#they wind up at this castle which very clearly does NOT have a ball on but like. what else is she supposed to do. it's cold and dark and

[theteaisaddictive]

you send one thematically-relevant song about loneliness and love and suddenly you get yet another vague au idea based on your characters

[harrysweasleys]

save me a dance // n.l.

summary: Hi!! Could I please request a Neville x Slytherin! Reader? She has a kind soul and became friends with Hermione (who’s the only person that knows about her crush on Neville), but she kept her distance because she knew about what happened to his parents. She goes to the Yule ball with another Slytherin that eventually ditched her, so she sneaks into the kitchens and hangs out with house elves until Neville comes by (knowing that she always hung out with them when she felt sad) and he confesses ^^

warnings: very brief mention of unwanted sexual advances if you squint, mentions of food

word count: 5k

a/n: my first neville fic!!! i’m so excited for you all to read it, i had so much fun writing it :)

[i do not give permission for my work to be reposted on any other platform]

For what felt like the hundredth time, you woke up to the same view; your Yule Ball dress hanging loosely over the four poster bed, the sunlight streaming through the fabric and onto your chunky bed sheets.

The dress was quite stunning, but Godric, did you dread wearing it. You didn’t exactly feel like dancing the night away alongside some Slytherin bloke while you looked around at all the happy couples, wishing ever so desperately that that could have been you. That you could be the one dancing the night away with the person who had captured your heart effortlessly.

Unfortunately, that plan hadn’t exactly fallen into place. Hermione had done her best to help you out in getting him to ask you, but you ended up being put on the spot when a Slytherin boy named Jasper had asked you during Transfigurations. So, you had said yes, but deep down, that regret was starting to multiply by the second.

You let out a groan, tossed your head back against the pillow, and lifted the warm comforter off of your body. The fireplace in the centre of the room was still crackling away, but within the stone walls of the castle, the cold seemed to never fully fade.

So you threw on your house sweater, your scarf, robe, and a pair of trousers, before heading down to start the day. The snow was accumulating rather quickly outside as Christmas drew nearer, rendering you quite glad that you brought your scarf.

“At least you’re prepared,” Hermione mumbled as the two of you made your way to Divinations, “It’s always freezing in Professor Trewlaney’s room! Oh, how I wish I could have brought mine. Rather silly of me.”

You chuckled, keeping your eyes on the long winding staircase as you responded to her, “Not to worry, I’m sure Ron has a sweater you can borrow.”

Though you weren’t facing her, you could practically feel her eye roll as she scoffed, “Very funny. Such a clever idea. You really are filled with those.”

“I’m just saying,” you turned back to face her quickly before pulling down the ladder to the Divination classroom, “I’m sure he’d think you look amazing in it. Isn’t that what guys like? When their girlfriends wear their clothing?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” she shushed you as you climbed up, “Be quiet!”

You apologized with a laugh as you climbed into the classroom and made your way to your usual seat at the front by the window, Hermione coming over to join you. Harry and Ron were seated not too far away, but that didn’t really matter to you. From across the class, you spotted Neville.

He was accompanied by Seamus — who seemed quite interested in the tablecloth at the moment — but you so wished that you could be the one sitting across from him.

His vest hung loosely against his body and his dark hair was littering his forehead, eyes scrunched shut as he let out a yawn. As he opened them, you noticed they darted in your direction before snapping away.

You felt a frown form on your lips. Why did he look away so fast? Instinctively, you raised a hand to the top of your head to check if there was anything in your hair.

“What are you doing?” Hermione asked as she dug through her bag, placing the heavy Divinations book on top of the circular table. The book, with its golden lettering, seemed to twinkle under the pink hues of the morning sky.

You shrugged, “Nothing.”

Her eyes followed to where you had previously been looking, and she let out a sigh, “Relax. You look wonderful. There’s nothing to fix.”

You sulked back into your chair, “Hermione, he asked Ginny to the ball. Don’t try to continue your matchmaking.”

She leaned forward on the table, pushing her thick hair behind her shoulder, “Doesn’t mean you don’t stand a chance. Look, I like Ginny, but maybe they’re going as friends. Like you and Jasper.”

“I think Jasper has more than friendship on his mind,” you muttered under your breath, thinking back to the way his hands lingered on your lower back a little too long after you agreed to be his date.

She gave you a sympathetic glance, opening her mouth to speak again, but was interrupted by Trewlaney announcing her presence. The class began shortly after, and you spent the time reading Hermione’s palm and deciphering what your own dreams meant.

According to the textbook, you were going to stumble upon a lot of money as well as possibly fall down a sewer within the next week. Nothing new, really. It was better than Harry’s, who once again, was told he was doomed for death in the coming months.

As the class ended, you stuffed the books and parchment into your backpack and thanked Trelawney for the lesson, following Hermione out of the room. As you made your way to the ladder, you spotted a little red ball on the ground.

You crouched to pick it up, immediately recognizing it as Neville’s remembrall. How oddly convenient that it land right at your feet.

“Oh, thanks,” he muttered as you turned to hand it to him, fingers brushing against his as you placed it in his palm, “This thing likes to try and escape.”

You grinned at him, “You should keep it safe in your dorm.” You tried your best to keep your voice steady as you spoke to him, which was odd, really. Why did you always become so nervous around Neville, who was one of the shyest, kindest people you’d ever met? Crushes were quite strange.

