"Well, Ellie?"

    The comfortable peace of the ward shredded apart, entangling Elise in an intricate, suffocating web of underlying noise. Every squeaking wheel, howling breeze, and snapping building joint honed the hairs along her arms and neck closer to ruthless needlepoints. Yet the relentless piercing pain Cadence's eyes lodged in her chest overshadowed all other discomfort. Elise had hurt her friend, and she was about to do it again.

    Cadence tapped her foot against the dull laminate flooring. "So...what are you waiting for? A written invite?"

    "I...I was reading through that passage James handed me, and something about it bothered me," Elise began, wincing as she snapped her bag's clasps open to pull out the writing sample. "It felt far too familiar, so I started thinking where I might have seen something like it before."

    "What tripe." With a snort, Florence craned her neck to avoid looking at the papers. "Lots of stories use the same plots and characters. Authors are bloody magpies, don't you know? Forever pinching the best bits of everything, they are."

    Handing the papers to Cadence, Elise withdrew her copy of Wanderlove and opened it to the bookmarked page by Florence's side. "This isn't just pinching, Florence. I don't know how or why, but this random student's work from years ago is in your story with hardly any differences."

    Florence refused to meet Elise's eye. "Blasted coincidence, that's all."

    "A coincidence? Across a sixteen-page extract?" Though the author avoided the sight of her, Elise still waved her arms at the side of Florence's head. "Sure, that'd be convenient for you."

    The pages shifted and flapped in Cadence's hands, and muted gasp parted her lips. "Oh fuck," she muttered as she stared through the murky air at her mother. "Tell me you didn't pull this shit, Flo."

    As her daughter's sudden hostility knocked Florence's mask of indifference from her face, the author covered up her surprise with a dark scowl. "I don't know what the bleeding hell you're on about, girl."

    "Tell me you didn't fucking steal Mel's story and slap your own fucking fake name on it!"

    Beyond the curtain, the few sets of footsteps that shuffled along the ward coasted to a captive halt. Florence tossed her blanket aside, her drained, weary body trembling under the burden of her anger. "I did no such thing," she said through clenched teeth. "I don't know what the bloody hell's going on, but it's got nothing to do with me."

    Slapping the sample onto the bed, Cadence stabbed the pages with her finger. "The hell it doesn't! It's in your fucking book, spreading your name, raking in your cash!" She delivered one last thrust to the papers, then stifled a desperate wail in the rear curtain. "I bet this is why Mel ditched me, isn't it? Because of you! You tricked her, used her, ripped off her hard work just to –"

    The curtain out into the ward flew open. "Alright, that's enough," a nurse snapped. Her name badge identified her as Gail and, judging by her grey hair and vicious green eyes, she was the seasoned head of the ward staff. "You're upsetting the other patients, and you're getting on my nerves and all. If you can't be civil, then I suggest you leave now."

    For all the fear the nurse's tone inspired in Elise's gut, Cadence refused to flinch. "Whatever. I'm sick of this place anyway." She pushed past the nurse and headed straight for the exit door, waving behind her without stopping. "Always a fucking pleasure, Flo!"

    Elise stuffed the book and papers into her bag and mumbled a sheepish apology, too distraught to meet Gail's stern eye. After repeating her pleading words to every member of ward staff she passed, Elise spotted Cadence's thundering form through the hospital's main door. "Cade, wait!" she cried as she spilled outside, letting the door slam behind her. "Just stop and wait!"

    "Fuck that!" Stomping across the stone ground, Cadence marched up to the outer cobblestone wall and delivered a swift kick to its top corner. A single pebble flew off and startled a raven from its hiding place inside a dense patch of hedges. "I've stopped and waited for six months, and for what? Hell, I stopped and waited while she was with Mel, and look what happened there!"

    "I know, and I'm sorry. I didn't know it was Melody's work when I brought it up," Elise answered as she paused her pursuit a stride away from her friend. She gripped her arm and, with a sigh, broke the tense silence that had settled between them. "Look, Melody and your mum talked a lot, right? Maybe there's some other explanation for this. Maybe this isn't as bad as it looks!"

    "Get a grip, Ellie. Of course it's as bad as it looks!" Cadence took a jagged piece of rock from the ground beside the wall and lobbed it over the road. The fragment landed in the same clustered foliage as before, the rustling leaves announcing the first drops of rain from above. "It always is in my bullshit life. Flo, Mel, you - everyone pretends they give a shit about me until they screw me over and ditch me in the fucking gutter with the rest of the trash."

