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themangledsans0508 · 3 years

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This Will Last

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Summary: Mal hates Molly's mother with a passion. Even under her intimidating gaze, she tries to stand up to her. Jen saves the day, and Mal tries to comfort Molly after the encounter.

Words: 1062, Oneshot

Warnings: Slurs (D), Canonical Child Abuse,

Characters: Mal Yoo, Molly, Jen, Molly's Mom, Molly's Dad

Ships: Mally

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe: Canon Divergence

NOTE: Was requested by tarle007 on Wattpad

Mal could feel eyes boring into her, the fiery stare from Molly’s mother enough to make her want to shrink into her flannel. Despite how she felt, she knew Molly felt ten times worse at least. Molly tightly gripped her hand, her face pale panicked. Mal turned to see Jen who looked just as nervous as she did. Mal looked at her with pleading eyes and all Jen could do was give an apologetic smile. Molly stopped and Mal stepped up beside her, looking up to fight the glare from Molly’s mother with one of her own.

“Molly,” she said cooly, “You gave us the wrong address. We’ve been driving around for seven hours. You have to focus better.” Molly stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the floor. Jen cleared her throat.

“Our address isn’t the easiest to remember. Even I forget it sometimes!” Jen nervously chuckled and the woman looked her up and down.

“I’m not surprised that you forget it,” she sneered and directed her attention to Molly again, “You, however, remember lots of things. Like those silly stories about monsters and such.”

“Actually, those stories are Greek myths. You know, history?” Mal said. She raised an eyebrow at her.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“Mal Yoo, ma’am. What should I call you?” She offered a hand to be polite. The woman eyed it with distaste.

“Evelyn. Now, Molly Powell, I wasted seven hours trying to find this place and I get here to find that you haven’t even learned to stand up straight-”

“It’s because her back hurts from working all day,” Mal blurted. Evelyn inhaled sharply.

“I’m not speaking to you right now,” she put force behind each syllable. “It is rude to interrupt.”

“I’m not exactly polite, ma’am,” Mal explained. “I’ m just telling you why she’s slouching.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Evelyn snarled. “I don’t need to be disrespected by a child and a woman like that. It’s obvious that this camp was falsely advertised. It didn’t do any of the things it was supposed to.”

“What did you think a summer camp in the middle of the woods was going to do besides give kids an outdoor experience?” Mal remarked.

“That’s it. I’m not going to be spoken to like this by a dyke and a-”

“Stop!” Molly shouted. Evelyn appeared taken aback briefly before she reached out and roughly grabbed Molly’s upper arm.

“We’re leaving,” she stated.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Evelyn, but a camper cannot be withdrawn midsummer. It’s clearly stated in our brochure,” Jen interjected. Her eyes narrowed.

“I would like to speak with the director,” she demanded. Jen nodded.

“Of course, Rosie’s cabin is right this way. I’m afraid the girls will have to stay here, no campers allowed in the director’s cabin.” She led Evelyn off and the man knelt down, hugging Molly.

“I’m sorry your mom embarrassed you in front of your friend, I’ve got to go make sure your mother doesn’t give the director a hard time. Love you kiddo!” He ruffled her hair and waltzed off. Molly didn’t stay to watch them go, immediately heading for the cabin after she was released, bringing Mal along. She opened the door and went right to Mal’s bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Bubbles crawled onto her lap and chirped at her, making an odd noise when Molly started stroking his fur.

“I’m so sorry Mal,” Molly mumbled. Mal took a seat beside her and wrapped her arms around her, pulling her tight against her body.

“Molly, what are you apologising for? You don’t control your mom. Is it because she called me a dyke? Let’s be honest, I totally am,” Mal reassured. Molly shook her head.

“No, she’s just- she was so rude to you and Jen. Neither of you deserved that.” Molly wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry. It’s just seeing her after being away from her for so long is really upsetting. I’ve been able to look back and realize that how I was living wasn’t normal. I’m happy right now. Maybe not forever, but for a little bit. She could take that away from me. She just tried to.”

