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i.Nott doesn’t realize that there’s anyone else in the cell until a rusty, accented voice says: “There isn’t any use in trying to escape. There are too many guards between here and your exit, you would need a miracle to get out.”Nott ignores the voice and keeps trying to pick the lock. It’s hard; the bars are put close together, and even though she’s skinny and her wrists are bone-thin she can barely get her fingers through. It’s unfortunate that they took her lockpicks, and also her second backup set of lockpicks. Thankfully they didn’t get the backup backup set of lockpicks tucked into her underthings, but those are the really shitty ones so it doesn’t help very much.“Mother fucker,” she says cheerfully, the fifth time it doesn’t work.“Just give up,” says the voice. It’s a male voice, strangely hoarse and throaty; it crackles like a fire and hits strange octaves.“Widogasts never say die!” Nott says, pulling her ginger hair into a bun and securing it with the absolute shittiest lockpick of the bunch. “Well. Actually we do say die, ah, quite a bit. But I won’t!”“You are stupid.”“Oh, definitely,” Nott says. “That’s why I’m here.” She pauses. “Why are you here?”The voice doesn’t answer.“Is that not what cellmates do?” Nott says. “Y’know, to bond. Friendships – friendships made in prison are the best friendships ever, right? Didn’t someone say that? I think someone said that. Nothing bonds you like…gruel.”More silence. Something scratches against the wall, like cat’s claws.“I’m in because I stole some things,” Nott says, which is only a lie if you look at it too long. “Shouldn’t have done that! I’ve learned my lesson now, though, and I will absolutely never steal anything ever again. I’m a changed woman.”“That must be nice,” the voice says.“What?”“Having the ability to change.”Nott stops working at the lock, finally, turns around and squints into the dark. “What d’you mean?”When she stares long enough – when her vision adjusts – she can see two faint gold lights. After a moment they get brighter, and closer, and then a goblin crawls forward out of the dark towards Nott.A boy goblin, probably. That’s what she thinks. Boy? Probably? How can you tell, but she can tell. He’s wearing a fine, oversized coat that’s gone all shabby around the edges, and his greasy green hair hangs into his eyes in a way that implies that it’s dripping. His shoulders are hunched.He opens his mouth, and the voice comes out. “Some of us,” he says, “aren’t capable of changing what we are.”“Holy shit,” Nott says. “You’ve got goblin hands.”His face slams shut.“No no no,” Nott says. “Your hands! They’re small! You can pick the lock.”He crawls forward, towards her, each of his clawed hands and feet finding precise purchase in the ground. “How do you know I will not eat your lockpicks,” he says. “Or you. I’m very hungry.”“You can try it,” Nott says. “But you’re so tiny! I don’t think you could win.”He stops on all fours, just a foot or so away from Nott. Nott squats down so they’re the same height.He holds out a hand and unfurls it. His hands are tipped with thick black nails; the skin of his fingers is green, and his palms are gloved.Nott high-fives his hand. “Alright!” she says. “Cellies! Cellmates! Cellpals.”“I meant,” the goblin says, “give me the lockpicks. I don’t know how to pick a lock, but I will try if it makes you stop talking.”“I’ll take it,” Nott says. She puts the lockpicks in his hand, which is radiating weird and uncomfortable amounts of heat. “I’m Nott, by the way.”“Caleb,” the goblin says quietly. His ear twitches, once.“Caleb,” Nott says. “That’s a nice name.”“I picked it myself,” Caleb says. He doesn’t smile, when he says it, and Nott can’t see the wrinkles on his face that means he’s used to smiling. That’s sad.“Well,” Nott says. “It’s very nice.”“Thank you,” Caleb says, and pauses, and then adds: “Nott.”ii.In the end they only make it because Caleb uses some sort of magic spell that makes a guard very enthusiastic about assisting a goblin and a woman who tries to pick his pocket on the way out. (He lets her.) (There’s a few silver pieces in there, which is excellent.)He drops the two of them off at the front door, and they walk out – unofficially free, if not officially. Or legally. Or – well, the point is that they’re outside.“That was amazing!” Nott says. “You can use magic!”“You sound so surprised,” Caleb says stiffly. He over-enunciates each word, which is both impressive and adorable.“I thought my CFF – that’s cell friend forever – would be, I don’t know, a drunk. Another drunk. Maybe an attempted assassin, with a poisoned dagger. I didn’t realize you would be so cool, Caleb.”Caleb’s ears twitch forward and – there it is, the hint of a smile tucking at the edges of his sharp teeth. “I’m not very cool,” he says. “I’m a goblin, in case you’ve forgotten.”