Chapter Text
“Where is my me-damned hand!?” Eda shouted. She turned over the piles of twigs in her nest with her left hand, while her right arm hung there like the useless stump it was.
“Did you check the closet?” Raine asked, coming into view and leaning against the doorframe.
“Of course I checked the closet!” Eda said. She shoved aside more twigs to find a bottle of nail polish. Well, at least she’d found that. She vaguely remembered looking for it last week.
There was still no arm in evidence, though, so Eda quit shoving her bedding around. She leaned back on her heels and blew out a frustrated breath.
“The bathroom, maybe?” Raine said.
“Nada.”
“Kitchen?”
“No!” Eda groaned. “I’ve looked everywhere, Rainstorm, I swear it’s like it just fucking disappeared! I’m never going to find it!”
She put her hand on her head, though with only one it lacked the proper dramatic visual of clutching at her hair. Damn shame, that.
Then she blinked as she felt the texture of yellowed bone beneath her fingertips. Eda grasped onto it and pulled her arm out of her hair.
“Oh,” she said. “Nevermind, found it.”
“I’ll cancel the search parties,” Raine said. Eda cast a suspicious glance in their direction, but their poker face had always been impeccable.
Eda graciously chose to ignore the possibility that they were making fun of her, and instead focused on reattaching her arm. It fell into place easily, a routine born of long practice.
“So,” Eda said, once she was done flexing her arm a little and looked up at Raine, “Bet you twenty snails Luz won’t see the party coming.”
“No bet,” Raine said, clearly amused. “She’s been oblivious to anything besides her finals for weeks now. Amity could probably propose to her and she wouldn’t notice.”
Eda snorted. “Oh, I think that would get her attention, alright. Though nothing less.”
“Fair enough,” Raine conceded. They stepped forward and offered her a hand. Eda took it and stood with Raine’s help. Her knees hadn’t gotten less creaky these past few years.
Once she was upright, Eda leaned forward and kissed Raine. It wasn’t like the way they’d kissed as teenagers, all hormones and intensity and maybe if I hold on tight enough I can keep this. Instead, this kiss was full of hard-won maturity and wisdom and the knowledge that I don’t need to hold on too tight, because I’ll have this forever.
Eda treasured every kiss with Raine, of course, but she had to admit she liked these ones better.
She pulled back and smiled at Raine. They smiled back, and offered their arm. Not literally, the way Eda liked to do to freak people out, but in the way of the gallant gentleperson Raine not-so-secretly liked acting as.
“Ready to go?” Raine asked. “We can’t be late.”
“Rainstorm, I am the mother of multiple gods. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
“Okay,” Raine conceded. “Yes. But still. Do you want to be late?”
Eda snorted and gave them another quick kiss. “Nah. Let’s get going.”
“Do you have your lesson plans?” Raine asked as they started towards the door.
“Sure do!” Eda patted her hair. “We’re discussing glyph theory all next week. It’s going to be incredibly boring. But then we’ll get started on the practical parts, so that’s something to look forward to. Hopefully Luz can hold onto her Titan power until the end of the semester.”
“It’ll be close,” Raine said. “She only has a few dregs left; it’s a miracle she held onto it this long. But at least King’s own powers are coming along nicely.”
“That they are,” Eda smiled as the left the Owl House. “Did I tell you –”
“That King’s light glyphs are getting brighter by the day, and he’s already trying to come up with other glyphs, and he’s just the objectively best Titan in the entire history of the Demon Realm?”
Eda snapped her mouth shut, and shot Raine a glare. They just gave a bland smile in return.
“You may have mentioned it,” they said, like the little shit-stirrer they were.
“Smart-ass,” Eda grumbled.
“Your smart-ass,” Raine said, entirely confident in their ability to weather the storm of her annoyance.
But. Well. They weren’t wrong.
Despite Raine’s urging, they really weren’t late. In fact, they were fairly early (a fact which would have scandalized her younger self). As a result, Eda and Raine took the chance to stroll leisurely through downtown Bonesborough, drinking in the sights.
