ASTERWICK 05 - Rhea (Patreon)

05: Rhea

10.12.26 – 7:05 p.m.

The Giant’s Rest – Downtown Asterwick

Rhea Blackwood – Current: 5’8” 120 lbs

Rhea Blackwood knew the sound of secrets better than most people knew their own ringtone. Secrets had weight. They changed the way a person leaned over a table, the way fingers cupped a glass, the way jokes came too fast and laughter arrived too late. Working nights at the Giant’s Rest taught you to hear all of it through clatter, music, rain, and the soft old groan of the building settling around the bar like an animal getting comfortable.

At 6:30 pm on a dead Monday, the Giant’s Rest was mostly pretending to be busy. Three regulars argued softly near the dartboard about whether the Ducks had a quarterback problem or a coaching problem. A couple from out of town occupied the window table and studied the beer list with the solemnity of people choosing a mortgage. Mira Holloway and June Park sat in the back booth under the old mill-pond photograph, talking like the booth had sound-proof walls.

Rhea liked both of them. Mira had been a quiet college kid not long ago, all sharp eyes and careful movements, the kind of customer who apologized to chairs when she bumped them. June had been loud enough for two tables and somehow still charming about it. Rhea had watched them grow up in the indirect way bartenders watched people grow up: by drink orders, breakups, bad haircuts, and the slow improvement of tipping habits.

June had also become a problem for Rhea’s dignity. Not a dramatic problem. Not one Rhea would ever confess to while sober. Just a small, persistent crush that had taken up residence behind her ribs a couple years ago and refused to move out, even after June graduated, dated people with better schedules, and developed the kind of confidence that made Rhea want to look away and keep looking at the same time.

Rhea had a motorcycle parked out back, ink from wrist to collarbone, a black button-up that made tourists behave themselves, and a reputation for being the person you called when a man at the pool table forgot his manners. She also owned seven sets of dice, painted miniature goblins on Sunday mornings, and had once spent three hours arguing that a gelatinous cube deserved better dramatic lighting. People had layers. Hers just happened to include a motorcycle helmet and initiative modifiers.

So when June said, too softly, “I got bigger at work,” Rhea heard it. When Mira answered with something about not shrinking back all the way, Rhea heard that too. She did not understand it. At first she filed it under gamer talk, which June could plausibly know and Mira absolutely could not. Bigger. Shrinking. Surges. Residual. It sounded like somebody explaining a cursed barbarian subclass after two beers and one terrible homebrew rule.

Except Mira Holloway did not play Dungeons and Dragons. Rhea was confident about that in the same way she was confident the beer lines needed cleaning every other Thursday and Old Pete would claim the jukebox was broken if it played anything recorded after 1989. Mira had coffee-shop posture, not tabletop posture. She looked like she alphabetized panic. June, sure. June could be secretly rolling dice somewhere. June could be anything she wanted and make it sound cool. But Mira discussing size changes in a whisper? That made the hairs at the back of Rhea’s neck lift.

They stayed for two Foggy Ales and two baskets of Giant Fries, which they devoured. They didn’t seem to notice how quickly each of them were inhaling the food. Rhea gave them space after that, because hovering was tacky and because if she stood too close to June while June looked scared, she might do something unforgivably sincere like ask if she was okay. At 8:12, Mira slid cash under the empty glass. At 8:14, June shrugged into her jacket, glanced once toward the bar, and gave Rhea a smile that landed sideways.

“Night, Rhea,” June said. Rhea lifted two fingers from the tap handle. “Try not to solve the world’s problems without tipping the staff.” “I tipped.” “Not enough for world problems.” June’s smile sharpened for half a second, then faltered. Mira touched her elbow, and the two of them went out into the rain together.

The bar died after that like somebody had pulled a plug. By nine-thirty, the regulars had surrendered to weather, the tourist couple had fled to whatever bed-and-breakfast sold them the fiction of rustic charm, and the jukebox played to empty tables. Rhea wiped down the bar, counted the drawer twice, and decided ten o’clock was merciful enough. The Giant could rest early.

She was carrying a crate of empty bottles toward the backroom when she smelled cedar. That stopped her more effectively than a shout. The Giant’s Rest smelled like beer, wood polish, fryer oil, wet wool, and old brick. It did not smell like fresh-cut cedar after rain. Rhea set the crate on the floor and stood very still.

The backroom was narrow, crowded with stacked kegs, cleaning buckets, spare stools, and a shelf of things no one wanted to throw away because they might become useful during an apocalypse or a health inspection. A delivery clipboard hung beside the alley door. Beneath it, on the concrete near the old mop sink, was a small clear vial no longer than her thumb.

Rhea did not pick it up immediately. She crouched, forearms resting on her knees, tattoos shifting over lean arms as she studied the thing. No label. No cap, either. A smear of pale residue clung to the inside, milky and faintly luminous where the overhead bulb caught it. Beside the vial, the concrete was damp in one coin-sized circle.

“Cool. Mystery juice. Exactly what this night needed,” Rhea told it. The vial answered by existing and refusing to simply disappear. She grabbed a bar towel, wrapped it around her fingers, and lifted the glass without touching it directly. Something in the damp circle on the floor reacted to the open air. It gave one soft hiss, and a thread of pale vapor curled up from the concrete.

