Helena woke up early. The catharsis of the previous night had helped. She still felt miserable. Acedia was still dead. But at least the strain of holding in her emotions was gone.
She turned her attention to cleaning up the small space and preparing breakfast. Camila woke up when she was about halfway done. “Morning,” the jiang-shi woman mumbled. She hopped over to the makeshift table. “Didn’t think I’d have to deal with groggy mornings when I was dead.”
“Are you alright?” Helena asked. She’d thought Camila had worked out her sorrows, but it’s possible the woman had held back worrying about Helena. She hoped not but…
“I’m good.” The woman peered at Helena. “I’m more worried about you, given how broke up you were last night.”
Helena shook her head. “Too much pent up for too long.” She finished cooking the porridge. “Though you modern people hold too much back in general.”
Camila managed a weak smile. “First time someone’s told me I hold back.”
Helena helped Camila sit and bend her arm to eat, then started in on her own porridge and tea. It was bland, but Helena wasn’t up for much more. The downside though was her mind wandered. She tried to focus on the future. She needed to find that angel, and given how much magic she’d burned through, she needed Camila’s help to beat it.
The jiang-shi seemed to be lost in thought as well. Normally she’d have finished eating already, but she was taking slow spoonfuls, eating more because it was there then any interest. Helena wondered if the woman was thinking about the ambush again. Blaming herself for losing Acedia. Even though that whole mess had been Helena’s mistake. She should have killed the attacker. She should have put better wards on Camila’s seal.
“Oi, Helena. You shouldn’t do that.”
“Eh?” Helena blinked. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
Camila sniffed. “Sure.” The woman’s expression fell a bit. “We should send mail to Invidia today.”
Pain shot through Helena’s heart. “I wanted to do that after we finished Acedia’s job.”
“It’ll hurt just as much then,” Camila said. “Well, hurt us. It’ll hurt her more if they don’t get anything except the police.”
Helena wanted to protest. That was stupid reasoning. But she knew that was a lie. Camila was right. She just wanted to avoid the responsibility until she had an excuse. “Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll tell Aoi to wait on the lantern as well. We should give her family the chance to show.” Camila nodded.
They finished the rest of the meal in silence. Helena tried to form the letter in her mind, but her mind squirmed away from the truth, and what words she could put together seemed insulting.
The block continued even as she cleaned up and set aside the dishes to dry. If this was in person… well it would still be terrible. But she could react to the person she was talking to. She could show her grief. She could offer more than words. In a letter….
Finally she buried her face in her hands. She hated to admit it, but she couldn’t do this right now. At least not alone. “Help.”
Camila winced. “Guess I can’t just make you do it eh?” She hopped over. “We got plenty of paper. Put it together then make it neat.”
“Right.” Helena gathered several scraps of paper to work with.
The process took most of an hour. In the end it turned more into a confession than a letter. They wrote about their meeting. The search for the fake angel. Her disastrous failure. And then what she knew of Acedia’s fateful choice. Finally they got to the demon’s last minutes and both of them just stared at the paper.
What was there to write? That Acedia had chosen to fall apart rather than stay as a demon? That she’d quite possibly saved a chunk of the city from total destruction? Should she offer some hope in the demon’s reincarnation? Maybe she should just say that vengeance had been obtained.
Finally a thought came to her. It was stupid. Meaningless. But she felt tears welling up in her eyes.
“Pick that one,” Camila said quietly.
Helena nodded quietly then scribbled out the ending. ‘She passed on, having broken her bonds and escaped human will.’
Camila sniffed beside her. Helena turned and wiped the jiang-shi’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Helena replied. She went to pull out some good paper. “Let’s finish this then.”
The letter itself didn’t take long. Helena’s penmanship wasn’t perfect, but it was quick and easily legible. When she finished she grabbed an envelope. “We’ll want this rushed, so it’s back to the post office.”
Camila looked at the map. No one had bothered to add anything to the notes after the disaster of yesterday. “Then what?”
“I try to find the Adena,” Helena said. “I want to know what he found while we were running around and I was screwing up.”
“That’s right. We did tell everyone. Someone should have learned something new,” Camila nodded. Her eyes hardened. “And if they didn’t, someone’s toying with us.”
“Exactly.” Helena put the letter in her pouch. “Let’s get ready. We won’t beat the morning rush, but if we head out now we might finish before dinner.”
Getting ready took much longer than usual. Camila’s outfit from yesterday needed to be left to soak out the bloodstains. They both needed a shower badly as well, which required summoning a miniature rainstorm. It was another hour before they both made it out of the house and worked their way towards the government district. Still the routine tasks helped keep her mind in the present.
The walk however gave Helena too much time. She tried to focus on the street, but she knew the route too well. It was too easy for her mind to wander.
“Heleeeeena.”
She blinked as Camila waved a hand in front of her. “Hm?”
Camila let her shoulders bob. “I was asking you about that raincloud thing. Is that really the fastest way to get water? Like, it’s kinda showy.”
It was an obvious ruse to get her talking. Camila had heard plenty of speeches on magic before. But Helena gladly fell for it. “It’s not the fastest, but it’s one of the easiest ways to teach it. Everyone learns weather manipulation eventually. It’s much easier to refine that spell than to learn different ways of making water fall from the sky.”
“Easiest?” Camila shook her head. “Seems more like something out of a cartoon. Like, there’s gotta be a more realistic way to get water.”
“The difficulty of a ritual spell doesn’t depend on how realistic it is,” Helena replied. “All magic is equally impossible after all. It depends on how much reality resists. And people just accept rain as being natural.”
Camila sighed. “Like, I don’t know if understanding that makes you weird, or if you can understand it because you’re weird.”
“Probably both,” Helena replied. It was true too. She’d learned over the years that magicians had a warped view on reality. Her views were right of course, but most people had a problem with that.
“I hadn’t expected to see you two here again so soon.” Helena’s attention snapped forwards. The bishop, Thomas, was standing in the square nearby. “I heard you found one of the heretics and stopped them. Congratulations are in order.”
The thin veil of normality was snatched away. Helena hated the man for it, but it wasn’t his fault. “Yeah. They’re dead.”
“A great victory for God,” the man said with a smile. Helena’s guts twisted up.
“Wasn’t a great anything,” Camila muttered.
The bishop looked confused then seemed genuinely shocked. “You don’t mean?!”
Helena looked away. The knots in her stomach had expanded into her chest. She forced herself to take deep breaths no matter how much her lungs demanded otherwise. “She died stopping their last sacrifice.”
“That’s-” Thomas slowly shook his head. “A great tragedy. I shall pray for her soul. I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but I fear it’s all I can offer.”
Helena clenched her teeth, but Camila covered for her. “Thank you, your grace.”
“I should return to my duties. God’s peace be with you,” Bishop Thomas said as he walked on.
Helena shook her head to clear her mind. She felt Camila’s hand drop on her shoulder and she shrugged. “Sorry. Let’s get to the post office.”
Camila sighed. “Ya know, you aren’t being fair to him.”
“I know,” Helena clenched and unclenched her fists. “It’s just… this was what she was trying to escape. I want to scream that at people.”
“I can get that,” Camila agreed quietly.
Helena gave her friend a weak smile. “Thanks for covering for me.”
“It’s nothing,” Camila replied. The jiang-shi woman saved them from future awkwardness by asking, “So if you know how to change the weather, why haven’t you made this heat less miserable?”
The discussion on why magicians didn’t dramatically alter the weather of entire realms took the rest of the line, and kept both of them pleasantly distracted. It was purely a coping method, but it worked. Camila was a great friend, and Helena owed a sacrifice to Philotes for the goddess’ aid meeting her.