"Are you gonna be okay with this, Button?"

Button bit her lip, shifting from foot to foot at the top of the stairs leading down into the wine cellar. Lapis could sense immediately the anxiety burrowing from within Button, the panic Lapis had once taught her how to mix herbs to manage. “Yeah, I'm fine.”

Lapis reached out a hand to grasp Button's slender arm. “Button. Are you, uh, sure?”

Peals of guilt chimed within her. She'd only split them up like this on impulse, to avoid being paired with Olivine when she was still feeling a little... well, the point was, it had only occurred to her after the fact that she was sending the most skittish of her friends down alone into a dark basement.

“Mm.” Button gave a small nod. “Yeah, I can do it. I mean, I sleep in an attic.”

Lapis withheld a smile. Lapis and Minni had hedged up two dozen little glowballs when Button had moved into Minni's attic. This cellar wouldn't have those. “Alright. Remember, just look to see if that sorority b—jerk is down there. You don't have to confront her directly.”

“Aw, I bet she could take her.” Minni emerged from the sitting room, coming up from behind Button to grasp an arm and rest her chin on Button's shoulder. “Right, Button? You totally wouldn't, like, dissolve into a blushy mess like last Solstice, right?”

Button's cheeks went robin's-breast red.

“Minni,” Lapis snapped. “Not helpful.”

The witches from the Barrow Wood Sorority came en mass to the village only rarely. Usually it was just one of the more diplomatic members, like Sapnettle or Espin, in to buy supplies. The Solstice Festivals, though, saw them at center-stage, and they were a little infamous for the amorous mischief they brought with them every year.

“Oh, don't worry, Button.” Minni nuzzled Button's neck. “Like, you’ll totally be fine!” She giggled. “Unless that witch gets the idea to disguise herself as Lala, anyways!~”

Button whimpered.

"Minni!"

Minni looked up at Lapis, eyes sparkling with playfulness. She looked questioningly to Button.

Button swallowed. “N-No, it's... it's fine.” She disentangled herself from the bimbo's clutches. “B-But maybe, um, you shouldn’t tease me with things that are probably…” She looked over at Minni. “I mean, if they would know to do that, it's... I'm not the one who told them, am I?”

She turned away quickly, nerves clearly getting the better of her, and hurried down the stairs.

She didn't see what Lapis saw: the stricken look that flashed across Minni's face, guilt and shame, ever-so-brief and then gone again.

As Button’s light faded into the darkness, Lapis reached habitually to close the cellar door. She stopped herself just in time—all Button had was a candle, after all.

She looked at Minni, chewing on her cheek. “You deserved that.”

“Totally.” Minni giggled, giving a carefree shrug. “That's, like, the fun in teasing Button, right? Someone's gotta teach her to stand up for herself.”

Lapis stared hard at her. She wanted very badly to bring up Minni’s behavior with the Sorority. But now wasn’t the time.

Minni didn't seem to notice Lapis’s internal battle. She turned and started skipping towards the mud room; Lapis followed a short ways. “Besides, Button knows I’m just having fun! You should give it a try sometime.”

Lapis rolled her eyes. “I have plenty of fun. I just don't... harlot myself out to every pretty face that shares a smile.”

“You can, like, say whore, Lapis~” Minni twirled, her short red skirt rising up over her tight boyshorts, and kicked her foot back, hands clasped behinds her back as if concealing mischief. “It's kinda hot when you swear.”

Lapis flushed. Minni's eyes sparkled, reminding Lapis that Minni, beyond everyone, had a seventh sense for when someone was turned on. “I cannot believe you wanted to be a Ranger once.”

“Me neither!” Minni darted in and kissed Lapis on the cheek. It was her favorite greeting, but Lapis stiffened as the proud bimbo's heat pressed in close, as she smelled Minni's light strawberry perfume. Minni always had the best perfumes. Lapis would know; she foraged Minni’s ingredients for her. “Being a slut is way more fun~”

Lapis swallowed.

Minni pulled back and giggled. “Course, if I hadn't apprenticed with the rangers, I never woulda, like, met you and brought you back to meet the others! So I guess it paid off.” She twirled around again, and Lapis tried not to notice how her shorts hugged those smooth, luscious curves. “Have fun in the kitchens! Let me know if it gets too hot in there~”

Lapis bit her cheek hard as she turned away. She forced her breathing to steady, timed it with her footsteps.

Of all the girls in their group, the one she absolutely refused to allow to get to her was Minni.

~ ~ ~ ~

The scent of chamomile brought Button some small comfort as her candle’s warm yellow light cast horrid shadows across the stairwell. Her footfalls tapped softly against stone.

She couldn't stop looking at the ceiling. That was what one was meant to do in a dungeon, wasn't it? Always look up.

And this felt like a dungeon. She reached the bottom of the stairs. Her little candle didn't do much but buzz against the darkness, a single stubborn firefly. Pillars of hewn stone arced into the ceiling in the form of barrel vaults. The vaults crisscrossed down the hall like four-legged spiders. Open doorways dotted both sides of the hall, their doors long since rotted and termite-eaten into mulch. One or two rusting braziers were still bolted to the pillars, but only ashes remained of the torches that once were.

