JO WATCHED NICO paint until her eyes were bloodshot and he was rubbing stiffness from his fingers.

She’d stolen a heavy blanket from his bed somewhere around the time the conversation was dying, and had bundled herself up in it. It wasn’t that the room was cold, but that she felt cold. Jo felt as if she’d been pitched out to the vacuum of space. The only tether she had to the world was the sound of Nico’s voice and, when that gave out, his brush.

At about the four-hour mark, Jo wished she could sleep. But it refused to come to her. No matter how much her mind begged for the relief, her body refused. So she settled for unfocusing her eyes and pushing her mind into a void until Nico stepped away from the easel, stretching, indicating that he was finished (for now).

“I should pick up a hobby.” It was the first time either of them had broken the silence in—Jo tapped her watch—three hours.

“A hobby? Seems like a good idea. What would you do?” He swirled his brush in a jar of mud-colored water.

“I don’t know, maybe you could teach me how to paint? It seems cathartic.” Jo stood, folded up Nico’s quilt, and walked over to set it on his bed. Not for the first time, Jo couldn’t help but admire the man’s room; the homey messiness and the warm colors mirrored the half-finished canvases splattered in paint and ink.

“I’m afraid we wouldn’t have enough time for that.” He placed the first brush in a different jar, and started the process on the second.

“Don’t we have eternity?”

“I’m afraid,” he said again slowly, “we wouldn’t have enough time for that.”

“Oh, ha ha, very funny.” Jo rolled her eyes, walking over to the canvas.

It was further along now, the streaks of color more obviously swirling into the silhouette of a woman. A beautiful woman, young and smiling and caught in laughter. It was breathtaking, even without Nico’s magic Jo’s eyes were drawn to it and only it.

In many ways, the Society was a shame. Niccolo de’Este would never receive the acclaim he so rightly warranted. His pieces would never win awards or hang in museums; he would never be compared to Pollock or Van Gogh or Murakami. Instead, he would only ever be appreciated by a sparse group of seven—most of whom had questionable taste. It was far, far less than someone of his talent deserved.

Jo could already feel the tell-tale ache in her heart growing thicker, lecherous—the same ache that seemed to thrive on realizations directly linked to her new reality. No matter how accepting she was of it, there was no helping the occasional feelings of loss that cropped up even still. For all intents and purposes, Nico was only nineteen. He should be studying art on a full ride at some university somewhere (or whatever the Renaissance equivalent was). He should be selling pieces by the dozens at local art shows. He should be living, just like she should be living. But their lives had been taken, all in exchange for the realities of people who would never know of their involvement, their existence.

Just like magic itself, it wasn’t fair. Jo sucked in a breath and thought with vehement sorrow that, even if they had all agreed to join the Society in their own ways for their own reasons, the prices they paid didn’t seem to balance out.

“I tease,” Nico said, oblivious to the torrent of thoughts that consumed her steps over to him and the easel. “Of course I would love to teach you to paint.”

His voice was light, the banter easy, serving as a reminder that there was nothing she could do. She wasn’t going to waste her time wallowing in righteous self-pity. “Fair” was hardly a driving factor in the whirring cogs and gears of the universe’s clock, wasn’t it? The members of the Society no more deserved their fates than the citizens of Japan deserved theirs, but that didn’t make any of it any less real.

“Well, you may be right, a different hobby might suit me better.”

“Then we shall find it together.” Nico gave his hands one more wipe on his apron, though the motion was hopeless. The garment had just as much pigment on it as had soaked into his skin. His expression shifted, and there was only a second before he spoke, but a second was long enough for Jo to fill with dread at what she knew he’d say next. “For now, however, I think we should return to the rest of them.”

A flash of panic ran down Jo’s spine at the thought, the sudden realization brought her back to the reality that existed beyond the reprieve that had been Nico’s room with a fierce and sobering shock. They’d been sitting for nearly six hours. Had the majority of the carnage already settled? Did the volcano, god forbid, erupt again while they’d selfishly escaped their unwritten duty of bearing witness to the world’s horrors?

Surely someone was still in the common area watching the news. The onset of the desire to know exactly what had transpired over the last couple of hours was swift and almost visceral, as if she was now personally connected to the damage and lives lost. Whether it was Takako’s legitimate association, or her own vicarious attachment, she felt instantly guilty for not keeping up to date.

“You’re right. I want to see what’s happened.”

With that, Jo and Nico wordlessly made their way down the hall. Not unexpectedly, there wasn’t just one person sitting on the couch in front of the television, but three.

Eslar leaned forward, elbows on his knees and chin resting on his laced fingers. He seemed to be almost unnaturally engrossed in the news (how he had the stamina completely eluded her), analyzing what appeared to be new footage with a frown. Jo wondered if he’d even left the couch once. Samson sat to his side, occasionally whispering things in one of the elf’s long ears. Wayne was an island at the far end of the couch, his grim expression warding off company. No one seemed to notice Jo and Nico’s arrival, and as she shifted her gaze from the men to the television, it wasn’t hard to understand why.

Most of the broadcast seemed to circulate between reporters’ comments about the carnage—of which there was a near indescribable amount—and actual footage of it. Mt. Fuji seemed to have finally settled. According to the scientists (for whatever their assessments were still worth) there were no further eruptions expected in the foreseeable future. That didn’t stop the continual oozing of lava and thick blanket of ash that now seemed to cover the globe. It was hard to believe, even harder to hope, that Mt. Fuji would stay dormant for long, not when its eruption had been so unexpected and violent.

