Work Text:
"Sorry?"
"Laura-" He glanced at the clock hung on the far wall of the office, though he did it only out of habit and not from a need to check the time, "-it's early in the morning in Vancouver. You should still be asleep." He walked over to the door, looking out. Daylight was fading, and if he strained his ears he could hear nocturnal birds slowly rustling to wakefulness, shrill cries alternative with softer chirps. He was not looking at the birds, however; he aimed his attention far into the distance.
Her voice was urgent. "I felt it, the moment I woke up. Even from here."
He could feel her anxiety and was touched, for he knew it was an anxiety misplaced on his behalf rather than for her own sake. "I know."
"Is it going to-"
"Yes. All the Forest & Bird officers they can spare are going, and all the volunteers they can find."
"Then there's no way to stop it."
Sorry laughed, though he did not hear any humour in his own voice. "Laura, me against a container ship?"
"Maybe if you and Miryam-"
Sorry smiled again, and shook his head, though Laura was not there to see. He knew that she could sense his movements, however. "Maybe if Winter were still alive, and able to help us raise power. It isn't possible, you know that. We would need a trio: old woman, mother and well, son. And it would take time." He turned around to look down at the side of his desk, where the backpack was ready. As Senior Officer, he was needed to help coordinate the rescue efforts. The first team was already there and had started searching the coast for injured birds. There were pictures in the news already, of oil-drenched blue penguins, regurgitating black swill from haplessly opened beaks.
"Is it very bad?"
He thought of how the public relations people had already started calling it the worst maritime environmental disaster in New Zealand, with oil finally leaking out after the ship had ran aground for days off the coast. Its load of containers were falling into the sea, sliding off a listing ship like rain droplets dropping off leaves on a tree. Sorry imagined the brightly coloured containers sinking to the bottom of the sea, their contents covered by the oil that was starting to float everywhere. There were colonies of dolphins, and petrels and shearwaters. If these seabirds carried the oil into their nests, they could harm their chicks. Dotterels, oystercatchers and terns nest on sandy beaches. If the oil came higher up the beach, it could smother the eggs and chicks.
"It's not a broken car, Sorensen." Laura's voice was severe, and Sorry came to himself with a start. "It's an environmental disaster. You can't talk about it like it doesn't matter."
"I'm sorry." He could feel Laura's sudden flash of remembrance at the sardonic tone of his voice.
"Events have conspired to make me name myself everytime I apologise."
"I could come back."
He was surprised at the firmness of her suggestion. "It's your first time visiting Chris's family," he pointed out.
"Kate and Jacko will understand."
She was one of only two people besides Kate who still called Jacko Jacko. Jacko (did this mean that he, too, was one of that group?) wanted everyone to call him Jonathan soon after he turned six, to Laura's hidden dismay, for he knew that on some level, Laura hoped that she, Kate and Jacko still lived their normal lives with fish and chips on Thursdays, and when her changeover, powerful as it made her, had not taken place.
"You wouldn't be in time." He hesitated to tell her, but he knew that she already knew, detecting it from his mind as skilfully as a juggler plucking balls out of the air. "If we were to do it, it would have to be now." There was no way to reverse the damage, of course, or stuff the oil back into the leaking ship, but they could help.
"Does it have to be that kind of trio? Old woman, mother and son?"
"Most cones of power are." He could feel Laura's growing excitement beneath her anxiety, and felt his heartbeat speeding up. "But you are a very powerful witch, Laura." He was almost breathless at the last.
"So we can do it with Miryam."
He admired Laura's confidence at the same time that he quailed from it. As he had told Laura before, the further he was in his room, he meeker he became.
"Sorensen."
Only one person said his time in that voice. Sorry, in his office, stepped back and nearly stumbled over his rucksack.
"Miryam?" he said, and only then realised he had spoken out loud, then there was no one else in the office. Everyone had gone home to pack for the journey to the coast.
"Do you know what it is that Laura wants to do, from across the ocean?"
It was disconcerting to find Miryam in the same estuary space that he and Laura had used for years now, for in some ways it seemed even more real than the real estuary with the kingfisher that would come to him, the one that was seemingly tame but underneath that surface, still as wild as black night sky.
"Is it possible, Miryam?" He heard Laura ask his mother in his mind.
"It may not work." Miryam must have sensed his reaction at that. "That is the truth. It takes a lot to work the weather, especially with you so far away, Laura. Distance matters very little, but it matters."
"It will work. It's not just for Sorry," Laura said. "I could feel the warning when I woke up, and each time, something bad has come out of ignoring that warning. I have to do something."
"Then it will work," Miryam said, and Sorry marvelled at her confidence. In his office, he stepped back into the shadows thrown up the tall file cabinets, letting his power fill up inside him, so that he could have been back in his old bedroom at Janua Ceali again, and was no longer mild or simple or good, but in possession of all that he could.
"Sorry? Are you ready?" Laura asked, determination making her voice as indomitable as a wall. Miryam added a murmur of inquiry.
Sorry could feel the ties that connected him to Miryam and from her to the land, as well as to Laura and laboriously, as child tracing a line drawing, through to him and the birds and fish and dolphins he loved. "I'm-" For a moment he was tempted to quip, "I'm Sorry", but restrained himself and said, "Ready."
/end