Rhea jerked back too late. The smell sharpened at once. Cedar. Wet iron. Something green and buried. Her eyes watered. The vapor slipped under the towel, cold against her knuckles, then burned warm as it crawled up her wrist. A fizz crossed the bridge of her nose, slid down the back of her throat, and settled deep in her chest.

Rhea panicked and staggered back. She slammed into the keg rack, and clapped a hand over her mouth as if she could keep the vapor from getting any farther inside her. Her pulse lurched. Poison, her brain offered. Chemical spill. Gas leak. Call someone. But all she managed was one rough cough and a furious whisper: “No. Nope. Absolutely not.”

A sound came from outside. Tires hissed over wet pavement in the rear lot. Rhea moved to the alley door and pushed it open with her boot. Rain needled the yellow security light. Her motorcycle waited under the awning, black and chrome and patient. Beyond it, near the dumpster and the warped fence, a plain white van idled with its headlights off.

For one second Rhea and the van seemed to notice each other at the same time. Then the engine revved. The van shot backward, fishtailed near the alley mouth, and tore out onto Mill Street hard enough to spray water across the brick wall. A license plate she couldn’t identify. No logo. Just white panels and a rear door that looked that had a mud smeared hand print, in the glow of the streetlight.

Rhea stood in the open doorway until the sound vanished. The vial in the towel felt warm through the cloth. That was the moment she should have called someone sensible. Police, maybe. Grant Ward down at Harbor Coffee, who somehow gave off emergency-contact energy despite owning too many flannels. Instead, she put the vial in an empty pint glass, covered it with a coaster, and set it on the highest shelf behind the locked liquor cage.

By 10:03, the front door was locked, the chairs were up, and Rhea was pretending the back of her tongue did not still taste like pennies and forest floor. Her phone buzzed while she was rinsing the growlers. A message from Caleb appeared over a photo of a twenty-sided die balanced on a pizza box: IMPROMPTU GAME. MY PLACE. THAT BEHOLDER ISN’T GOING TO SLAY ITSELF. BRING BEER.

Rhea stared at the message, then at the locked liquor cage, then at her own reflection in the dark bar mirror. Tall, narrow, hard edges. Dark eyes. Black hair coming loose from its knot. Ink everywhere visible and plenty hidden. She looked fine. Fine enough. Weird nights were still nights. Weird nights still ended better with friends, dice, and beer.

She filled two growlers with Foggy Ale, clipped them into the saddlebags on her motorcycle, and rode through rain-slick streets toward Caleb’s duplex on Juniper Court. The cold air should have cleared her head. Instead, it pushed the cedar taste deeper into her lungs. Caleb Voss lived in half of a sagging blue duplex with a porch light that flickered like it was auditioning for a horror movie part. He was the game master, which meant he owned too many binders, used voices when sober, and believed every locked door deserved a backstory. His living room had been converted into a battlefield of graph paper, snack bowls, character sheets, and tiny painted ruins.

The group was already there. Travis Bell, broad and cheerful, played a paladin who solved moral questions with a hammer. Owen Pike, pale and precise, played a wizard and corrected Caleb’s Latin even when the Latin was fictional. Milo Chen, who smiled like he was getting away with something regardless of whether he was or not, played a rogue because subtlety was one thing he took seriously. And Nessa Rutlidge sat at the end of the couch with a notebook balanced on her knees, thick glasses sliding down her nose, soft body folded into an oversized cardigan as she drew flowers in the margins of her druid spells.

“There she is,” Caleb said, arms rising like he was presenting a champion in an arena. “Rhea Blackwood, bringer of ale, breaker of encounters, sworn enemy of my carefully balanced bosses.” Rhea set the growlers on the coffee table. “Your bosses die because they monologue.” “Villains deserve theater.” “Villains deserve initiative.”

They settled into the game with the easy mess of people who had done this too many times to be polite about it. Travis argued with a ghost statue. Owen identified the wrong magical fungus twice and took it personally. Milo stole a cursed ring from a corpse and immediately announced that this was Caleb’s fault somehow. Nessa’s druid adopted a beetle the size of a shoe and named it Bernard.

Rhea laughed in the right places. Rolled well. Bounced a cheese puff of Caleb’s forehead when he described a corridor as “moist.” For almost an hour, the strange thing in the backroom became smaller in her mind. A bad delivery. A dumb prank. A van that had nothing to do with Mira and June whispering about getting bigger, about shrinking, about a cabin Rhea was almost sure she had not actually heard them mention.

Then heat moved under her skin. It began beneath her sternum, a slow unfurling pressure that made her sit straighter. Rhea looked down at her character sheet and found the numbers swimming. Her black jeans tightened across her hips as if she had shifted wrong in the chair. The fitted button-up pulled lightly across her chest. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for her to stop breathing for one count.

“You good?” Nessa asked quietly. Rhea looked up. Nessa was watching her over the frames of her glasses, expression mild but attentive. “Yeah,” Rhea said. “Just too much fryer oil in my bloodstream.” “That’s not where it goes,” Owen said without looking up. “Let her have poetry,” Milo told him.

