How can a drabble be two places at once, ask you? Why, when it's also posted in open_on_sunday!

Set in the Baby Steps 'verse. It's the precursor to a much longer story, set months after But The Shouting and Homecoming.

Keys


“Here.”

Drusilla peers into living green-gold energy that pulses and shines through its veil of lovely-young-woman. Accepts the keys she'd created from ink and paper, instinct and madness.

“I'd thought them torn to bits in Prague, along with my dolls. Thank you,” she whispers, entranced by two fans of color and foresight.

“I'll . . . check in again--see how you're holding up.” Then the sheep's-clothing woman is gone from the cell, taking with her a smile innocent and merciless as love.

Drusilla draws the first key.

Queen of Cups. . . .

. . . it tears as easily as any useless paper.

*

I've got a headache this big, and have head for nearly two weeks, of and on. Since I bonked my head. I keep getting these painful headaches that only make one side of my head hurt (the bonked side) while the other feels fine. I keep having weird dizzy spells and seeing motion out of the corner of my eye. Like bugs, or something small insidious and kinda ooky. It's not eye-strain and acetaminophen doesn't seem to help matters, though drinking does. Or maybe headaches are just another thing I don't pay any attention to when I'm hammered.

Damn concussion. . . .

Or--shit, I could be insane instead of still-concussed. But I hope not. I can't afford lithium or whatever-the-fuck on my salary.