Sheltering Her (Lore of the Fields #2)

Vivian

Squatter’s rights. I had dreamed of them since I was a kid.

Staring at the document pasted on the dilapidated door of my New York flat, my eyes welled with tears. The heading of the notice mocked me with big, inky-black letters: “Notice to Vacate”. The death knell to everything I’d been working towards my entire adult life.

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” I miserably half-laughed, half-croaked, to myself.

I was a meager four months away from legally claiming the property through Adverse Possession. Four. Fucking. Months. I could practically taste the sweet relief of stability. Officially having a home to call my own…

Now, that hope was gone.

I ripped the paper from the chipped blue paint and stomped into the space that I considered as good as mine.

What’d once been an open-concept workspace for start-ups had become my sanctuary.

Not my first choice in comfort, neighborhood, or aesthetics, but that didn’t really matter to me.

I'd lived without stable housing since running away at twelve.

This place beat sleeping in parks and on the couches of sketchy ass people, afraid to close my eyes at night.

The room was cold—aged concrete, rusty metal, and yellowing glass—but I’d found ways to warm it up.

Working fast food didn’t exactly provide a decorating budget, but years of propagating an army of plants added much-needed life and vibrancy to the space.

I made things “homey” with the limited resources I had.

My face twisted into a grimace when I looked at the wall I’d marked with chalk tallies over the years—counting down until I could file the paperwork to claim this place as mine. Every squatter's dream. I’d done everything right in building my legal case for ownership, and now none of it mattered.

In just a few weeks, what little security I’d built would be gone. I didn’t have a backup plan.

“Mreeeeeoowwww.”

My damp eyes blinked down to my cat, Nurghle, who rubbed on my swollen ankles affectionately while noisily complaining about my absence. Another lovely fourteen-hour shift on my feet. Everything hurt.

“Sorry, buddy,” I sniffled, scooping him into my arms and carrying him to our mattress on the floor.

I fell onto the bed and buried my face into the soft fur of his stomach, allowing it to soak up my tears. His purring couldn’t magically fix all the pain, fear, and rage… but damn if it didn’t make a shitty day feel a little less shitty.

Up until I saw that notice on my door, I thought the worst of my day would be passing out at the register at work. Closely followed by repeatedly fleeing to the bathroom to heave up my guts. Coworkers complained, but I couldn’t afford to call out sick anymore.

This had been happening for months: fevers, vomiting, fainting, weakness, and body aches. The symptoms were getting worse, and nothing I did helped. At this point, I was just hoping to not be literally dying. Health insurance was a luxury I couldn’t afford, so there was no way to be sure.

The world was spinning. My vision started to fill with black blotches. These episodes sucked, but at least I was home for this one. I hugged Nurghle a little tighter and closed my eyes.

Feeling overwhelmed about that letter wasn’t helping, but how could I not be? I just wanted to be healthy, safe, and have a place to call my own. Was that so much to ask for?! Apparent-fucking-ly.

“Mreeeooooowwwwww!”

“What, buddy?”

I peeked an eye open in response to the sound of distress. His black fur was so bright it was practically chocolate brown, as if directly under a lamp.

I looked down.

What the fuck?! I’m the lamp?!

My head jerked back as I realized I was glowing. Electricity was pulsing through my veins. Hairs rose along my arms. Nurghle’s fur stood on end, too. He tried to wiggle away, but in my panic I clung tighter.

“What’s happening?!” My voice was shrill as I frantically scooted across my mattress, trying to run away from… what, myself?

Being struck by lightning didn’t make my extensive list of unfortunate life experiences, but I had to imagine what happened next was par for the course. A blinding white-yellow light. All my muscles contracting at once. Sparks igniting in every cell of my body.

I was being torn to pieces. Smoke drifting through the air. Wisps of cloud ripping apart until nothing was left. The tip of a joint set ablaze, inhaled, and extinguished. The pain of crumbling to ash only to be lit once more by some bitch with a crappy butane lighter. Again. And again.

Then it was over. And everything felt… fine?

I opened my eyes.

Gold. Everywhere. Precious gems. Warm light.

I stood in an open pavilion with white marble columns, a shallow crystal-clear pool, and fountain spouts trickling streams of water down gilded walls.

The rich environment was accented by beautiful foliage twisting around the opulent features.

