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"Dad said to give you all his love,” Riz murmured sleepily, nodding off on the couch cushion. “He can hear us, you know. He told me. At his grave. Got his chair an’ coffee there an’ everythin’.”
Sklonda blinks from where she’s watching the figure of her husband on Riz’s clunky old laptop, only faintly visibly thanks to the light of heaven casting him in silhouette. But she can still see his fond smile, the lines of his face, the jaunty tilt of his fingers as he waves. The video is only about ten seconds long, but it has been on repeat for several minutes now.
“...what'd the chair look like?” is what she ended up asking.
Riz hummed. “...just like the kitchen chair. Scratches ‘n all.”
She sniffed and reached over to ruffle Riz’s hair. “Said one day we’d all solve the same case together,” Riz continues, eyes closed. “But he hoped that it was as far away as possible.”
Sklonda doesn’t try to analyze the warring parts of her heart at that statement; it would just be too much, especially now. So she stays by her son as he falls asleep, the first peaceful sleep she's seen him have in over six years.
Driving back into town over the bridge, Sklonda has the sudden urge to talk to her husband.
It’s an act that has always brought her some comfort, but it’s also become something she does with more vitality and reservation, with the knowledge that there’s a very good chance that he’s listening on the other end, even if he’s unable to offer her his comfort or advice.
Not that she would change what she would say. But there have been a few times in visits past where she’d just gone over the edge, resentful and shouting, lost and grieving, cushioned by the safety that no one would be listening.
So much for that.
Still, she follows her impulse and, after passing the diner and the gas station and the dirt road that leads up to the manor where so many of Riz’s friends live, she swings into the hospital parking lot, puts the aging car into park, and sets off towards Cravencroft.
It’s late afternoon, the sun already hanging low in the sky; school is over, but Sklonda can’t remember the last time Riz came straight home after school, between his friends and his quests and his clubs. Most of the time he comes in around nine or ten, gives her a kiss on the cheek, tells her briefly about his day, and listens to her about her own day, before settling down on the couch or floor to do some work.
Whichever one of them falls asleep first wakes up with a blanket wrapped around them. Sklonda tries her best to make sure that it's not her most of the time.
She makes a note to come here with Riz at a later time, maybe when winter break starts up. It’ll be a shorter trip with the cold weather, but at least he’ll have some more time to spare with the schoolwork on hold, hopefully.
Pok’s headstone is on a little hill, and the tree it lies under has lost its leaves already, leaving them scattered on the ground or in the slight November breeze. She pats the top of the headstone and says, “Hey honey,” before settling down at the roots of the tree, the ground cold beneath her.
She sits in silence for a moment, picking at her claws. “Just me today. Riz is somewhere,” and she blows a breath out. “Ancestors only know, really. He’s had so much going on this year.”
“Did I tell you the bullshit about my pension? Motherfuckers…” she hisses. “Fighting me tooth and nail for it. All over some bureaucratic bullshit. Just one last way to fuck me over.”
She sighs, leans forward onto her knees. “But it was what was gonna send him to college - of course he’d still need scholarships, and loans, but it would’ve made it so he didn’t need so many, so he wouldn’t have to…”
Sklonda rubs her eyes. “It would’ve been okay, is what I’m saying. Between all that, and his grades and his quests, it would’ve been okay.” She chuckles weakly. “Maybe you could send some of those good wishes you get paid our way, huh?”
Only the sound of the birds and wind responds, and she twists her mouth. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”
Sklonda imagines Pok’s face, the look of gritted frustration, when she was facing a problem he couldn’t help her with, the way he’d stroke his mustache and beard in thought, in pursuit of a solution. “What’s that that we have? Grit? I hope it’s enough to get Riz through this, because it’s all he’s got right now.” She can’t help the bitterness that seeps into her voice.
She stews for a moment before admitting, “Well, he’s got his friends. And they’re good, really.” She screws his mouth up as if she’s tasting something sour. “Even if they call him the Ball.” She huffs in distaste.
“But the thing is? I still have no doubt that he’ll still do it. Because he won’t give himself another choice.” She rubs her arms as the chill in the air grows. “I wonder which one of us he got that from,” she says, and she can’t tell whether her tone is sarcastic or self-deprecating.
There’s no point in being resentful; there never was, but it was the easiest feeling to indulge when there was nothing else that could be done.
Sklonda sighs again. “I miss you, is all.” The sharper edges of her grief have been softened after Riz’s spring break, with the solidity of her husband’s soul still out there, waiting and working, but sometimes there’s still a catch when she runs her hands across that grief, that cuts her swiftly and deeply when she least expects it. “Wish I could…”
Ancestors, there’s so much she wishes she could still do with Pok; there wouldn’t be enough time in the day to say it all.
“Sorry to unload all of this on you,” she apologizes, even though it feels like that’s what she’s always done every time she visits alone. “But I’m glad you’re there.”