    The glaze over Cadence's eyes mirrored the wobble that claimed her voice. Fighting the lump that took root in her throat, Elise inched towards her friend. "I do care about you, Cade! You're my best friend, and you've always meant the world to me, wherever we were. And even if she doesn't show it, I'm positive Florence cares about you too, else she'd never have taken you in."

    "Then who do I blame?" Though the rain fell faster and harder around them, none of the water soaked into Cadence's clothes slowed her raging movements. "Whose fault is it that my life's such a fucking disaster? Yours? Mine?"

    "No! You don't have to blame anybody!" As the wind picked up, Elise crossed the remaining distance to Cadence's side. She caught Cadence's wrist before she grabbed another loose stone, capturing her friend's attention. "You can't hold grudges against everybody for everything they do. Sometimes, shit just happens, Cade. That's life!"

    A moment of hesitation flickered across Cadence's face, yet it vanished with the escape of her wrist from Elise's grip. "Like fuck it is," she replied, her tone more controlled than before as she strode towards her car. "I'm sick of waiting for things to go right for once. It's about time I go and make things happen, and I know just where to start."

    Through the rain, black storm clouds collided around Cadence's every move to drown out the sunlight from her eyes. A heavy mist obscured the path ahead of them, yet Elise's panic set her racing after her friend without a second thought. "Wait!" she called out, daring to take Cadence by the arm and check her advance. "I'm not going to let you run off on your own like this, not without you telling me where you're going."

    "Isn't it obvious?" Cadence said as she stopped and shook herself free of Elise's grip. "I'm heading to see Mel, duh. I'll tell her that I found out about Flo's little thieving streak, help her sue the grump's ass for plagiarism or whatever, and get my kickass friend back. Easy-peasy."

    "What? That's ridiculous!" Crossing in front of her friend before Cadence resumed her march, Elise held up a hand to block the rain as it angled into her eyes. "Just think this through for one second. We don't know what happened, or why Melody left, or whether she'll believe a word you say – for God's sake, Cade, we don't even know how to find her!"

    "You might not, but I've got the perfect idea to track her down." As she paced to the side of her car, Cadence's sweeping movements spilled a fan of raindrops over shoulders. "For once, Mel's ex-creep is actually going to be useful."

    Elise scrambled to lean in the vehicle's front passenger window as Cadence sat inside. "You're going to ask Matt?" she asked, her face red-hot even as fear drained her colour away. "Did you already forget the guy cornered me with a knife not that long ago?"

    With a shrug, Cadence shut her car door. "So I've got extra leverage to crack info from the psycho nut. What's the problem?"

    "This isn't a joke! You know better than I do just how messed up that guy is, and I doubt he gets nicer in private." Though the cool rainfall urged Elise into the flawed shelter of the car, a deeper, darker chill from her friend's movements kept her outside. "How do you know he'll even tell you where she is? You two aren't exactly the best of friends."

    "Maybe that's for the best, seeing as my real best friend only wants to hold me back." The SUV hacked into life, and Cadence gritted her teeth as she revved the wheezing engine. Her fierce stare towards Elise sliced through the rain's veil. "I don't expect you to get it, so just back the hell off and let me do my thing."

    Storm-chilled water burst through the walls of a dam in Elise's core. Biting back a long, growing list of complaints, she opened the car door and threw her dripping bag in the back seat. "That's not happening," she said as she held her friend's eyes in close contact. "I'm not leaving you, Cade. Wherever you're going, I'm coming with you."

    Cadence's breath caught in her throat, only stirring into movement with the slam of Elise's door. "Ellie..." she sighed as her senses trickled back into their places. "Seriously, I'm not guilt-tripping you into tagging along. This isn't your problem."

    "You made it my problem when you told me all about how much you missed Melody," Elise countered, allowing a brief glimmer of cheer to light up her lips. "You're my best friend, my real best friend, and I want to see you happy more than anything. If I can't stop you doing something stupid, then I can at least stop you doing it alone."

    A hush swelled in the vehicle. As drop after drop of fondness sparkled in Cadence's eyes, Elise let her gaze dive into the girl's pools like her heart had told her to so many times before. Cadence's eyes may have been hazel on the surface, but a single ripple transformed her waters into a swirling verdant spectrum laced with spilled gold. Immersed in her friend's warm ocean, the furious rain beyond the car vanished from Elise's notice. Everything was calm, quiet, and right.

    Then, without a word, Cadence broke the eye contact and stared at her steering wheel. Elise moved to straighten out her skirt's skewed hemline, yet her friend caught her hand before she finished a stroke. "You two have one thing in common, at least," she said, smiling to herself. When she looked up at Elise again, a pair of tears trickled out of her eyes. "You're both absolute bosses at using my own words against me."