He gave you a small smile and a shrug, “I like to carry it on me. It’s from my nan. I don’t want to leave it behind.”

Your chest felt like it was going to swell at his words, “That’s really sweet. I’m sure she appreciates that you care for it so much.”

As you turned back to face the ladder, Hermione gave you a quick wink and a thumbs up before darting away with Harry and Ron, clearly insinuating that you should walk with Neville. You mentally scolded her before making your way to it, Neville not far behind.

“She does,” he said, fondness clear in his voice, “It’s not like I get anything from my parents, so I cherish anything I get from my family in general.”

Your heart sunk in your chest. Neville had always been very closed off when talking about his family — especially his parents — so the way he mentioned them so casually had you doubting what to say next. You didn’t want to make him uncomfortable by continuing the topic, nor did you want to brush it off like it was nothing.

“I’m sorry,” you said, facing him once the two of you began going down the spiral staircase, “I can imagine it’s difficult. But your nan clearly cares a lot, and she’s lucky to have you.”

His ears turned slightly pink at your words and you had to fight a grin.

The next few minutes were silent until Neville once again turned to face you. There was something about him that always seemed optimistic, despite the fact that he had just spoken a bit about the difficult situation with his parents. Whether it be the smile on his face or the sparkle in his eye, you couldn’t be sure what it was. But Merlin, did you ever adore it.

“She sent me my suit for the Yule Ball, actually,” he said, a bit of a hop in his step as he said the words, “It doesn’t fit perfectly but I’m sure it’ll last the night.”

You let out a small laugh, “That’s awfully sweet of her. I’m sure you’ll look dashing.”

As you said the words, you regretted them instantly. Well, not so much regretted — you meant every syllable — but more so, you wished you could currently fall into the sewer that Trelawney had predicted you’d stumble into.

Throwing out a compliment like that was quite possibly the last thing you wanted to do. Would he react badly? Would he think you were coming onto him? Would this change things?

Were you overthinking?

The corners of his lips curled up into a shy smile and he gave you a nod and cut you short of your internal rambling, “Are you excited?”

Yeah, definitely overthinking.

You let out a sigh, trying to move past your embarrassment and continue your walk to your next class, dodging a few passing students, “Kind of. I’m excited for the music. Not so much the dancing. I’m not very good at that.”

He chuckled, “I wasn’t either. I taught myself, actually. In my room. The lads loved to make fun of that.”

The image of Neville dancing away in the cramped boys’ dorm brought a smile to your face.

“You’ve already got a step up on me, then,” you faced him, “Get ready to watch me humiliate myself on the dance floor.”

You stepped a little closer to him as a group of Ravenclaw pushed past in a rush, and Neville’s hand reached for your arm to help steady you.

“Sorry,” he muttered, pulling away and avoiding your gaze, “But anyways, I’m sure you’re not as bad as you think. Ginny has never danced either, so you won’t be the only one.”

You tried your best to push past the surge of jealousy that washed over you. You already knew he was going with Ginny — hell, you’d know for a while now — but it did not make it any easier to hear. Especially coming from him.

“I didn’t expect you’d ask her,” you admitted, “but I’m sure you’ll both have a wonderful time. She’ll have a good leader to help her maneuver the moves.”

You gave his shoulder a small nudge, trying to act like you weren’t drowning in your own feelings. The thought of Neville holding Ginny close to his body as they swayed to the romantic music nearly made you sick. You liked Ginny a great deal, she was such a sweet girl with a fierce attitude that you admired, but you really wished Neville had asked you instead.

“We’re just going as friends,” he said, “I was going to ask someone else but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And I’m pretty sure Ginny was also interested in another person in the first place.”

You tried your best to hold back a sigh of relief. They were going as friends. That didn’t mean it would make it easier to see them together, but maybe you could push past the jealousy you felt about seeing them as a couple.

But then the next thing he said hit you; he wanted to ask someone else. Someone he was interested in romantically? Perhaps he actually did like someone, even if that someone wasn’t Ginny. Who could it be? And why were you so irritated? You didn’t even know them.

“Well,” you said, unsure of how to change the topic, “I’ll be looking out for you two on the dance floor.” You wanted so desperately to no longer speak of the Yule Ball. The thought of the night was now dizzying and had you feeling a little faint, to be completely honest.

It was going to be a long day.

— —

You were honestly quite surprised by the appearance of the Great Hall. Usually filled with long tables, chairs, and candles, it was now glistening like a winter wonderland. There was fake snow falling from the ceiling, but it never touched the ground. The room smelled faintly of pine trees and sweets, and you figured that there had to be at least seven Christmas trees littering the room.

To put it simply, the space was beautiful.

Music played softly from the dance floor ahead, and to your right, there was a small table with a few snacks and drinks. There were also quite a few seats around, already occupied by couples and friends.

“What do you want to do?”

You turned to face Jasper, who was waving over at a group of Slytherins further on the left.

“We can go dance,” you suggested, praying he wasn’t going to drag you over to his housemates. Jasper seemed alright enough, but you weren’t a fan of his obnoxious friends. You could very well go the night without hanging around them, thank you very much.

He shrugged, “Sure.”