“A cool goblin though.”They stop – well, they stop for a second, and then while they’re stopped Nott pulls the two of them into an alleyway because she isn’t actually that stupid. Caleb goes stiff when she grabs him; he doesn’t stop being stiff, even when she lets go.“It really doesn’t bother you,” he says.“What?” Nott says, and then says: “Oh. That you’re a goblin?”Caleb’s ears twitch back, curl in towards his head.“No,” Nott says. “It doesn’t bother me. You’re a goblin, I’m a human, I’m a thief, you’re a wizard. That’s just who we are. Why does it matter?”“Goblins eat people,” Caleb says. “Goblins steal children from cribs. Goblins attack adventurers. Goblins are stupid animals with no brains.” He says each of these sentences with a prim and hollow voice, like he’s a teacher trying to give her a lesson he’s already tried three times before. (Nott uses this metaphor from experience.)“But none of those things are true about you,” Nott says quietly.“How do you know?” Caleb says. His voice is raw. Nott crouches down and holds his hot hand in hers.“I know,” she says. “I don’t know how I know it but I know. People tell you all sorts of stories about who you’re supposed to be, and – and what you’re going to be, just because of where you were born or what you were born as. Those are just stories, Caleb. You can be whatever you want, and I think you’re going to be amazing.”Caleb stares at her, eyes like two golden suns in his skull. His pupils are huge. He looks down at his hand in hers. “You know,” he says, “I think that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”“It was pretty good, wasn’t it.”“Pretty good, yes. Did you plan it?”“No! All on the fly. Cool, eh?”“Very impressive,” Caleb says. He smiles; it lights up his whole face, each of his tiny pointy teeth like a ray from a foreign sun. “I think you are going to be amazing too, Nott the Brave.”“Thank you,” Nott says. Then she says: “My last name’s Widogast, actually. Don’t go spreading that around or anything, but, that’s what it is.”“Oh,” Caleb says. He pulls his hand back. “Yes, you – you said, back there. I only thought – where I came from, we – we don’t have long family lines the way that humans do, so we – ah, sometimes we choose. I thought it had a nice ring to it.”“It does,” Nott says. She bounces on her feet a little bit. “How about we trade?”One of Caleb’s ears flicks.“You take Widogast,” Nott says. “Gods know I’m not doing anything with it. And I’ll be brave.”“You would give it up?” Caleb says.“Caleb,” Nott says. “You have no idea how much I’m willing to give it up.”“Then I will take it,” Caleb says. “On one condition.”“Yes?”“You let me buy you a prisonbreak drink.”“No,” Nott says, and quick – quick quick, before Caleb’s ears can droop, before his face can close off behind his teeth – she says: “I’m buying. I’ve got all the silver from that guard’s pouch anyways, I’m not doing anything with it.”“That was very stupid of you,” Caleb says.“But brave!” Nott says. “Also brave!”“Not really,” Caleb says, but when she heads out of the alleyway he follows.iii.Later, in the inn, the two of them lying drunk into one bed, Nott’s bare feet sticking out from under the scratchy wool blanket and Caleb curled up carefully with his back to her——and the dark of the room, and the hush of their breathing, and the pieces of moonlight cracking in slowly through the window——Caleb says: “Nott?”“Yes, Caleb?”“Where are you going?”“I don’t know,” Nott says. “Anywhere. Everywhere. I don’t really have a plan.”One breath in, one breath out. One breath in, one breath out. One breath in and Caleb says: “Me too. I used to have a plan, and then I stopped having a plan, and then I went to prison, and now I don’t – I don’t know.”“You could be a wizard,” Nott says.“I don’t think I – that isn’t really an option.”“Why not?” says Nott, rolling on her side and looking at the small spiny curve of Caleb’s back. “I mean, the Soltryce Academy’s obviously not really an option anymore, unless wizards are very good at making academies out of ashes – which they might be, who knows.” (Caleb probably knows.) “But I’m sure there’s a school on the Menagerie Coast or something. You’re very smart. You use all sorts of big words in conversations, and not in a show-off way, just in a way that says that you know things. I don’t know. You could go to school. Or something.”“Or something,” Caleb says. His voice is distant, fragile. He sounds like he is speaking to her from the stars, and it’s cold up there.“Or you could just come with me,” Nott says.“Would you have me?” Caleb says.“Of course I’d have you,” Nott says. “You named me brave.”