Permission
The shape is not the point
Welcome to Day #19. Earlier episodes are listed below.
This little series intersects with other tales based in the world of Nevicata devised by Maryellen Brady 💗📚 for her 24-Day ADVENT-ture 2025. She’s invited us all into her world.
PROMPT (#19): How will your character meet the Light of Stories?
Day 1: Welcome to Nevicata
Day 2: A Light Snack
Day 3: Breakfast of Impolite Champions
Day 4: Case of the Nightmare Scarf Lady
Day 5: Ferrel versus the Princess Posse
Day 6: Life Takes Practice
Day 7: Hide-and-shriek
Day 8: Happiness is a Warm Bath
Day 9: Open Mic, Open Heart
Day 10: Disasterpieces
Day 11: Disastermath
Day 12: A Matter of Temperment
Day 13: Stage Fright
Day 14: Nyxie’s Choice
Day 15: Utter Otter Madness
Day 16: The Unbearable Height of Tradition
Day 17: Double Vision
Day 18: You Can’t Go Home
The Wet Landing was loud in the way only a bar full of people who had experienced something could be loud.
Not just rowdy.
Not just jovial.
Victorious.
Someone had started a song and abandoned it halfway through. Someone else picked it up in the wrong key and kept going out of spite. The floor was sticky with something amber and unapologetic. The sign over the bar read SLIPPERY IS A STATE OF MIND, and several patrons appeared to be treating it as a personal thesis.
Ferrell sat on a stool that had never once considered otter ergonomics, a glass clutched in his paws, staring into it like it might eventually confess.
Angelo leaned against the bar beside him, coat gone, baton long forgotten, cheeks flushed in the satisfied way of someone who had nailed it and knew it.
They had already had several drinks.
Possibly four.
Maybe more.
Counting felt accusatory.
Ferrell broke first.
“I like being an otter,” he said.
A beat.
“I don’t want to go back.”
Angelo took a long sip. Nodded. Didn’t look surprised.
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course you don’t.”
Ferrell blinked. “That’s it?”
Angelo shrugged. “You’re having a good night.”
“It’s not just a good night,” Ferrell said, words wobbling but sincere. “Everything’s easier. I don’t have to be myself. I don’t have to worry I’m not good enough. I don’t have to think about whether I’m allowed to do something.”
He gestured vaguely at his chest. Missed. Corrected.
“I want a thing, I do the thing. I mess up, it doesn’t stick. It just… happens. Then it’s over.”
He stared into his glass.
“I feel confident,” he added, quieter. “I’m not afraid. I just move.”
Angelo listened.
“I thought about dropping the pendant into a well,” Ferrell said, casual as weather. “Things fall into wells all the time.”
Angelo set his glass down very carefully.
“Okay,” he said. “That part? Mildly alarming.”
“I didn’t do it,” Ferrell said quickly.
“I know,” Angelo said. “Which matters.”
They drank for a moment, the bar roaring around them.
Then Angelo leaned in.
“You think you’re happier because you’re an otter,” he said. “But that’s not what changed.”
Ferrell frowned. “Feels like it did.”
“Sure,” Angelo said. “Because the shape is loud.”
He waved a hand. Knocked over an empty glass. Didn’t notice.
“Fur. Speed. Sliding everywhere. Very persuasive presentation.”
Ferrell snorted despite himself.
“But listen,” Angelo said, voice slipping into that loose, dangerous honesty musicians got when the performance finally dropped. “You didn’t stop thinking because you grew fur. You stopped thinking because you stopped asking permission.”
Ferrell’s ears drooped.
“You didn’t become joyful,” Angelo continued. “You became honest. For once, you didn’t check the room. You didn’t rehearse. You didn’t ask if it was okay to play your own part.”
He tapped the bar for emphasis. Missed. Tried again.
“That’s not an otter thing,” Angelo said. “That’s a you thing.”
Ferrell swallowed.
