Raven Chapter 8 Krakens, Care, and Crystal Arches 84
Raven
Forrest's statue nap is bearing down on us.
The guy doesn't get to choose when it happens—it just does, once a week, like a curse with impeccable scheduling.
I'm going to sneak out for a bit before it hits and go bother Jim.
The bright side? At least the nap is hitting now and not post-mission.
Paperwork is already hell without adding a groggy, reanimated gargoyle into the mix.
He rarely sleeps at night, mostly only needing a nap here and there in his human form.
His room reflects this fact every time I'm in it.
The space has two distinct areas. One boasts a large, starkly organized desk.
A wall of bookshelves stands sentinel behind it, filled with legal texts, policy manuals, and historical analyses, all perfectly aligned and organized, of course.
Three large monitors rest, hidden under the desk, and rise when he presses a button.
Most of the time they're filled with security footage, spreadsheets, and mission schematics, but occasionally he'll watch a show or something in an attempt to keep his dirty secrets from the guys.
Surprisingly, it’s not the raunchy porn kind of secret. Nope, his guilty pleasure is the Pride and Prejudice mini series.
The other corner of the room is his sleeping area, treated more like an afterthought than a place of relaxation.
It's shoved aside, perfectly ordered and devoid of personality—no decorative pillows, no sentimental photos, no soft lighting.
The lighting is actually ruthlessly functional: a bright, clinical glow for the office and a single focused reading lamp aimed at the rolled-up mattress.
Yeah, you heard me. A roll-up mattress. Just shoved in the corner like comfort doesn't matter.
According to Kieran, Leandre tracked it down for him after weeks of watching Forrest sleep on a camping pad—"like a sad wee Dugald." I have no idea what that is, but I take his word for it.
The thing still looks like it belongs in a monk's cell, not a bedroom.
Unrolled, it's just a thin, rectangular pad on the floor—no frame, no give, pure disciplined flatness.
The blanket is a single, precise fold of grey wool.
The reading lamp is the only concession to modern comfort, and I'm half-convinced Forrest only allowed it because it's angle-adjustable and energy-efficient.
Just add all of this to the reasons why this family needs therapy.
The most empty corner, though, across from both the command center and the sleeping area, is a single square of tape on the floor. He and Em have coined it the "designated stasis zone," but I just call it weird.
The weekly statue nap isn’t the most efficient thing in the world, but at the end of the day it’s a compensation for the fact that he doesn't sleep at night. Which feels like a decent trade off to me. At least he doesn’t have to hibernate for months like a bear.
The whole setup is too stiff for my liking.
I understand it's a ten-hour prolonged sleep that is also his most vulnerable and static time, and this is his attempt to self-discipline his way out of actually processing those feelings, but come on.
Plenty of people sleep ten hours a night.
They manage just fine without a tape square.
The minute I'm corporeal and can figure out how to order things online, I'm buying him a giant, utterly comfortable bed.
I'll even make sure it's sturdy enough for his stone form.
If I hear him utter, even one more time, that his little roll-up pad "provides adequate cushion without indulging in decadence," I'm going to stop calling him Ro-ro and join Anik in calling him "Preacher. "
Forrest is already twitchy, and I've barely been in his presence for five minutes. I'm trying to leave some good vibes behind before I head out to see Jim, but apparently he finds my positive energy unsettling. Or it’s the looming nap. Probably both.
Either way, the man needs to loosen up. And I definitely need to check on him more.
I get so tangled up in Em's deep-web drama that I forget he’s here, single-handedly keeping the whole circus running on sheer stubborn discipline.
He never complains, never grandstands—just shows up, every day, in every way that matters to the people who love him. Even if he’d never admit that out loud.
Miriam departed this morning. Kieran is still at the club—his work week starts Thursday evenings and runs through Monday morning.
Dre is off somewhere helping a shifter give birth to triplets, and Anik is in the office, pounding recruits into the ground to cope with the looming mission and his mom’s departure.