“I didn’t need to,” Caleb says. “You already were, you would have figured it out on your own.”He rolls over. He studies her in the dark. “Nott?” he says.“Caleb?”“Nothing,” he says. His eyes close and then open again, the flat gold discs of them disappearing and reappearing. “Good night, Nott the Brave.”“Good night, Caleb Widogast.”And that’s it.iv.(That’s not it.)(Nott wakes an hour or so later, in the dark, and Caleb is sitting on the edge of the bed. When she stirs he turns his head to look at her. “Nott,” he whispers.“Yes?” she whispers back.)(“Are you running from something too?” he whispers.“Yes,” she says.)(“Okay,” Caleb says, and turns his head to look back out the window. “Go to sleep now.”“Alright,” Nott says, and does.)(She doesn’t remember this in the morning.)v.It’s fun, is the thing. Being with Caleb. It’s – it’s wonderful, obviously, to have someone else there; to talk about where to spend the night, to figure out more and more stupid and elaborate ways to get money from people, to wake from bad dreams. But it’s also fun. Caleb insists she teach him how to pick locks (which is pretty successful) and pick pockets (which is disastrous). He can drink her under the table, although afterwards he laughs too much and calls her Astrid and only speaks in Zemnian. It’s fun. It’s been – who knows how long since Nott had fun. Months? Years? Decades?It’s just the two of them, for a while, stealing things that Nott thinks Caleb is making up off the top of his head: pounds of charcoal, random herbs, a brass cup. Watching Caleb have fun is fun. Nott teaching someone things – that’s fun too. She’s never really been smart enough to teach anyone anything before; she’s never even been smart enough to learn, which is why she ran away in the first place. But teaching Caleb the way her fingers itch, the tells other people have, the space between your body and theirs where you can reach and take – that’s easy. It’s easy. It’s fun.They bolt out of every podunk town they find – some cities, too – and their backpacks get heavier and their stomachs get fuller and their smiles get bigger. Caleb teaches Nott how to curse in Zemnian and in Goblin. Nott steals interesting-looking books from shelves for Caleb. She eats the foods he doesn’t like off his plates (berries, burned meat) and he eats the foods she doesn’t like off of hers (mostly just vegetables).I’ve never had a friend before, she tells him.I’ve never had a friend like you, he tells her back.They sleep in the same bed, because Caleb keeps insisting on taking the floor but that’s stupid. Also: he’s warm all the time, like a fire you can hold in your hands. Sometimes Caleb wakes up and goes to sit by the window, and Nott always wakes up too from the cold.One time she does this and the room is glowing.It’s hours until sunrise and the light is pulsing orange and easy, like this shitty inn-room is somehow inside something’s heart. Like it’s a heart, beating. Caleb is on the floor, hunched over a circle spelled out with intricate runes and strange powders; there’s a fire burning in the brass cup Nott pocketed six towns ago. He’s whispering something into a book Nott has never seen before. His eyes reflect the light.The sun rises in the center of the circle and it rises, reflected, in Caleb’s eyes. The light gets brighter and brighter and more and more unbearable and there’s nothing but white, even when Nott closes her eyes, and she thinks mom and she opens her eyes again, and she can’t see anything. Then her eyes adjust, and it’s fine – she isn’t blind – Caleb is sitting on the floor, hugging a cat that’s almost as big as he is. The cat is ginger; in the moonlight it is the exact same color as Nott’s hair. It’s purring.“Hey, buddy,” Caleb is whispering. “Hey, hey, hey, buddy, I missed you too. I know this is a strange form for you but you’ll get used to it, ja?”The cat licks his jaw; its tail thumps affectionately into Caleb’s arm.“Me too,” Caleb whispers. “I made another friend, actually. That’s her in the bed. Her name is Nott. You’ll like her. She’ll try to convince you that she’s stupid, but she’s not stupid at all. So don’t believe her, okay?”The cat sneezes, and Caleb lets it drop to the floor. It wanders around in circles, sniffs the walls, sniffs the bed. Caleb sits where he is and runs his hands through his hair. “Okay,” he whispers to himself. Nott watches him for a long time to see if he says anything else, but he doesn’t move at all before she falls back asleep.vi.Update: Frumpkin is definitely Nott’s favorite. (Don’t tell Caleb.)vii.There are so many cities and towns and cons and lifetimes. Nott repeats this to herself whenever she gets too scared or too sober or too guilty about what she has and has not done: there will be