Moira woke with a start a few moments before the alarm. She’d set it for a nap after briefing her employees on the overnight patients, but now she felt tired and anxious after another unsettling dream.

She takes a shower and dries her hair as quickly as she can, then fusses with some makeup knowing it will raise the brows of her nosy tech Haewon. (Jasper she didn’t need to worry about—he would only have eyes for the newest tiny patients.) Checking her outfit in the mirror, she rolls her eyes at her reflection and takes her white coat off the hook. Slipping it on as she heads out to the clinic, she checks the time. 11:45, perfect.

“Coffee?” asks Haewon, looking up from the computer. She gives Moira a quick once-over, stopping briefly at her new flats and then returning with an increasing brow height to her face. “I didn’t see any paperwork started for these two so I made them charts. Who did you say brought them in?”

“Coffee sounds so good right now,” she answers and steps into the back to pour herself a cup, hoping to avoid the rest of this conversation. 

Haewon follows. “I will start guessing then,” she challenges with a smirk.

Jasper steps in from the back hall, kitten and puppy held to his chest swaddled in a handtowel. “Ah, Doc, they’ve got healthy appetites and are already much livelier.”

“Wonderful!”

“There are those slings in the back if you’d like to give one to …” Haewon trails off with an expectant look.

“Great idea,” Moira beams, grabbing that notion and running with it, off to fetch a sling and get away from the conversation as the door chimes. She busies herself digging around on the shelves for the stretchy cloth wraps they’d made for hands-free warming inspired by baby slings. Just another minute so I can calm the hell down.

“I put the hottie you are attempting to hide from me in exam room 3, Doctor,” Haewon says poking her head into the storage room and grinning so widely Moira wants freeze time and calmly walk by her and out of the clinic and into the woods, never to be seen again. 

“Thank you. Please find another hobby.” 

“My grandmother would be so offended if you called our family’s skills a mere hobby.” She steps aside and presents the cleared path with a flourish of both arms and a lean in the direction of the exam rooms. 

“I do not need a matchmaker or fortune-telling or anything like that,” the doctor hisses as she just happened to exit as directed since it was the only path available. Certainly not because she was participating in her subordinate’s game. She doesn’t mind the warm and fun atmosphere the clinic had adopted with the addition of her new hires–they certainly could use it given the more frequent than they’d prefer heaviness of their profession–but in such close proximity to Nyrun? Right there, down the hall? Dear lord. What if she heard? 

Haewon frowns, “I know you’re all Science, but don’t you think science is,” she trails off looking up searching the ceiling for the right words, “too new?” 

“Let’s talk later, maybe over something stronger than coffee?” Moira asks regretting being so dismissive of Haewon’s practices. It wasn’t like her to have a serious tone outside of veterinary conversations, so she’d probably made her feel bad. “You are one hundred percent correct about the, um, temperature of number 3. No argument from me on that at all,” she offers and is relieved when Haewon smiles again, the twinkle in her eye restored. 

“Yes! I’ll bring the babies in, or, well, Jasper probably will. He’s pretty attached,” she says going to find them. “And boss?”

Moira pauses, looking back to her. “Yeah?”

“I have a good feeling about her. She’s so strong and she stumbled on your name when she asked for you. I love that. Go be the same treasure she already knows you are,” she almost sang the last part, her voice reverberating inside Moira like when you walk through Church Way at the top of the hour.

Momentarily stunned, Moira stammers out a “th-thanks,” as Haewon continues on her mission. As the echo clears she feels lighter, encouraged. She pushes the swinging door into the exam room corridor leaving her anxiety behind. 

. . .

Nyrun sat on the beechwood bench staring at a poster depicting the life stages of cats compared to humans, wondering how old she was and where she’d fall on the chart. She wasn’t sure if Kika paid attention to Obvious years, so maybe it wouldn’t be totally unusual for her to start up a conversation about it. They could figure it out together.  

The small exam room was painted a pale green and felt very clean. Kika would approve. While there wasn’t a window, there was a skylight above; the rectangle of light it cast was currently perfectly aligned with a framed photo of a red-haired man with a horse. “Bay dun,” she says aloud as the door opens.

“Ah! You know your horses,” Moira says, joining her.

She has no memory of learning about horses, but her mind fills with horse facts resurfacing from the mire within her. “Tuor had a few horses a long time ago,” she surprises herself with this bit of knowledge, although it makes sense… Tuor was older than cars. 

“Me too. I grew up with them.” She points to the photo, “That’s my grandfather on his farm. I lived there until I went to college. I raised a few on my own over the years. 4H and all.”

Nyrun nods. “Did you get some sleep?”

“I made a solid effort but somehow woke up more tired?”

“Hrm. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, I don’t think,” she answers, concerned and filled with an immediate need to help solve whatever is wrong. 

