the secret of distance

Chapter 17

Notes:

"There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world."

—Welcome to Nightvale

As the days pass quickly, Hope finds herself actually having fun.

She spends her mornings training with Josie, and sometimes Alaric joins them. Those practices in particular are slightly nerve-wracking, but the father of two never tries to give her the shovel talk. That somehow makes Hope more nervous when she thinks about it too much. She would much rather get it over with, if she's being honest.

Josie is steadily improving her fighting skills, at least. She still can't land a single hit on Hope unless the tribrid gets distracted, but she's definitely getting there. Hope feels terribly proud just thinking about it.

Sometimes she even tells Josie so, and the girl always answers with a beautiful, beaming smile that Hope can't help returning. She loves these moments the best, next to the times that Josie wanders into her bed late at night.

More often than not, Hope finds herself as the big spoon and comforts the siphoner after another monster or Malivore mission.

The monsters start to come more quickly, too.

One day Hope and Alaric meet an Agrabuamelu an hour away from Mystic Falls. Hope calls it Ugly instead of that long ass name, perfectly describing the half-scorpion, half-man whose sickly vertebrae protrudes from nearly-transparent, disgusting skin. Fortunately for them, Dorian swiftly researches the Mesopotamian mythology that births the monster and they're able to find its weakness—killing Ugly with its own venom.

Once again, Hope discovers Josie waiting for her when she gets back to the school. She prepares a long speech including a detailed apology when the other girl just kisses her on the cheek and reveals a plate of food she had stolen from the kitchen.

"I figured you must be hungry."

"I—" Hope's breath catches in her throat, oddly touched yet not surprised. "Thank you. Stay with me, please?"

"Of course."

Another night finds the headmaster and the Mikaelson in the forest outside the school fighting a giant boar. Hope laughs so hard that she loses her focus and ends up with a sharp horn in her thigh when the monster rams into her with its large head. Josie almost kills her for that particular one. The tribrid can still remember the conversation.

"Oh my god, it hurts!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Josie, you're not the one with a horn in your leg."

"It's soulmate sympathy pain!"

"That's not even a real thing!"

Hope's favorite monster she encounters is a demon named Asmodeus. He brings perverse sexual thoughts and desires to the surface, and Hope gets one really, really intense make-out session with her soulmate before she realizes she's possessed.

Hope holds the siphoner in place against the door as she yanks it closed, grabbing her wrists and pinning them above her head. Her eyes glow red as she presses another kiss to Josie's shoulder before whispering into her ear:

"Do you want me to fuck you against my desk? I had a pretty good dream about that one time."

Silence.

"Um. I don't think I meant to say that."

Her least favorite monster comes in the form of some combined—three Greek creatures named Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges. They tower over Hope and Alaric, almost as tall as the trees around them, and the tribrid tries not to gag when her eyes pick out a dozen limbs shifting and moving underneath their skin like ripples of a lake. They actually don't do much damage passed launching a bunch of huge rocks Hope's way, but it still exhausts her to dodge all of them.