Torin glances out one of the shop windows. That group is standing out there, chatting away after just having left. Those two brothers catch her eye. The taller one stands straight, a fond smile gracing his lips as he stares down at the girl, Mino. Then someone else catches his attention. Wilder, his name is.

  The shorter one… Bee. Something flutters inside and she quickly reaches up to close the shutters. Has she eaten enough today? She feels a little weak.

  She doesn’t rush as she moves back towards the front counter, letting herself straighten up a bit. She closes and latches cabinet doors, shuffles items around to make the really dusty ones easier to see. They always close shop early on special customer days. When she reaches the front of the shop, Janos is scribbling down the sales records, cracked glasses perched on his nose. She sighs. He really needs new ones, but they just… can’t afford it right now. Guilt and shame swirl in her stomach.

  Janos looks up as she joins him behind the counter. He pulls her over in a side hug, while continuing to write. Torin rests her head on Janos’s shoulder.

  “Do you think we can trust them?” Janos asks.

  “To help us, you mean?” Torin responds. “I think they’ll help. They seem nice.”

  “There’s a difference between nice and good. It’s easy to be nice,” Janos spits with some vitriol. “The nice ones usually fail.”

  Torin turns, covering Janos’s mouth with her hand. “Everything will be fine, I promise.”

  Janos jerks away, rips his glasses off. He stopped caring about them after the first ding, but it still makes Torin wince. He paces angrily. “No it won’t! It won’t be fine, Torin. We’re running out of stock and you can’t handle rationing doses that small. We’re running out of time.”

  Torin can’t let the panic rise any further. “We’ll get more,” she tries, reaching out to him. Janos waves her hand away.

  “Please, stop trying to make me feel better,” he says. “I don’t want to feel better. I want to fix you.” Torin curls into herself. She won’t get through to him when he’s like this.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  Janos sighs, and some of the tension thankfully lifts. “It’s not your fault, Tor. I just wish it hadn’t happened to you.”

  Torin stares at his glasses, abandoned on the wooden countertop. She wishes the same thing every day.

  Torin’s mother was a kind woman, not just a nice one. When she found out she was having a baby, she started traveling throughout the Underground, searching through different communities’ libraries for books on pregnancy and motherhood. She visited with other mothers and with healers. She was determined to do right by her child. But she was also an anxious woman, like many of the people in her family (like Torin herself). She didn’t trust her own judgement and ignored her intuition, convinced that others knew more on the subject than she ever could.

  When Torin was born, it was a healer from Heath who delivered her and watched over her health. As a baby, Torin had been very weak. She got sick too much and wasn’t growing quickly. The healer gave her mother a solution, a crushed concoction devolved from whitegrass and a supposedly rare root called anchor. As a baby, she was prescribed a pinch of the powder once a week with her breakfast. As a child, a pinch at breakfast every day. It helped Torin grow and she got sick less often. But when Torin was six, her mother tried weaning her off of the medicine. Torin had nearly died.

  By that time, the healer had gone missing. Torin hasn’t seen his face in thirteen years, but she’s left money at his home, and the next day without fail, more of the medicine appears outside her front door. Even when she moved in with Janos to the shop, the medicine appeared at the shop door.

  Now, if she doesn’t take nearly half a cup every day, Torin will start that painful, deadly withdrawal. See, Torin has done some research of her own over the years. Anchor on it’s own will kill if you ingest enough. Whitegrass is what stabilizes it, makes it capable of staying in her system. But taking only whitegrass doesn’t continue to stabilize the anchor that is in her body. They can’t bond within the body. She has to continue taking both anchor and whitegrass together. Or, somehow, consume enough stardust to purge it all safely.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Hey, but let’s not talk about that now, I guess.” Janos says, sensing Torin’s mood shift. She can see the apology in his eyes. “We should probably go grab some groceries, want to head to the market?”

  Torin brightens. “Yes, that would be good… I mean, if you want?”

  Janos nudges her with his shoulder. “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re going to get all shy with me now!” He’s right, she shouldn’t let the anxiety get to her.

  “N-no, sorry. You don’t usually want to go, so I was making sure.”