“Jen and Rosie won’t let her. I mean, Jen hates lying and she’s a stickler for the rules, and she made up a policy to protect you. Rosie will back her up because that’s just how she is. She won’t be able to take you away unless she wants to get the law involved, and if she does that she’d expose herself for being a horrible mother, which would get her in trouble. Not to mention she signed a form agreeing to all the camp’s policies. You’re safe here.” Molly sighed and rested her head on Mal’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to lose all this,” Molly murmured. “This place is amazing. The woods, the lake, the mountains, it’s magical. The only thing better is the people here. All of you. I’ve never really had friends before, I never imagined I’d have friends like you all. I’ve never been this close with anyone. I’ve never felt this way before, felt safe with another person.” She reached over and grabbed her hand, intertwining their fingers. “What I have with you is so special. I know at the end of the summer I’ll have to let everything go, but I want to hold onto it while I can.”

“You won’t have to let go,” Mal reassured. “We can come back next summer. We can do group chats, face calls, we can do this long-distance. I really like you, Molly. More than I’ve ever liked anyone before. I’m willing to put my all in this if you are too. I don’t care if your mom hates me.”

“That’s funny because I don’t care either. We’ll make this work.” Molly seemed to say the last part to herself. Mal rubbed circles into the back of Molly’s hand.

“Do you want to go find the girls?”

“No, I don’t want to go outside right now. Just in case.”

“Okay, so what do you want to do?” Mal asked.

“Whatever you want to do,” Molly replied.

“I’m good just staying like this if you are.”

“I’m good like this. I like this.” Mal kissed her forehead.

“I like you.” Molly giggled.

“I like you too.”

#chara writes #mally #lumberjanes #mal yoo #lj molly #lj jen #lj molly's parents

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isoscele · 3 years

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Lumberjanes Week Day 1 - First Day of Summer

(This is longer, weirder, and later than I wanted it to be, but isn’t that the spirit of the week?)

--------- Jo’s last exam is electrical engineering, and she finishes twenty minutes early. Dr. Quispe winks at her as she turns it in, and Jo tries to smile. The constant fog of formulae and diagrams dissipates from her head, replaced by a more all-consuming calculation.

One hour, six minutes to go.

She drops by her room, picks up the single backpack sitting on the bare mattress. On her way out, Gabi pops out of the lounge. “All done?”

Jo’s smile softens, takes on something real. “Yup. You?”

“I still have an essay, but I’ll probably do it at home. Got any big summer plans?”

“Kind of.” She shifts her backpack higher on her shoulders, silently debating how much to say. “I’m going camping with some friends.”

“Oh, cool,” Gabi says. “I wouldn’t’ve pegged you as an outdoorsy type, Jo.”

“Oh, you know.” Something under her skin humming, some outdated circuitry splitting into life. Forty-nine minutes. “In certain circumstances.”

Gabi giggles. As is the case with every one of their sporadic interactions, Jo wonders if they’re flirting. “Have fun! Don’t get eaten by a bear!”

She swans back toward her laptop and empty M&M packet. If she’d looked back for just a moment, she might have wondered what she had said to make Jo look so devastated.

---------

Mal has a pickup truck. It’s disgusting, with a windshield wiper that sounds like a dying macaw and a clutch that, for two heart-stopping seconds at the beginning of each gear shift, refuses to move at all. Mal has always defended it with a vigor previously only saved for her best friends and favorite bands.

Jo slides into the passenger seat. The radio is blasting heavy metal and the interior smells shockingly of mayonnaise; she has to blink hard to hold back her tears. There are some things that are so beautiful, so precious that it’s impossible to look at them head-on. Jo always forgets, when she’s away.

“You’re in the bus lane,” she tells Mal.

Mal obligingly starts the very long process of getting her car to move. “I thought the idea behind going to fancy science school with adults was that bus lanes were no longer necessary. Also, it’s fucking amazing to see you.”

“The buses shuttle students around campus. Also, I’m delighted that you’re here and I want to give you a hug.”

“Motion passed,” Mal says, and they squeeze awkwardly over the two melted Frosties in the cupholders.

The car jolts into first gear hard enough to throw Jo into the seatbelt, and then suddenly she’s laughing so hard she has to hold her sides to keep herself from spilling over.

“Sorry!” Mal says, “sorry, she’s jumpy around strangers,” which is what she says every summer. It’s a terrible joke laced with an irrefutable affection, and it’s so Mal that it makes Jo laugh even harder.

“We’re not strangers,” Jo says. She pats the center console, feels a little of the polyester flake off on her hand. “Me and this truck go way back.”