another town. There will be another lifetime. Frumpkin may vanish, but he will come back if they keep enough incense on hand. Caleb isn’t going anywhere. He isn’t. He won’t.This particular repetition she whispers to her bruised and bleeding knuckles. There are so many cities, so many towns, so many cons, so many lifetimes. There are so many cities and towns and cons and lifetimes. There are so many. There are so many. Cities, towns, cons, lifetimes. Cities towns cons lifetimes.The cell here is weirdly similar to the one she met Caleb in, in that it smells like shit and also there may be actual shit stuck to her boots. There’s a small barred window in the upper corner. Outside, she can hear people laughing in the dark. Her hand hurts; her heartbeat lives in the bones of her knuckles.She doesn’t know where Caleb is.Frustrated, she paces in loops back and forth across her cell. Fury burns like fire in her throat – no, like bile – no, like acid. Fury burns like acid in her throat and it drips back into her hand again and she’s furious, always, furious. She’d burn down that bookshop if she ever went back there. She’d burn down the world.
There’s no way we’d let a goblin—
—and they took Caleb away, and she doesn’t know where he is, and the thought of going on without Caleb and his book of spells and his constant delight over bookshops and warm bread and taverns and Nott – she can’t stand that thought. What would she do?Turn around?Go home?…No, she can’t go home. Instead she makes another loop. She’d given Caleb her shitty backup backup lockpicks, lost the backup lockpicks four towns ago, got her good set taken when they grabbed her crossbow and the rest of her shit. From instinct, she rattles the bars. They don’t move. “Fuck you anyway,” she tells them, and gets back to pacing.They’re going to take Caleb away and kill him, but she doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to think about what they do to goblins. She focuses on the nasty mold-covered bricks of the wall, on her own punch-bruised knuckles, on the lizard crawling through the window and the
And the lizard crawling through the window.
“Frumpkin!” she hisses, and then: “Frumpkin?” as she realizes that there is in fact more than one lizard out there in the world. But no: he’s Frumpkin, bobbing his round little head and using sticky little feet to make his way into the cell and towards Nott.When he’s reached her shoulder, he drops her backup backup lockpicks out of his mouth and into her hand.“Caleb?” she whispers.The lizard presses its cold head up against her chin and stays there. Which is good, because it means Caleb’s close enough to send himself into Frumpkin; which is bad, because it means Caleb is sitting somewhere hunched as small and nonthreatening as he can get and staring blankly at nothing, senseless, waiting for her.“Okay,” Nott whispers to herself, “alright, we’re going to get out of the cell, we’re going to get the hell out of this town. Right, Frumpkin?”Blep goes the lizard tongue.“Right,” Nott says to herself. She shoves a lockpick-holding hand through the bars and believes in herself, and Frumpkin, and Caleb. Mostly the other two; she doesn’t believe in herself, the stupid girl who threw a punch in a bookshop and got them both thrown into the brig. She believes in Caleb, who had wanted the books. She believes in Frumpkin, and Caleb inside of Frumpkin, and Caleb watching Nott pick the lock and believing in her.It clicks.So maybe the belief worked, or maybe some god somewhere rolled in Nott’s favor, but whatever the reason she laughs giddy to herself and sneaks out of her cell. (She wants a drink.) (It can wait.) Frumpkin points his tail left; she goes left. He points straight, she goes straight; right to right, through the twisted-up labyrinth of this town’s stockade. There are a few times where she has to hide breathlessly behind a barrel or in an alcove or, once, up on the ceiling – but the guards don’t see them. They’re fine.Caleb is awake when Nott gets there, standing, watching her. His ears are straight up, and his posture looks like Frumpkin’s on high alert: rigid spine, wide eyes. He’s clenching his jaw. “Nott,” he says. “Nott I am so sorry.”“You’re sorry?!” Nott says, crouching down and getting to work on his lock. “I’m sorry, I’m so stupid, I shouldn’t have—”“No, it was very brave, I shouldn’t have thought—”“I just don’t understand why—”“I could—”—and the lock clicks, just in time for Caleb to say “goblin.” Quietly.“Don’t do that,” Nott says, and picks him up and settles him on her hip like a baby. “Shh. Stop wriggling – ow, gods, you just kicked me in the—”“What are you doing—”“I carry you! You scout ahead with Frumpkin! We stop being in prison!”Caleb’s bony little arms close around Nott’s back, and his pointy chin digs into her shoulder. “Okay,” he says quietly.