“Thank you for coming to meet me on such short notice.” She had arrived at her little neighbourhood café about two hours before she’d asked Morrigan to meet her, with the purpose of trying to work on her second novel. The problem that came with writing young adult novels was the idea of a series. While in theory writing a long saga for your readers to enjoy extensively, was a great plan, in reality it was a lot of pressure. The first book had been easy, she’d taken her time to develop the characters and the plot, but now; she had deadlines and people’s expectations to live up to. She lived in constant fear of the possible disappointment of thousands of fans.

She was thankful for Morrigan when she finally arrived, giving her some respite from the stress. “You know it’s never a problem for you Liv, I’m always up to come talk, especially if it gives me the chance to try and talk you into coming back.” Her dark eyes winked at her as if it were some inside joke they carried between them.

Olive had been asked to step down from her position in child protective services when she’d grown too attached to her charge. An antiquated and outdated rule, if you asked her. Georgie had been worth the risk and ultimate demise of her career; not that she’d even been that happy in the position. When she had gone into social work, she had had visions of a grand plan to overhaul the system and make it better for everyone involved. She’d been quite young, and perhaps far too idealistic, as the young often were. In actuality, she had quickly become so swamped with work and cases that her only focus could be each child, whose lives were being torn apart by the mess their family felt necessary to dump on them. She’d always worked her ass off to give families the best outcome, to help work their problems out, but there were always those who were never meant to be parents.

That had been Leanne Sutton.

Perhaps her life had been headed somewhere else at some point, but when little Georgie had come along, that had all been flushed down the toilet. When her case file had come across her desk, things had gone downhill from there. “Evanna would never let me come back, we both know that Mor.” There was no anger left to her words, no edge, it was just a simple fact. That part of her life was over, and she was finding new ways to change the world, putting pen to paper, changing the minds of the youth. It was a slower change, but she had to hope that works like hers would help encourage a change in the way things were going to be done in years to come.

“Evanna and I already talked about it, she would let you back Liv, if you just went and apologized for being young and naive. Show some regret and she will restore you right where you were! Archie got a promotion when that witch from the west side finally retired, your desk is open.” It hurt a little, the way that Morrigan looked at her with so much hope that she might come back. They’d both started at the same time though Morrigan hadn’t risen as quickly as Olive, the younger girl always looked up to her with so much pride until the incident. Olive was sure that all that trust was gone by now though, She’d broken the cardinal rule: Don’t Get Attached. The whole situation had created a lot of broken trust and lost respect from her old coworkers, she was just glad that she’d been able to rebuild some of her relationship with Morrigan outside of their shared work.

She shook her head, ducking it to try and hide from the way Morrigan’s sweet face dropped. The round, lingering baby fat gave her such a childlike appearance which made it all the harder to bear when she was sad. It wasn’t just her face that made her look younger than she really was, it was also the hair, dark at the roots fading down into an almost icy blue. Olive was sure it helped get the small children to trust her, though, she couldn’t figure out how the girl ever got the dye job past Evanna’s no-nonsense rules. “Mor, we talked about this, I would love to come back but it’s too much for me. I promise I’m okay though, I’m working on my sequel, and I’ve got Nina now, she’s a full-time job all on her own.” It was painful, the look of loss on the young woman’s face and it made her think of Georgie. Wherever the girl, the one she’d wanted to call her daughter, ended up, she hoped it was a happy place. “Anyways, this isn’t why I asked you to come meet me today.”

The blue-haired girl took a deep breath, straightening herself back up as she was reminded of the more pressing matters at hand. “Right, you asked me to meet you for a reason, and not just to have coffee because were friends.” Her dark eyes rolled, but the smirk that played on her lips made it clear that she was only vaguely annoyed and not in any lasting way. “Sometimes I think you just want me for my access, Liv.” Her lithe little fingers pulled the laptop from her bag setting it down on the table to logging on. It was all an act, Olive didn’t need her to unlock the system because she knew Morrigan’s codes, she always had. “I’m going to go get a coffee, if someone just happened to take a peek at the files of one Lucias Rowe, I would be nigh to stop them.” Which meant the files were already pulled up for Olive to look at as soon as she turned her back.

Olive watched for a long moment, just long enough for her friend to walk to the front counter. from there she took the laptop, lifting it across the table to set it on top of her closed one. She thumbed through it, jotting down everything that they might need to know about Lucky. She stopped short though when she found the name of a little brother, Xander Rowe, who the other boy hadn’t mentioned. she was sure that probably had to do with self-preservation, she knew how these kids could be about their siblings, and rightly so.