He linked his hand in yours and tugged you along behind him, bringing you over to the dance floor. Once you got there, you noticed a few familiar faces.

Hermione and Viktor were not far away, and she gave you an excited grin before pointing at her date, who was obviously making love heart eyes in her direction. You couldn’t blame him, honestly. Further along you spotted Fred and Angelina, dancing away as if they were the only two in the room. It caused you to chuckle.

“So do you want to dance, or…?” Jasper asked, placing one of his hands on your waist.

You shivered under his touch. It wasn’t a good shiver, it was discomfort. You wanted more than anything to be dancing with Neville — who you currently spotted over with Ginny, his hands on her waist and hers on his shoulders.

“Yeah,” you squeaked, awkwardly stepping closer to him before putting your arms around his neck. Your throat began to sting as you watched the two of them glide across the floor, laughing as they spoke to each other. It felt quite juxtaposed to the uncomfortable, weird situation that you found yourself currently in.

You began to sway to the music, trying your best not to dart your eyes to Neville every couple of seconds. Jasper was clearly not enjoying this, but you honestly couldn’t bring yourself to care what he wanted. He wasn’t going to get what he came here for and you weren’t going to be guilted into it either.

You honestly couldn’t be thankful enough as the slow song ended. You quickly pulled your arms away from him and you crossed them over your chest.

“I’m going to go get a drink,” you said, not waiting for his response before taking off to the table by the entrance. You heard him call your name as you pushed your way through students, holding the skirt of your dress in your hands to avoid being stepped on, but you didn’t look back.

There was a clearing near the table and you took a deep breath, dropping your skirt and letting out a sigh. Your shoulders slouched as you walked over and grabbed a small glass, not even sure if you were thirsty. The excuse was simply to get away from Jasper. You were regretting your decision to come here more than ever.

“I recommend the punch.”

You spun on your heel, nearly coming in contact with Neville. He was standing behind you, taking a step back after realizing how close he really was.

“Oh—,” you nodded, “Thanks.”

The punch bowl sat in front of you, glistening red under the shimmering lights. You grabbed the spoon and poured yourself a little bit, enjoying the scent of the fruity drink.

You turned back around, giving Neville a forced smile, “I’m sure it’s delicious.”

His eyebrows furrowed and he fiddled with his waistcoat, “Are you alright? I don’t mean to prod or anything.”

Your heart fluttered at his words, “Yeah, I guess I’m alright, really. Just not having a great time.”

Neville’s eyes scanned the dance floor where he spotted Jasper’s familiar blond head scanning the crowd, “I’m guessing it has something to do with your date.”

His eyes found yours again and you nodded, placing the glass down on the table behind you, “My situation is kind of like yours, I guess. You wanted to ask someone else. Well, I wanted someone else to ask me.”

You could see his shoulders sag before he frowned, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I’d say anyone would be lucky to have you as their partner, but something about him tells me he’s not enjoying himself the way he should be, being by your side and all.”

You had to fight a grin at his words. How Neville could be so awkward, yet so effortless in his words, you’d never understand. It was one of the reasons you knew you wouldn’t be getting over your crush anytime soon.

“Thanks,” you gave him a smile, looking down to the ground before meeting his eyes again, “You should go back. I don’t want to keep you from dancing.”

You could see the hesitation in his eyes as he scanned your face, but he gave a slight nod, “If ever you want to get away from him, I’ll be there to help you.”

“Thanks, Neville,” you smiled genuinely, maintaining eye contact. He stood there for a moment, looking into your eyes, and you could practically feel how reluctant he was to walk away.

As cliché and typical as it sounds, it almost felt like you were alone in the room, completely lost in his gaze. His eyes brought you comfort that nothing else could provide, and you only wished you could look into them more often. Like dancing, for example. How easily you’d find yourself lost in his eyes if you were dancing.

“No worries,” he gave you a small smile, scanned your face once more, and took off into the crowd. As you watched his head of dark hair vanish, you let out a deep breath. If life could go your way, he’d have his hand linked with yours as he led you back to the dance floor.

But life wasn’t fair like that, was it?

You completely disregarded the punch behind you, stomach feeling like it was in knots, and made your way back to where you left Jasper. Only, you couldn’t find the familiar mop of blond hair anywhere. He was rather tall, so it wouldn’t be difficult to spot him. And yet, somehow, he was nowhere to be seen.

Until you looked to the entrance door and saw him hand in hand with a ginger Slytherin girl, both of them stumbling over their feet as they made their way out.

“Well, that was fast,” you mumbled, a frown on your face.

You stood alone on the floor, couples swaying to the music around you. It kind of felt like a movie — the kind of movie where the girl gets her heart crushed by a guy, and then is ditched by another guy, and then is left alone in the end. A crappy movie, you thought, but one that seemed to fit really well right now.

The music was practically taunting you, so instead of staying put or going to finish your drink, you once again gathered your dress in your hands, and made your way out of the room.

The hallway felt a lot fresher compared to the Great Hall, but that was understandable. Hundreds of bodies in one room compared to the corridor with an open doorway to the winter air.

Though, that wasn’t where you were going. You decided you’d go down to your usual escape spot, and now that all the teachers were chaperoning the ball, you would make it there with minimal interruption.

