Even if I counted all the uncountable memories in The Well, I doubted that there had ever been a fight that was so difficult to make sense of.

Deebee, as big as I thought he was, was still invisible. The only ways for me to know where he was came from watching the impressions he made on all of the plants in the garden cave and following the streak of sunlight that Rat had turned into.

The shining little bird would swoop up to the top of the cave before diving back down and filling the air with the humming sound that had come with his arrival. When his needle-like beak would make contact with what could only be some part of Deebee, he would begin to turn as if he was some spinning top that a child would play with.

Deebee did not cry out in pain or scream, but I could hear the small little exhales that came from him every time that he was struck.

Between Rat's erratic light and Deebee's unseen size the garden cave had turned to chaos right before my eyes.

The warden was not there to stop it.

He had told me if anything went wrong to cry out for him, and he would be there before I knew it.

I couldn't.

It had felt so good to actually do something that he had thought I could do. If I called out for him, it would take me admitting to myself that I had failed.

I couldn't do that.

I shouldn't have to do that.

I was a sorceress, and I know he'd only meant it as a compliment, but the bearded man had called me, his junior warden.

I couldn't let him down.

"Alright, Autumn. What are you going to do?" I asked myself as I knelt down to keep from getting caught by one of Rat's piercing dives.

Lay down, cover your head, cry, wait till it's over. The Autumn I didn't like, the real Autumn, answered in my mind.

I shook my head and talked back to myself. "Hush."

The idea to take Rat and hold him in place with my power like I had done with Precept Seram's weights and Durath's scruff came to mind, but the little bird was too fast. I would never be able to grab him.

I could step to the side and yell for Deebee to flee, the warden had said he was the fleeing type after all, but that would be a failure just the same.

"Fight me you coward, you have the goal to steal from my nest, but not the bravery to defend your own hide. How pitiful." Rat trumpeted down before he set himself towards Deebee once again.

I could bring out my chord, but being able to catch an arrogant tree and a thieving Tana were much easier targets than Rat. I would be more likely to hurt the invisible familiar or miss entirely than I would be to hit my mark.

My fireworks would do nothing but make things worse. They might stun the bird or stop his swooping for a time, but they were sure to scare off the familiar I wanted to talk to.

What would the warden do? I asked myself, knowing that I had no more tricks that I could use. I had only been a new moon for a handful of weeks. There had not been enough time for me to get good with my power yet.

Probably use his tether to stop or calm Rat, and then he would talk to them and sort things out. I thought.

That would've been helpful if I had the scrap of silk that the bearded man wore as a belt. It would've been helpful if Rat knew me the way he knew the warden, but he had taken offense to me saying his name.

What would Precept Seram do? Came my next thought.

My pink hair precept would have caught the shining little bird in one of her bubbles and put up another around Deebee without a single of her hairs falling out of place.

I had no bubbles. I had none of her grace. I was so unlike my teacher that thinking of trying to be like her felt like a cruel joke.

I asked myself a third question. What would Reese do?

Something loud and impulsive, undoubtedly, but there was more there for me than the other two I had thought of.

Reese had fought against the bitter deeps of The River Eae by making glowing orange pieces of her power mound up beneath her feet.

She had no better idea of what she was doing than I had when I made my azure cord for the first time in the wake of her success.

My sandy skinned friend had shaped reality to fit her will because she was sorceress, it was what we did.

Sorceress Ulet had told me that very thing after she had brought me back to Zenithcidel in the birdcage of her power.

When I had made the ribbons around Anna's throat that Sam's gifted bird skull hung from, I had no idea what I was doing. The perfect red fireworks that I had destroyed the manor's kitchen with because Anna and Arthur's fighting had reached a point that I could not stand had come as a surprise to me just as much as it had the raven haired siblings.

I had shaped reality to fit my will because I was a sorceress.

It was what I did.

Shifting my werelight to my right hand, and with no understanding of what was about to happen, I pushed my left palm out towards the chaos unfolding before me.

"Both of you stop," I shouted, my words laced with the cold blue that filled me. "Now!"

Nothing happening would've been better than what did.

Rat didn't slow down, not even for a second.

Deebee still made his sad sounds, but found no relief from the shining little bird's assault.

I stood and watched a nearly identical werelight to the one above my right hand birth from my palm in a blinding blue flash.

It was only nearly identical because the one I had made previously was the size of the tip of my thumb. The one I had made in blind faith of myself, was bigger than both my fist held together.

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I panicked.

Purposely breaking my focus at the side of it, I shouted out to the two familiar's but was too scared to actually form any words.

"Ahhh!" My voice echoed over the sound of Rat's humming.

My working came apart the moment it hit the leafy vines that covered the ground.

It hit me in a flash and a wave of cold that felt like needles against my still damp body.

I hit the rock behind me and fell to the ground, my arms held up in front of my face and a useless attempt to protect myself from what I had created.

The sound of dirt and dust raining down from all the holes at the top of the cave and remnants of the largest working I had ever performed filled my ears. Once it all had fallen, and the high-pitched whine that screamed in my mind ceased, an eerie quiet settled around me.

"Deebee? Rat?" I called out, still unable to open my eyes.

I heard the sound of something wet moving towards me and Deebee spoke in his sad voice. "Little bird is hurt."

I pushed myself forward and climbed to my feet before I ever opened my eyes. Slipping over my own dust as I moved, I blinked through the burning and caught brief glimpses of what I had done to the garden cave. Every green plant, every yellow fruit, and all the other colors that had filled the place a moment before were buried in my blue.

