Seated at his desk with quill in hand, Varus paused for a moment to look behind him and around the little space that he called home. “I might be the easiest Elder Lich in the history of Amends to slay if even that heedless girl could move around for even a moment in my cottage without my noticing. All an adventurer would have to do is wait until I’m writing…”

  “You are that.” His protagonist joked back at him.

  “H-Hey, don’t be m-mean! He’s just f-focused!” The priestess character replied with her fists balled up.

  The hero’s heart, his lover, wife, and greatest ally, said nothing. He could feel the fictional character standing by, watching in the way she did, as if she were real and living, and not born of dreams and imagination… her hands were on her hips as if she were impatient with Varus, but over what, he couldn’t say.

  Varus chuckled a little and got back to work, and the only noise he heard was the scratching of quill upon paper again.

  He made it all of five sentences before a sense of restlessness came over him. He shifted on his chair, the wood groaned and creaked, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his arms, brushed a stray strand of his long white hair over his back, and set his quill to the paper again.

  “I’ll never leave you. Whatever happens. Whatever danger comes. It has to face all of us, never just one of us.” Varus read the lines out loud as he wrote them, and managed to get through the moment when his protagonist hugged his team before they set out to face a monster that was guarding some vital magic item, the name of which Varus would have to turn back several pages to recall…

  And then he set his quill down again.

  That restlessness was on him.

  The Elder Lich pushed himself back from the desk and got to his feet.

  He turned around, putting his back to his work. “You’re distracted.”

  He heard the voice of the hero’s lover, and felt a hand that didn’t exist, touch his shoulder. “You’re right.” He answered her. “I’m going for a walk.”

  The sense of a ghostly presence was gone when he stepped outside of his cottage. The sun was red and dying on the horizon, preparing to go down for the night, and as he walked across the old dirt road he cast his eyes in the direction his departed guests must have gone, he paused. ‘Did they take enough with them?’ He asked himself, then heard a familiar voice offer him a rebuke.

  ‘Even if she is a bit off in the head, Lithia is a certified adventurer. She made it out to me after all. I’m sure she packed well, and you know better than to think that.’ He looked to his side and saw the slender woman of all trades. A keen eyed archer, a half gifted magic user, a mostly successful huntress, a middling-to-good swordsman…

  ‘And the only one who could put up with that damn boy’s antics.’ Varus thought, and she cracked a little smile up at him.

  “That’s a hell of a way to refer to the hero to his wife but… I’ll allow it.” She said before letting out a chuckle and smacking him on the shoulder.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I didn’t say- oh… right.” Varus muttered.

  “Yes, I’m not real, just in your head, idiot.” She said it without any vitriol, and when Varus began to walk, so too did she. He knew it was true, she just felt alive to him. But that didn’t stop him from looking down at the dirt to confirm with his own eyes that there was only one set of footprints on the ground.

  “I’m sorry. I’m trying to focus, but something feels off. Like I can’t do my usual work. I feel restless, I’ll just take this walk, settle my mind, then go back and work more on telling your story.” Varus promised, but the ghostly shade made of dreams and memories only shrugged and began to hum a slow and haunting song.

  The low light of the evening was still enough to cast shadows and faint glows. The dim dancing shine of fairy lights began to pick up in the darker places, and flowers that were bright and in bloom facing the light all day, put themselves to sleep, closing up their petals and retreating into the safety of the soil or the bodies of the trees they’d taken root in, leaving black, brown, and red bark visible where once only bright petals bloomed.

  “The dark mother is a wonderful artist.” Varus said as his feet carried him deeper into the woods. Faint chirping began from birds and bugs alike.

  “Yes, she is. But as you know, she worked with the father for this. She gave him the day to make beautiful, and took the night for herself. He dresses the day in bright colors, his gift of beauty to the woman he loved, and she stripped it in the night, baring what lay beneath. That’s how the story goes, isn’t it?” She asked rhetorically.

  Varus nodded. “I was never devout, but I remember. I always liked the stories about the beginning. I feel like them. Or what I think the dark mother and father must have felt like when they first set foot on our world and called it ‘Amends’. It’s…” He paused and searched for words to express himself then finished, “when I create my worlds, everything is a mystery, but it will also be what I want it to be, until it finds a will of its own in spite of me.”

  She laughed a little, “Like us? Like your characters. You made me like her. Beautiful, dangerous, and infinitely patient with bombastic boys who make me laugh when I most need to.”

  “Yes. But then, you become your own person anyway.” Varus countered, “I couldn’t keep you on the path I decided for you, I never can, you grow and change and resist my will until I can only give in and tell your story your way. Little rebels, all of you.” Varus managed a somewhat hearty laugh and felt a ghostly touch on his arm.

  “That sounds a lot like you’re more our father than our maker.” Her reply was quiet, but even so, it was enough to still his laughter.

  “I suppose so. Once you were established as yourself, all I had to do was watch you grow and write it down-” Varus stopped talking when he felt the ghostly hand close over his arm and tug at his dark robe.

  The face didn’t exist. He knew it. But it was no less real to his glowing red eyes. “Like your children. We needed you to show us what we were, and then it was up to us to figure out what we could be. But we needed you still, if you’d abandoned us, we would never become anything. We would be half ourselves forever…thank you, for not abandoning us when we needed you.”

  “I-I don’t understand.” Varus said dumbly as wide eyes of a vanished life stared up from a fresh faced youth at the height of an adventure he hadn’t finished writing yet.

  “Yes, you do. That’s why you walked here of all places.” She replied, and then she was simply gone.

  Varus looked around, and knew at once that she was right. The stains were still there on the tree where the wild wolf’s body struck. The bark had been torn away from the impact, and the branches still lay where they’d fallen, through more rotted than before.

  And the tree where he’d found the pair in their moment of terror and weakness was somehow seared into the mind of the Elder Lich.

  “I have to go find them. Will you excuse me?” He said at once, and took off at a spring that threatened to uproot the trees from the explosive force of his undead strength.

  “Yes. The main character might be a little cross with you, but he’ll get over it, as long as you finish our story eventually.” She replied, but even though her voice was there in his own head, he hadn’t even really heard it as he focused on something else entirely.

  am a dad. :D When I explained the plot to my stepdaughter, that it was an Elder Lich who wanted to finish his work without being constantly interrupted, she said, "I feel attacked." To which I said "You should." :D Yes we laughed.