“Okay,” Nott says.“Thank you,” Caleb says. “Thank you for coming back. For me.”“I’m not going to leave you,” Nott says. It suddenly seems essential that Caleb know this. “I wouldn’t,” she says. “Not – not just because I don’t have anyone else, haha, but because you’re – there’s no one like you. I don’t want anyone else to be my friend.”Caleb’s stubby little claws dig into her shoulderblade. “You are my favorite, Nott the Brave.”Nott laughs, shaky. “I’m everyone’s favorite,” she says, and carries him forwards. She feels him slump against her just as Frumpkin perks up and skitters down the hallway. “We don’t need anyone else,” she whispers to him, even though she knows he can’t hear her. “We’re fine on our own.”Which are, of course, famous last words.viii.The sudden loud, excitable crowd whose table they’re sharing all seem to think that Nott’s in charge and Caleb is her sidekick – which is hilarious. The blue tiefling girl tries to pinch Caleb’s cheeks a few times, and the human girl is frowning at Nott like she’s sizing her up (terrifying), and the half-orc guy has been way too polite all things considered. Nott keeps exchanging terrified glances with Caleb; each glance says can we leave? and do you want to leave? and why aren’t we leaving?They listen to the conversation ebb and flow around them. The half-orc – Ford? Fjord? Forde? is there an ö in there somewhere? – says: “Me and Jester are headed—”“—to the Soltryce Academy!” says the tiefling (definitely Jester), bouncing in her seat, excitable. “Fjord is learning magic, he’s getting really good at it!”Nott starts saying “So is Caleb!” at the same time the monk girl says: “Oh, no, you definitely can’t go to the Soltryce Academy. That’s not, like, a thing you can do. There is no Soltryce Academy anymore, dude.”“What?” says Fjord, and “What?” says Jester, and Nott says: “It burned down just a few months ago.”“Arson,” says the monk. She shrugs a shoulder and drinks more ale. “At least that’s what I heard. I guess one of the students went apeshit and blew up the place.”“One of the students?” Jester says.“Well, shit,” Fjord says, and Nott should say something, but instead Nott is watching Caleb. The clench of Caleb’s green knuckles around the handle of his stein, the way his hands are trembling – his ears back – his pupils blooming too wide.“Caleb,” Nott says. “Caleb?”“Oh man,” says monk. “Yeah, it was a goblin, right?”“That’s what I heard,” Caleb says, his voice high and twisted and thin. “The only goblin to ever be accepted into the Soltryce Academy, and they went and blew the whole thing up! Pretty funny eh? But what would you expect from a goblin? All they do is break things—” and then he’s up and out of the chair, tearing up the stairs towards their room.“Is he—” says someone, but Nott is already running after him. Up the stairs with her stupid long human legs, longer than Caleb’s, faster than Caleb’s; she catches up with him at the door to their room, and slams it shut behind them.“Caleb,” she says, and Caleb opens his mouth and snarls at her and then his hands catch fire.She hasn’t seen him use a fire spell before.“Caleb,” Nott says, and Caleb says: “That’s not my name.”“Caleb Widogast,” Nott says again, and Caleb lets out this horrified animal noise and then the flames go out. His hands shake. His eyes well up with hot salt water, and he doesn’t move, and he just – stares at her.“It’s me,” Nott says. “It’s Nott. Alright? I’m still here. I said I’d still be here. I’m here.”“Clib,” Caleb says. “Clib. Ugly little name for an ugly little goblin, but – I still thought I could be something, ja, thought I could – and they all laughed, Astrid didn’t laugh but they all laughed, didn’t matter the marks I got or how high I climbed or what I was willing to do for this stupid empire, they still – and then – well, what was I supposed to do?” He looks at Nott beseechingly, pupils blown all the way out. “What was I supposed to do, Nott the Brave?”“Run away,” says Nott. She sits down on the ground. “Run away from your mistakes and hope that everyone forgets about you.”Caleb’s ears wilt.“I’m sorry,” Nott says. “You should have been me. I should have been you. All I do is run away and drink too much and steal things. I’d make a good goblin. You – you should have been a Widogast, a real one. My parents wanted me to do something like that, to get into the Soltryce Academy, to – to make a name for all of us, and I – I couldn’t, Caleb, I couldn’t even look at the books, my mind got panicked and my fingers got itchy and I had to run and steal and drink and fight and I had to get out of there, they all – the way they looked at me – it should have been you, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”The dry, leathery feeling of Caleb’s hand holding her hand. “Never apologize,” he says. “I’m glad, that you are the person you are. I’m proud to be your friend.