What Goes Around Comes Around

**Wednesday October 28, 2020.**

“Thanks for helping me out with this, Gwen,” Ellen spins slowly on her heel, whistling as she takes in the room. “Figured I knew just the gal with a forgery to ask.”

The workshop Gwen had created for herself inside the empty soul-space formerly occupied by Nimue looked surprisingly mundane for something with that premise. It was expansive and dark, lit up by a number of torches and candles that surprisingly did not make the place feel hot. The forge was a different matter. It was a gaping maw of a furnace, blazing hot when you came near it. The smith’s tools were displayed in an orderly fashion around it. All are there, except for the hammer, which hangs from Gwen’s tool belt.

“Hey, ain’t no problem!” Gwen responds, walking over to a small lounge area she had set up for herself in the corner. She grabs two Bepsi bottles from the minibar next to a large oak chair and a small table. It was good to take breaks from work, even if this wasn’t an ideal break room. She made do. “So.” she says, walking back towards Ellen. She holds out one of the bottles for her, while gesturing at the forge with the other. “It’s not often I help out a friend with something like this, even less when it’s not something designed for fighting. I have made jewelry before, though. The magic is a little more complex for things without an edge, but we’ll make it work. Did you have something specific in mind?”

“Rings,” Ellen states very matter-of-fact-ly between sips of her soda. “Anniversary’s coming up and I wanted to make something this time. Y’know, make up for the years we mighta missed.”

She looks up and around at the various swords, spears, knives, weapons she doesn't know the names of, and looks back at Gwen with an eyebrow raised. “You *can* make rings here, right?”

“Oh yeah, no worries, I’ve tried making a bunch of things before. Rings too.” Gwen waves off Ellen’s worries. “Nothing very intricate yet, in material or enchantment, but I do like a challenge! Gotta have something special for such an occasion. Come to think of it… my two-year anniversary with Olivia’s coming up too…” She stares into the forge for a few long moments before she shakes off the temporary stupor. “Anyway! Do you want something simple or a specific design? A certain material or colour? Any inscriptions or enchantments? Does it need to be usable as a weapon?”

Ellen reels at the barrage of questions, just sort of blinking at Gwen until she stops. “Dude, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I really just meant some normal-ass rings. I’m no… ring designer or whatever, but at least I think these are pretty normal? We’ve definitely seen weirder.”

She produces a folded up paper from her pocket, smoothing out the creases before handing the sheet to Gwen. The page is covered with what at first look like bad attempts at drawing snakes—visual art isn’t Ellen’s forte—that eventually begin to more clearly resemble a pair of spiraling rings, meant to twist into each other. Plain, unembellished metal bands. Written notes are scattered around the sketches: dimensions, questions about finger size difference being a problem with the interlocking, random strings of words that might end up in some song someday.

Ellen looks at Gwen, nervously rubbing her hands together like she’s awaiting a diagnosis. “So, does that look doable?”

Gwen takes the paper and her finger trails over it as she studies the different drawings. She nods as she mumbles to herself. “Well, you might not be a ring designer, but these definitely aren’t common forms. A bit tricky, but definitely doable! Could even twist them together to form a single ring, if you ever wanted to do that. Hmmm, if you’re fine with me adding some flair to it, without taking away the heart of it, I have some ideas?”

She pokes at the bits of lyrics. “So are these words things you want to sing about with the band sometime, or--”

“Igno- ig… nore… those…” Ellen struggles to slide the paper out from under Gwen’s hands, but gives up when it threatens to tear. Defeated, she slumps further into her chair, bratty frustration all over her voice. “*No. Gwen.* I don’t think those kinda lyrics would go over super well.”

There aren’t any names used, but it’s clear the lyrics are about Tay.

About Tay and Ellen.

About Tay and Ellen maybe leaving.

“Oh, too personal, or too critical of the government, or… oh.” Gwen’s tone is curious at first, then slides into being a little teasing, then drops off when she actually reads and interprets the lyrics. “Oh. Yeah. That’d do it.” She takes a deep breath and sighs. She says nothing as she gently puts down the paper on the armrest of her chair and gets up to get a sketchbook from a shelf.