It brings a smile to her face to picture him sitting there with his coffee, in the echo of this sacred site that exists somewhere in heaven, with that helplessly fond smile that she was privileged to see every day.
She’ll see it again someday in person, she reassures herself. That much is true.
When she gets home an hour later, the sun has already set, earlier and earlier each day as fall moves into winter. Riz is seated at the kitchen table, bagged eyes narrowed in on a paper.
“Hey,” she says as she closes the door behind her, kicking off her shoes.
He perks up, although his fatigue is evident in his slumped shoulders and limp tail. “How’s it going?” he asks, smiling wanly.
The table has been divided up between them by a thin strip of colored tape. On Sklonda’s side are all of her files and evidence for her current case, and the mug of cold coffee she had left there this morning; on Riz’s side, she spies lists of strategies for campaigning, infographics on rhetoric and persuasion, and a scattered mess of index cards littered with bullet points.
Is he running for class president, she wonders eagerly. If he was, why hadn’t he told her?
“Good,” she says, leaning over to hug him around the shoulders and ruffle his hair, and he makes a familiar noise of protest that she knows he doesn’t really mean, and doesn’t bother to move away.
“Where were you today?” he asks, returning to his receipts as Sklonda goes into the kitchen to find something to eat.
“Out and about,” she says, wondering if she should lie; it would be easier with her looking into the fridge, and it would only make him feel bad anyway. But she only considers it for a second. “I stopped over by Cravencroft and just spent a little time visiting Dad.”
Riz’s ears fall flat in shame. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
Exactly what she was worried about. “No!” she protests, waving the apology away. “It’s alright sweetie.” She moves to the fridge to find something for them both to eat.
Riz huffs and puts down his pencil to run his hand through his curls. “It's been crazy,” he sighs. “It's been really, really crazy.”
“I know,” she reassures him, bringing over a tupperware of chicken salad and a sleeve of crackers to sit between them at the table. If she’s right, he hasn’t eaten yet either. Sure enough, he takes the little sandwich she makes out of them and pops it into his mouth with one loud crunch. “I know there’s been a lot going on lately.”
Riz hums. “Did you hear about the stuff at the festival?”
“Frosty Fair, yeah I did.” She likes the Thistlesprings, but the idea of attending the fair while the Loams, who had been so excited and had worked so hard for it, were in the morgue made her stomach feel sour, so she had decided against it.
“Yeah, Principal Grix came down and tried to kill students,” Riz says, his face twisting in incredulity. “And also everyone was naked before it. There was a nudity tent.”
Sklonda had heard about the principal for sure. A letter had come home from Aguefort, frustratingly vague and incompetent in its confirmation of the fact that yes, the interim principal had attacked a group of students at the fair, and yes, it had been neutralized by one of the students.
She had sent a picture of the letter to Riz, who had only texted back: yeah, fabian killed him, with help from my spell :)
She chuckles a little at his expression. “Well, I knew about the nudity tent. Yeah, Frosty Fair.” Riz’s face turns petulant at her laughter. “But yeah, absolutely strange. I was planning on going, but my case folded up.”
He frowns. “Why did your case fold up?”
Sklonda sighs, already predicting where the conversation is going to go. “The people I was defending are no longer with us,” she says eventually.
Riz is quiet for a moment, but Sklonda sees his tail flicker across the floor in telltale interest. “Does that strike you as suspicious?”
“Yeah, yeah, absolutely.” She huffs helplessly. “But, you know, I would only interact with it in a legal way if the person who-”
“Mom, I'm sorry,” Riz interrupts, covering his face with his hands. His voice is muffled when he speaks. “I'm trying not to get, like, 'cause I feel like I'm just like, work, work, work…” He talks over her protest. “And we should really, like, go for a picnic or something, but I just wanna ask you about your case so bad.”
She can't help but smile a little; there's definitely her boy. But Riz isn't looking her in the face as he asks shamefully, “Is it okay if I ask you about your case, Mom?”
“How about this,” she offers, checking the time. “I’ll be up late, and I’m sure you’ve got something going on tonight, I bet.” Riz hums and nods helplessly. “I’ll come pick you up afterwards.”
“Please,” he agrees, and he takes another cracker with chicken salad. “Thank you.”
She smiles and reaches out again to ruffle his hair. “You know, it's your junior year. I'll take all the time I can get.”
“Thanks Mom, yeah,” he replies, his mouth full. “Love you. Let's talk about the case, please.”
She sighs, and pops a cracker into her mouth before moving to crack open her own work. “Love you kiddo. “We’ll talk about the case.”
Sklonda does try her best to drive Riz around, whenever she can.
He’s got his bike and his bus pass, of course, and two friends with their own transportation; he can protect himself, and he knows where he’s going, and all of the rules to staying safe on the road when you’re smaller than everything else out there. He’s a smart kid. That’s not why she does it.
It’s just what she said - I'll take all the time I can get. And it’s not like she had a lot of time to begin with, given her work.