“You would have hated the Academy anyways,” he says, voice straining for levity. “They didn’t like drinking there. Only studying, and practicing. And so much reading.”“I hate reading,” Nott says quietly. She laces her fingers with Caleb’s. “Why don’t the words do anything? They just sit there and stare at you, it’s the worst.” She sniffles a little bit. “Sometimes I miss them. I know it’s stupid but sometimes I want to go home and show them that it’s okay, and I’m happy just…being here. Y’know. With you. Out in the world.”“If you want to go home,” Caleb says. “I’ll go with you. You know that.”(Nott knew that.)(Nott didn’t know that.)(Nott knows things, sometimes, but that doesn’t mean she believes in them.)“Yeah,” she says, “of course I knew that. You and me, right?”“Yes,” Caleb says. “You and me.” He pauses, twitches a little bit. “Nott?”“Yes, Caleb?”“Can I show you something, please?”“Alright,” Nott says.Caleb sucks in a breath, and lets it out, and shows her.She’s seen him cast Disguise Self before – he’s been a little halfling boy, an old dwarven woman, a gnome of indeterminable age and gender. She hasn’t seen him put on this face: a human man, maybe about Nott’s age, with tangled ginger hair and bright blue eyes. He has Nott’s elbows, and her overly-pointed chin, and the dabs of freckles she can never quite get rid of. But he’s still Caleb. He looks just like Caleb, only he doesn’t.“Ta dah,” Caleb says. “Caleb Widogast.” He smiles, sour; it looks weird on him with teeth that dull and few.“Hello, Caleb Widogast,” Nott says. “I’m Nott the Brave.”“Hello, Nott the Brave,” says Caleb, and he separates their hands so he can hold his out to shake. Nott shakes it. “I’m a goblin,” she tells him. “But I’ve cast a spell, so I don’t look like one.”“I know spells too,” Caleb says. “You know I studied at the Soltryce Academy?”“Wow,” Nott says. “That’s – that’s a smart person school. Real smart people over at Soltryce Academy.” She can’t help it: she laughs, just at her own stupidity. “Oh, Caleb,” she says. “How long does the spell last?”“An hour,” Caleb says. “But – I could keep casting it. I could – or if I was strong enough, I could – I could maybe make it permanent.”“It wouldn’t be you,” Nott says.“Yes,” Caleb says. “Exactly right. It wouldn’t be me. It would be – I think it would be more the person I want to be. Caleb Widogast. I would be him.”“You already are,” Nott says. “And this is a very nice trick, and I think my nose looks much better on a man, but I’d like to see my friend again. Please.”Caleb looks at her, his eyes blue and sad and endlessly old. His pupils don’t change size; his ears don’t move. He looks half-alive – he looks like he’s dressed up for an event he didn’t want to go to, in a suit that’s two sizes too small.Then the spell melts away, slowly, and he’s just Caleb again. When Nott met him, there were still points of gold embroidery in his coat; they’re all gone now, but she doesn’t mind. He looks and smells like her Caleb. She opens her arms for him and he tucks himself perfectly against her, all his pointy bones digging into hers. He folds his arms around her and holds her back.“You say you’re stupid,” he says, voice muffled into her shirt, “but they are stupid, if they did not want you. Just the way that you are. Loud and stubborn and clever and sly, optimistic, kind. You have a heart as big as the entire horizon, Liebling.”“That’s not fair,” Nott says, “you never taught me that one.”“I know,” Caleb says, and keeps holding her. Nott holds the small arson of his body, even though it should be too hot – even though it should burn her enough to let go.“Caleb?” she says.“Yes, Nott?”“Do you want to go with those weirdos to the circus?”“I don’t know,” Caleb says. “It could be fun, maybe.”“I thought so,” Nott says. “But you know – the second you want to go, we’ll go. I’ll go with you. We’ll leave town.”Caleb nods, jabbing her repeatedly with the familiar knife of his chin. His claws knead at the back of Nott’s shirt. He doesn’t need to promise her the same; Nott already knows.Then Caleb breaks the hug, steps back, tugs at a lock of his hair. “Time to go apologize for my tantrum,” he says. “How do I look.”His ears are green and pointed, twitching this way and that way to catch all the sounds of the room. His eyes are golden, wide. The endless knifeblock of his teeth snarls up the edges of his mouth – not into a smile, but the smile is there. The potential for the smile is there.“You look perfect,” Nott says. She takes his hand, and they step out the door.