“Well, let’s hope you and this truck go way forward, too,” Mal says, “because I’m really not sure the engine’s going to last us to California.”

---------

They pull into the trailhead at around six the next morning, and make silent work of the luggage in the back. The sun’s just starting to come up, blinking warily between the table pines. Mal waves her on, and Jo sets off along the winding path.

The first year or two, they mostly stuck to campgrounds and RV parks, warming hot chocolate on the camp stove despite persistent, obnoxious heat. Jo didn’t think much of it at the time, but now she knows that Molly was trying not to inconvenience them, trying to keep them to the shallows of the forests. Trying to keep anyone from going too far, getting too stuck.

The fact that they were instructed to bring backpacking gear this year doesn’t do much to assuage the constant thread of worry in the back of her mind. This isn’t something they can dip their toes in anymore; the world is always a more dire place than they left it last summer.

The hike is long and treacherous. They go off the trail almost immediately, but neither of them need a map. It sounds cliche to say that they’re following something else, but they are. The anxious chitter of the birds and the sun balking at the edges of the trees and the distant hush of a river form a clear topography in their minds. They walk without discussion, taking each turn as naturally as if they had always lived here.

Around mile seven, they start to hear voices. Mal breaks into a run, and Jo comes crashing after her.

They knock straight into April, who catches both of them with practiced ease. For a moment, the air splits with three different calls of incomprehensible joy, and then they’re lowering themselves to the moss as a single, complex organism.

“Holy Felicia Flames, you guys look great!” April hollers.

“I have so much to tell you,” Mal says.

“Are you trying to set the forest on fire?” Jo asks, wandering over to where April has piled an impressive set of branches and old newspaper. She must have packed most of it in herself; the trees around here don’t look like that.

“Might make our job easier,” April says, and then a grim silence falls over the clearing.

I’m going camping with some friends, Jo had said, as if it was just camping, as if they were just friends. As if Jo’s relationship with these people, the things they had to do together, could be described in such a mundane and immaterial way. As if Jo won’t sit at the fire with them tonight, watching the way the sparks clear the shadows around their eyes, and love them with everything she has in her. As if she won’t hate them, too, for making her come here.

Here they are, in the annual half-second when they don’t know what to say to each other. The moment when the summer teeters, still soft and blameless, on the edge of something sharper.

But then April asks Mal how the band’s doing, and the moment passes.

“I wish I’d thought to bring pictures,” Mal says. “We played at this amazing venue last January--there was this skylight, and it was pouring rain, and people just kept coming in because it was so miserable outside.”

“Aw, that’s great,” April says. “I’d love to come someday, but y’all sell out so fast!”

Mal scratches the back of her neck, looking embarrassed. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“What are we talking about?” Ripley half-shouts. Jo yelps, and then that turns into more laughter, which turns into an incredible group hug. For someone who carries no fewer than three kazoos on her person at all times, Ripley can be surprisingly stealthy when she wants to. Jo never hears her approaching anymore; first, there’s nothing, and then there’s Ripley.

April hugs Ripley so hard she lifts her off the ground. Ripley immediately starts listing all the weird birds she’s seen this year and asking April to cross-reference them with her encyclopedia of creatures.

And then, of course, there are four.

Jo drifts half a step closer to Mal and extends her hand. Without tearing her gaze from the blot of trees, Mal takes it.

Last year, Molly had been sort of--sick. They’d been camping on a bauld where eagles circled high overhead and the flowers were all this terrible saffron yellow, bent under the shadow of the rocks. Molly had walked with a stick, like the Bear Woman--like Nellie used to use, thick and gnarled. But she said that was temporary, just because of a bad fall, and no one talked about how her freckles had almost overtaken the white of her hands, how her eyes were spotted with yellow and seemed to constantly rove towards the sky.

No one had mentioned much of anything, because the year before that they had buried Nellie in the soft earth beside the lake and they had all tacitly agreed not to talk about it. Maybe that’s what growing up is like--finding more and more things that no one is willing to say. Holding a grief in you that sometimes feels so bright and all-consuming that it can’t possibly be real.

“She’ll be okay,” Jo says, quiet so as not to kill April and Ripley’s buzz. “The forest loves her.”

But that’s a cold comfort, because they have all spent the same six summers learning that the forest’s love can be the most terrifying force in the world.