She’s parked in the eastern lot of Aguefort where Riz has told her to be, keeping the car running to stay warm in the air that has only gotten colder since she was at Cravencroft. She’s not sure which of the many extracurriculars he’s here for - which had never really been a thing for Riz, before this year.
In middle school, he’d tried out some clubs in the first weeks - he had particularly liked the newspaper club, she remembers, because it was a lot like being a detective - but had only ever attended a few meetings before telling her that clubs just weren’t his thing, and besides, he could spend his time better trying to get some cases from their neighbors.
He had tried to sound chipper about it, but she had still caught the looks of hurt and disappointment that he had tried to hide from her, and she grits her teeth at the fact that he won’t tell her the truth. It reminds her of when he was a toddler, sticking everything into his mouth to teeth on and locking his jaw when she had tried to get it out, even if it wasn’t good for him.
Then between his freshman and sophomore year, he had always been off somewhere with his friends. And it was good to see him laughing, to see others laughing with him instead of at him. But she has her own feelings about his friends, sweet and kind that they are, that, for the most part, she keeps to herself - because they’re teenagers, after all, just like Riz.
The side doors of the school open and a small group of students come out, silhouetted by the lights from the inside hallway. She squints to find Riz and spies him at the back of the group, talking with someone else, before he turns his gaze to the parking lot and looks around for her. Sklonda sees the quiet relief in the relaxation of his shoulders when he sees her. He turns and salutes the other student with a bright grin and breaks away to cross the parking lot.
He slumps into the passenger side with a quiet, “Thanks Mom,” that betrays his exhaustion, and he stretches out as much as he can; then again, she can’t imagine that he had any more energy than he did earlier.
“Of course, kiddo,” she replies, shifting the car into drive and starting to pull out. “You have fun? Which one was this one? That uh, flying club?” She can’t keep them all straight.
“No, this was, uh, Components Club. Helps with my subclass.” He waves vaguely. “You’re talking about the Aviation League. We, we meet at midnight on Saturdays and also Tuesdays, I think? And Thursdays.” He raises his hand to make a point. “Unless that's Soil Club, which is on alternating days of the week.”
“Well, that sounds like a whole lot, darling,” Sklonda comments as she pulls onto the street - who schedules meetings for midnight? “You’re in a thing called Soil Club?”
“Yeah, you'd think that it'd be called Plant Club or something like that,” Riz grumbles, keeping one hand on his temples as if to ward off a headache, “'cause we do kinda learn to grow stuff, but there's just a huge focus on soil.”
He sighs. “And I tried to talk to the mole guy about the soil and he really freaked out at me.”
What soil? “Wow, okay,” she says.
Riz nods, not looking at her. “Yeah, it's been tough. But what's up...?” He blinks, as if waking up from a nap. “What's up with this weird fair, and people are dying or something?”
The lack of his usual eloquence is too concerning. It's only been a few hours! “Oh, Riz, you have to sleep, kiddo.” When was the last time she actually saw him sleeping? Definitely not before yesterday.
“I can't, Mom.” Riz sounds defeated. “I don't have time.”
So much of her time spent worrying about Riz, when he was younger, was about sleep.
Seriously, was bedtime this much of a struggle for anyone else’s kid? But who could she ask, if she had the confidence in the first place?
First it was just about energy, and eagerness - there was so much that could be done when you were awake! And it frustrated her, but at least his reasons were typical, childish. Nothing to worry about too much.
And then, after Pok had died, that same energy and eagerness had developed an edge of desperation, as if he were running from something in his sleep rather than running to something while awake. Sklonda didn’t know what to do, and they couldn’t afford therapy, so she just did her best to set limitations and make him comfortable - for whatever good that did.
And then, after his quest in sophomore year, Riz finally, finally, got some regular rest - not as much as she would prefer, but definitely more than what he was getting before - as if there was nothing more to be scared of his dreams. A balance was struck, and she’d never been more grateful.
And now, after that balance has been achieved, after that desperation has gone away, he just doesn’t have time.
Part of Sklonda wants to say that Riz isn’t giving himself time - that his phrasing makes it seem like he doesn’t have a choice. But then again, he doesn’t really have one, at least not compared to his friends.
And I don't wanna put any more pressure on you than you already put on yourself, but you might have to look at some extracurriculars as a way to guarantee, because if you don't...
“Oh god,” she mutters to herself. So much for telling him to take care of himself. Another swing and a miss. She can’t remember a time where she hit a home run, so to speak.
“Well, sweetie,” she begins, hoping that maybe satisfying enough of his curiosity about the case will be enough to get him to drift off, “the case got suspended because my clients were, I think, murdered.”
She purses her lips, thinking of the Loams, hoping that they found peace in whatever plane they had ended up in.
“...okay,” Riz says, nodding again, clearly processing things a little slower than usual.