Still, it wasn't as dark down here as she’d expected. That was odd. She felt like she was seeing a lot more than the light of a candle ought to be revealing. Button studied the stone brick walls of the wide hall.

She blinked rapidly. No. It couldn't be. Nobody would be so...

She looked at her candle.

No. There was no way. She swallowed her doubts and as much of her fear as she could stomach and approached the closest doorway.

She smiled weakly as she noticed tiny ants skittering from one of the cracks between the archway bricks. She tried to comfort herself with that. She wasn't the only living thing down here.

She couldn't stop thinking about how Lapis had looked in the veil. That slack-jawed expression, that husky tone of utter abandon.

It hadn’t looked like a witch’s prank.

In the darkness of the halls beneath an abandoned castle, the shadows of stories of a ravenous ghostly baroness stretched all too long.

As Button stepped into the doorway, she whispered the names of what insect gods she could remember—only two, and neither ant-based, but Vescensweet of the Honey Candle had always been a comfort to her, and Paynterlily of the Stained Glass Wings had to be friend to winged ants, at least, hadn't she?

She noted several old barrels piled against the wall of this room. Something dark and congealed pooled around them. Probably leaked wine. Hopefully leaked wine.

Would the witch be hiding in one of the barrels? Not likely. She managed a small laugh at the mental picture, though, and her laughter gave her courage to pass through the arch and into the room.

This had been a buttery, she guessed, noting the old shelves. There were still a couple of old jars on them, and she couldn't resist reaching up and taking one down from its shelf. She held the candle up to it. The liquid inside was of thick golden amber.

Her lips parted in delighted surprise. It was honey. She tilted it from side to side, admiring how easily it poured, shimmering in the candlelight. She took down the other one as well. Honey almost never went bad if it was properly sealed, and both of these jars seemed to be in perfect condition.

She tucked them into her satchel. Her fear felt a little lightened now, if only by excitement at her find. She'd have to tell her own bees all about it when she got—

From behind her there rose a groaning creak.

Panicked quills of hoarfrost stabbed through Button’s heart. She spun around toward the doorway, her candle sputtering from the motion.

There hadn't been a door there a second ago.

But something else besides the door now inhabited the archway.

Shreds of pale, diaphanous fabric, illuminated by flickering candlelight. Pale elbow-length gloves, the fingers daintily caressing down the old metal door. A wide-brimmed white hat with a flowing veil.

Sharp teeth glittered behind that veil.

The figure moved wrongly. Jerkily, unevenly. Sometimes it was like she—it—was reversing its own motions, going back in time. Then it would twitch back to the present with lightning speed. Its figure seemed to shift, the joints displacing as if the bones beneath its pale skin were never still. As if the bones were alive and crawled where they willed.

And the figure was closing a door that hadn't existed a second ago.

“Wait!” Button cried.

The figure paused, and Button had a moment of intense, icy regret.

Warm breath tickled her ear.

Button realized that she couldn't move.

Her thoughts leaped and stumbled and raced on all fours in a panic. She willed motion into her body. Nothing happened. She could feel everything, her muscles felt fine, but she tried with all her might to make them tense, to twitch so much as a finger, and… nothing. As if in a nightmare, her body would not obey.

“Such a pretty thing.” The voice in her ear was warm and wet. So were the lips that smacked so lightly against her earlobe. “Wouldn't you like to stay here with me?”

Move. Run. Turn around. Fight.

Button couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe. That realization hit her late, and panic flooded her whole body. She tried to take a breath in, and her body remained as still as if she was dead. The only part of her that moved was her pounding heart.

She tried to think of gods to pray to. But terror had clenched around her and wouldn't let go. It forced her heart to pound, forced her to keep struggling to breathe, and drove all thoughts but run, run, run from her head.

And there was something else, there, too. Another shameful emotion fluttering inside her.

She had no control. She was suffocating. She was captured. She was in danger.

How could that be making her like… this?

She was completely helpless.

She watched the door. The smaller the gap shrank, the more bent and warped and monstrous the figure’s posture became.

Those tender lips smacked wetly against the sensitive space just below Button’s ear and above her neck, the softest, most teasing of kisses. “Such a pretty pet you'd make,” the voice whispered, at once sultry and intimate and effervescent, otherworldly, alien and empty. Long, sharp nails traced along her jawline, scratching delicately. “Wouldn't you like that?”

Button squeaked. Everything was going dark, going fuzzy. She couldn't think, she couldn't move, and terror was choking her to death even faster than the paralysis.

The other hand caressed her shoulder, slid down her side, so delicate, so half-present. It slid down lower, and lower, as the lips planted another tender kiss against her neck, forced the moan from her breathless lips—

And the door slammed shut.

The touches vanished. Button let out the rest of her breath, and then, realizing she could breathe, gasped.