Gwen stays quiet as she returns, a lot less chatty than usual. She glances briefly at Ellen, then focuses on the sketchbook as she begins to draw and write down notes on materials. “So, uh. Anything else you needed to talk about?” She asks, carefully avoiding the word ‘want’, knowing from past experience Ellen often didn’t seem to ‘want’ to talk about personal things. Yet Gwen doesn’t want a repeat of any of the times she’d functioned like an emotional crowbar to a friend, given it had backfired about as much as it had worked.

“Yeah. Well, ok maybe not *need*, but like… how's travelling and stuff been? You still doing that? I know I don’t pay a ton of attention but,” Ellen makes a small arc with her hand, gesturing at the room around them, “seems like you’re pretty set up here again.”

She sinks into her shoulders in the hopes that they’ll somehow shield her from the guilt creeping up from the back of her mind. If Gwen is reacting like this to the idea of them leaving, she doesn’t want to think about the looks on Atlanta or Melody’s faces when they hear about it.

“I occasionally still do it, yeah. Just not as a continuous thing now. I met a lot of cool people! Forged a lot of cool stuff too for some of them. I think one of them founded some small town heroes league thing? So on a local scale superheroes are more organized and the League of Heroes can just focus on the big world-threatening stuff. Well.” she laughs and shrugs. “If there still was a League of Heroes, that is!”

Gwen’s tongue sticks out a little from between her lips as she draws some small details on one of the designs she’s drawing. All of the designs derive from the spiral base that Ellen provided, just with minor embellishments and twists.

“It was cool seeing so much of the world, but being gone for six months started to make me homesick.” Gwen continues. “How was that for you and Tay? We have done a little band stuff since your big trip, but we haven’t really talked as much as we did before it, have we?”

“Guess not, but shit’s been pretty weird since… well, since forever, really. That’s not really much of an excuse, huh? Never mind, uh… yeah. It was great.” There’s a long pause while Ellen tries to think of how to expand on that, but stalls when she can’t quite find the words. “I miss it, honestly. Some days all I can think about is how much stuff we won’t be able to see because we’re stuck here and like obviously it’s impossible to see all of everything ‘cause we’d never have enough time and… yeah. I just feel stuck.”

“Hah. This must sound like deja vu to you, huh?” The corner of her mouth raises in a half-smile.

“Hah, yeah, a little.” Gwen puts down the notepad between the two of them, showing some variations on what Ellen had given her. Gwen stares in the direction of her forge. “We’re all stuck, in different ways. I still feel like that sometimes, still searching for a goal or purpose. Melody and Aman have mentioned that a bunch too. Not knowing what to do after high school, after college. The future can be scary. Not like, the time-travel-to-the-future future, but our personal future. I like roaming around, like you and Tay do, but I need a home. A base to travel away from and come back to. Friends.”

She turns to look at Ellen and gives her a smile. “I know time-keeping is not your forte, but after you and Tay ship out again, don’t be a stranger, yeah? Pop in once a year or two. Dad makes a pretty good boar roast for Christmas.”

Ellen chuckles for a moment before remembering who Gwen is, who her father is, and that she must not be joking when she says “boar roast”. She traces a finger along the looping sketches as she looks over Gwen’s designs.

“Home base sounds pretty nice, but like… the time difference is what fucks it up. We can’t really track how long we’ve been gone when we’re gone, y’know? So sure, we can *try* to come back every now and then, but there’s no making sure it won’t just be like last time and we’ll be years older while it’s been like a month here. Me and Tay have both been on both sides of that and it always sucks.” A flash of Melody’s face pops into Ellen’s mind, happy then confused then hurt.

She slides the pad back towards Gwen with a finger on her favourite set. “These ones.”

“Hmmm…” Gwen nods pensively. “I suppose it would be pretty freaky if you showed up to my next band performance looking like some ancient Baba Yaga type cyborg lady. You’d need something to properly keep the time with, for your personal time, and keep in mind how that roughly aligns with ours. Sounds tricky, especially since you have trouble showing up on time for band practice.” She smirks along with the little joke and takes the pad back. “But you do have good taste, evidently.”