It looked good, Eda had to admit. Sometimes (a lot of times) the lack of Coven sigils everywhere was kind of a head trip. She had grown up in a world where every doctor’s office was marked by a Healing sigil, every apothecary a Potions sigil, every pet store a Beastkeeping sigil. They had been everywhere, all the time, and while Edalyn Clawthorne, Most Wanted Witch on the Boiling Isles, had been skin-crawlingly aware of them in a way most people hadn’t, she’d still taken them for granted. They’d been bullshit, but a lot of things were bullshit. That didn’t mean you expected them to change.
They had, though. They really had.
Gone were any trace of sigils, or the Emperor’s Coven, or Belos’ influence in general. Instead, people had put up depictions of the Titan, or King, or sometimes even Luz. There were depictions of glyphs that were just artsy enough that they wouldn’t get triggered if someone bumped into one with their elbow. There were touches of the Collector’s magic everywhere – he liked doing favors for people, and Eda allowed it so long as they didn’t overwhelm him with demands. So far she’d only needed to punch two people in the face, which was better than she would’ve expected.
Most people nodded to Eda as she passed, some outright giving her a short bow. It was a little irritating, but it was still a significant improvement from the absolute hysteria that had broken out when the whole ‘mother of a Titan’ thing became public. Yeesh, Eda still had the urge to shudder when she remembered those first few months. She and her excellent family had managed to shield King from most of it, but dear her, that had been exhausting.
So. Eda could endure a little bowing. At least it wasn’t offers of virgin sacrifices or unquestioning obedience.
(Not that those hadn’t been kind of, maybe, just a little…tempting. Sometimes. But responsible mothers did not use their children’s fame to get laid, and so she hadn’t. Raine had, gratifyingly, rewarded her restraint once they got back together.)
They made it to the town square without incident. The area was already decorated, filled with a bunch of human stuff with a demonic twist. As the resident expert on Human Realm stuff, Eda had been consulted thoroughly on the decorating scheme. Naturally, she had provided roughly twenty percent true information, thirty-five percent guesses and speculation, and the rest just making shit up out of whole cloth.
Because come on. Eda knew her daughter. If Luz wanted a normal Human Realm party, she would have stayed there. This was a fusion of both, just like Luz, with a personal touch that she was definitely going to appreciate. Luz was going to love it.
Especially the spider cake. That had definitely been worth the effort.
“Hi, Mom,” Hunter said, coming over. Willow trailed after him, still in her Flyer Derby uniform. Eda was grateful to her for creating that team, possibly even more than her agreeing to go out with Hunter. Dating was all well and good, but joining the Flyer Derby team had been so fucking great for Hunter. Making friends, engaging in competition without lethal danger involved, social bonding…yeah. Flyer Derby had really let Hunter discover what being an actual teenager was like.
“Hunter!” Eda said, disengaging from Raine to hug her son. She ruffled his hair and took glee in his reflexive blush, made of equal parts embarrassment and enjoyment. “How’s everything?”
“With me or the party preparations?” Hunter asked. On his shoulder, Flapjack twittered what was probably a hello, and Eda patted his little head as well. Why not.
“Both, of course,” Eda said. She gave a nod to Willow, who smiled back.
“My apprenticeship is coming along great,” Hunter said earnestly. He was adorable when he got going, and Eda knew for a fact that she wasn’t the only one who thought so. “Dell says that I should be ready to carve my first solo palisman before the year is out! He won’t even supervise!”
“Oh proud mother of Titan, that’s great!” Eda said, and pulled him into a hug. “You’ll knock it out of the park, kid. I can’t wait to see what you do.”
“Me neither,” Hunter said. Open glee shone on his face. “I have a few designs already, but of course I’ll have to wait and see what the wood’s like, and meet whoever’s getting it. Anything before that is just daydreaming. I really can’t wait, though. It’s so exciting.”
He looked happy. He looked so happy, and Eda was struck, as she so often was, with the breathtaking, world-shattering realization that this was what people meant by making a better world. Not the reformed government, or the University of Wild Magic, or the absence of Belos. It was this – the happiness of her son as he imagined his very first solo carving, eagerly anticipating and planning for something he never even would have been able to conceptualize five years ago.
