Theo and Sandra

...

A drop of blood wells up on the edge of my thumb and I swear, ripely. I drop the throwing star I was inspecting onto the table to clean up later and shuffle out of the cramped room, getting to the front door before whoever it is does that little hesitant second round of knocks.

"Hi! I'm Theodore Turner, your neighbor on the other side of the uh... fork in the road?" The mountain on my doorstep furrows his eyebrows at my appearance in growing confusion, then shrugs. "Your neighbor all the same," he finishes.

"Oh. Hi, hello," I respond, 100% like a person who's not halfway-stitched into a Victorian-style bodice with ragged muslin pieces draped across her shoulder. "I'm Sandra. Thanks for coming by, I just..."

He's noticed the bodice, and when he stares back at my hair I remember I also still have the headpiece on. Feathers.

"Just... I'm a seamstress! Sometimes I answer the door in the middle of a project; this is actually one of the less embarrassing situations I've been in this year," I overshare.

The man nods, his smile reappearing full force. He offers his hand, and I take it. "Well, welcome to the neighborhood, needles and all," he laughs.

I then remember that I have my pincushion band still wrapped around the inside of my wrist.

This is how I meet Theodore Turner.

...

As the months pass, from a mild winter into a wet spring awaiting a slow-approaching summer, I become a passive but appreciative half of a close friendship with the mayor's only son. He probably takes time out of his day for half the people in the village while he works around town, but this is the first friend I've had who I see on the regular, not just on occasion when I skulk outside of the house for supplies on the main street.

"Do all seamstresses have blowtorches?" Theo leans against the cluttered far wall of my workroom, chewing on the dried mango I offered him from the bag at the table beside me when he wandered through the doorway.

"Only the cool ones," I explain, eyes never leaving the glowing red wire in front of me. I place the torch down and feel around for my pliers on the table, snatching them up and bending the pliable metal just so, to the degree specified on my chart. It's hard to make comfortable wings, especially as elaborate as these are supposed to be.

"So, this butterfly..."

"Moth."

"This moth," Theo begins again, "it's supposed to be done by the end of this week?"

"Yeah." I hold the frame out, judging it against my diagram.

"And you haven't started the costume yet."

"Costume's easy, making the wings is the hardest part because they're so heavy."

He shifts on his feet. "Sandra, it's Wednesday."

"And?"

"Every day I've been here this week, you've been in here. You have nothing in the fridge except two pounds of sharp cheddar and a Coke Zero, and the blankets on your bed aren't even rumpled."

"Wow, somebody sounds obsessed. Maybe you should stop coming over here so much." I set the wire wing down next to its partner, whirling around to find my safety goggles and gloves so I can go outside and wield the two halves together. I should be able to add the canvas material to them, and then spend the rest of the day applying all the foam feathers I cut out. I can't seem to move fast enough.

I'm caught mid-whirl, heavy hands on my shoulders. "Sit down for a minute, Sandra."

"No."

"Please?"

I consider, clutching my gloves in my hands. The goggles are probably in the shed. "Listen, when this project is over, I'll hold off on commissions for a minute and be dead to the world. You know how I do, Theo, I'm good."

"I'll be back tomorrow."

"Bring food," I advise him, following him out the door and heading around the house to the shed. While he's strolling back down the path, I feel a disorienting lurch in my stomach that stops me in my tracks.

I lean down into a squat in front of the shed door, trying to shake it off. Theo is just out of sight, and the friend in me is relieved. The fox is pissed.

I'm supposed to have at least a couple weeks. And I run the trails around the house almost every day, why am I losing it now?

I let myself relax into a supine position on the patchwork of tall grass, the chickens clucking uneasily around me. The last time I waltzed my little furry ass out in front of them I got stomped out of the front yard, and I don't care to repeat the experience.

I breathe until it passes, and then I go to wield my wings together.

...

It's done. An almost sheer, barely shimmering slip of a gown, nipped into a tidy hem at the ankle and a prudishly high neckline up top.

The wings hanging next to it are gaudy, audacious, and everything I simply wanted them to be. The minor burns and punctures I got from my assortment of hardware are well worth the trouble.

Jayla Hayworth, a leanly-sculpted returning customer who half-designed the dress herself, stops and stares with me when we get to the workroom.

"I'm lucky as hell," she sighs.

I grin. "Yeah."

