Couch Vigil
The office couch was as ugly as ever. It was a monstrosity of brown faux leather, cracked in spiderweb patterns from age, the stuffing beaten flat in the middle from years of use. It smelled like old tax papers, stale fryer oil, and dust.
Marcus dropped onto it with a groan that started in his lower back. He set his phone on the floor within arm's reach and pulled a scratchy wool blanket over his legs.
He lay on his back, staring up at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. He reached under his shirt and pulled out the coin. He had threaded it onto a loop of twine he found in the desk drawer, wearing it against his skin like a dog tag.
It was warm. It pulsed gently against his sternum, a steady, low-frequency throb that synced with his own heartbeat. Just enough to remind him that he was wearing a target now. Just enough to keep him from forgetting.
The restaurant lights were off. Only the neon OPEN sign bled through the crack under the office door, painting a strip of the carpet in bloody red light.
He listened. He could hear faint sounds from the back room—the rustle of sheets, the soft murmur of the sisters' voices speaking their own liquid language, Liri's brief, muffled burst of laughter at something Eira said, followed by Eira's low, soothing reply.
It sounded domestic. It sounded normal. It sounded like a lie.
He should have been out cold. His body was wrecked.
Instead, his mind was a projector that refused to turn off, replaying the day's footage on the back of his eyelids.
Pig men dissolving into black dust.
A forest of obsidian trees pressed up against the glass where the gas station should be.
An old woman with hunter's eyes leaving him a living coin.
A ritual with cool hands on his face that let strangers slip into each other's words.
A woman kneeling on his floor, pressing his hand to her beating heart, telling him in careful English that her life was his now.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling the stubble rasp against his palm.
"Marcus Hale," he muttered to the ceiling tile. "You were supposed to open a quiet place. Serve eggs. Watch ball games. Get old and boring."
Instead, he had become a landlord to a Slipgate and a guardian to refugees from a fairy tale nightmare.
Pad. Pad. Pad.
Footsteps padded softly in the hall outside.
Marcus sat up halfway, his abs clenching, muscles tensing instinctively. He relaxed when he recognized the pattern. Bare feet. Light. Hesitant.
A gentle knock at the doorframe.
"Yeah?" he called, his voice raspy.
The door opened a crack. Eira slipped in.
She was wearing the gray T-shirt he had given her. It hung loose on her frame, slipping off one shoulder to reveal the smooth curve of her collarbone. It hit her mid-thigh, leaving her long, pale legs bare. Her hair was completely loose now, unbraided, falling in a cascade of gold down her back.
She looked softer like this, stripped of her armor and her fear. But no less dangerous.
"Liri sleeps," she said quietly, closing the door behind her until it latched. "She curls like a cat in a sunbeam."
"Sounds right," he said, shifting to make room, though there wasn't much.
She stepped closer, moving into the small pool of red light. "You do not sleep."
"Brain won't friend me tonight," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "Too much going on. Too many variables."
She considered that, tilting her head. "In my world, when the mind chases itself like a dog catching its tail, we sit by the fire. We listen to others breathe. It tells the body it is safe. It tells the animal inside to rest."
She nodded at the floor beside the couch. "May I sit?"
He shifted his legs, swinging them off the cushions to make room. "Yeah. Of course."
She sat on the floor with her back against the couch, close enough that his knees brushed against her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees.
For a while, they just sat there in the dark. The neon hummed. The metal of the filing cabinet ticked as it cooled. Somewhere in the kitchen, a fridge compressor kicked on with a rattle and a hum.
"In the forest," she said eventually, her voice barely above a whisper, floating in the dark. "When the hunters came the first time... there was only us. No uncle. No guns. Only the light in my hands, and it was flickering. It was not enough. We ran and ran until my lungs burned."
Marcus stared at the dark wall, listening to the tremor in her voice. "You did alright today," he said. "You stood your ground."
"I broke one," she said, sounding critical of herself. "Could not finish. You finished. You brought the thunder."
She tilted her head back, resting it lightly against his knee now. He could feel the weight of her skull, the warmth of her hair.
"I have seen many men who call themselves warriors," she said. "Men with swords and armor and loud voices. Many run when the shadow comes. They break. You... you did not run. You stepped forward."
"That's kind of my thing," he said quietly, looking down at the top of her head. "Not running. It gets me in trouble."
"Stupid," she said, her tone almost fond. "Also brave. The two are often twins."
They lapsed into silence again. It wasn't awkward. It was heavy, shared.