You spotted the familiar painting by the kitchen entrance, the bowl of fruits, and raised your hand to tickle the pear. The painting swung open and you crawled through the little stone passage, making sure your dress wasn’t going to get caught, before landing on both feet on the tile floor.

“Oh! Miss Y/N!”

Dobby, donned in a little scarf and hat, waved at you from a tabletop.

“Hey, Dobby,” you grinned, “Sorry to interrupt your quiet evening in here. I didn’t know where else to go.”

He patted the table next to him, “Why did you leave so early? Dobby heard the ball was lasting all night.”

You gave him a little smile, sitting down on the stool in front of him, “Wasn’t as fun as I expected. I’d rather spend my evening here. Where is everyone else?” The stool was rather small for a human being, considering it was most likely made for an elf, but if you leaned forwards against the table and kept your feet plastered to the ground, you managed to balance just fine.

He gave a little smile and looked at you with those big eyes, “They are all tired! We have been putting the ball together for days now! They all went to bed.”

The corner of your lips curved up, “Well, now you have company, Dobby.”

He clapped his hands together and let out a little laugh, “Let me show you what Dobby found today. It was in the Gryffindor common room!”

You nodded, knowing that it was most likely a knitted hat. Hermione had been leaving those scattered around the room for a little while now. Little did she know Dobby was the one collecting them all.

As you watched his little body disappear through a small doorway on the far wall, you took a look around the kitchen. Despite the fact that you were certain they had been working non-stop in here for days on end, it was nearly spotless. Pots and pans shimmered under the candlelight, tabletops were clear, apart from a few fruit bowls and snacks. The counters were clean, as well as the floors.

If this place had windows, or maybe a little more light, you felt it would be quite nice.

You sat there silently for a little while, already beginning to feel the sadness of the evening creep in. It was quite a bummer, really. You didn’t know if you wanted to go back to your own dorm tonight or stay out wandering the halls, mind running through all the scenarios on how tonight could have gone differently, how it could have been better.

The only sound you could hear was a light creak, which you eventually realized was the painting swinging open to let someone in.

Panic began to settle in and you stood off your chair, moving to the other side of the table. You would still be very much visible if you ducked, so there was no point in doing it, but you did it anyways.

The last thing you wanted was for Snape or Moody to catch you where you shouldn’t be.

Except, the person that crawled through and landed sturdily on their feet wasn’t Snape or Moody.

It was Neville.

You popped your head back up, eyes locking with his. He looked a little disheveled in terms of his hair, and his bow tie was slightly off centre, but the smile on his face showed relief.

“Neville?” you asked, already feeling a little less panicked. You only hoped Neville was alone. The last thing you wanted was for a girl to crawl in behind him. He wasn’t that kind of guy, you knew that, but your mind went there anyways.

Thankfully, he was alone. The painting swung closed behind him and he gave you a small smile.

“What are you doing here?” you asked, walking back around to the front of the table, this time deciding not to sit on the stool.

His cheeks turned a little pink but he brushed it off and shrugged, “I saw you rush out of the room. I wanted to see if you were okay. I remember you once told me you come here when you’re upset, so I gave it a shot.”

Your mouth felt like it fell open so you shut it quickly, blinking rapidly, “I’m surprised you remembered. Only you and Hermione know about my little escape spot.”

He gave a small chuckle, stepping a little closer, “Are you alright, though? I saw you leave and I didn’t see your date anywhere.”

You gave a shrug, averting your eyes, “He left. With another girl. I wasn’t interested in him that way, but it still sucks.”

He furrowed his eyebrows and gave a shake of his head, “You’re better off without him,” he stepped a little closer, catching your attention once more, “But I get why you’re upset. Funny story, the same thing happened to me. But not in the same sense. Ginny managed to get a dance with Harry.”

You were close enough to put a hand on his shoulder, “I’m sorry.”

Realization caught up to you and you noticed how stupid this gesture probably was, so you snatched your arm back and held it against you. Neville noticed your quick reaction and you could see his gaze fall down to the ground before meeting yours again.

Just like at the punch table, it felt as if time stood still while you looked into his eyes. You could see he looked like he wanted to say something, his stare darting back and forth between your lips and your eyes, but he didn’t say anything for a good moment.

Until one of his hands reached across and held yours. His skin was warm, and you could feel his pulse against his wrist. His heart was beating fast, and if he could feel your own pulse, he’d say the same about you.

“You look—,” he took a deep breath, “You look beautiful tonight. Well, not just tonight. You look beautiful most of the time. I’m just saying, it’s — never mind.”

Your heart seemed to stutter in your chest, goosebumps rising on your skin at his words. They had caught you so off guard that you couldn’t find a way to respond. No words seemed to find their way into your mind. All you could do was smile. A bright, genuine grin that hurt your cheeks.

“Thanks,” you let out a small laugh, linking your fingers with his, “Also, you look pretty dapper yourself. I told you you would, and I was right.”

He stepped closer, his other hand locking with your free one. It wasn’t an overtly intimate gesture — people held hands all the time — but Merlin, did you ever melt into his touch.

“Do you — Can we have a dance?”

You bit your lip to hold back your smile. How you went from standing alone on the dance floor, starring in the most depressing teen flick you’d ever heard of, to standing alone in the kitchen, your hands locked with Neville’s as the candles flickered around the two of you, you’d never know. But you were so, so grateful. And happier than you can ever remember being.