Before clicking through to Xander’s file she looked up, making sure her friend wasn’t returning just yet. Instead, she found her friend talking with some guy, tall and a little gawky, who’d just come in from the rain with a little girl. They seemed friendly, or at least, Morrigan appeared to be flirting with him, while the little girl was trying to smooth out her ever-growing curls as they dried from the rain. It was good, it meant she had a few more minutes before the other came back.

Deciding not to worry about her friend’s love life, she turned her attention back to the screen. She knew it was a stupid thought but when she opened the file, she half-expected the boy’s hair to be as blue, pink, and purple as his brother’s cotton candy locks. However, the boy who stared back was rather plain, unassuming with his messy brown hair, born in July of 2004 which made him 14, just about 15, and already he looked scared of what the world had to offer. Reading through it gave her a slight idea of just what he had been through, though she suspected that his file only contained a fraction, and told her that he was at one of the worst group homes just a town over. Further investigation showed that he’d been taken there to purposefully split the siblings up, he’d been labeled as a flight risk, liable to run off with his brother. She knew her mother wouldn’t even think twice about that note, and, hopefully, with Morrigan’s help, they would be able to get both brothers back under the same roof. Both files warned of a third, older sibling named Lucy, however, there were no files attached to the girl’s name, and she had to wonder who or where the girl was. The notes were rather vague about that information or even who their father was, as it seemed the birth certificates that had been found with them were forged, and any real trace of their existence remained unfound. The two were certainly a mystery and she could see why her mother took to the elder brother so quickly.

Olive had the laptop turned back around before her friend was even back at the table, so when Morrigan glanced over and saw it back in its position she took that as a sign that she was ready to go. “Find what you were looking for?” the question came just moments later after the young woman had said her goodbyes to the strange man with high cheekbones and soft, slender, angular eyes.

“Yeah, Heather is looking to adopt Lucias and Xander Rowe, Lucias is aged out of the system so that will be relatively easy, but I’m going to need your help getting Xander out of that group home. Do you think you could reach out to his caseworker?” Olive broke a piece off her granola bar, popping it into her mouth as she waited for Morrigan to take a cursory glance over the record.

The darker haired woman nodded as she took notes of who the caseworker was, as well as their contacts and just whose arms she would have to twist to get a boy with that much risk released into the care of a foster parent. “Leave it with me, I’ll keep you updated.” It was a gentle promise, Olive didn’t know how Morrigan did it, but despite being low on the chain she always knew just what stones to turn over to make things happen. “Now, let's talk about something a little less serious, like when was the last time you got some? You look so tense, your hand is not cutting it anymore.”

The snort that escaped her was so gross she could feel her cheeks heat before the sound had even finished. “Listen, after Pippa, I think it will be a long while before I consider any dating, a long, long while.” Olive took a sip of her coffee to try to signal the end of that topic, but Morrigan clearly had other plans.

“No one said anything about dating, I just asked if you’d gotten any.” It was then the younger woman glanced over at the man she’d been talking to before, giving him a little wave, a motion he returned with slender, worn fingers.

Sure, he was handsome, sort of tall but he was a little scrawnier than she tended to go for, not to mention she typically preferred women, something Morrigan knew well, making it strange that she’d pointed him out for her. None of that any of that really mattered, however, “Mor, I don’t do casual sex, you know that, you make fun of me for it.”

“Fine, but if you were to need a dick appointment, I’ve got a few numbers you can call.” Her dark eyebrows waggling at the ginger-haired woman, before her words seemed to trigger a thought in her. “Shit, wait what time is it? I have a dick appointment.” This caused them both to break down into fits of stupid laughter as she took a stand, dumping the laptop unceremoniously into her bag.

“Well Mor, you enjoy your fun and I’ll talk to you tomorrow, right?”

“Absolutely Liv… and think about what I said.” There was a wink tagged onto the end of that, followed by another meaningful glance at the man who was picking up drinks for him and the little girl. “He’s a good man, a good dad, and a good lay.” It was a little surprising though, he looked younger than she was and the girl older than Nina by at least a few years, not to mention they looked nothing alike. Perhaps she’d misjudged their conversation? Perhaps Morrigan was their caseworker? Perhaps the little girl was adopted?

Olive didn’t want to think too long about how Mor might know what kind of lay the man was, she couldn’t see the woman as anything other than a little sister and the thought of it was just as disturbing as the possibility of Elise’s sex life. She watched the girl make her way out of the café, giving her a little wave, before pretending to be focused on her computer as she booted it back up, trying not to notice how friendly Mor was with the mysterious man. Trying to pretend she wasn’t as intrigued by his purple contacts and relationship with her friend or the child he was handing a sandwich off to.

Just like that she was alone again in the café, her friend, dissolving into nothing more than a blur across the street through the rain that pounded on the front window. She pulled her dark green sweater around her a little tighter as if against the cold the other girl was now facing and turned her attention back to the open document awaiting her thoughts, to which she had none.