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From one blink to the next, Yu found himself back in the kitchen, barely hanging on to the last thread of focus, shaking from head to talon, from his feathers to his core.

As he came to, he stood before the cupboard with the many familiar bottles. The Sharran Vey was in front of him. Not on the shelf — on the workbench. One of the six bottles stood right between his trembling wings. It was sealed, yet the liquid inside spun and swirled, as if someone had shaken it moments before. Yu stared, as the areole hurled itself from one side to the other, striking the glass from within like something caged.

The spirit calmed and it did not.

Yu felt the urge to shake it again.

He did.

He shook until the areole tore apart. Then he set the bottle down and watched, blankly, as the slimy chunks oozed out and dragged themselves through the liquor. The orblight overhead threw his shadow across the glass. As the orb slowly drifted on, the shadow slid aside. The light moved out of his back until it touched the bottle. The tinted surface brightened into a dark mirror. It reflected Yu's face.

Yu did not know who he was looking at. Or what.

--------------------------------It had been so easy for the wanting to take over. ------------------------------------For the screaming part, also. Yu was regaining control over his body just now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It was beyond terrifying.

---------------------------------------If the wanting could take over his mind in an instant, and dictate his words, -----------------------------------------and if the screaming part could wrench the body away ---------------------------------------------and drag him back into the kitchen and make poison, ----------------------------------------then who was the Yu standing here and thinking about these two parts?

----------------------------------Was there still anything to him

---------------------------------------------—— to the him that he believed himself to be, --------------------------------------------------------the him that he was right now?

-----------------------------------------Or did he just exist as a moment of pause, ---------------------------------------------before one or the other part took over again?

----------------------------------------------------Was he the change between their turns at the surface? -----------------------------------------------------------Was he just … the break between them? -------------------------------------------------------Was he merely--- indifference? -

His shadow returned. As the orblight drifted back to the centre of the room, the dark shape rolled across the glass and swallowed his reflection once more. With him gone, the broken areole became visible again. The strands of mucous clung inside the bottle like swollen fish eggs.

----------------------------------------------------------He was wrong.

----------------------------------------They were not equals, the wanting part and the terrified part.

------------------------------------------Yu had thought so, until now. But he had been wrong.

---------------------------------------Until now, he had believed that the split within him was a clean and fixed fracture, ----------------------------------------a chasm dividing one self into two halves. While those two halves screamed at each other ---------------------------------------from opposite ends, the guard mask had been Yu's attempt to build a bridge between them, ----------------------------------------something to bring them together and thus realign their perspectives. --------------------------------------The mask was meant to impose a single line of sight that would cancel out their extremes, ----------------------------------------a connection that might, over time, merge them back into one functional individual. ------------------------------------------For that, it had been all rigid function and forced steadiness.

---------------------------------------------------------------It had also been an illusion.

The orblight returned from the right, slowly creeping across the glass until its glow replaced the sight of the areole with the faint reflection of Yu's eye.

---------------------------------------In truth, it was like this.

Yu bent down in front of the bottle to block the light. He came so close that the tip of his beak touched the glass with a small, brittle plink.

---------------------------------------He was like this.

------------------------------------The wanting was something that shifted within him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------It was the areole.

----------------------------------------All around, bottled within his body, was the terrified self, --------------------------------------------the exaggeration of all that was panic and paranoia. ------------------------------------------Within that terror, not beside it nor beneath it, but inside it, ------------------------------------------------floated the wanting self, indifferent to any such feelings. ---------------------------------------------It was sealed in its own membrane, impervious to the outer spirit -------------------------------------------and without ever touching the body that held it. Left undisturbed, --------------------------------------------it felt none of the body's pain and none of the mind's fear. -------------------------------------------It felt nothing but the absence of the <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/>.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------That absence was its own essence.

------------------------------------------------------------The <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/> had put it there, -----------------------------------------------just as the distillers put in the areole ---------------------------------------------------to drive the spirit into change. ---------------------------------------But she had not let it rest in him quietly, ---------------------------------------------to drift and dissolve and integrate in its own time. ------------------------------------------------No. She unsettled him. ---------------------------------------------Her presence and her gaze and her voice and her touch shook the wanting --------------------------------------------------------------------------until it tore and seeped through the rest of him.

-----------------------------------------It had taken over, just like that. It had broken through the mask. -------------------------------------------It had spoken to the shaman. It had offered itself to her. -----------------------------------------There had been no going back for the wanting self. ---------------------------------------------The only reason Yu had made it back ------------------------------------------and out of the sick bay was that she had let go of him. --------------------------------------------She had released him before the wanting tore open entirely.

-----------------------------------------------------But it was torn. The rupture was there, ----------------------------------------- -------like the broken areole before him. -----------------------------------------------Even through the darkened glass, --------------------------------------------Yu saw the purple threads -----------------------------------------------------bleeding their colour into the whole. ---------------------------------------------------He saw it and he felt it; -----------------------------------------------the rising anticipation for the Witching Hour. --------------------------------------------------With every second, more of it spread. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------It would poison the spirit, ----------------------------------------------------------------and whatever remained of him.

