Lotus spent them as productively as she could, running endlessly over the practice exercises a princess in another world had sent. At least she was making some small amount of progress—she could hold objects in the air now, so long as they weren't too heavy. That meant she didn't have to stick her face into food to eat it anymore.If only she had trusted her entire savings to invest in meme stocks, maybe she could've bought a cabin in the woods somewhere, and wouldn't be trapped…
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133.2 K •
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The spell was, in fact, still going.Lotus felt it, though she couldn't exactly describe what she was feeling, or how. The spell wasn’t drawing power from her anymore, the same way it took active concentration to hold something up in the air. That wasn't a good thing—a spell that she wasn't actively casting was a spell that she had no way to stop."It shouldn't be!" She stood up, stumbling away from his camera. The little toy woodpecker toppled off the side, clattering against the floor. Lotus recoiled,…
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133.2 K •
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