“Here, I can share what I was sent. I mean, obviously, I can’t share everything, but, for what it’s worth to you, kiddo. It was an embezzlement case, and that’s what caused Frosty Fair to withdraw. The festival was supposed to happen at this place called Loam Farm outside of Elmville.”
She’d liked the place when she’d driven out there to meet with the Loams once or twice. She’d always be a city girl at heart, but she could see the appeal in rolling hills and green and gold countryside. Maybe for a vacation, if they can ever afford one.
“Got it,” Riz affirms, his eyes still closed. Sklonda wonders if he would notice if she started talking nonsense.
She won’t be that mean. “They were a married firbolg couple, Alonso and Hespia Loam.” She frowns, thinking again of the couple, tall and friendly and helpful. She’d wanted to help them, to trust them, almost immediately - but that’s not exactly uncommon in the cases she usually gets. “There was some evidence that they embezzled. Actually, before it went to court, just based on, kinda, the rumor of it, I think Frosty Fair pulled from them, and they had to find a last minute…”
She waves her hand. “This was back when- was the long night, and Frosty Fair pulled in reaction to the news.”
Riz repeats, “Got it,” and moves to run his hand across his mouth just like Pok always did when he was thinking. Riz had picked up the habit in an act of mimicry when he was little, and now it was his own.
Sklonda sighs a little. “But when I talked to them, you know, they didn't have enough money to hire a defense attorney, so they went with a public defender. And when I talked to them, they were adamant that they were innocent. Not that that necessarily…” She shrugs. “I mean some people will, you know-”
“Right,” Riz nods again.
“But for what it's worth, I believed them. And the case we were building was actually gonna be a slam dunk. They came up to prove that there were some forgeries in documents that were submitted on their behalf.”
She was so proud, so relieved, to see that this case would go well, and so had the Loams. When all of this is over, Hespia had said after Sklonda was leaving the farm one evening, you can have all of the fruits and veggies you want. I know it’s not much, but it’s what we can offer. It reminded Sklonda of growing up surrounded by the barter system in the neighborhoods of Bastion City inhabited by Mountain folk; she won’t lie, she had been looking forward to it. It’s not like they have fresh food that often.
“Yeah, considering that the Frosty Fair we went to completely went to shit,” Riz grumbles, “it seems like they were probably framed or something.”
Completely to shit sounds like an understatement. “That was my thought as well. It seemed like they were framed. I couldn't tell you why.” She shrugs. That had been the most frustrating part of the case - a missing motive. “The reason I had a hard time trying to prove it is there's no monetary incentive to frame the Loams for embezzlement.”
“I think they're trying to summon a demon or something. There's, like, just another thing,” Riz says, completely missing how Sklonda turns her head to stare at him, before jerking back to focus on the road. He’s leaning forward now, head cupped in his hands, so his voice is muffled. “They had all these, like, runes and stuff that was, like, under the stage.” He rubs his eyes. “There's, like, these red stars. They, like, turn people into giants.”
Sklonda decides maybe that’s enough for now. Maybe he’s the one talking nonsense. He doesn’t even sound interested in what he’s talking about, like he usually does. “Kiddo.”
“Yeah?” he mumbles.
“Why don't I just pull over, and you take a nap. You want to just take a ten minute nap?” She’s reminded of him at the age of three, fussing and hissing at the idea of sleeping in spite of the fact that he was so clearly tired, and of herself coaxing him gently to just lie down.
“...alright, yeah, I'll take a ten minute nap.” Riz agrees, almost too quickly. “Thank you, Mom.”
She almost thanks him instead as she takes a right and pulls into the parking lot of a gas station, the lot lit up with warm yellow light.
After she puts the car into park, she turns to Riz to ask if he wants something to eat for when he wakes up - and he’s already slumped against the seatbelt, snoring softly, ignorant of the crick in his neck this will surely bring.
It’s the fastest she’s ever seen him fall asleep. Sklonda’s relief at this occurrence is outweighed by her concern. They’re definitely going to be here longer than ten minutes.
She sighs and unbuckles her own seatbelt to relax a little, considers putting on some music, and decides against it out of worry that it’ll wake him up. There’s a book about common law precedent wedged in the back. She digs it out and uses the light of the streetlamp to pick up where she had left out.
Eventually she turns the car off after letting it sit idle for so long. It doesn’t take long before the cold air starts to seep into the old car, and she sees Riz shiver involuntarily. Sklonda cracks open the glove compartment and grabs the thermal blanket. She unfolds the crinkly sheet and tries to carefully tuck the edges around Riz. In his sleep, he shifts to get comfortable, and he doesn’t wake up.
After about forty-five minutes, while Riz sleep away, she texts Lydia Barkrock.
She remembers when Sandra Lynn had texted her, asking for help with a sudden new resident at the manor, only a few days after the kids had left for spring break. Not that there was anything to move in, but the poor woman’s house had just been destroyed. But the woman herself was unharmed, at least by that instance.