Yu slammed his wings against the workbench and pushed himself back. His first instinct was to run in circles again. He did, opening the first workbench cupboard as he walked, then checking the second — and then stopped short at the hearth, before he would pass the bottle again, and before he would reach the third leg, the one with all the bowls.

He did not know where to go from there, so he climbed the stool in front of the surgery window. Just to see that … Bubs was still there.

He was.

They were still working on the leg. Because Deltington stood between Bubs and the door, Yu had a poor angle, but enough to see Bubs bent low over the cage, doing something delicate around the pins. Every so often, he picked up another one of many thin slivers from a tray — no, not cloth, but tissue. With his tiny instruments, he guided string after string into the leg, pushing them through the narrow cuts between the pins, and then drove his forceps deeper along the major wound to pull, thread, and tighten the lengths through the meat. Yu could only guess he was fastening what had been torn. He could not tell whether the scraps on the tray belonged to the human or were something that Bubs had prepared, like the new bone.

After these first impressions, Yu climbed back down.

He could not focus. It did not distract him. Not like last time, when the old memories of his life with Tria had risen on their own and pulled him back into himself. Now, there was no past sense of self to tether him. Only new and raw feelings.

For a long while, Yu just stood and stared at the bottle across the room, lost inside himself.

He did not know what would become of him if the <img alt="image" height="30" src="https://glasswizardchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/018.8-The-Glass-WIzard-Webstory_Psychological-Fantasy-Magic-Webseries_The-Duckman_Chapter-Part-2_Queen_small.jpg" width="60"/> spoke to him again after the Witching Hour. If she touched him. If she did even more than before.

------------------------------What would he do, in turn?

--------------------------------------What would become of him?

Well … he was supposed to be a pretend guard. That was the one him he needed to be right now. And so, eventually, Yu forced the uppermost mask back into place and prepared seconds for the krynn and the borman. He had not asked whether they wanted more, but simply assumed they would, with how gaunt the krynn looked and how much bormen normally ate.

He carried out the first of the new bowls, intending to serve the krynn first. However, as he found the beastkin still bent over his initial portion while the borman was all done, Yu had to leave it with the latter. Then he returned with a second bowl, which he placed beside the krynn.

Thus concluded a second round of steaming wapa for the new arrivals, only for Yu to realise, far too late, that he still had no idea how portioning or payment worked. When that thought surfaced, he decided to drown it immediately. Asking anyone now would be way too awkward. Besides, he was already overrun by the rising tide of requests, because, as it turned out, Harrow's fireplace cluster still had not had enough. The original five had finished their first portions; Bawal and Jerakill had come down; basically everyone except Imbiad was present — and of course they all wanted more food. Well, all but Harrow, who had her own odd rations. She had begun licking something white that Yu swore was a stone from outside. No one went to bed. Everyone seemed well awake after the witch scare, hungry for seconds and thirds. So Yu kept ferrying bowls in and out of the kitchen, again and again.

And then, just when he thought he was somewhat getting the hang of it, the fireplace people asked for drinks. They asked with such casual assurance certainty that Yu could only assume this was the normal routine. So he complied. Naturally, each of them wanted something different. From how quickly they fired their requests, they seemed to know exactly what was available. Yu did not. He struggled just to remember the four separate requests. Once Nion had asked for whatever Dundinway was, the others had immediately thrown in their own special wishes. Repeating the names under his breath, Yu trudged from shelf to shelf, hunting for bottles he had seen but not truly registered. He had already torn through the countless cupboards earlier when searching for drinkable stuff for himself, but since he remembered none of the unfamiliar names, he had to do it all over again. He ran around all four corners of the room, climbed up on a stool for every top shelf, and pushed mismatched bottles around and aside to decipher all their oddly foreign labels.

The Sharran Vey was still out.

Yu passed it again and again. He looked at it each time. Too often.

But he did not touch it.

He found the Dundinway first. In fact, it was the only thing he found. He dragged the tall bottle from the shelf, wrestled with the twisted bindings and the stubborn metal spring of its seal, and began to pour. He had thought the ladle had been humiliating enough, but smooth, rounded glass was worse. It was even harder because the bottle was full, which meant that tilting and spilling were essentially the same action. The moment Yu tipped it, liquid ran everywhere. Half fell into the mug. The rest slid down the neck of the bottle, over his feathers and across the workbench; a vivid sheet that gathered momentum as it drifted towards the edge. Acting on reflex, Yu snatched another mug, the nearest he could reach on the centre table, and held it beneath the overhang to catch the spill. Naturally, he got the worst one: one of the earlier bowls of stew. So now he held a mug of Dundinway laced with lumps of mush. He shoved the abomination far back against the wall, where it almost vanished underneath the shadows from the above cupboards.

After a moment's consideration, he pushed the opened bottle of Vey back there as well.

-------------And then he wondered, --------------------------very seriously and for a very long time, ----------------------------------------------------how and when

-------------------------------------------he had opened it.

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