“Look at you,” Eda shook her head in amazement. It was all she could say, really. “Look at you, kiddo.”
Hunter seemed to grasp what she meant, because his smile grew a little bit softer.
“Yeah,” he said, a reflection of her own wonder in his voice. “Look at me.”
Eda could have basked in Hunter’s success for several minutes more, but her attention was pulled away by another of her kids.
“Hello,” Eve said, as she descended from the sky. She hopped off her staff and looked around. “Do I need to fix anything?”
Eda snorted. “No. We can follow diagrams, Eve.”
Eve fixed her with one of her trademarked disconcerting stares. “Not all the time. Do I need to fix anything?”
“No, you do not,” Eda said, rolling her eyes. “Everything is fine.”
“Mm,” Eve said, clearly ready to put that to the test as she scanned the area. Her staff transformed to palisman form, and fluttered up onto her shoulder, twittering the whole way.
Flapjack tweeted back in greeting, which was adorable as always. He and Waffles had gotten along from the moment she’d woken up, and they were just as close as their owners were.
“Okay,” Eve conceded, after a minute of scrutiny, “Nothing is wrong. Good job.”
“I’ve been throwing parties since before you were born, kiddo,” Eda said, rolling her eyes again.
“That was three years ago,” Eve said, “And I wasn’t actually ‘born.’”
“Semantics!” Eda waved her hand. “The point is, I know my stuff, even if you’re the one going to school for this.” She paused. “Speaking of, how goes that?”
“It’s going well,” Eve said, brightening up a little. “This week we’re focusing on color palettes. We have to design a sitting room that has to balance three different portfolios.”
“That’s…good?” Eda guessed.
Eve nodded, looking pleased. “It’s very good.”
“Alright then,” Eda said, doing her best to hide her constant, neverending bewilderment at the knowledge that the child most genetically similar to herself was studying to become an interior decorator. “As long as you’re happy.”
“I am very happy,” Eve said, and Waffles chirped agreeably on her shoulder. “I know you don’t understand it, but I am.”
“Then I’m happy too,” Eda said firmly, going over and kissing her daughter’s forehead. Eve leaned into the touch, humming contentedly.
“Eda!” came Raine’s voice from a ways away, and Eda looked up to see Raine dashing over. “Eda, Willow has news!”
Willow was indeed trailing after them, mouth quirked up, and Eda realized she had been carrying a glow of contentment around since Eda had gotten here.
“You do?” Hunter said, wrapping his arm around her waist.
“I do!” Willow said cheerfully. “It’s – well, it’s just a rumor I heard, but it’s about the Sigil Removal Project.”
“Oh, yes, that,” Eve said, nodding. To everyone else, she said, “They did it. It worked.”
Eda’s jaw dropped. “They did?!”
Hunter’s eyes went wide, and he dropped his arm from Willow to clutch at his own sigil. “They – they did? It worked? They can remove sigils?”
“Yes,” Eve said. “It took a little more power than they expected, but they should be able to start removing sigils en masse in a couple months. We can probably get you an earlier appointment, though, Hunter. And Gus too.”
“…Oh,” Hunter said, looking overwhelmed. Eda went over and wrapped her arms around him, taking his weight as he swayed a little. Flapjack nuzzled him, and Hunter seemed to appreciate it even as he didn’t let go of clutching his wrist.
“…Seriously,” Willow said to Eve, “Why aren’t you running the Boiling Isles Department of Intelligence?”
Eve blinked at her. “Because I don’t want to.”
“This is amazing,” Raine said, and they squeezed Hunter’s shoulder. “I’m so happy for you, Hunter.”
“Thanks,” Hunter said, swallowing and standing up straighter. He looked down, then at Raine’s hand that was still on his shoulder, Bard sigil emblazoned on their skin. “…I’m happy too. For all of us.”
“Looks like this party’s going to be pulling double celebration duty,” Eda said, and pretended to ignore how her own throat was a little tight. Fuck, people could get their sigils removed. They wouldn’t have to look at their skin and see a piece of Belos there, a reminder of the genocide they had barely managed to escape. Hunter, Raine, Lily, Mom, Dad, Edric, Emira, Gus, Eberwolf…everyone could finally be free of that.