“I’d love that,” you nodded, stepping closer and resting your head against his shoulder. His hands let go of yours and went to your waist, and it felt so right. So right that you completely forgot about how it felt when Jasper was holding you instead.

Your hands went up to his neck, draping them around him and leaning into his touch. There was no music, but it almost didn’t feel necessary. The two of you began to sway slowly back and forth, the only sound being the click of your shoes as you took your steps. You couldn’t even bring yourself to care about whether Dobby would walk back in any second now.

He rested his head against yours as he led the way. It wasn’t much of a dance, but it was quite possibly the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to you. You wished more than anything that you could freeze this moment and live like this forever.

“A hat! Dobby was left a hat — Oh! Hello!”

Neville pulled away instinctively and grinned awkwardly, taking a second to process what had happened before nodding his head in the direction of the house elf, “Hello, Dobby.”

You fought a grin, turning your head back to face Dobby, who was awkwardly looking between the two of you, a large knitted beanie in his hand.

“Dobby can sense he is intruding,” he muttered, giving a little bow before backing up through the door he left through before, “Good night!”

The moment had sort of been interrupted, but you didn’t move away from Neville’s touch, resting your head against his shoulder once more as your laughter died down. Of course, the curious little elf would walk in at the worst moment.

“I knew that would happen,” you laughed, tightening your grip around him a little more. He chuckled, head falling against yours. You could feel his hair tickling the side of your face, the strands unruly and curly as they brushed against your skin.

The night ended up being way better than you expected.

This one you would never forget.

——

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[inarizakibabe]

Changes

As the first prince of his country Suna had just about everything his heart could want. Riches, fine silks and linens, and more food than he could eat. One would expect with a life as luxurious as his he would be happy. Unfortunately his father could see the sadness deep in his son's eyes. Maybe he needed  new hobby or more servants to boss around? Then again looking at things carefully the king noticed his son avoided the servants as much as he could. Just what could cheer up his son and bring back the joy in his eyes? Oh! Maybe that could work.

"You called for me father?"

"Yes Rintaro. I've noticed your sour mood these past few months and I think I know what could make it better." the king smiled down at his son. "I remember entering a funk as you young kids say and your grandfather threw a ball in my honor and I ended up meeting your mother."

Suna fought hard to hide the disgust creeping onto his face. Surely his father didn't really think he wanted to meet someone.

"So that's why three days from now we will have a ball and invite all eligible maidens to attend. Maybe I'll be able to see you smile again,"

"Um father with all due respect I don't really see how a ball will improve my funk as you called it. Maybe if I took a ride around the forest I'll feel better?" Suna hoped his father would get the message but knowing how stubborn he was he'll most likely be engaged three days from now. "I'll even bring my attendants to make sure I'm alright."

"Nonsense going for a ride isn't what you need. Trust me on this Rintaro. A ball is exactly what you need. You're dismissed. You have a ball to prepare for." The king said before turning back to the papers on his desk.

Suna sighed and left his father's office. Maybe if he ran away nobody would miss him. Or the entire kingdom would be put on lock down until he was found. He couldn't put his people through that so there was only one thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next day Suna found himself taking a walk in the garden. If all goes to plan he wouldn't have to propose and maybe he could get the freedom he was craving. Sure castle life was fun but when you have people constantly telling you how to live and doing every thing fro you it can get tiring. Before he turned eighteen he didn't have as many responsibilities as he does now. Life was simple he would take lessons during the day and after a certain time he was free to do what he wanted until dinner time.

Now he's stuck behind a desk everyday taking on the tasks of the kingdom he father didn't want to do. If he got to leave the castle anymore it was for business and once all was settled he'd come right back home and behind the four walls of his personal office again. His home had become a prison and his office his cell.

"You know if you continue to frown at the ground it's less likely to open up and take you away from here."

Suna looked up and found one of his attendants speaking with him. He had two personal attendants who miraculously happened to be twins. They met each other at the age of six and have been together ever since. The one speaking to him now was the blonde one Atsumu which meant his brother Osamu, with gray hair, was most likely harrassing the kitchen staff.

"That sounds like a dream come true right now. Don't you feel suffocated here? You've lived here your whole and trained to work for me. Was it something you always wanted or was this chosen for you?" Suna asked.

"Sounds like someone is scared of their responsibilities. Alright Rintaro tell me what's wrong." Atsumu offered Suna an encouraging smile until he noticed the deadpan look on Suna's face. "You don't have to look at me like that you know."

"No offense but, actually take as much offense as you can from this but last I checked advice giving wasn't something you were capable of. Where's Osamu?"

"Looking up one of the maid's skirts. Now what do you mean I'm not a good advice giver? I happen to give great advice to people in need." Atsumu huffed.

"Right right remind me again why ten percent of the palace guards quit after you left 'inspiring' words with them." Suna mused.

"Be glad you're a prince." Atsumu muttered dejectedly.

"Threatening the crowned prince? That's grounds for dungeon time. Let me know if you want gray or white sheets." Suna laughed as he continued in the direction he was headed before.