Gwen takes the pad over towards her work bench, puts it on a small table next to it, and starts to arrange her tools and check them over. At one point, she stands still and looks like she is staring right ahead while counting on her fingers and writing stuff in mid-air on an invisible board, taking mental notes almost literally.

“Okay,” she says, “I have most of the things I need to make these already here. I can get started tomorrow and it should be done in a week, give or take.”

Ellen mockingly raises her middle finger while Gwen’s back is turned, then picks up her bag from the floor and follows Gwen over to the work table. “Ok, that’s fuckin’ fast, but also when I said ‘thanks for helping with this’, I meant that I want to help make the things. Probably shoulda said that earlier, huh?”

She hefts her backpack onto the table with the muffled clangs of metal hitting metal. “Last time I just bought Tay something, so I figured since it’s probably been a while I should actually \*make\* something this year. Plus, we still had these with us.” She empties the contents of the bag on the table, odd sized bits and pieces of various metals from who-even-remembers-where-or-when, that scatter across the surface. “And it’s not like we were doing much with ‘em otherwise. Guess we could give ‘em to Noodle…”

“Oh. Oh!” Gwen says slowly as she realizes what Ellen is really talking about. “Right! Okay, that does change things. I can walk you through the steps, but it will go a lot more slowly. Some ring creators take like two months with the process, depending on specifications. It won’t be that slow with the two of us, but it will be more than two weeks. It’s gonna… well, it’s gonna be a big labour of love, for sure!” She gives a little laugh.

Gwen sifts through the metal on the table. “Okay, the idea and symbolism behind this is definitely adorable. Some of this is not usable for forging, but some can definitely be used or reused. The other stuff can go to…” She stops for a moment and stares at Ellen. “Noodle? Is Ernest doing metalwork now, too?”

Ellen scrunches her face at the suggestion. “Ern? Ew no, I meant Mel. Uh, Melchior-Mel, not Melody-Mel. Jesus, I never realized they could both have the same nickname before. Why is so much of my family called ‘Mel’? Guess I’m not really the one to complain about that though.” She laughs softly while poking at the growing pile of rejected metal samples, and her smile starts to fade. “I know this’ll go slower with me here, and if you decide I’m not ring-making fast enough then you can kick me out or whatever. We’ve got until like the end of November, so I just hoped it was enough time for me to do something about it.”

Gwen laughs along. “I had much the same reaction last year when people would get confused between you and Elle. Though I’m probably the only one that had that problem, since you weren’t on the team at the same time. Maybe Aman and Seth too?” She looks pensive for a moment as she realizes how long ago that already was for her. How much longer it might be for Ellen. She hasn’t heard from Seth in a long time either. With Mini moving back to Massachusetts and Parrot focusing on college and politics, their band had been put on pause. At least Gwen still has the Flex Girls, both as an outlet and something to do with friends. She makes a note to text Seth later.

“By the end of November we should be done for sure,” Gwen states. She chuckles a little. “Didn’t think time was gonna be an issue for you, Drummond.”

“Yeah, well time does what it wants regardless of me lately. It does this one thing where it keeps moving forward? I super hate that one.” Ellen laughs along. “God, did I ever show you that song I wrote? I think it’s from before you left and it was angsty as hell, but I bet we could make it less depressing with a little work. Ugh, it’s been like a thousand years since I thought about this one, gimme a sec.”

She hums in starts and stops, dotting in lyrics where she remembers them and swearing where she doesn’t. “Ok, I at least remember the chorus.
> I keep walking just to feel like
>
>

> I am going somewhere but I’ve
>
>

> Got no plans and no direction
>
>

> Keep spinning in circles
>
>

See what I mean? Talk about downer hours.”
Gwen nods along to Ellen’s tune and repeats it as she tries to harmonize with her voice. “It’s not bad, it just could use a happy ending or some more upbeat parts with it. Like…
> These circles I have spun
>
>

> And I have realized
>
>

> Sometimes it’s good to have no plans
>
>

> And sit down for a while”
>
>

She continues to hum, trying to find a happier melody. She looks at Ellen and smiles, enjoying this tiny moment of collaboration. It’s like old times. Old times becoming new times becoming old times again.