    "You make it pretty easy with all the trash you talk," Elise said through a giggle. Watching the rain spatter the front of the car, she ran her thumb over Cadence's knuckles. "And who knows? Maybe we really will find Melody, and she and I can both blast you for being a huge idiot."

    "Sounds like my kind of fun," Cadence answered with a wink as she squeezed and released Elise's hand. "Alright. Buckle up, killer, and let's get this shitshow on the road."

    ***

    In all her years of living in Bosmouth, Elise's instincts had steered her well clear of the disused docklands. The chain metal fencing around the area had all but split apart at the links, laying bare the damage wrought by the decades-old deaths of the town's fishing and shipping industries. From Elise's first memory of the place, the docks were a bloated blight on the town, swollen with the screech of rusted metal and the stench of rotting wood. Nerves and fresh rainfall did little to soften their assault on the senses.

    Yet not even Elise's lowest estimations prepared her for the dire state of the old fishing huts beside the docklands. Swiftly abandoned after the last boats left the town, the few half-hearted attempts by successive authorities to resuscitate the empty houses only sapped what little life remained in their strained sinews. Crumbling hovels barely held their heads above the burnt-out vehicles ditched beside them, and sprawling grasses peppered with colourful wildflowers buried any paths beneath their bulk. Even the briefest pause in the breeze allowed the distinct odour of decay to rise and fill the air once more.

    "Dump, sweet dump," Cadence said as she silenced the car's rumbling engine. Her nose curled up, and she smacked her lips together before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I haven't come around here lately, and it's pretty obvious why."

    "And I thought my building was a trash heap," Elise answered, fighting to speak through the potent metallic tang that stained the inside of her mouth. "What are we doing here, Cade? When you said we were looking for Matt, I figured we'd be going somewhere with...people."

    Cadence scanned the nearby huts for signs of life, a groaning sigh leaving her lips when her search ended empty-handed. "People wandering around would ruin the whole 'junkie hideout' vibe," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. Slamming the door behind her, she looked around the muck-stained buildings and shook her head. "Look, Matt used to crash here when he got busted dealing drugs out of whatever shithole dive he was renting. I bet he came straight here when Mel dumped his ass and kicked him out."

    "And what if he didn't?" Elise asked as she trailed after Cadence, her hands clasped together by her waist. "I doubt he'd leave a note with his new address for us."

    "Oh, don't worry. We'll track him down." With a smile, Cadence shook her friend by the shoulder and marched into the graveyard of barren buildings. "We just have to follow the trail of booze, bad weed, and bloody piss. No worries!"

    Elise barely choked back the gag that clawed up her throat. "Maybe some worries..."

    Many of the fishing huts stood without doors or curtains, their dark windows stalking every step Elise took between the streaks of overgrowth. Against her better judgement, Elise ducked her head into one of the larger houses and flicked on her phone's torch to sweep away the gathered shadows. The stench of smoke clogged her nostrils before her eyes adjusted to the burst of bright light. A broad black patch stretched across the centre of the single room, and charred fragments scraped beneath her foot as she approached the threadbare sleeping bag slumped beside the wall.

    Twisting her light source around the room, a white scrap flashed to catch Elise's eye amidst the pool of soot. She knelt to pick it from the burnt pile, keeping her knees clear of the messy ground, and recognised the blackened scrap's distinctive smooth, dry feel with one touch. It was paper, a lone survivor of the silenced flames. As unlikely as its escape from fire was in itself, a flip of the paper revealed strings of cracked letters that puzzled Elise further. They were typeset, yet the characters appeared not in a standard black font, but a striking serif prism that blazed in her phone's light beam.

    "joy became even...lips soothed the burn...and scanned the horizon..." Elise read aloud, running her fingers over the red, then green, then blue letters. A flash of her light over the fire pit revealed a series of other, smaller paper pieces, though nothing else of value struck her eye. "What happened here?"

    "Hey, Ellie! Check it out!" Cadence's voice poured through the hut's many openings, and Elise stepped outside to see her friend clutching a pair of vintage-looking firecrackers between the fingers of one hand. As she met Elise's eye, Cadence whipped out a lighter from her jacket pocket. "Your birthday's coming up, yeah? How about we start your party early?"

    A star burst in Elise's gut, and she tucked the found paper into her bag as she ran to Cadence's side. "Cade! Don't light those, for God's sake!" she cried, laying a hand on Cadence's wrist. "Where did you even find these? They look ancient."

    With a wink, Cadence waggled the firecrackers around. "Chill out, already. What are you afraid of, that they'll explode? They're supposed to do that, you know." She grinned at Elise and gestured towards a flat patch of land. "Maybe if we set them off, they'll spook Matt out of whatever drug den he's buried in."