Small parts of Deebee were no longer invisible, but my mind could not make sense of the writhing lengths that I could see.

Rat, the sunlight within him shining much less brightly than it had before lay in my dust, one little wing, twisted out at an awkward angle.

"No, no, no," I said, my breaths feeling thin and shallow. I threw myself to my knees and slid to a stop at the injured familiars side, my hands stopping just before I scooped them around it. "I'm sorry-I didn't mean-are you-"

Rat fluttered its twisted wing and let out a little whimper. "Eggs."

"I don't know what that means, let me help you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." I cried, feeling like I should be doing something, but being completely unable to do anything.

"Eggs," Rat repeated as he rolled himself onto his little feet with a pained chirp. "In my nest."

I followed his beady eyes to the bed of leaves that Deebee had been standing on shortly before and rushed over to it without a thought. With both my hands, I threw my dust away by the palm full, but it felt like it would never end.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." I repeated, unable to stop myself from apologizing endlessly.

Stupid.

Spots of green leaves began to show through the blue.

Child.

Eggs. There were eggs. I could see their shells.

Bad. All of you is bad.

I brushed the bed clear enough to see the broken eggs laying crust and blown apart in the same places they had been before I had destroyed them.

Ruiner. The real Autumn named me in my mind and I could find no way to disagree with her.

The warden's voice echoed down the tunnel into the garden. "Ire? What's happened? Are you alright?"

There was no yolk or clear runny fluid clumping in my dust or around the broken egg shells. There were only seeds, dozens and dozens of seeds. Some were split open and had tiny green sprouts reaching out of them. Others were no bigger than a grain of sand and were sticky to the touch. Amongst it all, at the bottom of its broken mates, was a single yellow egg that remained whole.

Sunlight shone across my dust and sent it into bright blue sparkles as Rat made his way over to me.

Wing still outstretched, he dug the remaining egg out with his thin beak.

"Never get to grow. They'll never get to grow." He chirped as the light that came from him dimmed even further.

I heard the warden call out to me again.

What felt like water began to trickle up underneath me and wet the hem of the thin green dress.

"I'm sorry." I continued, barely holding myself together against the loss of my accidental firework.

Rat was small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, but when he looked up at me, broken wing and all, it felt like he would have made Durath seem small. "You will pay for what you have done. Justice has arrived. My King! This craven creature has destroyed my eggs. Smite her!"

"Hold on. Hold on. Hold on," The warden shouted back. I turned around to see him struggling to push past what looked like nothing. "Let me through. What are you made of, jelly?"

As soon as our eyes met, my strength failed. Tears flowed from my eyes like the water that was streaming into the garden cave from the tunnel, and I slumped back onto the mound of my dust weakly.

"I didn't mean to," I cried. "They were fighting and I thought I could stop them."

"Hey now, that's alright. Everything's just fine. We can talk about it on the way out." The warden said as he reached me and pulled me onto my feet.

"I hurt Rat." I sniffled.

The warden picked up the injured bird. "He'll be fine, familiars are made of tougher stuff."

"I broke his eggs." I cried, kneeling down and showing the bearded man that only one of the shining little bird's eggs had survived my violence.

"He'll make more. Half the island is full of these little caves he makes. What is that?" The warden demanded, pointing down to one of the parts of Deebee that was no longer invisible.

"Deebee. We were going to trade." I said through my tears. Leaning against the warden was the only way I was managing to stay upright. My stupid working had taken much more for me than anything I had ever done before.

The warden clapped his hands and gestured to the water rising up our ankles. "Well met, Deebee. I would like to meet you properly, but high tide is upon us and I will not be alive to do that if we don't reach the surface."

Deebee sighed a sad sounding sigh as all of him disappeared once again.

We were halfway back down the tunnel before I realized that we were moving at all. I had almost killed Rat. I had killed his plant eggs. There was no telling how bad my firework had hurt Deebee. If the warden's life did not depend on the blood pact he had made with my white haired guard. I would've laid down and let the rising water drown me.

Ruiner. The real Autumn thought again.

False. The other Autumn disagreed.

I miss Anna. I thought at both of them, crying so hard that my throat had begun to hurt.

"Tie this around your waist like before, and we'll be out of here in just a second, alright?" The warden shouted as he handed me one end of his tether.

Everything was a blur through my unending after glow. The waterfalls from before roared twice as loud as they had before I had gone into the tunnel. The pool at the bottom of the drowning cave rising faster and faster, it felt like it would reach the top in no time at all. Even still, the only way I moved forward was by the pull of the warden as he ran us over to the outcroppings that we had climbed down earlier.

One by one he climbed up and pulled me up after him with his tether.

All I was able to do was cry and continue to apologize. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Just barely out climbing the rising tide, he made it to the outcropping that would lead us back to the ladder and out of Durath's cave.

He reached down to take my wrist, and both of us realized that in the swell of my sorrow, I had not tied the tether properly. Our eyes met as the knot slipped loose, and I went falling towards the water like the stone he had thrown into the ocean earlier that day.

The impact pushed all the air from my lungs and I opened my eyes to see the disturbed surface growing further and further away from me.

I twisted and spun, trying desperately to move upwards, but it was only down that I went.

In the corner of my eye, I saw something moving in the distance.

Then, through the other eye, I saw the dark shape again.

No! I tried to shout but all that came from my mouth was a burst of bubbles that rose upwards like I would have given anything to do.

I was going to drown.

The dark shape appeared again.

Bru crashed into me with great violence and closed her jaws around my leg.

Just like the gifts I had gathered for her, I would never be returning to Anna as well.

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