---------

It doesn’t take long at all before a familiar sound comes rolling in from the mountain. It’s a sound like dinosaurs, like goliaths, like the world collapsing in on itself.

It’s a sound that heralds the approach of Bubbles, who these days is about the size of a house.

I don’t know! Molly had said, laughing, the first time they had seen him again. I guess he was just a baby when we met him. I’ve been feeding him a lot of peanut butter lately, maybe that’s it.

Bubbles crashes through the trees, chittering so loud that it sounds like the laughter of a god. On his back, perched awkwardly against the scruff of his neck, sits Molly.

She does look okay. Their home hasn’t killed her yet.

There’s a little more white in her hair, a little more curl to her fingernails. But she’s smiling so wide it’s almost like they’re just here to catch up, like just for today they can afford to be a group of friends and nothing else.

Later, of course, will come the campfire, and the birds falling silent, and even the cicadas forgetting to cry, and they will map out another fraction of the world. They’ll find another dozen stone men, sleeping still enough to be dead. They’ll find perhaps hundreds of potential apocalypses, and they’ll spend the month eating little and sleeping less, preventing the end of the world again and again and again until they can’t even remember what they’re saving.

But right now, Molly slides down Bubbles’ side and yells “Guys!” and the summer bursts into being.

#lumberjanes week #lumberjanes #my writing #sorry about the weird formatting this website is a genuinely terrible place to publish writing

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transxfiles · 3 years

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Hello fellow Lumberjanes fans!! After reading Issue 75 I have Many Thoughts (Head Full) so I wrote this little fic (below the cut for your convenience), please enjoy <3

They tell the younger kids it's a slumber party. Something to celebrate the end of summer, and the promise of coming back next year.

The younger kids know they're lying.

"The yeti's are here," a little girl says matter-of-factly to Jo. "And all the big bugs, and the mermaids and the selkies. And the selkies never come."

Jo looks at her sash, covered in badges like she was waiting to show her parents. She's only at Seedpod level, not even a Sapling yet. She's got a few badges - Pungeon Master, May The Forge Be With You, Daylight Savor - and she sewed them on herself, by the looks of it. Maybe her counselor helped her out with the first one. Jo wants to ask her where her counselor is, wants to find someone else to take this poor kid off her hands, but then Jo remembers that Marley said. We did a head count and we have all the scouts, but...

She realizes that Jen was one of the lucky ones.

"Everything's gonna be okay," Jo tells the girl, managing to spit the lie out even though it's catching between her teeth. "It's just a slumber party. Then you get to go home in the morning, and it'll be fun."

The kid opens her mouth to say something else, but Jo's gone before she has the chance.

April's sitting in a hammock, one of the ones the Roswell's tied up high near the ceiling. Upon second glance, Jo realizes that Ripley's up there, too, though not for long - as soon as she spots Jo, she's speeding down the beam in a hurry, and before she knows it Jo sees an orange t-shirt and a streak of blue at her side.

"Are we sleeping up there?" Asks Jo.

"Nah, Dighton called dibs," April says. "But they're letting us hang out up here while they check on the moose stables. Looking for stragglers, folks who mighta been left behind."

"Me and April were looking through her scrapbook!" Ripley says, buzzing with excitement. You wouldn't think that a horrible catastrophic event was currently threatening to literally consume all of their lives. Except that Ripley's always like this, or at least, seems to be: bright and glittery and jumping up-and-down, with a grin so wide and toothy you could see how (The Other) Jonesy was willing to accept her as one of her own.

There's a noise from above, and Jo sees that April's started to shimmy down to the ground, now. She's got a satchel over her shoulder - Jo's satchel, she realizes - and her scrapbook's under her arm. April lands with a small Thud! on the ground in front of them, strikes a Spider-Man pose, and then stands, reaching out her elbow to Jo.

Elbow bump.

Bring it up.

Lock thumbs.

Wiggly fingers.

Peace sign.

The handshake is surprisingly calming, though maybe it shouldn't be. It reminds Jo that she's still here. She's still with April. The world is ending, not yet, not if they've got any say in it. Ripley lets out a small, longing sigh.

"I wish I had a secret handshake buddy."

