Sinsemilla Mary Jane Pots/Memory Books

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## **Volume 10, Chapter 2:**

You are small, small and staring wide eyed and ecstatically up at the parade of people, amongst the crowd as illusionary stars fall upon you and an eruption of cheers roars in your ears. Beside you, your parents squeeze your hands proudly and hold you tightly as you are announced by name to be among the lucky ones to join in this school. “Are you scared Sinsemilla?” They whisper to you. “This is a big moment, its okay to be scared.”

## **Volume 17, Chapter 4**

The memory is of sitting on a wall outside the college with her friends. They’re all smoking, having a wind down session after class. There are other people in the group chatting with them, including a guy who Milly can’t quite figure out if he’s a student or not but he’s very animated in talking about an idea he has. He has black hair, yellow eyes, and doesn’t quite fit in with how everyone else is dressing, and is very animated in persuading the others to help him. Joel and Cassia both brush him off, and as he gives up and walks away, Anja and Etienne jump down from the wall and follow.

## **Volume 17 Chapter 8**

“Keep still.”

“I am doing.”

“That means you can’t blink either!”

Saracen smirked, creasing the corners of his eyes and smudging the damp liquid eyeliner.

“Dude!” Milly huffed, immediately casting prestidigitation upon him as he laughed and tried not to squirm as she sat on his lap facing him. “You ruined it!”

Saracen laughed, dabbing at his eye to see if any of the black liquid came off. “I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not!”

“I am. *I really sincerely am*.”

“You lie.”

“Maybe I do, but honestly, I’m so glad you decided to do this *after* impaling my ears with that spike. I would have looked like one of your pandas.”

“Seriously Sara, do you not have the word needle in your world?”

“We do.”

“What about mascara?”

His smirk turned to a squint of confusion, yellow eyes narrowed at her. “Are you making up more words again?”

“Me? *Never*! Now stop making faces. I’m nearly finished.”

With a deep breath, Saracen went still again, patiently waiting for Milly to finish up her work. The plan had originally been for the pair of them to go out, grab dinner, then head to the cinema, but from what they had heard, a major incident involving a chimera escaping from the zoo meant that they had all had to remain indoors until the creature was recaptured. According to Saracen’s insistence, it had been nothing to do with him or Ettienne, but Milly had her suspicions.

“Huh,” said Saracen once Milly had mage-handed a mirror to him from across the room, inspecting his darkened eyes and still slightly bloodied ears. “My eyes look *really* yellow.”

“But does it look good?”

“Hell yeah.” He grinned, flicking his freshly cut hair back from his face. With a proud little smirk, Milly got up to make herself a victory hot chocolate, rummaging through the cupboards of the dorm room kitchen to find the marshmallows she had hidden out of sight from Cassia and Anja. It may have not been the fancy pesto-pasta she had intended to eat on their night out, but it would do.

“I recon if my cousin’s cousin, had this stuff,” Saracen continued as he admired himself in the mirror some more, “I’d look like some of those girls around the college. You know the ones; where you can see the line between their skin and the amount of orange make up they’ve put on.”

“Ugh!” She scrunched her face up at the thought. There was no shortage of fifteen year old newbies who thought that the older students would find neon tangerine coloured skin attractive.

As she stirred her hot chocolate, she glanced over at him.

“Your cousin’s cousin?” She questioned with a curious tilt of her head, throwing a marshmallow from across the room at him to catch. “I didn’t know you had cousins.”

“Eeh…It’s a little more complicated than just that. Technically Pari is a cousin once removed, but she’s more like a little sibling. Ana is her cousin. As is Chaz. *Stupid prick*.”

“You’ve not spoken about your family much at all.”

“What’s there to say? Pari’s the only one I like out of them all. But then most of them on my cousin – Pari’s side at least – are aasimar. My aunt is too, and it’s kind of hard to like anyone who thinks they’re superior because they’re a descendant of a celestial being.” He rolled his eyes and slouched across the sofa, laying the mirror down.

Milly stared at him, unsure of how to respond. Aasimar weren’t common in her world, neither were teiflings. There weren’t really any gods or demons and so it never really occurred to her that there might be other places where there was an over abundance of the celestial and-or demonic.

“So…half your family are aasimar?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you? Is that why you got this weirdness going on?”

“Fuck no!” He sat up and glowered. “Human as can be!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I…am mostly sure?”

“*Mostly*?”

He shrugged. “It’s kind of hard to tell on Fracture. There’s little bits of all kinds of people everywhere. No one has uh – what’s the word Ettiene likes to use? *Evolve*? Yeah. No one from there has evolved with the world, they kind of just arrived, part by part.”