Even if Mt. Fuji never erupted again, the catastrophe had already left its permanent mark, not just on Japan, but on the entire world.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Wayne noticed their presence, his dry remark cutting Jo from the constricting tethers of grief that had already begun to form between her and the television. “We’d wondered where you two had gone.”

“He’d wondered,” Samson corrected bravely, but still very quietly and without raising his head.

“You could’ve come and got us,” Jo said defensively.

“A reprieve is sometimes necessary,” said the elf, who had barely moved from the television and still did not tear his eyes from it. “And there is not much to be done, for now.”

Samson caught her eye, but seemingly wasn’t able to speak until he’d ducked his chin again. “I made some breakfast for everyone.”

Slowly, Jo walked the rest of the way to the couch, leaning heavily against it. “Thanks, Sam. That’s very thoughtful of you,” she murmured, distracted by the images flickering across the TV screen.

They were showing footage of the Hakone region now, still smoldering in some places, burning in others, but mostly just completely destroyed. With a sickening lurch, Jo found herself subconsciously comparing the sight to old photos she remembered learning about in her high school’s ancient history class—the entirety of Pompeii sitting in ruins, whole families frozen forever in their last moments of life, completely unaware of it being taken from them. The images of the long-ago Roman city came alive vividly in her mind, like she’d seen it before. Jo attributed it to the footage she’d all but seen on loop now overlaying with her past school lesson.

She wasn’t sure what was worse, seeing something like this coming, or being blindsided. For example, Shizuoka had watched their neighboring region fall to the might of a natural disaster, knowing all the while they were next. Multiple clips of a tsunami, triggered by the quake, only added to the still spreading damage.

It was truly becoming too much to bear, a relentless assault of one thing after another after another.

She didn’t know how the men continued to do it, stare at the news with their somber tones, as if seeing something she couldn’t. So, Jo didn’t bear it. She turned away and stepped toward the kitchen, where Samson had laid out mismatched plates and platters filled with breakfast foods, willfully oblivious to the horror-movie cinematics only a few yards away.

Apparently, she wasn’t alone in needing to step away, because Jo nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden appearance of the orange-haired man at her side.

“Thank you for making breakfast,” Jo said, mostly just to break the silence. Samson nodded, keeping his eyes set firmly on moving the platters so that they were in a perfect line. Jo grabbed some scrambled eggs, a few slices of bacon—careful not to disrupt Samson’s adjustments—and then paused. This close, even Samson looked more uncomfortable than usual, his brows furrowed and face bordering on stricken. “Hey, Sam?” Jo whispered, taking in a breath when he glanced at her with noticeably wet eyes. “Are you all right?”

For a couple of seconds, Samson didn’t respond, just looked at her with that same worried expression. It was a dumb question and she knew that; none of them were really “all right.” Then he sighed, an exhale that Jo felt leave her own lungs in response.

“Yes,” Samson mumbled, scrubbing harder at the soapy pan. “I just don’t like the waiting.”

Jo wanted to ask him what he meant, but there was something about the sentence that felt final, a heavy silence following in its wake. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was certain Samson was done talking. So, with one last murmur of thanks, Jo took her plate out of the kitchen, down the hall, and as far away from the television as she could get.

Takako was expectedly awake when Jo let herself quietly into her room. She was now in a seated position, but otherwise didn’t seem to have moved much from her futon. So Jo placed the plate of food in front of her and took back her own spot on the adjacent futon as well.

“I don’t know if you’re hungry, but Samson made it.” Jo offered, trying once again to simply fill the silence with anything but worry and tension. “At the very least, it’ll feel good to fill your stomach with something hot.”

Takako nodded at her, mumbling what sounded like a soft thank you, but she made no move to eat. Jo could sympathize; her own stomach tied in sickening knots. She didn’t have the heart to mention the fairly recent development of a tsunami; Takako would find out soon enough.

As Takako stared off into the distance, Jo started to see traces of a similar expression on her face, the same concern that had been mirrored on the faces of the rest of her team. A concern Jo was slowly starting to realize ran deeper than just for the lives lost in Japan. Everyone was on edge, waiting for something, as if they expected the catastrophic after effects of Fuji to somehow reach them as well.

Eventually, Jo couldn’t take the silence anymore, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them close. “Takako?” she asked, wincing when it seemed to startle the woman out of her thoughts. Takako hummed in acknowledgement, but seemed no less distracted. “Samson said he hated the waiting. What did he mean?”

Somewhere in her, Jo had known. Even as she asked the question, she knew what the answer would be. She just hadn’t wanted to hear it. Or maybe her mind just rejected thinking it, as if that could make it any more or less real.

When Takako frowned in response, it was with no little amount of fresh pain in her eyes. She looked reluctant to answer even, raising one hand to her mouth as the other tapped a soft rhythm against the tatami. It took longer than Jo expected for her to string together a response, but when she finally dropped her hand, it was with a stoic and schooled expression. Even if the turmoil in her eyes hadn’t entirely faded.

“He means waiting for Snow to call us to the briefing room,” Takako said, a fraction of that carefully crafted expression crumbling. Jo didn’t need to ask for clarification, but she gave it to her anyway. “With a disaster this big, there’s no way someone won’t make a wish.”

“Of course someone will make a wish.” That much was obvious. Hundreds of thousands of people were dead or gravely injured. “But what are we supposed to do? Stop a volcano? Even Snow knows we can’t prevent a natural disaster.”

Takako finally looked up. Jo had spent so long trying to get close to the woman, but now that she finally was, all she wanted was to be blind to the truth in her eyes. Especially as she said, with a blunt and grave certainty, “That doesn’t mean we won’t be asked to try.”