The Gathering

The Morning After

XV. The Morning After

Dawn came slowly to the Witch-house. Cool air through the windows. Light filtered through curtains that smelled faintly of lavender and older things.

The guest rooms had been a surprise. Nine of them, each furnished differently. All comfortable. All prepared for occupation. Fresh linens. Working plumbing. Even towels in the bathrooms, soft and new.

"Someone's been playing house," Mia had observed the night before. Her hand ran along a perfectly made bed. "And they've been doing it for a while."

They'd chosen rooms by instinct. The Wilds took a large corner room with two beds. They'd shared sleeping space since childhood and saw no reason to stop now. Alice selected a room with a full-length mirror. Emma claimed the one nearest the electrical panel. Kash chose the room with the best sight lines to the garden. Kamadan took the smallest room at the end of the hall.

"I require little space," he'd said. "The Keepers taught simplicity."

Sarah hesitantly accepted a cozy room, decorated for a younger guest.

"We'll explore the basement in the morning," Alice had declared. "When we're rested and the light is better."

"The basement won't have natural light," Emma pointed out.

"The metaphorical light, Emma. The light of restored cognitive function."

"Ah. You mean when we're not exhausted."

"Precisely."

Now it was morning, early, the sun barely clearing the trees. The Wilds were the first downstairs.

Or so they thought.

Emma sat at the kitchen table. Pieces of what had once been a microwave oven surrounded her. Her jumpsuit was immaculate. Her silver hair precisely arranged. Her expression focused. In front of her, a small device blinked with lights that shouldn't have existed in consumer electronics.

"Morning," Mia said cautiously. "Did you sleep?"

"Three hours and forty-seven minutes. Optimal for my requirements."

Emma didn't look up from her work.

"I've been conducting an electromagnetic survey."

"Of course you have."

"The results are significant."

Emma connected two wires. The device emitted a soft hum.

"Making it behave," she added, apparently to the device itself.

Lora moved toward the refrigerator. Fully stocked, they'd discovered last night, with fresh produce and staples that shouldn't have been there.

"Emma, do you want breakfast? I'm making eggs."

"I did the electromagnetic study," Emma continued, as if Lora hadn't spoken. "The entire manor is inside a dampening area."

Mia started the coffee machine. A modern one, blessedly functional. The smell of dark roast filled the kitchen. She rubbed her eyes.

"Gosh, I don't understand Borg in the morning. Emma? Scrambled eggs. Yes or no?"

Emma finally looked up. Her expression was neutral. Her posture shifted. Adaptive mode engaging.

"I think they are mildly optimal as an early meal."

Mia stared at her.

Emma's face twitched. Then she laughed: a genuine sound, warm and unexpected.

"Fine. I can adapt." She set down her tools. "To translate: we are inside a huge Faraday cage. Very complicated tuning. The structure of this house has been deliberately configured. The stone, the metal framework, the wiring. All designed to block certain frequencies. No one can detect us from outside. I ran quick tests with the equipment I found in the basement antechamber."

"You went to the basement?"

"Only the antechamber. The stairs and a small landing. I didn't proceed further. We agreed to explore together."

Emma picked up her device again.

"But I did notice something interesting. The dampening is selective. External detection is blocked, but we still have access to the mobile network. Full Internet connectivity. That requires extremely sophisticated engineering."

"So we're hidden but not isolated," Lora said. She cracked eggs into a bowl. Shells crunched under her fingers.

"Precisely. Someone wanted us to be invisible to certain forms of surveillance while remaining connected to the outside world. I would very much like to learn how they achieved this."

Emma finished reassembling the microwave's control panel. Her fingers moved with mechanical precision.

"Good. This unit was miscalibrated. It will function properly now."

Mia poured coffee. Strong, black, the way she'd been drinking it for sixty years. She sat across from Emma.

"You mentioned something last night," she said. "At the library. When Kamadan was explaining what happened to previous gatherings. You used a word."

"I used many words. Could you be more specific?"

"Ascending." Mia's voice had gone flat. "You said some of them ascended. And I didn't like it."

Emma's hands stilled on the microwave.

"I noticed your reaction," she said carefully. "Your physiological indicators suggested distress. Heart rate elevation, micro-expressions consistent with grief response. I chose not to pursue it in the moment."

"But you're pursuing it now."

"You raised the subject."

Emma's tone was gentle. Adaptive mode, fully engaged.

"I apologize if the word triggered difficult memories. It was a term from the historical texts Kamadan referenced. I don't know what it means in that context."

Lora had stopped cooking. She came to stand beside her sister. One hand resting on Mia's shoulder.

"It's personal," Lora said quietly. "It's about our husbands."

Emma waited. She didn't prompt. Didn't push. Just waited with the patience of someone who understood that some words needed time to emerge.

