“What was I supposed to do? Lie to them?” Varus asked as the pair started crying even louder, their shoulders went up and down as they choked on their own sobs and hid their eyes by pressing their forearms up to them to catch their tears.

  “No, but there’s ways to do this that-” Lithia tried to answer, but Varus shook his head.

  The cacophony of noisy crying was almost physically painful to bear, particularly to the Elder Lich who had spent five thousand years without another person to distract him at all, and he couldn’t focus on what Lithia was saying.

  “Tuesday, Hannah, step outside for a moment so I can talk to Lithia.” He said, and in an instant Tuesday grabbed her sister’s hand, yanked her up, and ran out the door leaving teardrops on the floor to mark their passing.

  Lithia opened her mouth to speak as they fled, the door slamming shut behind them with a thunderous clap which reminded Varus of the last time he’d slammed the door and shattered it into a thousand pieces. She said nothing as Varus looked down at the floor, his mind not on her words as he recalled watching them try to put the pieces back together again. Only a few dark stains from emotions he sought to name but could not, lingered there now.

  It was only when his eyes went away from the floor that Lithia stood and spoke to him, her hands on her hips, she looked up at the horned Elder Lich whose long white hair wafted in the breeze that came through the window and said, “You messed up.”

  “I was just being truthful…I can’t- I can’t take care of them. I don’t know how.” Varus took slow, heavy steps over to the table and sat down hard enough that the chair made an ominous thud beneath his weight. “I suppose I just proved it with…that.” He stretched out an upturned hand toward the door and then turned his focus back to Lithia. “What was I supposed to do? Lie?”

  “No.” Lithia said in a tone filled with rebuke, she leaned over, bending at the waist so that she looked down at the literary Lich, forgetting for a moment that he was still a dangerous, powerful undead who had already defeated her once with ease, she carried on in the tone of a teacher whose student had done something foolish or dangerous or both.

  “But there’s being honest, and there is being cruel. And just because you didn’t mean to be cruel, doesn’t mean you weren’t. There’s a gentle way to do this. And you did it in the worst possible way.” She inhaled deeply through her flared nostrils, her face was flush with frustration, Varus was inclined to ask her how he could have done better, but beyond that deep breath she gave him no chance to speak.

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  “You could have talked about the wider world. You could have talked about a fun trip. You could have told her they could come see you soon. You could have told them you would come see them. You could have told them wonderful stories about the world of Amends and its many Kingdoms. You could have gotten them excited for the trip by helping them to pack and using bright, upbeat tones or told them how to write to you or…”

  As she ranted off her list she raised one fist in between them both and then began lifting fingers to count off what he could have done. It took several minutes more of her suggesting ways he could have made it less painful for them before she lowered her hand back to her hip and finished by saying, “These are a pair of lost girls who have no family left that they know of, no idea where their parents are, or if they’re alive, or anything. Then you go and save them…little ones that age, they get attached easily. Especially if they’re desperate. Now they think nobody wants them. Of course they’re hurt and reacting this way. As far as they’re concerned, staying with you is the best possible life.”

  “It’s not.” Varus said with a decisive snap of his voice. Her rebuke stung. And it stung even more because it felt like she was right. Still, he couldn’t pretend his cottage was the best choice. “I obviously don’t know what I’m doing, I wasn’t even a father when I was alive, and after all this time alone…I’m an Elder Lich. Apart is how we are meant to be.”

  Lithia let out a contemptuous snort. “If you say so. The point is, you messed that up, but it can be fixed. Just let me do the talking. They’re distraught, but it’s not the end of the world.”

  It was hard to explain what he felt right then. Truth be told, Varus wasn’t entirely sure. ‘Alright, so she’s not the brightest torch in the cave…she has the good sense of a drunken donkey, and is about as cautious as an intoxicated nekoni. But she seems to understand small children better than I do…somehow.’

  He let out a frustrated sigh, “Go on. Go…talk to them. I’ll- I’ll wait here. I-” he looked away from her and over toward his waiting pages. Around the desk they were there, the shades of vanished lives made alive again in story form, the spirits of old friends made fiction, the goofy smile of the boyish hero, the shy blush of the priestess who never knew how pretty she really was, who was nervous about everything she did, but brave as a lioness when danger came to her own, the brazen woman whose deadly skill with sword and spell alike were surpassed only by the wicked tongue that slaughtered egos. They were posed around the desk, seemingly at ease, but the Hero of old gestured to the chair with a wink and a smile, beckoning him to return to his work in giving them life again.

  The invisible shades of characters who longed to see their story told, never revealed themselves to anyone else, and in his heart and head alike, Varus knew they were mere fanciful thoughts…but they felt so real, so alive…and so impossible to abandon now, just as they had been when their inspirations were at his side.

  He had no throat to swallow, but he accepted Lithia’s offer by adding, “I have some writing to do.”