sphere of the sacred worm

"I think I'm developing opinions on things... that I never had before?"
"You make it sound like a medical problem."
-Liza and Klyatva over drinks

• Cora, having just offered Liza a job, must then follow up with a discussion of what it is she's even planning to do with the Bleak Academy, and Liza proceeds to ask her a number of reasonable but difficult questions and gives her decent advice. Cora continues to realize the increasing enormity of her new job, and considers hitting up the chancery and others for possible new hires. Liza also learns that Cora is the new Headmaster and that Ovida is the Bleak Academy now.
• Cora returns home to Yulia and slips into bed with her before waking her. They tearfully reunite, and Yulia starts to learn about the new aspects of Cora's ghost hybrid body. They speak about what happened and what happens next, before Yulia returns to sleep at Cora's suggestion, holding tightly to her arm¹.
• Liza invites Raya over to have dinner² with her and her family, since she and Aspechka are dating but not calling it that. They talk a bit about recent events, I rush to calculate when in the winter this is and engineer a school schedule, and they talk about various teachers and shared classes. Liza asks Raya about the local angels and her own experiences, which she recounts. Raya mostly succeeds at not putting her foot in her mouth when she mentions the Voroninas' poor reputation in Old Molder and is asked to describe the rumors in more detail. Mushroom drama is recounted, Raya learns about Cora becoming Headmaster, and everything goes well as Liza fetches dessert³.
• Ovida mingles among the students of the Academy and finds many of them still working on their programs of study and personal endeavors. She speaks with a student attempting to produce art of something that has never been known, and shows him a glimpse of how she sees dreams; he is left frustrated and continues at his work. She wanders eventually into He, Death's and now Cora's office. As she studies the snowdrop she gave him that are still there, Cora arrives, knocking down a painting of bluebells that then spill across the floor, and Ovida takes one for herself. They talk about Cora's plans and what they've both been up to, and Ovida resolves to find Theremin and Mara. She returns to the Grotto, and plants the bluebells there.
• Liza meets with Klyatva and Opal at a bar⁴ and talk about what's been up with them. Klyatva seems to be doing better but is careful with her language around Opal about it⁵, and does mention a number of ongoing health effects from being merged with Pitohui. The also talk about the developments at the Bleak Academy, Liza's family, their respective pasts as they pertain to their current jobs, and Liza's new haircut. Liza admits she actually likes her haircut now, versus simply feeling ambivalent about it.
• There is blood in the water and death in the dreams of Town, and Ovida is drawn to the shores of the Big Lake. There she finds the corpse of a great and terrible creature rotting and dissolving away into nothing, and she mourns the loss of her friend He, Death. A woman interrupts her, cleaning herself of the rot in the icy waters, and Ovida takes her hand, unsure if she is Him or something else. She tells Ovida that she is one of his daughters, that he was "lousy with them", but that she has bits and pieces of him left as part of her. She doesn't recognize Ovida at first, but knows she's familiar, and asks if Ovida would like to have met her before now. Ovida agrees, and we see her memories in the Academy, and we see how his daughter has now always been present in some. They speak further, and the girl remembers Ovida's luthe and cannot quite place her own name, and she asks her to help her comb her long, long hair. Ovida takes her to the Grotto to help her, and in an echo of one of the final times she spoke with He, Death, she offers to braid a snowdrop into her hair. She agrees. As they talk further, she asks about clothing, and Ovida offers some suggestions- eventually, the woman makes all things possible and reaches to the sky, drawing down the cloak of twilight to garb herself, and it is beautiful. Ovida admits she may have fallen in love with her⁶.

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1. a more traditional embrace or cuddling were not feasible on account of the small rosebush presently piercing through Cora's heart.

2. rabbit soup, using local rabbits and vegetables

3. baklava sourced through Valter

4. Celdinar's is a small, constructed space like a set or something from The Rehearsal that's been set up in a larger gutted industrial space. there's a mysterious local theater group involved.

5. Opopanax who is Panacea may be killed by locating her resting place and burning the corpse, or by proving to her that she is unneeded

6. Death's youngest daughter, whose name is yet to clarify itself but whom may be known by the title Queen Night, half-sister to the Sun.