"I'll take green. Look the fact of the matter is you're clearly not happy about something and as one of your attendants it's my job to fix that. I can get your horse saddled if you want and tell your father you had an entire platter filled with cheese." Usually Suna would grimace at the mention of cheese but a ride through the kingdom sounded more like what he needed.

"Thanks but no thanks, after the last time my father would kill me if he found out I ran off again. If you did want to cheer me up you could figure out a way to get him to cancel this ball he's throwing in my honor."

"You know as well as I do just how stubborn your old man is. You'd have better luck raising the dead than changing his mind. Look on the bright side. There'll be cake." Atsumu smiled at Suna who in turn frowned at him.

"For saying that you get purple sheets."

"Wait! Let's talk this out!"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The following day Suna found himself in his room being fitted for a new suit. In the twenty minutes he's been standing there he's been pricked by pins three times.

"Last warning tailor. The next time you hurt the prince you'll be charged for treason." Today Osamu was keeping Suna company

''Forgive me your highness. You're more built than I'm use to dealing with. Rest assured this suit will be the most beautiful suit you'll ever wear." the tailor put another pin in the fabric he was working with and prayed he hadn't pricked Suna again. "If I may ask, what occasion is this ball in honor of? The last celebration we had was your eighteenth birthday and I believe your birthday isn't until next year so what's the joyous occasion?"

"You'll find out the day after the ball until then please focus on leaving skin on my body." Suna sighed.

"Of course your highness my apologies again."

"Tsumu talked to me yesterday. What's going on with you?"

"He talks too much. He simply saw me walking in the garden nothing else."

"Oh yeah? I heard that princess you met in Shektor is coming tomorrow. Should I make arrangements that she's your first dance of the evening?" Osamu smirked at Suna who scowled at him. "Oh dear your highness what an expression. Be careful Princess Tsumaki doesn't see it she might think one of the wind goblins is tickling your nose again. In fact I'll write a letter to her right now to bring her special medicine to cure you!"

"Osamu you bastard! Ow! Alright fine enough I'll answer both your questions just stop tormenting me! I should have both of you locked up for treason." Suna growled trying to keep the parts if his sanity he still had.

The tailor and Osamu smirked at each other as Suna began to speak again. "I just felt trapped behind these walls recently. Is everything I'm doing really important? I sit down and sigh papers all day either about farm rations or mining and I just don't see the need to do any of that. The people know what they need to survive and they know how to do what they need to survive so why should I waste time looking over it for them? They're not children who need to be supervised they'd be well off without me. The again if I don't do that then what is my purpose here? What am I suppose to do with my life? Am I just the face the people use when they need something? No wait that's my father's job so I'm just here. I make agreements and trade deals with other countries and attend diplomat meetings my father can't make it to. If I didn't do any of that then I'd be a regular boy in the kingdom maybe doing stable work. Sounds better than being the one everyone blames for everything if things go wrong. My father apparently doesn;t know me very well and thought I was lonely so he's throwing a ball for me to find a wife. What's not to love about that?"

Osamu sighed and pulled one of Suna's cheeks. "First don't talk about yourself like that. Like it or not this is how you were born and there's literally nothing you can do about that. It doesn't matter what kind of job you do even if all you did was tell someone to move a chair you still did something and it benefited somebody in the long run. You can't see yourself for the things you do but me and everyone else around you can. You just need to look at things from a different point of view."

Suna looked away from both of them and sighed while taking in Osamu's words. Maybe all he did need was to view things from a different perspective. Yeah maybe that could work. "Ow!"

"You didn't have to stick him again Mori." Osamu sweatdropped.

"Nope that time definitely was an accident. Please try not to move your highness." Mori smiled innocently.

Or maybe his tailor would take him out first. Whichever came first he guessed.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The day of the ball finally arrived and carriage after carriage arrived at the castle holding nobles and royals from near and far. Suna was in his room again watching from the window as carriages entered the palace grounds. Maybe if he's lucky he could make a run for it during the party and jump the fence to get away from everybody to maybe save himself for a little while. Or maybe one of guards sees him and tries to follow him and ruins his plans.

"Just sit through the ball and I'm sure your father will let you leave for an hour tomorrow."

"Yeah right after his engagement announcement. Listen Rin if you don't want to do it then I don't see why you should."

"Don't listen to Tsumu. We'll help you if you need a breather every now and again but we can't cover fro you the entire night."

"Or eat these two slices of cheesecake right now and be excused for the rest of the night." Atsumu suggested wiggling his eyebrows.

It was a pretty solid plan but a night of pain wasn't worth missing the ball. His father might only postpone it and he'd be confined to his room until everything passes.

"Well gentlemen it's my last night a single man. If I'm lucky Tsumaki won't be my future bride. The small bout of freedom I had was nice but it's time for me to be a big boy and do what I have to. Once I'm king the first thing I'm doing is making sure Asami doesn't go through this." Suna sighed.

"I doubt she'd have a problem with it. Which girl doesn't want to be entertained by a handsome man? Bonus points cause he's rich." Atsumu shrugged.

Suna's eyebrow raised in confusion, "Are you calling the princess a money whore?"

Atsumu chuckled softly and smiled at Suna. "You and I both know that's not what I meant. You're really the only person who has a problem with palace life. Asami is actually looking forward to her happily ever after which is something you need to start doing. You can hate it but if it's something that has to be done then you have to suck it up and get it over with."