“Ah, you must be Riz’s mom,” Lydia had said approvingly when Sklonda had shown up with toiletries and bedroom furnishings and everything else that Sandra Lynn had texted her. Her eyes are crinkled with kindness. “I’ve heard a lot about him from Ragh.”
It was a surefire way to Sklonda’s heart, and of course Lydia would know that. And so she had spent a good amount of time at Mordred Manord during the long night of summer, having dinner there with Sandra Lynn and Jawbone and Lydia at least once a week.
With Lydia, she’d found surprising camaraderie - surprising because she never thought she’d find it with the mother of her son’s former bully. But Lydia just - she gets it, in a way that Sklonda can’t quite put into words. But it probably comes down to being a single, green mom, with your energy fractured and split in whatever way demands your attention the most. In some ways, when they talk, she feels like she’s talking to herself.
Today 5:34 PM
Sklonda
Hey have Ragh or the girls mentioned anything to you about a demon trying to take over Elmville at the Frosty Fair?Lydia
they said there was some shenanigans going on with the stage
but they mostly talked about the principal going nuts
and the vulture dimension?
they did look pretty shaken
more so than i’d expect from a dildo lawnmower
but maybe that’s just meSklonda
…
Riz never mentioned that.
How
Wait nvm I don’t actually want to know.Lydia
lol. what’s up with riz?Sklonda
Picked him up from a club and he passed out in the car.
We’re just sitting in the Skeetz downtown.
Never seen him go to sleep that fast.Lydia
yeah both fig and kristen have talked about how much he’s doing
he’s been helping them out a lot too. fig is passing all of her classes for the first time.
sandra lynn is thrilled.
and i know he’s been over here a few times to work with kristen
he’s a good kid. you did a good job
Sklonda purses her lips, and feels frustration gnawing on her ribs like a starving dog. Yes, this is where her good job has gotten, with a teenager about ready to die from exhaustion in her car.
Sklonda
Thanks. I’ve never seen him this stressed out before. There are so many clubs.
Like so many.
And his grades are practically perfect you know?
Just wonder where all of this stress is coming from. Guess I know now.
But I’ll talk to him.
About the demon thing too I guess.Lydia
priorities priorities
did you get the other letter?Sklonda
What other letter?Lydia
apparently one of the staff turned up dead
no other details
jawbone doesn't know anything else either
Sklonda
Who was it?Lydia
cleric teacher. no other details, just a notice of death
kristen’s been off since they got the news at school. poor girl’s already going through a lot
Sklonda
I’ll ask him about that too.Lydia
chat later? if i’m not sleepingSklonda
Absolutely :) Appreciate it.
Eventually, she gets hungry. Riz probably will be too, when he wakes. So she steps out and stretches, carefully closing and locking the door behind her. Riz doesn’t even stir.
The door chimes and she’s greeted by the sound of pop music and humming of electricity as she pushes into the gas station. It’s one of those fancy ones that doubles as its own little fast food restaurant - and unfortunately, Sklonda likes their food. A lot.
She grabs a couple of sodas from the cooler, a bag of chips from the rack, and goes to order at the little computer. She bites the inside of her cheek as she taps the screen and thinks; burgers are always a good bet for Riz, so she orders two for him, mixing up the toppings, with a large fry. Between all that and the chips, he should be full for tonight.
The dwarven woman at the counter is yawning when Sklonda walks up and passes her the items and her receipt. “Hungry?” she asks in a bored tone as she starts scanning.
Sklonda shrugs. “Kid’s in the car.”
“Ach, yeah, they’ll eat you out of house and home,” the woman chuckles, unknowing of the fact that Sklonda can only wish that Riz would do that - as far as she's concerned, he doesn't eat enough. “Mine started middle school this year, and all of a sudden her beard’s growing in. I swear it was an inch overnight.”
Sklonda chuckles weakly. “Mine was gone all summer on his quest. Came back and now he’s taller than me.” She hadn’t realized it until the next night when Riz came back from hanging out with his friends; she had almost cried, but she was sure he didn’t notice.
“It’s always when you’re not looking.” The woman shakes her head. “That’ll be one silver, and three copper.” Sklonda digs out two silver pieces and hands them over. “Have a good night! Hope your kid likes the food.”
When she gets back into the car, Riz hasn’t moved. As she gets comfortable, she sees his nose twitch with the new scents in the car, but still he doesn’t wake, even when she opens the soda and the quiet hiss of air escapes.
She ends up hooking her phone up to the auxiliary cord and playing some oldies on a low volume, the songs that would play whenever she and Pok went out to eat, sharing appetizers and desserts side by side. She fingers one of the ships and imagines herself on a barstool, seated next to Pok as they talked about nothing, the nothing that meant everything to her, and still does.
She rests her head on her hand and sighs, taking a sip of her soda. Besides her, Riz shuffles a little in his seat and snores softly.
After ninety-four minutes of sleep, Riz sniffs and blinks slowly, groaning as he sits up and twists his neck.