It was the best damn thing Eda had heard all year.
Word spread quickly through the crowd gathering around the square, anticipating the party. The news almost had the celebrations kicking off early, but Eda managed to contain the revelry. Mostly people wanted to just cry in relief about the news of the SRP success anyways, so it wasn’t much of a chore to get them steered towards the punch bowls rather than the still-uncut cake.
Just when Eda was feeling very smug about her crowd control skills, she heard a shouted, “Mom!” from up high.
Sure enough, when she looked up, the Collector and King waved to her. The Collector had their arms wrapped around King to keep him aloft. Eda felt a grin stretch across her face as she waved back.
“What took you so long?” Eda called, gesturing them downwards.
The Collector drifted down, King content to hang from their arms like a particularly adorable stuffed animal. The Collector was smiling, and King looked oddly gleeful, which Eda had learned usually indicated some form of mischief.
Well, good for them. Mischief was good for kids, as Eda could well attest from her own youth.
“We were busy making a surprise,” the Collector announced as they touched down. King hopped out of his arms.
“Oh?” Eda said, as she went down on one knee to hug the Collector, then King. “Is this the kind of surprise I can know about?”
“Of course not!” King said, returning her hug. “Then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”
“You got me there,” Eda said, and stood up. She stretched, feeling her bones pop and crack at the motion. The Owl Beast stirred in the back of her mind, like a cat briefly waking up from a nap, then rolling over and going back to sleep.
“You’re gonna love it, Mom!” the Collector said, bouncing up and down. Being himself, his bounces were less adherent to gravity than would normally be expected. “It’s soooo great!”
“I bet it is,” Eda said, mentally plotting out ways to mitigate the damage if it turned out their surprise came with immense threat to life and limb. The Collector had gotten better at judging the fragility of mortals, but millennia of momentum didn’t vanish overnight, or even in a couple years. The Sugarplum Incident of last summer proved that well enough.
But King was a better judge, and he didn’t look worried, so Eda limited her concern to a pat on the Collector’s head. Take every day as it came, that was advice you couldn’t go wrong with.
Well, unless you had to plan ahead a few days, or more. Which was basically a must when raising children. So it wasn’t actually very helpful advice in the least. Why did anyone say that at all? Maybe it was a conspiracy.
…Hm. Eda might have had one too many Apple Bloods to calm her nerves before getting ready for the party.
It wasn’t a problem, though. Eda knew her own limits, and while she may or may not have blown right past them in the long-gone days of yore (and gore), she damn well knew better than to mess up her daughter’s surprise party. She quickly got to work jumping into conversations around the party, burning off her restless energy and waking up her mind.
Eda mingled, dropping in and out of conversations here and there. Darius talked at length about the success of the Sigil Removal Project, and what that would mean for the Isles going forward. Eber discussed with her the merits of adding a flamethrower to his Abomination mech-suit (they were both very much in favor, but disagreed whether there should be a ‘napalm’ setting). Willow was effusive about Hunter’s Flyer Derby skills and how the team would brutally crush their opponents at the next match. Gus had an attack of nerves about his guest lecture on Monday about human-demon relations and wanted to go over his outline with her just one more time. Raine asked her opinion on how she would go about stealing some artifact or other, so they could shore up security on the thing.
Soon enough, Lily swooped down from the sky, Owlbert fluttering around her. Eda greeted both of them warmly, and teased Lily about a stray feather.
“I can hardly keep my wings pristine in the middle of flying, Edalyn,” Lily said with an amused roll of her eyes, straightening out the offending feather.
“Say it ain’t so,” Eda gasped, putting a hand on her chest in mock horror. “You’re supposed to be my role model, Lily! What am I supposed to do if you’re not a shining example of perfection at all times? You’re shattering my whole worldview here!”
“I think you’ll survive,” Lily said, dry as her favorite nerd books.
Speaking of, “How’s it going at the museum?” Eda asked. “That renovation coming along?”
“They are,” Lily said, brightening up. “Construction just started. We’ll have the new wing ready for display within the month. Hootsifer has been an enormous help, of course.”