“What if I can’t do that without this?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at himself. “What if I lose it when I lose the shape?”
Angelo didn’t answer right away.
“You lit the ring tonight,” he said finally. “Not because you were small and fast and fuzzy.”
Ferrell snorted.
“You lit it because you decided,” Angelo said. “No hesitation. No rehearsal. You committed.”
He nudged Ferrell’s chest, gentler this time.
“That part?” he said. “That doesn’t come off with the fur. You don’t return it. You keep it because you brought it with you.”
Ferrell stared into his drink.
Angelo clinked his glass.
“To giving ourselves permission,” he said.
Ferrell hesitated—then smiled, small but real.
“To not asking,” he replied.
They drank.
Then a sound threaded its way through the walls—distant, raw, and unmistakable.
A wail.
Not pain exactly. Something deciding whether it was done asking for permission.
The lights dimmed and the shadows deepened and the amber glow over the bar thinned to a nervous hush. Glasses rattled. The hanging sign trembled, then settled. Somewhere in the back, a bottle tipped over but didn’t break.
And then—like a held note released—the lights came back.
Laughter rushed in to fill the gap. Someone started clapping off-beat. A cheer went up for reasons unclear and unnecessary. Music lurched forward as if it had tripped and decided to dance through it.
“It’s that banshee,” Ferrell said.
Angelo grimaced. “Mm. She’s thinking.”
Ferrell frowned into his drink. “And that’s bad, right?”
Angelo considered. Took a sip. Winced.
“No,” he said finally. “But it feels like she’s standing at a crossroads and yelling at it.”
The wail faded, and the bar noise reclaimed the space, loud and alive, like it had been waiting its turn.
Ferrell stared at the amber liquid in his glass.
“Huh,” he said.
Angelo lifted his drink. “To complicated women with powerful lungs.”
Ferrell clinked his glass automatically.
“To… that,” he said.
They drank again.
They left the bar the way people always did when they’d had enough—without announcing it, without quite agreeing, just drifting toward the door when the noise became too much to hold.
Cold slapped them both in the face.
Angelo inhaled deeply, immediately regretted it, and laughed. “Ah. Sobering. Rude.”
Ferrell blinked at the snow like it had personally betrayed him.
They walked—well. Angelo walked. Ferrell padded, slid, occasionally misjudged physics. The streets here were quieter, lanterns fewer, their glow stretched thin across ice-polished stone. Somewhere nearby, water moved beneath a frozen skin, whispering to itself.
The river.
Angelo stepped onto the bank and sat heavily on a half-buried bollard, legs dangling, hands braced behind him. He stared out at the ice like it might answer questions if he waited long enough.
Ferrell took one more step.
That was one step too many.
His paws went out from under him with a soft, humiliating fwump, and he face-planted into the snow.
Hard.
He lay there.
Did not move.
Angelo glanced over. “You good?”
Ferrell groaned into the ground. “I regret… everything.”
After a moment, Ferrell lifted one hind foot, planted it carefully, and pushed.
His body slid forward across the snow, face still firmly down, ears flattened, tail trailing behind him like an afterthought.
Push.
Slide.
Groan.
Angelo watched, then burst out laughing.
“Oh my gods,” he said. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Yes,” Ferrell said. “But everything hurts anyway.”
Angelo considered this. Nodded. “Fair. I’ll be here.”
Ferrell lifted his head just enough for one eye to glare sideways. “Thanks. I’ll arrive eventually.”
Another push.
Another slide.
He came to a stop beside Angelo’s feet, still face-down, snow clinging to his whiskers like punctuation.
There they sat.
The frozen river creaked softly—not breaking, just thinking about it.
After a moment, Angelo nudged Ferrell gently with his foot.
“You know,” he said, “most people sit upright for moments like this.”
Ferrell sighed, voice muffled by snow. “I am communing with the ground.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t worry,” Ferrell added. “I’m very comfortable.”
Angelo smiled out at the ice.
They stayed there—one perched, one prone—watching moonlight fracture across the frozen river.