  “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to go,” Janos says. He grabs the key for the door and they head out, locking up behind them. He flips the shade over the window so that the painted side faces outward. The words were roughly sketched out by Janos. They read: WE’RE CLOSED; SORRY NOT SORRY. Torin giggles to herself. She does every time she sees it.

  Janos has his hands in his pockets as they walk. Torin glances at him several times and soon sinks back into thought.

  Janos has grown up alongside her, though he’s a little older. When he found out that their magic was a matched pair, he became convinced that they were soulmates, even though they’re cousins. He grew out of that belief, but he’s still stuck by her side, and he’s growing desperate. Torin knows her condition tortures him. She wishes she could take it all away.

  Janos is the one who discovered stardust. Neither of them really trusted healers anymore, especially not after the one who failed to save Finna from his injuries. But Janos instead consulted with the old herbalists and theoreticians, ones who had decades and decades of knowledge but didn’t use it for power or prestige. One knew of stardust, a material secretly collected in the Overground and hoarded by priestesses of the stars. It was considered sacred. It was also a natural remedy to Torin’s addiction among many other ailments. It could purge the false medicine from her body and made the effects easier to handle.

  No one knew how trace amounts of it got Underground, but it had been found in small deposits in quarries and even, once, submerged beneath someone’s garden. So far, they have not been able to find enough stardust to rid Torin of the addiction completely. The small amount that she takes only prevents her tolerance from growing. Janos tried to set aside a chunk from every finding so that one day Torin could be healed, but they were running out of sources. They had to keep dipping into that pool.

  The new lead was rumored to be the biggest deposit ever found. If Torin and Janos could secure it, she could finally be free.

  Torin stumbles over an uneven paver. She shakes the thoughts off. Janos is still beside her. For once he’s left home without his jacket, which makes a nice change. His skin is tan even without any sun (Torin doesn’t think she’ll ever understand that), and he’s got pretty well defined muscles. Seriously, when has he ever worked out, ever? Meanwhile she goes out for runs at least once or twice a week. Why must she be so pale? And limp and noodly?

  Torin flops her arms around a bit, wallowing in her noodleness. Janos notices and chuckles, cocking an eyebrow. “What are you doing?” He asks.

  “I’m a noodle,” Torin replies pitifully. “I’m a noodle, and you’ve got muscle arms. You don’t even work out!”

  Janos full out laughs. “Oh, man, are you jealous? Torin, all I do is a few pushups in my room every morning and then a few stretches to help keep my body more in shape. You could join me if you wanted.”

  Torin shakes her head. “I am a noodle, and a noodle I must be,” she declares sadly. She pinches herself to avoid letting out a smile, but it doesn’t quite work.

  “You're such a dork,” Janos says, tugging her ponytail gently. Torin sticks her tongue out and walks a bit faster towards the entrance to the market. Luckily it doesn't seem too busy. Less anxiety for this gal then.

  Janos grabs a basket at the entrance and hands it to Torin. Of course he won’t carry it. Torin rolls her eyes.

  “I wish Finna were still here,” Janos mumbles abruptly. Torin, shocked, looks up to see Janos glaring at the ground. Torin takes his hand carefully.

  “I do too,” she says.

  Finna was Janos’s older brother. Janos rarely talks about him anymore, still dealing with the grief and the hurt. What had brought him into Janos’s mind today?

  “Yeah,” Janos says, and he doesn’t let go of her hand.

  Torin stays by his side quietly. As they walk, she swaps a loaf of bread for a handful of golds and places the loaf in the basket.

  Janos pauses, then pulls away from Torin, dropping her hand. “Why don’t you go get something fun for yourself? I can take care of this.” He takes the basket from her hands.

  “What?” Torin asks. She blinks. Janos is acting very strange out of nowhere. What’s going on with him? “You never want to do this. And do you know what we need? And shouldn’t it be the other way around, you getting something for yourself and me getting the food because you look like you could use some cheering up—”

  Janos tugs up the hood on Torin’s sweater and pulls it over her head. “Stop worrying so much,” he says. “I just need a little distraction.”

  Torin lifts her hood to peek up at Janos, but he’s already walking away.