“Awww, Lulu!” Hooty said, popping up over Lily’s shoulder like the even more disturbing cousin of the hack-in-the-box. “I love you too! We make such a good team!”
“We certainly do,” Lily said, patting Hooty’s face with a contented expression.
…Eda was never going to understand her sister. Especially her taste in friends.
She didn’t need to understand her to be happy for her, though, so she suffered through asking several more questions about the museum. Lily politely pretended to believe Eda’s interest, and waxed on about the architectural style and planned exhibits until Eda felt like her brain was going to dribble out of her ears.
It didn’t help that Hooty kept cracking jokes and offering critiques every so often. Eda had a higher tolerance for Hooty than average, but even she had her limits.
Fortunately, once talk turned to ideas for the possible interior decorating choices of the wing, Eve employed her usual omniscience to detect that and popped up out of nowhere. She and Lily quickly fell into talking options, and Eda made her escape.
She made one last circuit around the square, checking that everything was in place, then sent Owlbert off to summon Luz. People were eying the spider cake, and cutting it before Luz got here just wouldn’t do.
The portal door made by her two godly children was situated at the end of the square, because Eda was not going to have a bunch of traffic going through her house. She spared a second of wistfulness for the first portal door, which was both portable and summonable and thus okay to leave lying around in her basement or whatever.
This one was pretty great too, though. The Collector hadn’t had much trouble with making it, once he had a bit of King’s blood. There had been talk of posting a guard on the door, but it turned out there weren’t actually a lot of people who wanted to go exploring in a weird unfamiliar land full of people who wouldn’t necessarily react well to their appearances.
There were still some people like that, of course. Mostly rebellious teenagers, which Eda of all people could have predicted had anyone asked her. But that had mostly been solved by putting an alarm on the door that recorded whenever it was used. It took the form of a cute little greeting of the Collector welcoming whoever opened it, which happened because the Collector had laughed when it had been suggested and Eda made it a point to do most things that made her kids laugh.
“Hey, everybody!” King called out, voice echoing across the square. “She’s coming!”
Everyone immediately quieted down, and directed their attention towards the door. Eda felt a grin stretch across her face. While King’s status had plenty of downsides, at least it worked wonders for crowd control.
Then the door opened, and Luz stepped through.
“Surprise!” Eda shouted, along with about half the crowd.
Sure enough, Luz looked absolutely gobsmacked. She looked around the square, taking in everything. Her eyes lingered on the banner that proclaimed ‘Luz’s King-cenera!’
“What…” Luz said, her face filled with stunned delight.
“It’s a party, all for you!” King said.
“Since your other parties were so small,” the Collector said, floating by the banner. They snapped their fingers and several illusory fireworks went off. “We decided you deserved a big one this year!”
“We’ve been planning it for the past couple weeks,” Amity said, walking out from the crowd and taking her girlfriend’s hand. She smiled to take any sting out of the words as she said, “You’ve been so absorbed in your finals you didn’t even notice.”
“You guys…” Luz said, biting her lip and looking around to take everything in.
“We studied human traditions extensively!” Gus said, because he was nearly as good of a liar as Eda herself. In reality, he had been so busy practicing his lecture that he had barely done any more research than asking Eda. And really, he should have known better than to do that. “We have a punching bowl, and a spidersilk dress, and a spider cake! Everything you need for a Kingcenera!”
“I love it!” Luz said immediately, just like Eda knew she would. She may have given the party-planners faulty information about human celebrations, but it was all for the best.
“Oh, oh!” King said, scampering up to her, “And look!”
Eda found herself smiling as she walked forward, watching as King drew out his light glyph. It was a completely different design from his father’s, something both undeniably Titan-ish but also truly his own.
It was good for him to have that. Eda had worried, more than once over the years, that being the last Titan would make King feel like he had to be like what people expected ‘The Last Titan’ to be like. And there had, in fact, been times when King struggled with the weight of that. But Eda had achieved more difficult things than keeping away toxic ideas for much less important reasons than keeping her son mentally healthy, and so those insecurities hadn’t really been given the chance to take root. Even now, people were mostly just looking at King drawing his glyph, instead of falling at his feet and swearing eternal loyalty.