“Hey kiddo,” Sklonda says. She’s already opened her soda and the bag of chips, and has been slowly munching on them and scrolling through her crystal since she got back into the car.
Riz takes a bigger sniff and his eyes light up in relief as Sklonda hands over the paper bag with his food. “Oh, thanks Mom,” he says, reaching in to grab a wrapped burger.
He devours the first burger within a minute, and she doesn’t interrupt him. The salary for a public defender is better than that of a detective, so food hasn’t been an issue, thankfully. Still, Riz always eats everything like he’s starving - although, Sklonda supposes, it’s probably to make up for all of the sleep he doesn’t get. Staying awake must burn calories.
Riz catches her gaze when he goes for the second burger, and his ears twitch in that way that they do when he knows they’re about to have a conversation.
“What's going on with you?” she asks, simply. Please talk to me.
His ears flatten, as if he’s ashamed of something. “So much,” he says, holding the burger limply. “Just so much.”
Ancestors, he sounds so defeated. “How are you so stressed out?” she asks. “I feel like I keep getting your report cards,” Riz nods and agrees, already knowing what she’s going to say, “and they’re all great, all A’s. And you're killing all your extracurriculars.”
She looks him up and down, and asks, more out of a desire to know if he’ll tell her, “Where is the stress coming from?”
“...everything's going good,” is what he says, and Sklonda purses her lips in defeat as Riz continues. “It's just, everything is going, you know what I mean?”
Riz turns his look from her to stare at his own hands and she watches him trace one of the many thin scars that line his skin. “It's like, we've got this…” and he gestures for emphasis. “Normally it's like we're just off on an adventure, and we got the one thing that we're trying to stop, but now we have to hunker down.”
Isn’t that the truth, Sklonda thinks.
“And everyone's got to do really well in school and everything,” Riz continues, his voice plaintive, “and we're all, you know, struggling to keep our grades up and do all our crazy extracurriculars.”
Riz huffs. “And then there's this red star thing that's making everybody go crazy. It's just a lot.”
He and his friends shouldn’t have to deal with this. Aren’t there adventurers who have gone to college? Who have more experience than Riz and his friends? If there are, it doesn’t feel like it. “You know,” she suggests, “you could tell some people. We could go talk to the Council of Chosen. There are adults-”
“We can't do that, Mom!” Riz shakes his head, making a noise of protest in his throat. “There's just…we told…” He sighs, and it almost sounds like he wants to cry. “So, we did tell somebody, and then she got...people killed her. So it seems like telling people isn't, like, great.”
Thanks to Lydia’s text, Sklonda puts the pieces together in her head; no wonder Kristen would be taking it so rough.
He winces and turns to her. “Mom, you have to be so careful,” he pleads.
“Riz, you don't need to worry about me, okay?” she reassures him. “I'm very capable of protecting myself.”
Riz nods as he turns away, but doesn’t seem entirely convinced. “Okay, yeah,” he mumbles.
“I don't want you to put all of this pressure on you.” She blows a breath out through her nose, in an effort to not sigh again, at the fact that he has to deal with this at his age. “Look, people summoning demons is really, really bad. I agree, we don't want demons running around. Did you see any demons pop out at Frosty Fair from this demon summoning thing?”
Riz shakes his head. “No, but I've seen... I was at a mall... at the mall-”
Sklonda tries to remember if she heard about anything going down at the mall recently, but fails to think of anything. “Everyone at that mall was really mad, and then Fig tried to eat a shrimp. And then the shrimp, like, went into a god's mouth.” Riz shivers a little. “And Fig was, like, really being weird about it.”
Sklonda can’t help but raise her eyebrows at this, because even for Riz, this is veering wildly into strange and uncharted territory.
He rambles on. “We've seen, sort of, the power of this demon manifest before, but I don't know what came from this summoning attempt. But they were trying to- there was stuff hidden in the lyrics, and then there were all these runes and stuff hidden under the stage. And Grix tried to stop it, and then he kinda just attacked everybody.”
He bites into the other burger with less zeal than the first one, seemingly trying to stare a hold through the glove compartment.
“Okay,” she says. “Are you…” She feels her heart and muscles twist within her chest as she admits, “I know I should be worried about these demons.”
Riz nods in agreement. “Right.”
“I'm really worried about you.” She almost sounds like him, when he told her to be careful.
Riz swallows his bite and deliberately does not look her in the eye. “Yeah, it's, you know, it's all good Mom.”
“You worry, you know,” Lydia said as they relaxed on the back porch, watching the twinkling stars. “More so than you would normally - because they want to tell you everything, but more than that, they don’t want to be a burden.”
Sklonda hummed, taking a sip of the heady orcish brew she’d been offered. She wonders what Riz is doing right now. “And then maybe they lose themself a little bit on the way,” she offers, thinking of Riz throwing himself into case after quest after problem, over and over and over again.
Lydia sighs heavily, the gem in her chest pulsing gently with red light as if it’s projecting her heartbeat, steady and strong. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Yeah they do. And you hope that they do come to you before it’s too late.”