"You can say that because it's not your life. I need to teach Asami about how dirty boys are. Osamu you'll be the example for what you and Mori did yesterday. Who could've imagined my attendant and the tailor conspiring against me. The mutiny." Suna shook his head in mock disappointment.

"Be disappointed all you want. I did what I had to do. Now you have to get ready for tonight. If you need us you know where we'll be." Osamu left with Atsumu right behind him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*

Night fell quickly and two hours into the party Suna finally met all the young women his father had invited. Many were kind and some more beautiful than necessary but all quickly looked away when Princess Tsumaki approached him. The night continued on as his father hoped with Suna being forced to mingle with everyone present. Eventually his social meter began to run out and he retreated to a hidden balcony for air.

A sound close by caught his attention and Suna found a young woman who seemed to be in the same situation as him. If he remembered he remembered her name was (y/n) third princess of a neighboring country. Suna tried to sneak away before you could see him but alas luck wasn't on his side.

"Your highness good night."

Suna counted to three then slowly faced you with a friendly smile, "Good night my lady. I hope you're enjoying the party."

"It's lovely and so is your country. Please give your father my thanks for inviting my family."

"I can assure you he'll give his thanks for attending. If I'm not being too forward may I ask why you're out here instead of enjoying the food?" Hopefully pressuring you like this will give Suna the quiet time he was hoping for.

"Forgive my rudeness but the amount of people inside made the room a little stuffy. I came out here for a little air." you smiled at him.

"Fair enough. I hope the air is to your liking."

"With all due respect your highness it's been a long night and it's exhausting speaking like this so if you don't mind we can call each other old acquaintances and speak like old friends would. It would be an honor if you would call me (y/n)."

Suna blinked at your request and fought the grin trying to rise on his face. "If that's so then feel free to call me Rintaro. Blame my father for taking things the wrong way and forcing us all to go through this."

"We can't really fight what our parents want us to do. Comes with the title really. You seemed upset earlier should I assume that you don't really want to get married?"

Suna sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't mind getting married I just don't think I should get married because my father thought I was in a funk as he called it. Sounds cliche but I actually believe in meeting someone and falling in love."

You blinked at the prince and giggled. "You're very cute Rintaro. I like to believe everyone wants to fall in love that way. Nobody wants to have their partner chosen for them. What good is being married if you're gonna be miserable everyday."

"If it means I don't have to sit through marriage consultations and weird balls like this one then I may just prefer the other way."

"Careful what you say. I think we both know your father is capable of that. I saw princess Tsumaki looking for her Rinnepoo earlier. Maybe I should let his majesty know you've chosen someone." You looked up to find Suna pouting at you. "Careful your highness they may send you back to etiquette classes for making such a face."

"Good evening Prince Rintaro. It's a pleasure to make your aquaintance tonight. I do hope that-"

"Ok! That's enough! Don't you dare repeat that."

Suna smirked and hid his mouth behind his hand. "Pardon me princess. I just found your greeting to me this evening amusing. I mean no harm it's just you were so cute. How many times did you practiced that?"

"Whatever. Let's see what you would do if the roles were reversed."

"Sorry princess but this isn't about me." Suna giggled.

"So you can smile and laugh. I almost thought you were emotionally constipated. Is that the funk your father thought you were in?"

Suna sighed being reminded of the situation he was in. "It's more than that but nobody would understand."

You smiled at him encouragingly. "The whole you're royalty so you have absolutely no reason to not be happy thing?"

"Exactly that. It's gonna sound stupid but I guess I miss the freedom I had before I turned eighteen. Well more I don't see the need for me to do the things I'm doing."

"Ah you feel monarchy should be abolished. Look at it this way crackers taste good on their own but with cheese the taste is elevated. Cheese and crackers is superior to just plain old crackers by themselves or just cheese by itself. Yes your kingdom could probably prosper on it's own but there are situations the people shouldn't handle on their own. Budget distribution, land distribution, diplomatic matters and many other things. We exist to keep harmony in the kingdom. Imagine leaving children to raise themselves. Many would unfortunately die before reaching a certain age. Think of your kingdom as your very own children. They're self sufficient yes but without you to guide them in the things they don't understand they'll be hurt. You can still do the things you love but your children come first. If you don't take care of them then someone may just take them away. "

Suna sighed. "I can understand that but I just don't understand why it has to be me."

"I don't understand why it can't be you. Anyone could've been chosen for the job but you were chosen. I don't know you well enough to speak on certain things but I have heard rumors that you basically run half of your kingdom on your own. The fact that nothing has fallen apart shows that you're more than competent to do your job. You need to have more confidence in yourself. I've only known you for a short time but I can already tell you're a wonderful person. Don't sell yourself short." You smiled at Suna who looked at you unsure.

Suna shrugged, "If you say so (y/n). Are you hungry?"

"I'm alright for now. But I do think we need to get back before someone misses us."

"What's the rush? You know the reason for this party."

"Is that you asking for my company your highness?"

"I didn't hear a no princess." Suna smirked when you giggled.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A few months later Suna found himself sitting in his office again. He was hard at work but this time with a slight smile on his face. A knock on the door took him away from the work he was doing and Atsumu stepped into his office.