"Oh my gosh, way to be humble," she laughs, marching up to the wall and taking in every detail of the wings, then the dress, then the wings again. "I'm so happy you moved out of the Black Forest, Sandra."

"The Black Forest? Is that what people are calling it these days?" I smile as I pull a garment bag and a significantly larger construction bag out of one of the drawers, and she helps me stow everything away.

"That's what it's always been, you have no idea how many people think goblins and fairies live in every tree."

Goblins only live in dead trees because they like the hollow, brittle wood, and neither they nor fairies spend a lot of time in this realm anyway. "Well, let me attest to its harmlessness with the fact that I made it out alive."

"And boy, I do not miss those shipping costs."

We're sweaty by the time we stuff the wings in her car, after I've assured her that she'd need to use a considerable amount of force to break them.

"Very important," I pant, "You can just lift them from the slots here over the corset boning for an instant release, just in case you happen to... I don't know... fall into a body of water and become waterlogged."

"These come with a drowning hazard?" She lifts an eyebrow.

"Drowning, fire, being unable to fit through doors and the like. They're around ten to fifteen pounds dry, I don't want to imagine them wet. Be careful."

I send her off and feel my body slump with exhaustion in her absence. The workroom isn't a mess - I wouldn't allow it to be - but there are bits of fabric and canvas still littered around the room from my frenzy. I sit down at my table and let my head fall into the welcoming circle of my arms.

...

"Sandra."

"Mm." I hear footsteps creaking over the floorboards and crack an eye open to worn black jeans and the ragged hem of a flannel shirt.

"Worked yourself half to death?" A large warm palm on my forehead, then. I don't know how he could tell whether I have a fever if he himself is a furnace.

"At the very most, an eighth," I judge, sitting up and feeling my back crack in all the right places. "Theo, when did you start letting yourself into my place? Like, a couple weeks after we met?"

He holds out a hand, and I take it. "After I realized you leave your keys in the door half the time."

"Well. Everyone else stays out."

Theo nudges me into my room and leans up against the door frame, watching me kick off my shoes. "I'm coming over to make sure you eat food later," he informs me.

"It's like you don't trust me to keep myself alive, Theo. I've done it for the past few decades, I promise I function fairly well."

He shrugs when I climb into bed, ambling back down the hall. I know he'll hang my keys on the hook he installed behind the door and make sure the place is locked up before he leaves.

I fall into a dreamless sleep, aware as my eyes are closing that the heated churning in my stomach is more concentrated than ever.

And it feels like he's back five minutes later.

My eyes crack open to a heavy, unrelenting knocking on my open bedroom door, and for Theo to be such a friendly man, I've envisioned punching him in the chest entirely too often.

"Hey."

"No to whatever it is."

"Sandra you've been asleep for half a day, get up and eat."

"You get up and eat, I had a long week."

Theo's weight shifts and my floorboards creak again. "And whose fault is - alright," he sighs. It's silent for a moment; alarm bells start ringing in my mind. I lift my head and open my eyes to Theo spinning my good fabric scissors around on one finger.

"Quickest way to get yourself kicked out," I snarl. I roll out from under the covers and he shuffles quickly down the hall, stopping in front of the fridge and holding the scissors above his head.

"You look rested," Theo teases. "Lost your pants though."

"Who sleeps with pants on? Give me those back." I refuse to go on my toes and try to reach them. One, because I'm not a child, and two because my shirt isn't long enough to cover my ass. So I just poke him in the stomach, hard. His arm drops to protect himself and I snatch the scissors from him.

"Ah! Ooh, cheater!"

"Who says I was playing games? It was gonna be a knife next." I turn around to put them back in my workroom - to hide them, actually - while he opens the fridge. "I'm gonna go find my pants, you should figure out how to make me dinner out of whatever's in there."

The curling of my stomach starts again, with a set persistence, when I straighten up from crouching to get my sweatpants that ended up in a ball under the blankets in the middle of my bed. I ease back up, unfathomably slowly, and look towards the bustling in the kitchen. He needs to leave.

I pull and doubleknot the drawstring on my pants extra tight, like that'll help any. I reason with myself, as I walk back down the hallway, that he might not respond too badly to me asking him to feed me something... else. He wouldn't even have to cook.