Sklonda huffs and throws back a bigger drink. "Where have you been for the last eight years of my life?" she asks, only half-joking, and Lydia throws her head back and laughs.
Sklonda never wants to argue with Riz, but with every nod and every passive reassurance, she finds herself biting her tongue more and more, her fang digging into her own flesh.
“It's definitely...it’s definitely…” Riz blinks, putting the burger down. “We're going. We're doing it, you know? We're what, like, what month is it? October?”
She can’t help the tone of incredulity. “It’s November, sweetie.”
“There we go, perfect.” Riz closes his eyes and nods placidly. “It's almost near the Yulenear. Yeah, I feel like junior year's just…” He leans back in his seat, polishes off the rest of the burger. “We gotta kinda power through, and we don't…” He swallows and puts the trash into the bag. “You know, all this work we've done, I really don't want it to be for nothing,” he says dejectedly.
Sklonda narrows her eyes at him, and thinks. “Yeah, a lot of work,” she says pointedly. She doesn’t necessarily think that he’s lying - Riz has always been a terrible liar, but he gets around that, she’s noticed, by lying by omission.
Riz hums, and turns to look at her, and she can’t tell if he’s trying to challenge her or beg her for something. “Your friends are working really hard, too, right?” she asks.
Riz scrunches his mouth up. “Yeah, in their own way. I think, yeah, everybody's actually working really hard. Maybe that wasn't true like a month ago, but everybody's really hunkered down.” He snorts. “Fig has like three majors now.”
“...all right,” she says, turning the car on. The engine sputters for a moment before coming to life, and the lukewarm air spills out into the cabin. She pulls out of the parking spot, and sees Riz start to relax a little.
But there’s still that tugging somewhere between Sklonda’s heart and tongue that tells her that this isn’t over yet. “You're a pretty hard-working kid under most circumstances,” she says, and sees Riz hunch his shoulders up in preparation for whatever she says next.
“And in past years,” she continues, “you've been going on really big adventures, and taking care of your grades. You've added a lot of extracurriculars.” She taps the steering wheel. “Something tells me you might have more than just school and a big adventure on your back, 'cause I'm looking at how overworked and tired you are…”
She tries to leave the rest to go unsaid, hoping Riz will fill in the gaps on his own. Instead, he steps over them. “I'm doing some light tutoring on the side.” He shrugs. “Just some flash card stuff.”
“I see all this student government stuff,” she points out, trying to sound upbeat, and Riz nods. “Are you…?”
“...so, I'm a campaign manager,” he says, and she can hear the uptick in his tone that he does when he’s trying to put a positive spin on something he knows she won’t like. “Another extracurricular. Very good for the ol' scholarships.”
She winces a little. “Who's running for student president?”
Riz clicks his tongue. “Kristen Applebees, believe it or not.”
“...huh,” is all she can say, because she can honestly say she never saw that coming. Beside her, Riz sniffs and rubs his nose and doesn’t add anything more.
Kristen is definitely the most unpredictable of Riz’s friends, at least according to Sandra Lynn. With some fairness to her, she’s clearly had the structure of her life upended in the last two years, and she’s struggled to create a new structure that would help her, or adapt to the one that she’s in now. At least, that’s what Jawbone tells Sandra Lynn, who tells Sklonda when she comes over to shoot the shit.
Sklonda doesn’t doubt Jawbone’s insight. But it’s hard for her to think about that as she watches Riz rub his eyes before turning back to the road. “So let me be clear,” she states.
“Uh huh?”
“You are working yourself…” She can’t help but huff, taking one hand off the wheel to soothe her temple. “You're working yourself to the bone.”
Riz hums in agreement.
“You're staying up. You're not getting sleep. You're turning in A+ work while you're trying to save Elmville from a demon.”
“Uh huh,” he says, nodding amicably with everything she says.
“And you're trying to put…” She curls her lip. “...Kristen Applebees on your back, and run over the finish line.”
He interrupts her to protest. “No! Kristen's…” He makes a noise of frustration, and she watches him reach up to clutch his curls. “Kristen does crossfit now.”
Sklonda barely catches herself from pulling over, but they’re not that far from Strongtower now. “If anything,” he continues, “it would just be like a weighted sprint, because that's how buff she is now.”
Does he hear himself, she wonders. Is that all he can say? “Riz-” she says, not even sure what she’s going to say.
“We're all-” he argues.
“Sweetie-” she begs.
“I know!” he shouts.
“I just want-” She glances back over to see the turn off for the apartments approaching rapidly. She curses quietly and swings the car quickly, hearing the tires screech as she overdoes it a little and the turn goes wide. She sees Riz grit his teeth and grip the door handle as she rights herself and pulls into her regular parking spot.
There’s a tense silence in the car that Sklonda can’t remember having between her and her son in… she honestly can’t remember.