King finished drawing, and the large glyph crumpled up and turned into a tiny pinprick of light. It reflected in Luz’s eyes as she stared in awe.
“King’s powers are coming in stronger every day,” Eda said, reaching out to put her arm around Luz’s shoulders. “He just invented this one. You’ll still have glyphs, even once the Titan’s power fades away entirely.”
“Whoah,” Luz breathed. “King, that’s amazing.”
“And that’s not all!” the Collector said, cartwheeling into view. “King, King, show them the surprise!”
“Hm?” Eda blinked. “Oh, that thing you were so excited about earlier?”
“You’ll like it,” Eve told her serenely, because of course she knew about it, whatever ‘it’ was.
“Watch this!” King said, and then he bent down and –
Oh. Oh. He was drawing another glyph.
Eda bent over a little to catch every detail. She knew what the new light glyph looked like – she would always treasure the memory of King showing it to her for the first time, and the design had been burned into her brain ever since – but this glyph was entirely new.
It reminded her a little of a wagon wheel, if she was being honest. A circle with a small circle in the very middle, with five spokes radiating outwards to connect them. Each spoke had another small circle along the middle, like a bead on a string.
King touched the glyph, and there was a dull glow as it crumpled up to reveal a tiny sprig of a plant. Eda couldn’t tell what type it was, but that frankly didn’t matter.
“Another glyph,” Eda said, not bothering to keep the awe out of her voice. “King, that’s amazing!”
She scooped him up, reveling in the surprised and delighted “Weh!” he let out. He laughed as she aggressively snuggled him, happy and bright and proud of himself, just like she’d always hoped for.
“It really is amazing, King,” Luz said, coming up to pet his head. King leaned into her touch as he settled down in Eda’s arms. “I can’t wait to see what else you come up with. I bet they’re going to be just as great as these two.”
“They definitely will!” the Collector said, swooping down. Eda shifted King in her grip to reach up and pull them out of the air. The Collector giggled and let himself be pulled, cuddling up right next to King. Thank goodness he was only ever as heavy as he wanted to be.
Eve came up and laid her head on Eda’s shoulder, leaning against her, a bold move she never would have had the courage to do three years ago. Hunter sidled up as well, and joined Luz in petting King and giving him his well-earned compliments for his glyphs.
It wasn’t until Eda noticed a flash going off that she realized Lily was holding a camera. She blinked at her sister, and Lily shrugged at her unselfconsciously. She turned her scroll around to show the picture to Eda, and even though it was pretty small from where she was standing Eda could mostly make it out.
Herself, Eda Clawthorne, holding two children and surrounded by three more. All of them unexpected additions to her life, and all of them precious beyond compare.
Eda smiled, a motion she couldn’t have held back if she tried. She mouthed ‘thank you’ to Lily, who just nodded, a soft look on her face.
“Woo, alright!” Gus said, and flipped a few switches and dials on the sound system that was set up to the side. “Let’s get this party started!”
Luz raised her eyebrows at Eda when the first 90’s song started to pour out of the speakers. Eda grinned back at her, unapologetic. Was it really her fault that humans had produced the best music when Eda had been a teenager? No, no it was not.
With a roll of her eyes, Luz peeled away and went over to Amity, taking her hand to lead her out onto the dance floor. Amity followed eagerly, her face lighting up as she started to dance with her girlfriend.
Eda kind of got the feeling that Raine’s joke about Amity proposing might not actually be too far off the mark, honestly. Probably not until they’d both graduated, but that was only about the when, not the if.
Hunter drifted away towards the food tables, and Eve peeled away to talk to Darius. Eda shifted her two remaining kids a little, making sure to keep them comfortable.
“Hey,” the Collector whispered to King, in that little-kid whisper that actually drew more attention than speaking normally. “Hey, King, are you gonna tell her?”
“Tell me?” Eda raised her eyebrows, looking between King and the Collector, both still nestled in her arms. “Tell me what? Oh apprehensive mother of Titan, please don’t say you have another surprise.”