After a minute, she shifted a little more. She settled so the side of her head rested more fully against the side of his leg, using his thigh like a pillow. Her body relaxed, the tension draining out of her spine.
Marcus went completely still. He didn't pull away. He didn't move a muscle.
"Where I come from," she murmured, her eyes half-closed, "we touch people we trust when we sleep. A hand on an arm. A back against a back. So we know if they move. So we know if they leave. If dark comes for you, I wake. If dark comes for me... maybe you will feel it."
"You know that sounds a little possessive," he said, a small smile touching his lips in the dark.
"Yes," she agreed easily. "Sky-bond is not polite. It is real. It is survival."
He let out a slow breath, feeling his own shoulders drop. "Alright," he said. "Then I won't move."
"Good," she whispered.
Her breathing slowed, deepening into a steady rhythm.
For the first time since they'd walked into his life—hell, for the first time since he'd come back from the desert—something in him loosened. It felt like he'd set down a heavy pack he didn't know he was still carrying.
His eyes slid shut.
He drifted off with the warmth of the alien coin pulsing against his chest, the solid weight of an elf woman's head resting on his leg, and the low, steady hum of The Slipgate vibrating in the bones of the building.
Morning Rules
He woke to the sensation of sunlight sneaking around the edges of the blinds, drilling a hot, white line across his eyelids.
For a disoriented, heart-stopping second, Marcus thought he was back in a sleeping bag on a cot in a forward operating base, stealing a twenty-minute nap after a night shift on the perimeter. The air tasted stale, recycled, and heavy with dust. His body was locked in a rigid posture of defensive sleep, muscles coiled tight, ready to roll out and grab a rifle at the first siren.
Then, the sensation shifted.
Something warm and heavy pressed against his sternum, right over his heart. It wasn't a dog tag. It wasn't aChristopher medal. It was a dense, rhythmic heat that throbbed in time with his own pulse.
The coin. The hesh-kel.
Reality snapped back into place with a jarring physical jolt. He wasn't in the desert. He was on the office couch in Weedfield, Texas. He was the owner of a failing diner that doubled as a metaphysical revolving door for refugees and monsters.
Marcus groaned, the sound rumbling deep in his chest, and peeled his eyes open. The ceiling tiles were stained with old water damage, not canvas tenting. The smell in the air wasn't burning latrines and diesel; it was the rich, dark, acidic scent of cheap coffee brewing.
He shifted his legs. The floor in front of the couch was empty.
He remembered Eira sitting there the night before, her head resting on his thigh, her breathing syncing with his until the darkness took them both. The memory brought a sudden, sharp ache to his chest—not from the coin, but from the absence of her weight.
Someone—Eira, undoubtedly—had taken the scratchy wool blanket he'd been using and draped it up over his shoulders during the night, tucking the corners in tight. It was a small, domestic gesture that felt terrifyingly intimate in the context of his life.
From outside the thin office door, the low murmur of voices drifted in. Liquid, melodic syllables that rose and fell like a song. Then, the sharp, distinct clink of a spoon hitting ceramic.
Marcus sat up. Every joint in his body complained—a chorus of pops and cracks from his spine, his knees, his neck. Sleeping on a ten-year-old couch after fighting pig-men was a recipe for orthopedic disaster.
He rubbed his face vigorously with both hands, trying to scrub the sleep and the lingering dread out of his pores. He stood up, stretched until his back cracked, and shuffled out into the hallway.
He emerged into the diner.
The scene that greeted him was so mundane it felt surreal.
Liri was perched in a booth near the kitchen, her legs tucked underneath her, bare feet resting on the vinyl. She was hunched over a laminated menu, studying it with the intense, furrowed-brow seriousness of a scholar decoding a sacred text. The morning sun caught the tips of her pointed ears, turning them translucent pink.
Eira stood behind the bar. She had tied one of his spare white aprons around her waist over her green dress. She was watching the commercial coffee maker with narrowed, suspicious eyes, her arms crossed over her chest, as the machine gurgled and hissed steam.
She looked up as he scuffed his boots on the floor. Her green eyes locked onto his, clear and alert.
"Good morning," she said. Her English was smoother than the night before, the consonants less sharp, the vowels rounding out as the 'seed' of the language took root in her mind.
"Morning," Marcus rasped. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender. He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tension knot at the base of his skull.
Liri waved the menu at him, nearly knocking over a sugar dispenser. "Restaurant," she announced proudly, the word crisp. "I am learning the scroll of food."