The pool was occupied by a handful of men and women, naked, indulging in drinks, sex, and platters of odd fruit.

Shit, I’m naked too. Frankly, it was one of my lesser concerns at the moment, but a huge concern nonetheless.

“Miss Vivian,” a soft voice said from behind me.

I snapped around in surprise at hearing my name, finding a woman draped in white silk holding a… clipboard?

“Where am I?” I clutched a very still and apprehensive Nurghle to my chest. At least he was naked, too.

“Your mother’s palace,” she answered flatly. “Come with me.”

Mother?! As strange of an answer as that was, I hesitantly followed behind her through a series of magnificently carved archways, not eager to stay in the den of hedonism.

“I think you may be confused. I don’t have a mother,” I laughed dryly.

If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have a father either.

I may as well have been an orphan. After months of being warned the world would “eat me alive” whenever I’d threatened to run away, I finally did so at the ripe old age of twelve.

Being eaten alive sounded better than living with him.

I chose the slums over his mansion, hunger over his private chef, dropping out of school over his private tutors.

“I wouldn’t advise repeating that sentiment to her,” the woman replied, her angelic voice ringing along with the golden wind chimes we passed.

I’d never been anywhere like this, even with my privileged childhood.

Everything was pristine, glowing, alive.

Did I die? The scenery was similar enough to heavenly stereotypes.

The dress draping from the woman’s shoulders and hips reminded me of Greek goddesses.

She fit in with the statues and carvings of women of all shapes and sizes posed throughout the palace.

Had I seen someone feeding grapes to their lover in the pool?

So far, the afterlife was pretty cliché.

As we passed through a loggia of marble arches streaked with gold, I noticed the courtyard outside was framed by a field stretching as far as my eyes could see. Wheat rippled like ocean waves in response to the breeze.

I definitely died.

We stopped outside of a set of extravagant wooden doors, at least thirty feet tall.

A massive, engraved golden tree was centered along the split, its branches stretching to the matching doorframe.

Its leaves were emeralds. Real emeralds.

They glistened blue in the beams of sunlight spilling between the surrounding columns.

The woman sucked in a deep breath. “Say as little as possible,” she instructed, waving her hand in front of an amber crystal where handles should have been.

I jumped involuntarily as the tree’s trunk split down its center, the doors opening with a low groan. A blinding light poured in through the gap.

I blinked away the glare. Figures and shapes slowly bled through the assault on my pupils, revealing the room. It must be pretty important, with all the entrance theatrics.

My escort walked ahead while I stood back, dumbfounded.

“Goddess Eva,” she greeted humbly. “I bring Vivian.”

Goddess Eva. On a gilded throne ascending to the arched ceilings, sat a tall blonde woman clad in decorative jewelry—and nothing else.

She was heavily pregnant, the chains around her waist draped over her rounded belly.

At her feet was a man, fully undressed and positioned between her open thighs.

Her curved leg draped over his shoulder as if he were nothing more than a footstool. Part of the furniture.

He moved to stand.

“Stay,” the blonde woman called “goddess” commanded in a powerful, sultry voice that echoed in the throne room.

He obediently lowered back down, leaning his face into her full inner thigh and licking subserviently.

“Arella, why in all the heavens is that thing here?” she asked with a disapproval that made my stomach churn. I’d had my share of people talking down to me, but that was new.

The woman who had escorted me here—Arella—looked at Nurghle. Oh. Not me. Him.

“I don’t know. It arrived with her,” she replied.

“Remove it.”

Arella stepped towards me.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” I snarled, my stunned silence broken by maternal instinct.

I stepped back and wrapped my hand protectively over Nurghle’s head, baring my teeth.

They would take my cat over my dead body.

Double dead. If that was a thing. They could send me to hell with his furry ass if they had to; he was staying with me.

Nurghle was all the family I had in life, would continue to be my everything in death.

Arella cringed, raised hands hesitating to reach for him as instructed. “We will be leaving shortly. Perhaps she can keep the beast as a gift?”

The goddess’s piercing eyes, prismatic and shifting every color of the rainbow, assessed me coldly. Her lip curled in displeasure as she returned her gaze to Nurghle.

“Very well,” she conceded. “Vivian… Vivian… Which one was Vivian?” she droned, her fingers slowly swaying to the lull of ambient music in the distance.