Seeing her worried, Moira quickly changes the subject. “Are you ready for Kitten and Puppy Care 101?”

“You have my full attention as always,” Nyrun says taking the hint, fashioning it into an origami flower, and handing it back.

Moira’s internal temperature rises but before the fear of Nyrun noticing takes over, she feels the bell resounding inside her, deep and centering. Holy shit, she likes me too?

Jasper opens the door with the bundle of babies in the crook of his arm, smiling cheerfully to hide his deep disappointment that his time with them was up. His cheer falters as he looks at the tall woman next to his naive, kind, very human boss. “Oh. Um. Hello. I brought…” He looks down at the bundle and hugs it closer. “I… I forgot the bottles. I will be right back!” He backs out of the room and takes off down the hall. 

“That was weird. I’ve never seen him so … animated.”

“Hey, while we wait, can I use your facilities?” Nyrun asks.

“Oh sure, I want to go check on him,” she replies, leading her into the hall and motioning back toward the lobby. “It’s the last door on the right.”

“Thanks!” Nyrun says and makes a dash for it. Moira shrugs and heads at a normal pace toward the staff-only area but is sidetracked by the front door chime. 

In the privacy of the restroom, Nyrun expands her sight and finds the wildling guy gesturing frantically to the diviner she’d spoken with earlier. Focusing on them, she can eavesdrop without risking the Veil slipping in front of Moira.

“Haewon you can’t be serious!”

“Calm down. You don’t even know her!”

“I know what she isn’t.”

“Look at me,” Haewon says grabbing his face between her hands. “Am I ever wrong?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Do you know her name?”

“No?”

“She told me at the desk. Nyrun Tuor. Tuor!”

“What?”

“Tuor as in The Tuor. And she was not lying.”

He stilled. She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug, careful not to squish the bundle. “Jasper, I know you are scared. She’s got a very intense aura and you are a tiny baby fawn in comparison. But is everyone powerful wicked?”

“But the babies. And Doc doesn’t know anything…”

“Shh shh shh,” she strokes his chestnut hair and kisses his forehead. “Where’s my benevolent forest spirit who loves all creatures? The one who so passionately defended pit bulls at the City Council hearing and saved them from being banned from Melitown?”

“Oh,” he says softly twisting the end of his scrub top.

“And moreover, I’m going to break my rule and share a secret.”

Jasper pulled back to look at her. “What? No, you can’t, Haewon!”

“The afterclap is worth it if I can settle your heart,” she draws him back to her.

Nyrun’s vision shifts to Moira’s conversation at the front desk wrapping and not wanting her to walk into her employees’ conversation, she quickly leaves the bathroom and catches up with her in the hall. Before she can even say anything Moira gasps and grabs onto her tightly, quaking. 

“Moira? What’s… are you ok?” Nyrun is overwhelmed with their closeness, but her heart is racing at her panic and fear. She doesn’t sense any threats. A medical thing? Moira was the only doctor she knew. The two in the back will know where the human doctors are.

“It’s—oh my god I am so sorry but I need to get away from it,” Moira sobs into her chest, gripping her shirt along with some of her hair unintentionally.

“Ok,” so not a sickness. “Yes, we’ll go but I’m not sure which direction is away?” 

Moira takes a deep breath and drags her into the exam room as far as she can get from the door, and having spent the last of her strength, collapses against her once more. “I’m so embarrassed. I just—I can’t handle them. And I’ve been having nightmares about them and it’s so so stupid.”

Nyrun reaches for her chin and tilts her face so she can look at her directly. “You are not stupid. Nightmares? What’s haunting my sweet Moira?” What could possibly frighten this woman who didn’t register a twinge of dread in her presence?

“I just, I just—They just scare me so so much ever since I fell into an old root cellar when I was a kid. There were so many. They were just everywhere. And no one heard me,” she struggles to get the words out. 

Nyrun pulls her close, her own heart jolts and retreats when it meets resistance, a cold tightly woven cocoon confining it, doing its best to hold her together. Dreading confirming her suspicion, she tightens her arms around Moira. Trembling hiccups steel her resolve, and she closes her eyes to see behind her. There, on the wall where they’d been standing hangs a painting of the night sky, its dark brushstrokes contrasting with the glinting progress of a spider about the size of her thumb taking up residence in the ornately carved frame. 

Deep inside her something snaps, delicate fissures spreading across her heart mirroring the silvery webbing. One by one small bits of memory crawl free as she unspools along with the coccoon, and she knows with absolute certainty that the tear falling down her cheek is her first.

In the staff room, unseen, the diviner leans close to the wildling’s ear and whispers, “Doc really likes her and the feeling is mutual. And if they follow the path of honesty and trust, they will find happiness.”

Image credit: Gevallen grootheid, Schenking van Eigen Haard, prentmaker: Smeeton Tilly, naar ontwerp van: Louis Apol, ca. 1874 - 1888