The sun's setting outside the windows, and the girls stand there and watch it go down. All of them. Every cabin - Cosmos, Zodiac, Dighton, Luna, Woolpit, Eclipse, Roswell, Dyatlov, Aurora, Walcott, Dartmoor, Xena, Voynich, Roanoke. They stand, some clustered close together, others turned away. On each other's shoulders, in arms, in hugs and embraces and one impressive cheerleading lift from the Xena cabin, who've been working on it all summer and haven't had the time to show it off before. They watch the sun go down over the forest, and then it's gone.

For the first time in the world, the forest is silent.

Mal pulls out her guitar.

"Me and Emily and Wren have been working on something," she says. "I was helping them get some campfire song badges the other day."

Someone lights a small fire in the mess hall fireplace. Mal takes a seat right beside it, the warm glow making her seem braver than she is. Emily and Wren sit beside her, because they've already been dragged into this, whether they like it or not, and honestly, their song isn't half bad (at least, that was the verdict with Mackenzie when they sang it for her - they were technically supposed to run it past three people to get the badge, but Vanessa didn't need to know that).

"When the world is ending we can sing and we can play, dancing in the forest as we laugh our lives away. Watch the stars go out my Lumberjane, and catch them one by one. Never know the place you go that changed your fear to fun."

Bubbles bounces off of Molly's head and scurries over to Ripley. They bow at each other and then begin to dance. It's not long before others join in. Mackenzie and Feryal start square-dancing. April and Jo never quite got their Go Ball-istic badges, but they manage. When someone trips, someone else catches them, and everyone laughs. Mal, Wren, and Emily's song has a tempo that's surprisingly upbeat. No one listens to the words.

When it's over, Mal sings them some cool indie song no one's ever heard of, and then a Disney request from a girl in Aurora (it's mostly improv'd, and some other girls jump in to help Mal find the chords, but overall she doesn't do a half-bad job), and then Lumberjanes Way, and then they tire themselves out and Seafarin' Karen (left in charge of the kids, left to guard them and make sure nothing bad happens to them) tells them they "ought to be gettin' some shuteye, dontcha think" and then before they know it they're off to bed.

They tuck themselves into sleeping bags, hammocks, makeshift beds, literal beds (some of the girls in Voynich and Eclipse just got their Wood You Or Wouldn't You woodworking badges, and are feeling handy right now) and someone sings a lullaby, though no one could tell you who. The counselors are noticeably absent; Vanessa's watching the perimeter by the volleyball courts, and Jen's on the porch of Rosie's cabin, and the others are all scattered somewhere in-between. The Roanokes are right in the middle of it all (because aren't they always?) fast asleep in the center of the mess hall.

Five girls sleeping, all in a row. Molly, Mal, Ripley, April, Jo.

Mal dreams about falling through the ocean. Ripley dreams of dinosaurs and cats, all named Jonesy, and siblings she's been missing for a while. April's punching something in her dream - she thinks it's a fox, but she's not sure. Jo's competing in a robotics contest against someone she doesn't quite recognize.

Molly dreams about a silver deer, racing through the forest, beckoning her softly to follow. The deer has antlers, a large, proud rack, but Molly knows its a girl. She has a bow around her neck, and a quiver of arrows. She's... she's going off to go fight something.

Molly wakes up.

(AO3)

#likes appreciated reblogs greatly encouraged comments make me very happy please spread and share this!!#my post #my fanfiction #fanfiction #lumberjanes fanfiction #lumberjanes fanfic #the roanokes #jo #ripley #april #mal #molly #ficlet #lumberjanes ficlet #lumberjanes #lumberjanes spoilers

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transxfiles · 4 years

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Lumberjanes Week Day One: Favorite Roanoke (Jo)

A Single Brown Feather, An Anagram, And A Search In The Dark In The Forest At Night

Jo is clever. She’s clever. She can figure a way out of this.

Something’s up with Molly. They’ve all noticed it, by now. She’s acting strange and speaking with an odd lilt to her voice and her eyes have gone just the slightest bit golden. Normally, they all would have attributed it to nerves; camp would be ending, soon. They all knew that. And they all knew that Molly was anxious about it most of all, even if none of them knew exactly why.

(Well. Mal knew exactly why. Jo knew that Mal knew because April heard from Ripley who heard Mal and Molly talking in hushed tones about it, and April wrote this all down in her great pink notebook and she handed it over to Jo for a read-over. Jo is a scientist, first and foremost, yes. But she took a class in crime scene analysis, and one in psychology, and one in forensics; in short, she makes a rather good detective.)