She stumbled forward, panting for breath, struggling to quell her panic. She tried the door, but the handle wouldn't budge.

Empty, ghostly laughter like rustling tinsel echoed all around her.

~ ~ ~ ~

Laleli stepped into the storage room. It was exactly as she’d left it, but in the dim, flickering light of her honeysuckle candle, everything just felt that much more ominous. The sheets draped over the old furniture evoked pale, looming figures.

There was no sign of the witch, but maybe the girl was hiding under one of those sheets.

Or, she thought, noticing the white window curtains rustling in an invisible breeze, maybe not.

She crept towards the window, her heart fluttering with excitement. Her footsteps were muted and soft. Her hand slowly rose to grip the very corner of the curtain.

"Got you!" she cried, wrenching the curtain aside.

The window glittered with the reflected light of her candle. She could see her face reflected, too, though it looked warped so close to the candle’s distorting light, her eyes sunken and black, her smile ghastly. There was nothing there.

Laleli let out a disappointed sigh. She set the candle down on the sill and leaned in, trying to banish the reflection by glimpsing the stars behind it. But it was still raining, still pitch black outside. The only faint lights she could see seemed to be coming from below the window's vantage—probably the candlelight from the other girls shining through the downstairs windows.

She kept staring, though, as the candle's flame warmed her chin and burned into the air its sweet honeysuckle scent. All the excitement had worn her out a little, and she didn’t mind a moment’s rest. There was something peaceful about the darkness. Unnerving, but… peaceful.

Looking out over the hills—as her eyes adjusted, she could see the very faintest glow of the setting sun between the clouds and the forest—Laleli felt suddenly struck by a bizarre sense of… what was this feeling? Ennui? Deja vu?

Longing?

She wasn’t sure where that would be coming from. But it held her. Maybe she was feeling homesick; she would only be back in town for a short time before returning to her schooling, after all.

Everything was so different now. She supposed she’d always sort of figured things would just… stay still while she was gone. She was always the one getting the group to do things, after all. She was the one who made things happen.

Everything was so quiet. The only sound was the very faint crackle of the candle flame burning the wax. It was soft here. It was peaceful here.

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened it again, watching the spots in her eyes fade and the faint horizon return. Her thoughts felt slow and staticky. Buzzy. Fuzzy.

Laleli rested her forehead against the glass. It wasn't as cold as she'd expected. She'd been hoping the cold would jar her. Instead, she just felt warm, heavy relief at reducing the weight she had to hold up on her own.

The world had not waited for her.

She closed her eyes. It was supposed to be a blink.

It felt nice having them closed. Easy. Heavy. Calm.

Everything in here was so… what was that word? It meant calm, but it had a different sound to it, like a mountain stream.

She finally opened her eyes again. She couldn’t see the horizon anymore. Just pitch darkness.

Her fingers ran over the window’s cool glass, admiring its smoothness. Serene? No. That wasn’t the word.

It felt like her mind was full of a deafening quiet. She could only bring herself to disturb it with one thought at a time. Slow. Gentle. She stared down at her pale candle, at its silvery flame. At her hand, also pale silver. No color. Calm. Muted.

Tranquil. That was the word.

She yawned. A faint giggle escaped her. The static in her mind was so loud. So expansive and thick. Fog. Nothing could penetrate it. Her thoughts felt small. Muted. Clipped short.

One thought ended.

Another began.

Drifting.

Aimless.

Staticky.

She felt so tired.

It sounded so nice to lie down forever.

She stared at the candle. Her eyelids began to sink. Another slow blink.

But her eyes never had to open again if she didn't want them to.

Her eyelashes brushed against her cheek.

The candle sparked as its flame went lower, and just for a moment, the vividly sweet scent of honeysuckle cut through the numbness.

Laleli's eyes opened wide. She lurched away from the window, so sudden and violent that she didn't even think to let go of the curtains. She just wrenched them right off of the wall, curtain bar and all.

The curtains swept slowly to the floor as she backed away, turned her back on the window. What… what the fuck?

She could feel that static consciously now, even as it receded like a dream that did not wish to be remembered. She could feel that numbness. Her world had been going… gray?

I nodded off, she told herself, heart pounding. Just a dream. I was falling asleep, that's all.

But standing up? Am I that tired? Wait, since when am I so tired?

It was then that Laleli registered that she had never heard the curtain rod hit the floor.

Her heart went as still as a startled prey animal.

Slowly, her heart already sinking, Laleli turned around.

She gave a cry and stumbled back.

The white curtains had never even touched the floor. They floated in midair around her, luminous in the darkness.

She couldn't look away. She felt frozen in terror and fascination. The curtains drifted as though under water, rippling, billowing. Vague shapes seemed to 'wear' them, vague, feminine silhouettes.

"Nice try," she managed, staring at
up at the sheets defiantly. "I know this is you, witch. I’m not scared."

Echoing feminine laughter, as soft and staticky as sweet cotton candy, rang off the walls and echoed in her ears.

They all knew she was lying.