She pointed a slender finger at a stock photo of a short stack of pancakes dripping with syrup. "Flat bread-cake with sweet tree juice?"
Marcus blinked, his brain still booting up. "Uh. Yeah. Pretty much. We call them pancakes. The juice is maple syrup. From a tree. Blood of the tree, basically."
Liri's eyes widened with delight. "We eat the blood of trees on cakes. I like this place."
Eira didn't look away from the coffee maker. The machine let out a final, loud, rattling gurgle as it finished the brew cycle.
She nodded at it, her expression wary. "Your metal water spirit is noisy," she said. "It spits and growls. Is that normal? Is it angry?"
Marcus walked behind the bar, moving into her personal space to grab a mug. He smelled her scent—rainwater and ozone—cutting through the coffee smell.
"It's coffee," he said, pouring a cup of the black sludge. "And yeah. That's normal. It's not a spirit, it's just a cheap compressor. It grumbles because it's old."
He took a sip. It was bitter, hot, and exactly what he needed.
He leaned against the back counter, watching them move in his space. Eira picked up a rag and wiped the counter down, mimicking the circular motion she had seen him use yesterday. Liri was tracing the edges of the sugar packets, arranging them by color like runestones.
They didn't look like guests anymore. They didn't look like refugees huddled in a storm. They looked like two people who had quietly, without asking permission, decided they lived here now.
They looked like they belonged.
The realization settled over Marcus with a weight that was both comforting and suffocating. This wasn't a temporary extraction op. This was a garrison.
He took a deep breath, steeling himself.
"Alright," he said, his voice finding its command pitch. "Family meeting. New house rules."
Both sets of eyes swung toward him instantly. The playfulness vanished from Liri's face. Eira went still, her posture straightening into a warrior's attention.
"Rule one," Marcus said, holding up a finger. "Nobody goes outside alone. Not to check the mail. Not to look at the sky. Not to empty the trash. Nobody crosses that threshold without a battle buddy. Not until I know exactly how many pig-faced friends we have out there, and how far that marker thing reaches."
He tapped his chest where the coin burned. "If they can track this, they can track you. We stay inside the wire unless we're moving together."
They nodded in unison. It was a soldier's nod—acknowledged and accepted.
"Rule two," he continued. He gestured toward the cabinet where the weapons were locked. "You don't touch the guns unless I'm right there with you and we are in serious trouble. I mean life-or-death, monsters-breaking-down-the-door trouble."
Liri lifted both hands, splaying her fingers. "Finger honor," she said gravely.
"Exactly," Marcus said. "Finger honor. Those things are tools, not toys. Accidents happen fast."
He looked at Eira.
"Rule three," he went on, his voice dropping a little. "You tell me before you do anything that might poke the Gate. No surprise magic. No opening random doors to see what's on the other side. No whispering to the shadows."
Eira put a hand to her chest, her expression solemn. "I will not open horror doors," she promised. "My light is for defense. Only small ones. For light in the dark. Maybe for heating bread if the metal spirit fails."
He decided to ask about the tactical utility of bread-heating magic later.
"And rule four is simple," he said. He looked from one to the other, making sure they understood the weight of what he was saying. "We figure this out together. Nobody runs. Nobody gets left behind. If I'm in, I'm in. We hold the line."
Eira held his gaze. Her eyes were fierce, burning with that ancient, terrifying loyalty he was still trying to comprehend.
"Sky-bond," she said softly. It wasn't just a word; it was a vow.
Liri grinned, breaking the tension. She adjusted the brim of the ball cap Marcus had given her. "Uncle rules," she added.
Marcus nodded, sealing it with himself as much as with them.
"Right. Uncle rules."
Outside the plate glass windows, tired Weedfield slowly woke up. An old truck rumbled down the highway. The gas station attendant across the street unlocked his pumps. Life went on, mundane and gray.
Cars would roll past The Slipgate today. Drivers would glance at the neon sign. And maybe, just for a second, they would feel the hair on their arms lift without knowing why. They would feel a static charge in the air, a sense of something heavy and watching from the shadows of the building.
Inside, in a diner that was also a bridge between worlds, a discharged soldier, an elf mage, and her little hellion of a sister sat down to plan a day that no restaurant handbook had ever covered.
And somewhere far away—or perhaps terrifyingly close, just on the other side of a thin membrane of reality—in a mist that smelled like moss and old rain, hunters lifted their heavy, tusked heads. They tasted the air. They caught the faint, impossible scent of coffee, gunpowder, and new bonds forming.
And in the dark, they smiled.