And today, during capture the flag, Molly disappeared. Mal disappeared, too, shortly after Molly did. They think she was going after her.

The rest of the Roanokes are in their cabin, now. Jen’s holding Ripley and holding back tears, the two of them sitting on a bunk together. Meanwhile, April and Jo have put together a bulletin board of clues, cross-referencing the notes they’ve been keeping, trying to figure out what’s going on.

The Zodiacs are here, too. April thought they’d be of help

“They lost their counselor to the woods at the beginning of the summer,” she’d explained. “I think they might know more than they’re letting on.”

Emily had offered up her notes to Jo; apparently the Roanokes hadn’t been the only ones keeping tabs on everything. Now, Hes and Wren are doing a sweep of the cabin, looking for clues. Cleaning out Molly’s bunk, and then Mal’s, shifting through duffle bags and peeking behind posters. Barney’s attempting to comfort Jen, though how well that’s working is questionable. Diane’s explaining everything she knows about forest magic to Jo - though apparently, she actually doesn’t know that much.

“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen, to be honest,” Diane says, sounding defeated.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never seen a place where time works like this. Not even on Olympus, not even in Hades. As soon as my parents set me down in this forest I felt weird. Like, it was trying to take my magic from me.” Diane’s voice is shaking. “I think it’s hungry.”

Jo writes that down; she thinks she can work with that, maybe. Diane’s being cryptic, but for the first time, Jo’s willing to believe it’s because she’s actually as in the dark as the rest of them.

Mackenzie walks up to the bulletin board, eyeing the red string tying together bits and pieces of information. Notes, photographs, pieces of moss, a scrap of green fabric they found snagged on a thornbush during their first search of the forest after realizing Molly was gone. She looks at one photograph, of a dark cave covered by a waterfall.

“You guys know about the Voice?” She asks.

They look up at her.

“The Voice?” Says Jo, an echo. “The one that keeps sending monsters after us? The one that made Molly stop time?” “Yeah,” Mackenzie says. “It… it took Vanessa from us.”

“Vanessa?”

“Their counselor,” Jen says, standing up. “Purple hair, spiked up all the time, never wore her uniform, took all the good coffee from the mess hall, deadly good at scrabble. Was with us until about a week or see into the summer. And then she disappeared.”

Jo looks up from her notes. “The… the Voice took her?”

April’d told her this, of course. Mentioned it in passing. But she hadn’t expected confirmation.

“That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“And you think it took Molly, too?” Asks Jo.

“No,” says Hes. She stands up from where she was kneeling beside Molly’s bunk. She’s holding a single brown feather. “I think she went to it willingly.”

Hes hands the feather to Jo.

“What can you say about this?” She asks.

Jo shrugs. “I…”

She doesn’t know what to say.

She’s clever, so, so, clever, but she never learned her birds. The Roanokes have never really been big on earning badges, much more concerned with running about in the woods, causing trouble if they can, stopping it if they must. That’s the point of camp, that chaotic aspect. They hadn’t gotten to birding yet. They were supposed to go two days from now, out in the forest with binoculars. They’d promised Jen. Jo knows it’s not going to happen now.

“Here,” Jen says, quietly. “Bring it over here, please?”

Jo pads over, keeping her feet light on the ancient wooden floor. The cabin is silent.

She places the feather in Jen’s hands.

“It’s unlike any I’ve seen before,” says Jen. She turns it over in her hands a few times, runs her thumb along the soft edge. “It’s a flight feather, definitely. You can see it in the shape, here, the sharpness of the form. But it’s too large to belong to any bird I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s brown,” Jo adds. “So it can’t belong to the Roc - its wings are black.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you find this?” Asks Jo, though she already knows the answer.

“Molly’s bunk.”

Her stomach won’t stop twisting itself into knots.

“Okay. So we think that Molly went to the Voice willingly. Why?”

“She doesn’t want summer to end,” says Ripley. “Mal… Mal said her parents weren’t nice, like ours are.”

“She doesn’t want to go home.” “The Voice has stopped time before,” says Wren. “We all saw the bubble incident.”

“The bubble…” Jo’s eyes go wide. “Bubbles! Where’s Bubbles?”