"Mine was named Thomas," Lora continued. "He was a session musician. Jazz trumpet. We met in ninety-five, married six months later. He had an oncology diagnosis in 2019. Pancreatic. Stage four by the time they found it."

"I'm sorry."

"Mia's husband was David. Sound engineer. Brilliant ears. He could hear frequencies most people can't even imagine. There was an accident in 2021. Studio fire. He survived, but the burns were..."

Lora stopped.

Mia took over. Her voice rough.

"They were both looking at suffering. Months of it, maybe years. The kind of ending that strips away everything you were. Leaves you hollow."

She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. Not drinking. Just holding. Her knuckles whitened on the ceramic.

"The Fae taught us something, during our time in the Court. They showed us that death doesn't have to be final. That the ones we love can be arranged to ascend to them."

"Ascend," Emma repeated. "You mean..."

"I mean we made a choice."

Mia looked up, meeting Emma's eyes directly.

"We asked the Seelie Court to take them. To bring them across before the suffering got too bad. Thomas went first. November 2020. David in March 2022."

"They're in the Otherworld?"

"They're somewhere." Mia's jaw tightened. "The Fae were honest with us. Ascension isn't clean. The person who arrives there isn't exactly the person who left. The memories might be different. The feelings might have changed. They probably wouldn't recognize us now. But they're not suffering. They're not hollow. They're transformed."

"That's why you retired," Emma said slowly. "In 2023. When you were sixty."

"I was sixty. Lora was sixty-one. We'd been performing for thirty years since we came back from the Court. Thirty years of music, tours, albums. And then David was gone, and I couldn't..."

Mia stopped. Swallowed.

"The music felt different after that. Like it was coming from a hollow place. We needed to stop. To remember why we started."

Silence filled the kitchen. Only the hum of the coffee machine. The soft sizzle of neglected eggs.

"I see," Emma finally said. Her voice had shifted. Not Borg-mode flat, but something softer. More careful. "I'm sorry to disturb that memory."

"You didn't know."

"No. But I should have been more cautious with terminology."

Emma paused.

"When I was wherever I was before, I had a similar choice. Two individuals I cared about. I chose differently than you did. I'm not certain which choice was correct."

Mia looked at her sharply. "You had family?"

"I mentioned once that I have two children. Adults now, with families of their own." Emma's expression was unreadable. "I haven't seen them in a long time. The circumstances of my existence make such contact complicated."

"But you didn't let them ascend."

"I didn't have that option. Or perhaps I did, and chose not to recognize it."

Emma stood abruptly. She moved to rescue the eggs from the stove.

"The past is difficult to navigate, even with perfect memory. Perhaps especially with perfect memory."

Lora took the spatula from her, gently. "I'll finish. You've done enough this morning."

"I haven't done anything."

"You listened. That's something."

Emma stood awkwardly for a moment. Then she returned to her seat. Mia pushed a second cup of coffee toward her. Already poured. Already prepared.

"You don't believe in the Otherworld," Lora said. Not accusingly. Just observing.

"Facts first." Emma wrapped her hands around the cup, mirroring Mia's posture. "You are facts. Altered physiology. Delayed aging. Above-average brain activity and cognitive functions. I scanned you both last night while you slept."

"You scanned us?"

"Non-invasively. Electromagnetic resonance only."

Emma's tone was matter-of-fact.

"Your cellular degradation rates are approximately one-eighth normal human baseline. Your neural connectivity patterns are atypical. More densely networked. Unusual activity in regions associated with musical processing. Your immune responses are elevated in ways I don't fully understand."

"What does that mean in non-Borg?"

"It means something happened to you that fundamentally altered your biology. Whether that something was the Seelie Court, or extended exposure to threshold energy, or something else entirely, I cannot determine without more data."

Emma sipped her coffee.

"But I believe your experiences are real. I simply don't yet understand the mechanism."

"You believe us?" Mia's voice carried surprise.

"I believe that you believe. And I believe that something has made you what you are."

Emma set down her cup.

"I've learned to distinguish between I don't understand and it's not real. The universe contains many things I don't understand. That doesn't mean they don't exist."

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Then Mia laughed softly. A warm sound, tired but genuine.

"You know what, Borg? That's the most human thing you've said since we met."

"I'm practicing," Emma admitted. "Adaptation is an ongoing process."

The others began filtering downstairs. Alice first, looking more rested than anyone who'd slept in Victorian-adjacent clothing should. Then Kash. Then Kamadan. Finally Sarah, yawning and still half-asleep.

Eggs were scrambled. Coffee was poured. The kitchen filled with the sounds of morning. Plates clinked. Forks scraped ceramic. Voices murmured. The occasional burst of laughter.

And then, when breakfast was finished and the dishes were stacked, they went to the basement.