“So there could be people from here – from my world – who are on Fracture?”

“Maybe? Maybe that’s where missing people end up. I know my grandma Petra was from elsewhere beforehand.”

Milly cradled her hot chocolate thoughtfully. The idea as possible, especially when there were never any bodies that turned up even after years of searching and thorough investigations into disappearances, but it couldn’t be proven.

Wandering back across to the sofa she nudged him with her foot.

“Do you think they miss you? Your family?”

“No.”

“*Oof*.”

“What?”

“You just answered that so quickly it…I’m just saying-”

Saracen held up his hand to stop her and shrugged.

“My family genuinely do not give a shit about me.” He said firmly. “They’re a bunch of narcissistic nostalgia-addicted assholes, who are more concerned about holding onto what remains of their little empires back from when Grandma Petra Stone was a pirate queen, and old Kedazi Ophanim still owned Neridan, and try to perpetuate that entitlement of power onto the rest of the family. If you have done nothing noteworthy or anything of importance to further the family, what good are you? And so far, all I’ve done for them is die.”

“*Narcissistic*?” She smirked at the new words he had picked up. “I knew you were paying attention during that lecture.”

“Well one of us had to! You fell asleep!”

“I was *resting* my *mind* in preparation for my exam.”

“Sure you were Milly. But anyway, I’d rather have a family of friends who actually want me than people who have to put up with me.” He said with a smile, then messed her hair up into a fluff.

“D’aww!”

“I know we’ve said about getting you back home but…do you want to go back?”

Saracen froze. In a blink of an eye he was a cat with silky black fur, ears pointed forward as he listened. Milly remained still, watching him to see what he would do.

“What? What is it?” She whispered, slowly reaching for her little journal full of spells of her own design, already planning which one to use.

Saracen didn’t answer and instead turned into a mouse, scurrying beneath the pillows. Alert to the sudden disappearing act to mean a teacher, Milly grabbed the blocky little TV remote to the tiny screen across from her and flicked it on immediately, trying to find a normal pose to be in for whoever was coming.

A knock sounded on the door and Milly called for them to come in.

Anja popped her head in.

“Hey. You busy?”

“Just watching TV. Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah.” She squinted at Milly with clear scepticism, eyes flicking about the room. “Pre-exam nerves. Can I…talk?”

“Sure.” Milly smiled, but behind her, she saw the silhouette of one of the teachers. ‘*Oh no here we go’* she thought ruefully, but she shuffled up along the sofa and patted the cushions for Anja. “Come in and close the door. It’s cold.”

Slowly closing the door to, Anja slowly shuffled further into the room.

“So,” Milly sipped the hot chocolate some more, “wha’sup dude?”

“I- Are those marshmallows?”

“Did you come in here just because you smelt them?”

“No!”

She bounded over.

“Fine. Take a handful.” Milly conceded, holding the bag out to her as she bounced down onto the sofa beside her. “What’s wrong though.”

“Oh I was just wondering if you noticed anything weird.”

*‘Weirder than our part-time dinosaur friend from another world?’* She thought to herself, trying not to look down at the pillows where Saracen’s little mousy nose was twitching. Instead she focused on Anja’s twitching ears instead. They always twitched when she was nervous.

“What kind of weird? Like ghosts and shit?”

“Kind of. I’m talking the seeing the weather change in real time when you get upset or weird stuff happening when stressed kind. Or hearing someone in your head weird.”

“Go see the councillors.” Milly said flatly, sipping her hot chocolate. “Or the psychology professor.”

“I did! He just said it was exam stress.”

“Well there you go, nothing to get even more stressed about.”

“But the weather!”

“What about it?”

“I…thought if you thought it was weird that the weather got all fucky when the chimera escaped.”

“Are you asking if I had anything to do with it? You know I don’t know any weather spells right? And I was never anywhere near the zoo when it escaped.”

“Damn. You saw through me.” She rolled her eyes and threw her head back to catch a marshmallow. “Professor Harry and Professor Ames asked me to ask you if you’d seen anything.”

“Why me?”

“I don’t know. Because you have no major so they think you’re a bum.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, don’t get offended! You’re a cute bum!”

“And you’re looking are you?” Saracen said as he popped out from behind the sofa.

Anja stared at him, then scooped up a pillow and whacked him several times over the head.

“Why are you in the girls room?!”

“Why do you always have to hit me with something?!”

Milly snickered, and watching the two fight she began to retrieve her stash and roll up a fresh blunt. Even as she lit it up and watched them, they continued to whack at each other with the pillows, throwing insults at one another, and as she stared, for a moment, they seemed to fall into slow motion. Puffing out a fog of smoke she swore she saw a mask covering Anja’s face.