“...look,” she begins, feeling her temper simmering beneath her ribs. “I like your friends,” She glances over at Riz, and sees him grimacing, staring intently at the side mirror. “I just don't wanna see my son killing himself to get huge accolades for other people that call him the Ball.”
Riz frowns. “No, but the Ball is a good-”
She doesn’t mean to shout, but she does. “I don't like it!” She doesn’t fucking like it, and she never has, and she doubts she ever will.
Riz closes his eyes rather than look at her. “I know, I know,” he says pleadingly.
“Your name is Riz,” Sklonda says, trying to get ahold of her temper. “And your friends…whom I love,” because she does, she reminds herself, “...I just wanna make sure that you're not being taken advantage of.”
Riz blinks heavily - he could be trying to keep himself from something, but she can’t tell from what. “Yeah, I think…” and he sighs. “I know what you're saying, Ma, and look, if it was…”
He works his jaw. “If you were talking to me in September or October, apparently, I would've agreed with you, but November, if that's what month it is,” and he points onto his knee as if making a point, even though it all sounds like nothing, “has been our month, and I think everybody's working really hard. As long as we're talking about November.”
“But, if we slip back into October, September stuff,” and he turns to look her in the eye for the first time in a few minutes, “you'll be the first person to know.”
His tone is hopeful for the end of this conversation, to placate her nerves, and Sklonda knows instinctively that this is all she is going to get from him. “...you let me know,” she says finally.
“I will,” he says, nodding in a manner that she thinks he thinks is encouraging, but just looks manic.
Sklonda sighs, debating over whether she should speak her mind, and decides that she should, because he deserves to hear it. “I think my son would make a great student body president.”
Riz’s eyes flash with something indistinguishable. “...okay,” he says, and he pinches his lips together tightly.
Sklonda breathes out, trying not to sigh again. “Is there anything else you wanted to know about the Frosty Fair stuff, sweetie?” she asks as she opens the car door.
Eager for the change in subject, Riz jumps in with questions as he grabs his briefcase and they walk back into the building together. The night sky is cloudless, but the light pollution is enough to block out any sign of the stars around them. The lobby is only a little warmer than the outside.
Inside the apartment, Sklonda flips on the lights as Riz turns on the space heater, warming up the living room. “And how…” Riz scoffs a little as he toes off his shoes to sit by the door. “Weird question to ask your mom - how were they murdered? What happened? You said they were investigating a murder scene at the Loam Farm?”
Truth be told, it’s not the weirdest question Riz has asked her about her work, and Sklonda had been wondering that herself. She shrugs. “I could try to go shake down some old colleagues at the precinct to find out.” There’s a few of them that could be persuaded, by what little pull she has in the office if not by sentimentality.
Riz nods as he sits on the couch, digging into his briefcase. “That'd be great.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Go do that,” she says more to herself than to Riz as she slumps into the kitchen chair. “I think they're still actively investigating over at Loam Farm.” She chuckles a little. “I will say,” and she picks up a pen, and briefly points it at Riz, “you did warn me a moment ago not to tell anybody about this.”
Riz nods again, his gaze moving to the coffee table. “Right. Okay, cool. I'm good.”
Sklonda watches him for a moment, before nodding herself and going to her work, a pitiful effort to distract herself from what feels like another miss.
There’s a brief moment of silence where all she hears is her pen and the space heater, before Riz blurts out, “Mom, I'm gonna go to Loam Farm, but I'm gonna be, like, invisible and stuff, so you don't have to worry about-”
The pen drops to the table. “Riz! No! No!” Sklonda reaches up and grabs at her hair briefly. “Don't go to Loam Farm!” This is exactly what she had been trying to avoid!
She ignores Riz’s protests for a moment, considering her options. He’s going to go, he’ll find some way, so what can she do about it to make it better for both of them?
“All right. Look, look, look!” She holds her hands up in compromise. “I will go with you to Loam Farm, okay?” She looks at Riz, trying to look him in the eye. “All right?”
Riz nods eagerly. “Yeah, yeah, that sounds good.”
“...good. We'll do that.” Sklonda shakes her head at herself, as she watches Riz settle onto the couch in satisfaction, crossing his legs to bend over his work, his pencil moving a mile a minute. She should probably count the fact that he didn’t hide it from her as a win.
She closes her eyes and only hears his pencil scratching before he says, “Thank you, Mom.” She opens them back to see him staring at her earnestly. “Really, thanks.” And he goes back to work.
Sklonda looks up around eleven and sees Riz leaned back against the couch, asleep again. She gets up to move his work to the coffee table, and move him to lie down, before throwing a couple of blankets over him; unconsciously, he moves to bury himself deeper into the pillow and blanket.
She takes a moment to look him over, this sweet boy of hers who pushes himself too far and who only allows himself so much. Where did that come from, she wonders?
Sklonda sighs, rubs her eyes, and returns to her notes and to her case until she herself passes out, the answer beating unsaid in the muscles of her heart.