With the house so quiet and everyone accounted for, it’s the perfect time to slip away.
As much as I love their beautiful, dysfunctional energy, sometimes a ghost needs a break.
Jim’s calm is a balm I can almost feel from here.
I send the organized silence of Forrest’s world one final good vibe before turning my back on it, seeking the steady, deep peace of the harbor.
Instead of dropping off the side of the terrace, I keep my body afloat and sail over the city.
From up here, the whole island spreads out beneath me like a living map that has significantly less organizational skills than Ro-ro’s nap curse.
At the very center, perched on the island’s highest point, Gilded Meadows sits under a canopy of ancient trees that have no business being that lush in the middle of a supernatural metropolis.
I can’t actually see the estates—they’re tucked into pocket dimensions, each one its own perfect, private universe insulated from things like crime and poverty and reality.
Old money and too much power. My guys could live there. They have the bank accounts for it, the power, the reputation, the whole damn package. But they also happen to have better taste.
There are shifter dynasties, the kind that don’t bother with territorial pissing matches because they already won them centuries ago.
Eastern European lineages with grudges that predate electricity.
I even heard Dre mention once that a dragon clan has a holding in there somewhere, though no one’s seen one of them in decades. Probably napping on a pile of gold.
Goals.
The fae, or the high-fae I should say, keep their distance for the most part—Faerie is its own whole disaster—but there’s supposedly a “hospitality bubble” tucked into the Gilded Meadows, a designated vacation spot for high-court fae who want to slum it in the mortal realm without touching mortal dirt.
And then there are the others. Families who brought their gods and monsters across in steamer trunks and prayer books.
Mediterranean sorcerer bloodlines that trace back to Alexandria and Athens.
South American curandeiros whose lineage predates any European setting foot on their soil.
Nordic clans who still leave offerings for the old gods.
Irish fae who’d spit at the word “faerie” because their courts have names, thanks, and they’re older than your entire civilization.
They’re all in there, somewhere, in their pocket dimensions and warded manors, sipping something expensive and complaining about the help.
I flip them off just in case anyone’s looking and can actually see me with their all-powerful rich people eyeballs.
Below the tree line, the Spire's glass towers catch the dying light and throw it back like they're showing off.
Tiered high-rises climb the northern slope in neat, ambitious rows—the kind of architecture that screams I have a retirement plan and my children will attend the right academies .
This is where you live when you've made it but haven't inherited it.
Successful professionals, mid-level Council bureaucrats, powerful supes who don't have the family name to coast on.
Forrest's office is in there somewhere, a mile or so from the penthouse.
The penthouse itself isn't in the Spire, though. We're right on the seam, where aspirational sterility bleeds into something messier.
The Merchant's Ring wraps around the base of the hill.
This is where the economic heart of the city lies.
Even from above, I can feel the chaos: streets crammed with stalls selling everything from ethically sourced phoenix feathers to feats of dwarven engineering I'm not smart enough to understand.
The Quartz Nexus Arch dominates the central plaza, its crystalline surface catching light and throwing prismatic knives across the surrounding rooftops.
Neutral territory where the only law is commerce.
Kieran's club is somewhere in the eastern sprawl, all low lighting and carefully cultivated mystery. Deeper west, pressed against the old seawall, Hell's Bend sits in a slightly less ritzy, more grimy part of the ring.
Past the Merchant's Ring, the architecture starts to…
relax isn't the right word. Surrender, maybe.
The Lower Quarter stretches in a crescent of mixed ambitions.
The buildings are a chaotic patchwork of human practicality and supernatural whimsy that couldn't quite afford either.
This is where the strivers live—the ones who clawed their way out of worse and are desperately trying not to slide back.
I can practically feel the tension from here.
Everyone is one good deal away from moving up or a bad one from moving down.
And then, at the southern edge, pressed against the sea: The Shallows.
The Human district. So named because the supes in charge think they're shallow waters—no power, no depth, no reason to look twice. Just a place to dump the ones who don't register on their magical radar.