Chapter Twelve #2
"Um..." I think I know where this is going, and I'm debating between letting her show off and trying to trip her up.
I decide to land somewhere in the middle.
"Salted caramel macaron," I say with a smirk.
She opens the cellophane around the cookie in midair and, when it plops out onto the desk, it's the most perfectly shaped caramel-colored macaron I've ever seen in my life.
She picks it up and cracks in half, handing me a piece and scarfing the other down herself.
I'm still staring at my piece when she huffs out a laugh. "You can eat it. It won't bite," she tells me. I shake my head a bit and focus my gaze on her before popping it in my mouth.
"This is the best fucking macaron I've ever had," I mumble around the bite, and she beams at me. "Can you make anything you want?"
"Well, there are definitely limits. Like I could probably change that into any kind of cookie you asked for as long as I knew what it was. I couldn't turn it into a full five course dinner, though. It has to be..."
"An equivalent exchange?" I interrupt her, wiggling my eyebrows at the reference. I realize too late that an immortal being who lives on a mountain probably hasn’t seen Fullmetal Alchemist, but at least I can appreciate my own joke. Then she shocks the absolute shit out of me.
"Well, to obtain, something of equal value must be lost. Obviously," she says with a smirk. Well, fuck. “The library is a full collection of past and present written works. That includes manga,” she explains.
"Aren't you just full of surprises," I say, tossing the trash in the takeout bag and clearing some space for my notebook. "So... about this first draft."
We spend the next few days brainstorming, writing, and nesting.
I've written another twenty chapters or so, and I've got six more planned to wrap everything up.
I'm so close I can taste it, and now I'm terrified to finish it.
What if they take her from me anyway? What if, no matter what we do, I lose her?
What the fuck am I supposed to do against literal gods?
The next morning, I insist on taking a break and typing up what I have written so far instead of writing more.
I tell her it’s because my hand is cramping from all the writing, which isn’t a lie.
I probably should have been typing this all to begin with.
Callie eyes me suspiciously at the suggestion, but her qualms are quickly forgotten when I set a full home cooked breakfast spread and coffee in front of her.
I bring my laptop in from the living room and spend all afternoon typing, occasionally tossing lines out at her for critique.
She spends the day curled up in my bed reading again, surrounded by a nest of blankets and snacks.
I go back and forth between my desk and the bed, trying to be productive enough that she doesn't notice I'm dragging my feet.
I'm not sure if it's just her presence or if she's actively using her powers on me, but I'm continuously getting new ideas as I type up my own words.
Different ways to word things, minor details to expound on.
.. This story seems to get better with every addition and change.
By the time we reconvene at my desk to scarf down some dinner, I'm a little over halfway done typing everything up. It was something I'd have to do eventually, but it was doubling as a procrastination effort and it's quickly outliving its plausibility.
"It's not as good as real Italian food," she says, pushing the remnants of a meatball around her nearly empty plate.
"But it was pretty damn good." She leans back in her chair and pats a hand on her stomach with a groan that I've learned indicates an incoming food coma.
Sure enough, she crawls back into bed and dozes off while I take a break from typing to play some video games.
I choose a simple 16-bit farming sim to give my brain a break, but it just keeps spinning in circles around all the insane information I've crammed into it over the last week.
Gods are real. Greek mythology is real. Muses are real.
Magic is real. Callie is real, and mine, and laying in my bed, and I'm... not in it with her? Because I'm a fucking idiot, right.
I abandon my game, sliding out of my sweats and slipping under the blanket behind her.
I press a kiss to the side of her neck, and she hums. I can see the corner of her mouth tip up in her sleep, so I plant another one there before burying my face in her hair and pulling her tight to me.
There's no way in hell I'll be able to sleep, but being wrapped around her like this calms my nerves enough to stop the tailspin I was putting myself into.
I need a plan.
We’ve been so wrapped up in my book that we haven’t left the apartment in days.
The weather is supposed to be tolerable tomorrow, and the farm is open all day for the general public.
I'll take her to go see the cows, and then we can get Mexican for dinner.
That should eat up most of the day. I'm sure I can think of some other extracurricular activities to take up the evening.
We can fill up on dinner, but I'm sure I'll still be starving for her.