“We don’t!” King said, with an indignance that was completely unwarranted. Eda knew her kids, thank you very much, and ‘troublemakers’ was the mildest way they could be described. “It’s just – um, about the glyph. It’s not a big deal or anything.”
“The glyph?” Eda said. “You mean the new one? I’d say that’s definitely a big deal, kiddo. What about it?”
“Not really,” King said, squirming a little. Eda adjusted her grip with the ease of long practice. “Just. Um. I told the Collector what inspired me to design it like that, and he thinks I should tell you.”
“Yeah!” the Collector said, and threw their arms around Eda’s neck. “Tell her, tell her! You’ll love it, Mom!”
“The design, huh?” Eda said, and thought about the wagon-wheel-like glyph. “Looked nice. What inspired you, then?”
King was blushing. It was impossible to tell physically, but Eda knew it was there, underneath his fur.
“Its, uh,” he said, “It’s us. Us kids, I mean. The little circles, they’re me and my siblings.”
“…Oh,” Eda said, as the image unrolled in her head again. The spokes, each with a circle on it like beads on a string. Five spokes. Five circles. Five of her children.
And. And. In the middle.
“The middle circle is, um, for my first sibling,” King said quietly, sneaking a glance at her through his eyelashes. “Because even though I never got to meet them, it’s…kind of because of them that the rest of us are here, right? You adopted all of us because they sort of…opened the door. I don’t know what our lives would be like without them, or if we’d all be a family exactly like we are now. And I want to honor that, you know?”
Eda couldn’t speak. She couldn’t really see, either, because the world was kind of blurry at the moment.
“Mom?” the Collector said, reaching up and touching her face. “Mom, are you okay? Are these happy tears or sad tears? I still don’t know how to tell the difference.”
“Happy,” Eda managed to choke out. She took a deep breath, and blinked rapidly. “Definitely happy tears.”
She looked down at King.
“Thank you,” she said. “King, that’s…thank you.”
King gave her a small smile. “Yeah. Of course. I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too,” Eda said, and kissed his forehead.
“I love you three!” the Collector said, and joined the hug.
Eda laughed and spun them around, which made them laugh as well. She came to a halt and then set them down, tears still pricking at the corners of her eyes.
“I think it’s time we enjoyed the party,” Eda said, “What do you think?”
“Yeah!” the Collector said, doing a protracted backwards somersault. “King, King, come on, I wanna make fireworks!”
“Cool!” King said, grabbing the Collector’s offered hand. He beamed up at Eda, and offered her a wave.
Eda waved back, of course, and the two of them flew off, discussing what colors to make the fireworks. Eda made a note to check whatever they made later, to avoid any accidental surprises.
She looked around. The party was in full swing; music pumping, drinks flowing, food being eaten, people laughing and talking and generally having a good time.
And her kids. Her kids.
Luz was dancing with Amity, a beautiful scene eagerly filmed by Camila on the sidelines, the two girls perfectly in sync with each other, their palismen frolicking around their flashing feet. Hunter was talking to Willow by the snack table, gesturing so animatedly Eda was surprised Flapjack could manage to stay on his shoulder. Eve was holding her staff and inspecting the decorations, finger tapping on her chin like she could read the secrets of the universe in the balloons – and, for all Eda knew, she could. The Collector was floating above the crowd, looking up at the stars and laughing in their faces, then turning around and diving back down to the ground. King was eating a cupcake, frosting on the tip of his nose, looking and acting like nothing more than a little kid at a birthday party, because that was what he was.
Eda breathed in, and breathed out. She heard the faint rustle of wings, and felt Owlbert land on her shoulder.
“My Eda thinking?” he said.
“Not really,” Eda said. She gestured out in front of her. “Just looking at my kids. My kids, Owlbert. Can you believe it?”
“Yes,” Owlbert said, and nuzzled her cheek. “My Eda loves them. My Eda is happy.”
Eda smiled.
“You know what,” she said, “I am.”
She breathed in, and remembered her shrine in the woods. She hadn’t visited it in a long, long time.
“I am,” Eda said, softer this time. She felt it settle in her chest, beating in time with her heart.
Then she breathed out, and went to join the party.