Chapter 17 #2
It’s Anissa. She’s cut her hair again—shorter, matching the length of the choppy pieces that used to hang at the front of her face.
It’s tousled, not quite straight and not quite wavy, but looks much better now.
Her bangs are in her eyes, and her eyeliner is either smudged kohl or yesterday’s mascara.
Her fingers glint with three different gemstone rings, and I notice a rope bracelet around her wrist with the evil eye stone braided into it, reminding me of all the silly “witchy” rumors about her.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the pens she’s holding out.
The last real interaction I had with Anissa was that Thursday morning debrief in Costa, when we thought she’d overheard us commenting about her hair.
I wonder if she remembers it, too; it’d be burned into my mind, I think, if things were the other way around.
As an olive branch, I tell her, “Your hair looks nice. That length really suits you.”
She rolls her eyes. “My mom didn’t give me much choice. I made a real botch job bleaching some of it a few weeks ago.”
“Is that why you…?” It’s too awkward to say had those awful, uneven chunks at the front, so I mime a pair of scissors near my face instead.
“Yeah.” She laughs, a brash and short sound, but not unfriendly. “I was trying to dye it purple and after I started thought maybe I should just do a test patch, which is just as well because I basically fried it.”
“Oh shit! Well…it…looks…”
Better, I don’t quite say, but she obviously knows that’s what I meant, because she holds my gaze, and there’s a little more spark to it compared to any other time I’ve seen her. This is also the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and the most I’ve heard her say in one go.
I stand up, bag haphazardly packed, and Anissa stands, too, holding something else out to me.
Of Wrath and Rune: Book 1—The Wakening.
Crap. Crap, crap, crap!
It’s mine, it’s definitely mine, with the pages crinkled, the front cover creased where it bent in half in my bag, and a makeup stain on the side where I spilled some foundation. My heart thunders in my chest. She might as well be handing me a hive of angry wasps.
I stare at the book in horror, too alarmed to even try to play it cool—oh, I’m just hanging on to it for a friend—and Anissa gives me a soft, barely there smile.
“I thought it looked like Téiglin that you were sketching before,” she says. “And I saw that photo of you and Jake from school at Comic Con over the weekend, with the guy who plays Daxys. That was really cool.”
“It…” I swallow the lump in my throat. The classroom is empty now, but it won’t be for long. “It was pretty cool actually, yeah. He was really nice. He liked my—” No, not “my” friend, Max is not “my” friend by any stretch. “He liked Jake’s friend’s cosplay.”
“Was that the guy dressed as Sir Grayson?”
“Yeah. Max.”
“Omigod,” she gushes, suddenly animated, her hazel eyes bright.
She smiles wide enough to show a gap between her front teeth I’ve never noticed before.
“He looked so cool! That’s so amazing. I can’t believe you guys all got to meet Daxys like that.
” Her eyes skirt past me then, lingering on my painting.
Her mouth falls open as she drinks it in. “Is that the Gilded Glade?”
“Yeah.” I point to an area of the trees. My heart is pounding, but it feels more like excitement to actually talk about my piece than worry at being found out. “I’ve gone for a kind of more abstract look, but if you squint you can sort of make out—”
“Téiglin!” she cries, and laughs, the sound lighter this time as she tilts her head to see the vague shape of an antlered man blended into the trees, her eyes tracking across the canvas and picking out the subtle, half-hidden shapes of fauns, a Minotaur, gnomes…
You wouldn’t know unless you were looking for them, and it’s unrecognizable as OWAR fanart except to those who know.
And Anissa, unquestionably, knows.
“I didn’t realize you were a fan too,” she tells me as I wash my paintbrush at the sink. Splotches of dried paint are caked onto my fingers, but I’ll have to deal with that later—I need to get to class. “How long have you been into it?”
“Er, not long. How about you?”
“Since always. I think I found the first book in the library when I was about ten, and I never looked back.”
“Ten?” I echo, jaw dropping, and I blurt, “I can’t even make it through more than a few pages of the book now; I can’t imagine reading them as a ten-year-old.”
She shrugs, looking embarrassed, though I didn’t mean it badly at all.
“So are you into all the other stuff, too?” I ask. I wonder if I’ve exchanged messages with her in the Discord without even realizing it, or if she was wandering around Comic Con or the Worlds Beyond convention last month and we missed each other.
Anissa cocks her head, frowning at me. “Other stuff? What, like…Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, you mean?”