    "Yeah, and they'll piss off whoever else is creeping around here too. If they don't burn us alive in whatever other flammable stuff is around here, that is," Elise said, snatching the firecrackers and lighter from her friend's grasp. She moved to toss them aside, then changed her mind to set the explosives onto the ground. "This place is freaking me out already. I don't know how people sleep here, let alone live here."

    "I think getting tossed out on your ass makes it a little easier to deal with." Spinning on her heels, Cadence strolled towards the nearby corpse of a saloon car and hopped onto its bonnet. She stretched her legs out, eased herself back, and cradled the back of her head in her hands as she stared up at the steel clouds. "Besides, it can be kinda nice to hide away for a while. Sometimes, on Flo's bad days, I drive off to the middle of nowhere just to get some space to myself, away from all those old people in town that scowl at me for dying my hair or whatever."

    Shrugging off the sharp pain in her gut, Elise sat beside Cadence on the car and tapped her fingers against the bonnet. Most of the earlier rain had passed, and the few drops that lingered cast a shroud of pleasant cold across her warm face. The quiet shift of the sea waves cushioned the slow drift of her thoughts. "I get that. I've lost count of how many times those people have told me my skirt's too short, or that I should cover my arms, or that I shouldn't be walking out after sunset without a guy."

    Cadence snorted. "Seriously? Every guy I've hung out with has been worse to deal with at night, Matt included. Horny creeps see your tattoos and suddenly think you're up for all kinds of weird shit."

    "I don't think they had that kind of guy in mind." Bouncing her heels off the front of the car, Elise turned her head to see Cadence cross her legs, her eyes shut. A soft layer of shadow fell over both her eyelids, and small sparkles flecked through its darkness to highlight the sharpness of the liner around her eyes. Elise let herself lie across the car like Cadence, her shoulder rubbing against her friend's side. "Do you really remember my birthday, or were you just kidding before?"

    "You tell me, killer. Do you remember my birthday?" As she waited for an answer, Cadence opened one eye to witness the glow of realisation dawn on her friend's face. She nudged Elise's leg with the side of her foot and tilted her head closer to the girl's face. "I might be punk trash like Flo says, but I'm not a trash friend. I remember what's important, no matter what."

    The fear that yanked at Elise's gut melted away as she took a deep breath, the cool, calming scent of herbal mint cleansing her burning sinuses. Beneath the fresh familiarity, however, lingered a bubbling blend of citrus fruit, crackling sandalwood, and shimmering, sparkling nectar. Elise shuffled against Cadence's side, suddenly unbothered by the decaying structures staring her down. "You're a great friend, Cade. I truly believe that, and even if things are messy between you now, I'm sure Melody believed it too. Maybe she still wants to, and she just needs a reminder of what having you around is like."

    Slipping her arm around Elise's shoulders, Cadence hummed to herself before leaning into the last strands of space between them. Her breath blew life into the fires that never truly died in Elise's cheeks. "I think I've got a pretty good way to remind her of that," she whispered, twining the ends of her friend's hairs around her fingers.

    Elise pressed her back against the car's rough metal frame, yet her mind still believed she was in freefall through the rumbling rainclouds. "You do," she said, forgetting to deliver her words as a question.

    "Firecrackers!" Suddenly, Cadence hopped off the car, dragging Elise to her feet with her. Buzzing on the spot, she gestured to the discarded explosives. "Alright, maybe not, but I really want to see these puppies burn. Can't we set them off somewhere less...small town psycho? Pretty please?"

    "Really? Gosh, you're such a brat." Elise steadied her toppling legs, folded her arms, and speared Cadence's smirking face with a venom-tipped stare. After wiping away the hot flush that loitered across her face, she knelt to take up the fallen firecrackers. "Fine. I'll leave them in the back of the car. Can we please get back to looking for Matt now, Captain Pyromaniac?"

    "I see myself more as General Mayhem, but you've got a point. I'll get back to it while you tie those down." As she turned to look around the next set of huts, Cadence waved back at Elise and called over her shoulder. "Don't get lost!"

    Though she scoffed, Elise could not stop her amusement from showing in her step. The path back to the car seemed much shorter without fear's lens distorting it, and she quickened her pace as the vehicle entered her view. Before she reached its side, a loud snap cracked through the air, and a glint broke through the murky shadow of a hut behind the car. The light faded away to reveal the front end of a dark motorcycle, and, as its pusher became visible, Elise's cheer fled from her body.

    It was Matt, and he was coming her way.