"Are these cucumbers or squash? All the ends are lopped off," Theo asks hopelessly, and I try to shake myself out of my mood. It doesn't really work this time, and I find myself stepping closer.

"I usually just cut them open to find out. But uh, I actually might have to reschedule dinner."

He looks over dangerously, and my stomach clenches, but not in any kind of fear. "Sandra, you didn't take on another project."

"No, of course not. But I can do dinner myself, I've got a couple things I do need to do." Myself. Repeatedly.

He snorts. "Sure."

Why is this conversation going so slow? He shifts, examining the contents of the fridge again, sighing.

The dam breaks on my need and I lean back into the wave, taking a couple reluctant steps away from the man with the dick I want to ride. "I do, you gotta go."

He straightens back up, planting a fist on his hip and pointing the cucumber - or possibly zucchini - to the back of the house. "And if I walk into that room you're not gonna have that goddamned roll of paper out to make another pattern?"

I can't speak. Or, I can, but what would come out would be some form of slutty begging. I just open and close my mouth, practically tasting him on the air.

He sucks his teeth, and starts to move around me to go see for himself. I feel my hands tensing, ready to grab him by his stupid stretched-out fifteen year old classic rock band t-shirt and haul his body over mine.

I make a decision.

He stops walking and stumbles a bit, and I lean myself against the wall, sweating. I don't want to see his face, with the confused, tranquil look that they get when the spell first hits them.

"I have to go...? I forgot I have something I need to do, urgently."

"Yeah, you do," I mutter, starting to pant with the effort of holding myself back and casting the spell at the same time. I recede into the shadows of the hallway and raise my head to watch him look around in vain, trying to blink my spell out of his eyes.

"I... have to go?" he asks me again, and his eyes lock onto mine with some degree of awareness. I redouble my efforts, sliding to the ground against the wall and shivering as drops of sweat start to run down my neck.

He stands over me, contemplating, and eventually his eyes go completely blank. Once I've got him, a calm smile plasters on his face, and he turns around and walks out the door.

I stay on the floor for a long while.

...

I actually text Theo to come over for once, about a week after the whole incident. I'm not gonna wait around for him to come to the house with a pitchfork and a crowd. Or... whatever he'd think to summon. An exorcist, a rabbi, his mom.

When he's outside he knocks, making my heart sink. For once I wish he would've just lumbered in and propped himself up against the open door to my workroom.

I cautiously open the door to him, fully clothed and hair in a less-than fuzzy bundle of twists. I may have been a sweaty, horny mess the last time he saw me, but hopefully he won't remember it like that. Hopefully he won't remember it at all.

So I start fresh. "Hey! Ready for.... Theo?" The sullenness across his face makes me blink. So he does know. But I don't think I've ever seen him this upset.

"Sandra, what are you?"

Shit. "Excuse me?"

"A witch, or fae or something? Do you have magic?" He plants himself firmly in the middle of the kitchen, not advancing on me but somehow swallowing up all the space in the room just the same.

"What makes you think that?" I laugh unconvincingly, probably, with my heart skipping every other beat.

"That night, Sandra, you forced me out."

Play dumb. Incredibly dumb. "Ah... I don't really get what you're talking about, but did I do something to make you mad?"

"Sandra, stop. I saw the spell you cast, I couldn't say anything but I saw the glamour and everything. And don't try it again," he warns. "I've got wards on me today."

I resist the urge to step back, and chuckle confusedly instead. "Theo, are you okay? You looked sick, yeah, but this sounds, um...." I gesture with wild, flapping hands. "Why don't you sit down and-"

Theo sucks his teeth and reaches deep into his pocket, bringing out a small woven bag smelling strongly of cinnamon. My stomach automatically twists, and I try to hide my reaction as he holds it out to me.

"Take it."

"Theo what is tha-"

"Sandra, stop fucking playing games with me. It's a ward, can you touch it? No?" He shoves it closer to my face and I cringe, but don't step back.

"Theo you're scaring me."

"I'm scaring YOU?! You compelled me out of the house and you're scared?"

"I want you to leave now."

Doubt flickers in his face before he stiffens up again and stuffs the ward back in his pocket. It's a little easier to breathe, but I still want to vomit; I wonder where he got it.

"Sandra... I wish you were honest with me. I'm not going to tell anybody, you know I never would. I just..." he shrugs helplessly.