“No, like the fandom stuff. Like Comic Con. You know, OWAR cosplays and fanfiction and Discords and that kind of thing.”
“I…” Her frown deepens, and she searches my face, almost like she’s looking for the lie in my words, some kind of trick. “I’ve read a couple of fanfictions, but…”
I have the sudden urge to ask if she’s a Silversmith shipper, too, what she thinks about the theory that Devon will die protecting Lady di Silver, to say how excited I am for Lady di Silver and Roach to cross paths (which I’m sure they inevitably will in later episodes) because I’ve become convinced they’ll end up having a really strong platonic bond, like siblings.
The thoughts pour in so thick and fast I can’t pick which one to ask first, and they’re followed swiftly by the realization that I care about her answers. About this fandom.
And not even for Jake’s sake, but…just because.
I end up swallowing all my questions, and Anissa is still staring at me funny. She looks almost distrustful, as if whatever tentative bridge we just formed is going to shatter if she tries to step across it.
People are starting to stream into the classroom now, and I’m going to be late for my next class. I am late, probably. Anissa will be too, because she stayed to help me.
“We should get going,” I say.
She nods, and I wait for her to grab her own things, though we leave in silence. I can’t quite pinpoint what I said that shifted the conversation for the worse, and understand much less why it bothers me so much.
Do I even want to be friends with Anissa? The quiet loner girl I was so keen to avoid, worried I’d be tarnished by association? Or cursed, like Evie suggested she was capable of?
At the end of the corridor, we part ways, and I mutter a goodbye. Anissa hums, not quite saying anything, and we move in opposite directions to our next classes, other stragglers cluttering up the hallways.
I only get a few steps before I spin on my heel and run after her.
“Wait! Anissa!”
I catch up to her and she looks at me with that frown still in place.
“There’s a Discord—a chat room forum thing—for some local OWAR fans; they’re all really nice.
There’s, like, channels within it for discussing theories or sharing links to fanart, and they organize meetups sometimes, although I haven’t gone to any of those.
Mostly they just talk about the show. The books, whatever.
I could send you a link, if…if you wanted? ”
The crease in her forehead and the pinch between her eyebrows eases away, and she blinks at me, owlish, before nodding.
“Cool, okay. Yeah. I’ll, um…” I don’t know why I’m so flustered.
It’s just—it’s weird, sharing the fandom with someone in real life, someone who’s not Jake.
It’s also weird to think that a long-established fan like Anissa, who’s been into the books for six or seven years, isn’t already invested in every facet of this bonkers little community. “I’ll send you the link.”
“That’d be really nice. I never get to chat about Of Wrath and Rune with anybody.”
“Well, now you can.”
She smiles, showing that gap in her teeth again, and there’s something almost Jake-like in her grin that makes me smile back.
OWAR Discord #324
#general
@mythicwitch
Happy Friday, folks! How’re your weekends looking? I just wanted to welcome @ladyanissadishipper to the group, she’s a longtime reader but new to the Discord
@sirmoonypants
Hey!
@fauningforhim
Hi @ladyanissadishipper!
@silversmithhh
Greetings, fellow fangirl!
@runicrascal
Welcome to the chat
@wizeguy
sup @ladyanissadishipper, great to have you here
@theseboots-weremade-formoonwalking
BE YE A RASCAL, @ladyanissadishipper?!
Private chat with @ladyanissadishipper
@ladyanissadishipper
Thanks for the invite Cerys can’t believe I didn’t know things like this existed for the OWAR fandom! And everyone seems so nice!
@mythicwitch
They’ve been very helpful to a newbie like me haha. And silversmithhh has some great fanfic recommendations (three guesses for which romantic pairing)
@ladyanissadishipper
I think this will be where I leave you, sorry
@mythicwitch
***
@ladyanissadishipper
The books made me Team Sir Grayson the Moonwalker before I even knew what shipping was lol. I get what the show is going for but…you won’t convince me she isn’t destined to end up with Sir Grayson
@mythicwitch
You’re right, this is where we leave each other
…but say more. I started the first audiobook a few days ago, maybe there’s some Moonsilver foreshadowing I need to be looking out for
@ladyanissadishipper
DEFINITELY. I mean, they’ve both got these HUGE ties to fate and so many parallels with their journeys of links to noble blood/duty that they twist out of to serve a greater good, and in this essay I will…