For once, no one was asking them to be anything at all.
—
Ferrell broke the silence first.
“I had it,” he said.
Angelo didn’t look at him. “Had what?”
“Everything,” Ferrell said. The word came out too big for his mouth. He frowned at it, then kept going. “Just for a minute. Everything was perfect. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t wondering if I was doing it wrong. I wasn’t thinking about—anything.”
He swallowed. Hard.
“And then it was gone.”
Angelo nodded slowly.
“So I left too,” Ferrell went on. “Because if the thing that made me feel like that could disappear… then I must’ve imagined it. Or tricked myself into thinking I was special.”
He huffed a small, humorless laugh.
“And when it went away, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be without it.”
The river creaked.
Angelo was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, gently—like he already knew—
“What was her name?”
Ferrell didn’t answer right away.
The ice sighed beneath its skin. Somewhere far off, something shifted and decided not to break.
“Nyxie,” he said finally. “She was… the best thing I ever had.”
Angelo didn’t interrupt.
“She’s my human,” Ferrell said, then corrected himself. “Sort of. She’s actually a demon. I think. That part’s fuzzy.”
He waved a paw, lost the thread, found it again.
“She was always happy to see me. Happy to play. I never felt like I had to earn her.”
His voice wobbled, then steadied.
“I thought… I was enough.”
Angelo closed his eyes.
“And then she was gone,” Ferrell said. “School. Training. Something important. I don’t really know. One hug, and then—”
He made a small, helpless gesture with one paw.
“—gone.”
They sat with that.
“That kind of thing,” Angelo said quietly, “gets into the wiring.”
Ferrell nodded. Once. Too hard. Winced.
“She was everything and I thought I was special.”
He laughed, sharp and brittle, then immediately regretted it..
“But it turns out I wasn’t enough. She left. So I did too.”
Angelo looked down at him.
“Ferrell,” he said, steady and kind, “loving something that leaves doesn’t mean you were wrong.”
Ferrell didn’t look up.
“It means you were alive.”
The river sighed under its skin of ice.
Ferrell breathed in. Let it out.
“She’d have liked the otter,” he said softly.
Angelo smiled. “Oh. Without question.”
After a moment, Angelo spoke again.
“I had a band once,” he said. “Years ago. Different people. Different sound. We were good. Like—scary good. Everywhere we went, it worked. No wrong notes. No fights. No doubt.”
He smiled faintly.
“I thought that meant I had everything figured out.”
“What happened?” Ferrell asked.
Angelo shrugged. “It ended. Someone got sensible. Someone got famous. Someone just… vanished.”
He tapped the ice with his heel.
“And when it was gone, I realized I’d tied my sense of being alive to something that was never meant to last forever.”
Ferrell was quiet.
“I thought I’d lost everything,” Angelo said. “Turns out I’d just confused the moment with the capacity.”
He glanced down at Ferrell, still face-down, snow in his whiskers like he’d lost a fight with winter.
“You never lose the part of you that felt that,” Angelo said. “You just don’t get to keep it in the same shape.”
Ferrell made a small, broken sound that might have been a sob.
“Why did she leave?” he asked.
Angelo took his time.
“I think,” he said finally, “because she needed to grow.” He tilted his head. “And so did you.”
The wind slid across the ice.
Ferrell let that sit.
Let it hurt.
“…So what do you do,” he asked, voice rough, “when it all falls apart?”
Angelo considered.
“You keep going,” he said. “A little slower. A little braver. And when something like that shows up again—and it will—you don’t run from it, but you don’t grab it so hard you scare it away.”
He paused.
“And you don’t pretend what you had wasn’t real either.”
Ferrell exhaled.
Long.
Shaky.
“Okay,” he said. Not convinced.
With considerable effort, he rolled onto his back.
A moment passed.
Then he began to snore.
How do you improve the story with each chapter? Im invested. I can't believe more invested & then you post another chapter!!!!