"Theo, I don't know what's going on with you, but I want you to go home and get some sleep. I can drive you if you want."

He just shakes his head, more to himself than to me, and walks out, the overly careful sweep of the door against the carpet and quiet click of its closing louder than any slam could ever be.

...

The weekend finally slugs around without a sight or sound from my friend, if he's still my friend. I decide to release some steam and slip out into the woods at the sloughing skies of dusk, hitting the ground on all fours and dashing after anything that moves.

I'm still breathing fast from my little romp and chase when I start sniffling around the base of a wide tree I know harbors some voles, or something; I don't know what they're called. But I do know they're delicious.

Then I feel eyes on me, and if I were human there would be a cold sweat enveloping me right about now. As it is, the presence has situated itself downwind and completely out of sight so that I didn't notice it at first, even the sounds of footsteps covered by the deceptively warm and friendly winds. I continue snuffling idly, starting to cast a small shield against any bullets or arrows the damned human might have a mind to fire before I get around to the safety of the other side of the tree.

But I can't cast a shield. The human has a ward. The wind shifts suddenly, and filled with dread, I finally openly acknowledge the stomach-churning cinnamon stench and the anxious face of my friend.

"Sandra."

I turn in a split second to dash away but just as I get some ground under me, something pelts me in my back. I gag, a distressed coughing noise lodging in my throat, and immediately begin to wobble on my feet, eventually stopped in my tracks. I hear a scurry of thudding footsteps and am grabbed by my scruff and hoisted into the air, twisting.

"Sandra, STOP," Theo orders. I stop dancing in his grasp, but only because the ward has completely filled my lungs and I start to lose hold of my form. I feel my body sag with the growth of my legs and arms, with the expanse of my chest. He loses his hold on my neck, fingernails deeply scraping my skin, as my body fights out of the smaller form.

Theo emits a grunt of surprise and falls down after me.

"Hhh," is the first word out of my mouth.

"Yes! Yes, I knew it!"

Under the weight of Theo's body I wheeze, and he sits up. "Throw," I gasp in between dry heaves. "Throw it, please."

He scuffles his hands through the leaves and finds the pouch, hurling it off into the distance. I hear a thump and the disturbance of dead leaves, and lay, trapped under Theo's legs, panting the nausea out of my system.

"Oh... you're naked."

"No shit," I mumble. "Wanna get off me?"

"Fuck, Sandra, I'm sorry!" He lifts himself up and I slide my body back against the trunk of the wide tree, voles long forgotten.

"Oh yeah?" I stare up at the broken pieces of fading sky between the tree branches, wondering how quickly I can get home and pack my things.

"I needed to know," Theo says quietly. I drag my eyes from the sky and find his face, creased with worry. Not regret.

"No you didn't," I sigh, bracing myself against the tree to stand. My legs tremble under me, but I manage.

"Sandra, hold on, you're hurt."

"I wonder how that happened," I spit bitterly. I test my weight on each leg and deem both fit for the walk home.

"I didn't know it would hurt you. Look, lemme give you a ride," he pleads, following behind me.

I stop limping towards home to face Theo, and his eyes immediately dart to the ground, due to my nakedness, my anger, I don't know.

"Theodore. Do you know how dangerous it could be for someone like me to reveal what they are? Do you know how long I've had to hide, how many friends I've lost, how many times I've had to all but disappear because of it?"

"You don't have to disappear now," he objects.

"Says the human man who forced me to reveal myself by asphyxiation and who is going to bear none of the consequences of that. Let me take my naked ass home to lick my wounds and pack, and you can live out the rest of your life knowing you solved the case, bitch."

"Sandra-"

"Theo, just fucking shut UP. Damn." He stands there in distress and I can feel tears prickling in the corners of my eyes. I let them fall because my hands, my arms, everything is too dirty to swipe them away.

I roll my head on my sore neck, feeling the angry lines from Theo's fingers begin to sting and fill with blood, and turn around to shift back in private.

"What are you doing?"

"Going home," I mumble, concentrating on the follicles on my forearms sprouting gray and orange fur. I feel sweat break out across my skin.

I hear him step closer and turn my head ever so slightly, the hostility coming off of me in resolute waves. He stops.

"Sandra, are you trying to change back? Is that going to be okay? You look sick," Theo nags, and I'm so furious with the day's fuck-up that my stomach sours at the sound of his voice.