Beach Day

1: Play Some Tiny Stills

Head somewhere else entirely, she goes up to the counter and sets everything down, then forgets to get out her wallet. It's so much more pleasant to zone out on a display of artisanal lip balm.

"That'll be eight-twelve," the cashier says. It's all that snaps her out of it.

Tiff nods, reaches into her back pocket for her wallet. The attendant doesn't say anything. Tiff figures that she shouldn't, either. There's a time and a place for dumping all her concerns about her position as a guardian of Lake Wonder, her perhaps-ontological tendency toward bad decisions, and how she really doesn't want to see her parents after two years of trying to work through what they did to her on her own. Paying for some drinks and a bag of sunflower seeds at a convenience store on the way out of Orlando is neither.

She can't get it out of her head. It has been at least a month since she helped save everything in the universe from a dimension-hopping evil wizard and a maybe-resurrected nightmare king— since she learned the perks of demigodhood included semi-immortality and a sudden ability to do magic, but not a cure to the way she is. It has been even longer since she got this weird promotion from local busybody to supposedly-responsible minor deity in the first place.

None of that has prepared her for what's happening. All the studying-monsters-and-folklore, all the fighting-nightmares-and-wizards, all the building-machines-in-the-backyard: none of it has helped her learn to stop hesitating when it comes to the hard things. Fort Reverence is waiting, her own personal Tower of London. Haunted— she's haunted. After two years, the ghost of who she used to be is still looking over her shoulder (and the ghost of some story she tells herself is watching like a shadow on the gas station's brick wall).

Two long years. It feels like she left just yesterday. Maybe the wound is fresher than she thought.

Tiff assures herself that nobody knows she's having this moment in a convenience store, trying to shove her debit card back into her crumbling wallet. Whatever the case, this is the only side of the family Drew has, and Aunt Esther wasn't about to let him go alone. Tiff was dreading this trip from the first. She thought, after everything with Oneiron, Chip Winger, and the Time Gnome, that she could handle this. Maybe she can't. She wants to be able to kill this particular demon, but she isn't sure she could do that without a ray gun and a bomb in her pocket.

It's fine. With her purchases precariously in her hands, she steps out into the humid air. It gathers on her skin like it's welcoming her home.

The inside of the car is packed tight with duffel bags and thoroughly-rifled-through snack containers. There's more than enough room for all four of them in there, but after two days of driving nonstop in shifts (and of Tiff hoping she never has to drive through Kansas again), it's a claustrophobic hellscape and last night's motel stay was a welcome escape.

She would take another two days in the car if it meant that she didn't have to see her parents again. She would turn into a frog a thousand times over. She would drive through Kansas at night, blasting music, as convinced she's going to die in a tornado as she currently is that she'll die of familial complications.

She'll get through it. It rests at the top of her throat. For once, things are going right for Tiff Sheridan. They're going to keep looking up. She just has to remember that. It's good to be back. She reminds herself: it's good.

It's easy to be optimistic right now if she tries, despite what waits at the end of the path. The sun shines in the December humidity. It's surprisingly cold for Florida. She thought she was going to be able to escape the Washington winter, but it's almost like it followed her.

At the very least, Kepler is here, she's surrounded by people she cares about, and her shiny new purpose fills her bones with some sort of power she still can't name or entirely understand. It doesn't even matter that she might have to see her parents in about an hour. She barely even cares.