Suddenly they’ve all descended into a bout of chaos, searching the cabin high and low. Jo knows, she knows , that this is the best lead they’re going to get in a long, long while. If they can find the raccoon.

Ripley’s the one who finds him. Drags him out from under the her bed, a chittering anxious mess. He’s far more animalistic than what Jo’s used to; his normally too-intelligent eyes are dark and terrified, his claws are out and thrashing and frantic. He’s fighting against Ripley. He’s never fought against Ripley before.

“He’s scared,” she says.

Jo steps forward to take him from her arms, but April stops her.

“I’m the strongest one here,” she says, quietly. “I should do this. Just in case he… well, in case he gets any worse.”

Jo nods.

April reaches out and picks Bubbles up, and he immediately tears a slash in her beautiful lavender sweater. April winces, but Jo can tell it isn’t too bad; there’s no blood. For whatever reason, April’s always been hard to hurt. She’s strong as hell, and her skin doesn’t cut, unyielding to knives or claws or thorns.

“Molly,” April says to Bubbles.

Normally, Bubbles’s eyes light up at the name.

Now, he hisses, fights April’s iron grip even more.

Jo and April share a look.

Something is horribly wrong.

Jo has never hated investigating the woods at night before, though she’s starting to.

They’ve split up. Three groups; April, Wren, and Emily in the first. The second, Ripley, Hes, and Jen. Jo, Diane, and Barney in the last one..

They know it’s stupid and they know it’s impulsive and they know that the odds of them coming out of this one alive are slim, but they’ve decided to go looking for the Voice’s cave anyway.

Rosie told them not to, when they told her what was going on. Shouted at them to stay inside. Locked down the camp. It was a pain to get through her security, though easier with Jen on their side. A counselor, it seems, can slip through anything.

Jo had to make the plan, what with Mal gone. And Jen helped a bit. And they still managed to get through, nonetheless, and out into the woods safe and sound, for now.

Ripley, Hes, and Jen are trying to find Abigail, or the Bearwoman. Someone who knows about magic, someone who’d be willing to help. But the woods are a maze that changes its form with every step, and they don’t have any means of communication, even with the flares Jen promised to send up in case anything went awry.

Jo tries not to think about what might happen if the flares don’t work. Or if some tragedy befalls the group before they have time to send one up. Or if something clever, more clever than any of them put together, manages to get to them first, stealing a flare and then stealing them away like the Voice stole Molly and Mal. Because, though Jo knows it’s naive, she continues to hold onto the promise that Molly didn’t choose this. That Molly’s out there, fighting the Voice, that Mal is fighting alongside her, that they’re not handing over their souls willingly in exchange for more summer days.

Jo looks up to see Diane in front of her, turns to check that Barney’s still at her back. The trail they walk is becoming more and more narrow with each step they take. Diane keeps insisting this is good. At least, for their purposes.

“The more the trail narrows, the more the forest is trying to steer us away. It means that we’re heading towards something it doesn’t want us to find.”

“Like the Voice,” Jo says.

“Exactly.”

It feels like they’ve been walking for days, now. That the night is lasting forever. And who could tell, either way? Time doesn’t work here, not really. When Jo looks up, she sees a starless sky. Cloudy, she’d think, if she was anywhere but here. Instead, she looks up and she grows wary.

The forest controls everything, here. The deeper in they go, the more powerful it becomes.

The starless sky is a warning. She’s sure of it.

“What does the Voice look like?” Asks Barney.

“Well,” says Diane, thinking. “Great big red eyes. Body made of shadow. Evil, as far as we can tell…”

Jo finds herself smirking, despite it all. “Evil isn’t a physical trait.”

“It is on this piece of shit.”

“And we used to have a counselor?” Barney asks.

Diane nods. “Yeah. Vanessa. She disappeared before you joined up. At first we thought she just went into town on important business, or something. But then she was gone for a long time, and so Hes went looking - she was appointed Stand-In Counselor or something, thought she could boss us around - and she ended up in dark forest. Got lost for a few days. Discovered a scrap of Vanessa’s favorite t-shirt, apparently, muddied and looking a thousands years older than it should have been, but there, nonetheless. Picked it up, and immediately found herself face to face with a pair of glowing red eyes, and voice that chilled her to her bones.”

“The Voice.”