The pressure faded. Rhea made herself unclench her fist before her pencil snapped. Ten minutes later it returned stronger, lower this time, blooming through her belly and pelvis with a dense, heavy ache. Her bra band seemed to bite. The familiar hang of her shirt changed, fabric drawing across a chest that felt fuller than it had when she left the bar. She shifted, and her jeans answered with a tight, unpleasant squeeze over her thighs and hips.

Rhea was tall, but she had always been built narrow—five-eight, lean from hauling kegs, riding, and never remembering to eat before close. She knew the map of her body the way she knew the back roads out of town. This was not that map. This was weight arriving where there had not been weight, softness and pressure filling out under muscle, her chest and hips becoming suddenly, insistently present.

Caleb put on his deep narrator voice. “The cavern trembles as the stone door begins to rise—” “Pause,” Rhea said. The whole table looked at her. She stood too quickly. The room tipped, not spinning exactly, but dropping away at the edges. Her chair scraped behind her. Her shirt pulled tight across her back and chest, and for one sharp second she felt every button as an individual threat. “Bathroom. Don’t kill me while I’m gone.”

“No promises,” Travis said, but his grin faded before she reached the hall. Rhea shut herself in the tiny bathroom and braced both hands on the sink. The mirror over it showed her face pale beneath the bathroom’s yellow light. Her pupils looked too wide. Her lips were parted. She looked like someone who had just outrun something and only now realized it might still be behind her.

She looked down. The black button-up had always fit close because Rhea liked close. Close was armor. Close said she knew exactly how much space she occupied and would decide for herself whether to give any of it up. Now the fabric strained softly across a chest that felt heavier, rounder, newly full beneath the compression of her bra. Her hips pushed against the waistband of her jeans. The denim bit at her thighs.

“What the fuck”, she whispered. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck...” Heat pulsed again, and she tightened her grip on the sink until the old porcelain complained. The feeling was not growth like stretching taller. She did not rise toward the light fixture or feel the room shrink. Instead, her body seemed to fill in, adding density and curve without asking permission. A faint tug passed over her tattoos as skin settled over new weight. Her belt pinched hard enough to make her hiss.

A knock tapped the door. “Rhea?” Nessa’s voice. “You okay in there?” Rhea stared at herself, at the impossible fullness pushing against familiar clothes, and forced her voice steady. “Yeah. Migraine. I’m going to head out.” “Want me to drive you?” “I brought the bike.” “That was not my question.”

Rhea almost smiled. Almost. “I’m fine, Ness.” It was a lie, but it was one she could carry for the length of a hallway. She splashed water on her face, waited until the worst of the dizziness loosened, then opened the door. Nessa stood there with her cardigan pulled tight around herself, glasses catching the hall light. She looked Rhea up and down once, not rudely. Carefully.

“Text me when you’re home,” Nessa said. “Bossy.” “Observant.” Rhea did not have the energy to argue with kind people, which was how she knew she was worse off than she wanted to admit. She said quick goodbyes, blamed the migraine again, and left Caleb’s duplex with the growler caps clinking in her hand like tiny bells.

The ride home was only twelve minutes. It felt longer. Rain misted against her visor. The bike vibrated beneath her, familiar and steady, but her body on it felt wrong. Her thighs pressed wider against the seat. Her jacket pulled tight when she leaned forward. Every breath made her chest feel heavier inside the confines of her clothes. She kept both hands firm on the grips and told herself not to think about white vans, cedar stink, or June Park saying bigger like it was something that happened to people.

By the time Rhea reached her apartment above the closed tailor shop on Alder Street, her hands were shaking. She parked under the narrow awning, killed the engine, and sat there in the rain-soft dark with one boot planted on the pavement. She was still five-eight. She knew that before she stood. The world had not moved lower. Doorframes had not changed. But her jeans had become too tight to ignore, her shirt gaped faintly between two buttons, and the weight of her own body had shifted into a shape she did not recognize.

Rhea climbed the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail, the other pressed against the strange fullness under her ribs, acutely aware her glutes could split her pants apart at any moment. At the landing, she looked back down Alder Street. Rain blurred the lamps. The town looked ordinary enough to be insulting. No van waited below. No one watched from the corner. Still, when she unlocked her door and stepped inside, she set the chain with more care than usual.

Her phone buzzed before she could take off her jacket. Nessa: HOME? Rhea stared at the message until the letters steadied, then typed back with both thumbs. Home. Migraine. Alive. She hesitated, then added, If anything happens to your druid, I claim adoption rights of Bernard. Nessa replied with a beetle emoji then added, see you next sesh.

Rhea managed one breath that almost became a laugh. Then the dizziness returned, heavy and soft, folding through her knees. She caught herself against the wall, feeling her jacket compress across her chest and arms, and her belt dig into hips that had not been shaped like this two hours ago. Somewhere in the locked liquor cage at the Giant’s Rest, a tiny vial sat inside an upside-down pint glass. Somewhere in town, Mira and June were planning to go back to the woods. And somewhere beyond the rain, a white van without plates kept moving.