Mirrored Conflicts (a Sokeefe story)

Chapter 16: The Message

Keefe slept surprisingly well that night. So well, in fact, that when he woke up in the morning, he momentarily forgot that anything had happened the night before.

That is, until he realized that he was underneath a pile of sparkly dresses.

Right. He was at Havenfield.

He wasn't sure what had possessed him. Walking around in the Forbidden Cities at night, with none of the means he usually had to keep himself safe, he'd eventually decided to take Samantha's ill-informed advice and leap to Havenfield. Terrified of running into Grady and Edaline, he'd anxiously considered a number of very bad ideas, including asking the alicorns politely to fly him up to Sophie's window, and ultimately decided to steal books from a human library and make himself a staircase.

Now that he had calmed down, he was a little bit bewildered by his own actions. But Sophie got it, and must have been actively trying to cover for him, because he could hear voices outside of the closet, and if he listened carefully...

"Grady, she can teleport. I doubt this was an elaborate plan to sneak out." That must have been Edaline.

"How else do you explain the staircase of books?!" So that was probably Grady.

"Listen, I was just a little homesick, okay?!" Sophie said desperately, and her emotions were convincing enough that Keefe didn't think it was a lie—not fully, anyway. But she hadn't lived in the Forbidden Cities in years, so why... "Visiting Amy again just reminded me of how much I loved my human family. And now... now they're gone, and..." Sophie was getting genuinely emotional, and Keefe's heart twisted.

He hated that he had anything to do with that.

Well, he didn't. But for some reason, he wanted to distance himself far, far away from the organization that had.

Which he had never wanted before.

"So I went to the library. I was just going to read a few books, but I forgot how much I loved reading, and I ended up taking all of them with me and... yeah. It was kinda stupid. But I didn't really know what else to do with them, and I was kinda wired so maybe my brain was having weird ideas... but it was kind of relaxing!"

Okay, Sophie was handling this like a pro. She almost made Keefe's panicked decisions make sense.

"Oh Sophie..." Edaline trailed off, but given the overwhelming sweetness filling the air, he was sure Edaline was hugging her. Love was a weird emotion for him to feel.

And Edaline... clearly loved Sophie.

A lot.

Keefe had always wondered if there was a kind of love he couldn't really sense, perhaps because it wasn't an emotion, it was a decision. And he'd almost convinced himself of that. But no. Edaline loved Sophie and Keefe could absolutely feel it and it made him feel sick.

"I knew it must be hard for you, but I never really stopped to think about how much. I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault," Sophie said quietly. "I never said anything."

"You can always talk to us, Sophie. About anything. I hope you know that," Grady said.

Sophie laughed. "You guys are squishing me!" she shrieked.

How cute.

Oh, what a delightful happy little family.

"How about later today you take me to that library, and I can discreetly find a way to conjure all the books back where they belong, okay?"