“We think so, yeah.” She looks at Jo. “At least, matches your descriptions of it.”

“Yeah.” Jo sighs. “Yeah.”

“Jo?” Says Barney. “Diane?”

“What is it, Barn?”

“Do you…” they sigh. “Do you think we’re actually going to find Molly?”

“Of course!” Jo says.

She hopes she’s not as bad a liar as she feels.

They get up and start walking again. The trees get closer and closer together, so thick they feel like a wall of solid wood. But Jo and Diane and Barney push through them. And then they find themselves met with vines. And they tear up the vines and push through these, too, and find themselves met with thorns. And on and on it seems to go, and Jo knows, knows with more than just gut instinct, that the forest doesn’t want them here.

She barely notices it when written on one of the trees is a word.

Well, the more accurate description would be carved into one of the trees.

“What does this say?”

“What?”

Jo’s stopped walking entirely, staring at the etching in the bark. “There’s something carved into this tree. I know there is.” Curse her horrible eyesight. She’s probably due for glasses anytime soon.

“Wait,” Barney says. “Diane. You can see in the dark, right?”

“How did you know that?”

Barney sighs. “Do you know how many times I’ve walked into the cabin to find you reading in the dead of night without a light on? It’s not that hard to tell. Emily told me that she actually thought you were a demon or something before she found out you were a goddess because of your wacky night vision.”

“Okay, fine. I have night vision. It’s a perk of being goddess of the hunt.”

“Okay,” Jo says, stepping aside from the tree. “Can you read this?”

Diane steps up to it, and squints. “These don’t even sound like real words.”

“Just say what it says.”

“Okay… um… ‘Wham! I Play Level Loom.’” She shakes her head. “It’s probably nothing. I mean, Level Loom? I can’t be the only one here who thinks this is ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” says Jo. “It’s an anagram.”

“Anagram?”

“Molly’s speciality.” She tries to sound calm. "It's gotta be a sign. Someone’s trying to tell us something."

Jo grabs a pencil from behind her ear, a pad of paper from her pocket. She starts writing down combinations of letters, scribbling furiously.

Barney and Diane share a glance behind her back. Diane doesn’t like the Roanokes, not really, but she is worried for them. Barney likes the Roanokes quite a bit; they’re worried for them, too.

They move away from Jo, sitting on a rock and letting her work in peace. Sometimes they pass a word or two between themselves in ASL - Wren’s been teaching them in their free time around the cabin, and they’re both quite good at it.

There’s a noise somewhere above them, a flutter of wings. They pay it no mind; there are many creatures in this forest, mostly harmless. Bats are common.

“Via Elmo, He Pwoily?” Jo mutters. “No, that’s not a word - Leave Him Wool… no, that won’t work, that doesn’t even make sense…”

The sound of pencil scratches is so loud in Jo’s ears, and the sound of those gears turning and turning in her head, she doesn’t hear the distant screams. April’s screams, she would have known, had she only listened.

Barney hears the screams. But before they can say anything, they’re gone. Diane looks up to find herself sitting next to no one.

“Jo?” She says, her voice shaking.

“Hold up Diane, not now, I’ve almost got this,” she mutters. Jo’s clever. She’s so clever, and she knows it, she knows she can do this. She has a few words down. “I have…” she writes those in. She still has a few more letters left, but then something clicks in her brain.

“Jo,” Diane says, a strange urgency in her voice. “Jo.”

“I’ve got it!” Jo says, finally looking up from her notepad. “I have Molly Powell.”

She’s so proud of her work, she doesn’t even process the words at first. And then those gears in her head start to turn, again, and she drops her pad on the ground.

“Oh my god.” “Jo?” Asks Diane. “Jo. Who has Molly?”

“I…”

I have Molly Powell.

“Hello,” says a twisted voice from above them.

Diane and Jo look up into that ink black sky.

Jo almost screams. But she knows better. April’s taught her to stand her ground.

Diane does scream. She figures that now, there’s nothing more to lose.

In the sky, wings grown from her back, eyes an icy gold, is Molly.

“I have Molly Powell,” says another voice, from behind them. A voice that sends shivers down Jo’s spine, one that’s she’s never quite heard before, but recognizes, nonetheless.

Not a voice.

The Voice.

“I think we’re going to have a lot of fun this summer,” it says. “Don’t you?”

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