Atsumu placed a sandwich and a cup of tea on the table in front of Suna "You seem to be in a better mood these days. What's your secret?"

"Sorry but secrets are secret for a reason."

"Keep your secrets then. Simply means I can't tell you the one I just heard." Atsumu smirked.

"I heard the dungeons don't have heat." Suna shrugged.

"Really? Just make sure my sheets are red."

Suna laughed and shook his head, "You little turd nugget. What's going on?"

"Alright fine but only because you asked so rudely. I heard your favorite princess is coming by later today. Maybe if you finish all your work you can be at the doors to greet her."

"Lucky for me this was the last page I had to look over. Prepare two horses and I'll make sure your sheets are maroon."

"And you call me the turd nugget." Atsumu rolled his eyes. "His majesty said you can do whatever you want for the rest of the day once you stop keeping him in suspense."

"Sounds good. Thanks for lunch."

Things were definitely starting to look up and with one simple question later tonight Suna's life was about to change again. This time for the better.

[tenspontaneite]

Peace Is A Journey (Chapter 24/?)

In which Corvus has some visitors, Rayla takes the princes somewhere nice for a change, and Runaan sits in a new cell.

Warnings: Food shortage; discussion and portrayal of recently acquired physical disabilities.

(Chapter length: 17.5k. Ao3 link)

---

Corvus regarded his visitors. His visitors regarded him right back. In that moment, arrayed in this back room of the House of Healing, they seemed at an impasse.

Lord Viren’s children had come to see him in the afternoon. Having heard of his presence here, and what scant details of his mission he’d shared with the townsfolk, they’d arrived already brimming with questions and impatience. They wanted to know the details of his mission. They wanted intel on his mission.

Corvus had, of course, told them in no uncertain terms that the details of his mission were classified. Certainly, they were not available to two children who wouldn’t even say why they were here. He told them nothing; not even what he had shared with the townspeople.

That had led in turn to some squabbling over the semantics of childhood, and then to further attempts to wheedle information from him, and then to this: silence.

Finally, after a considerable amount of wheedling, complaining, and prodding, the dark mage – Claudia – changed tracks. “…Look,” she said, slowly, and for the first time since they’d arrived, there was a hint of something sincere in her voice. Corvus watched, stone-faced. “You heard about there being two kids with that elf, right? Do you know what that means?”

He wished he could fold his arms, but they weren’t exactly in a fit state for it. “Do you?”

She sighed, plainly frustrated, and lifted a hand to her face for a moment. “It’s Callum and Ezran, right?” she said, impatiently. “It has to be. The last time anyone saw them, was with her.”

Corvus noted her wording, and said nothing.

She wasn’t impressed by his reticence, and scowled. “If you can’t trust anything else, you should trust that we want to help them,” she informed him, resolute. Beside her, her brother shifted uncomfortably. “They’re our friends. We grew up with them. And if we’re going after them and you can’t, because you’re injured – you should tell us what you know. Anything that could help.”

There was, he thought, some honesty in that. He didn’t know how close the friendship between the princes and Viren’s children might be, but they had grown up with each other. That much was true. But… “You didn’t come here looking for them,” he said, eyes narrowed. “I know that.”

Claudia hesitated. She looked at her brother, who seemed about to speak, and motioned him silent. She spent several long moments thinking. Finally, she said “No, we didn’t.” She hesitated again. “We…thought they were dead.”

A lie. Or at least, not the full truth. It was plain from her expression. Sceptically, he asked “Did you?”

She stared at him, expression caught between frustration and irritation and some thread of genuine worry. She exhaled, and admitted “We…didn’t know for sure. But it – it seemed like that’s what would happen, you know? Elves kill people. What else was going to happen, when they ran off with her?”

That was interesting. “’Ran off with her’?” he repeated, sharply, and again she hesitated, plainly uncertain how much she should say. He could get it out of her, he thought. It would take just a little more prodding. “Until I understand what you’re doing here – why you’re really here – I’m not telling you anything,” he said to her, flatly. “I don’t need specifics, if you’ve got your own orders. But I’m not going to share classified information when, from what I know, there’s no good reason for Lord Viren’s children to be here chasing that elf.”

“Isn’t catching a bloodthirsty elven assassin enough?” she asked, with some asperity.

“No. It’s not. If that was all you were here for, your father would be working with General Amaya, and I’d know to expect you. Instead…” He lifted his eyebrows at them, as if to draw attention to their presence here.

She sighed. Her brother tapped his foot, clearly irritated. It took a while for her to deliberate, pacing a little, looking at him uncertainly, biting her lip. For some of that interim, she looked startlingly young. It was almost enough to make Corvus pity her. But he didn’t let his expression change. The General was counting on his judgement – the princes depended on his judgement. So he waited, and then, finally…

The dark mage came to a decision; he saw it in the slump of her shoulders, the way she exhaled, the way she looked at him.

“The elf stole something,” she said, plainly.

Her brother looked uneasy. “Claudia…”

“Shush, Soren.” She didn’t look away from Corvus. “The elf stole something,” she repeated, as though willing him to believe her, and he watched her carefully.

“Something important,” he judged, when he had looked, and determined that she seemed to be honest.

“A weapon,” said Claudia. “I’m not going to tell you what it is. But it’s – magical, and incredibly powerful. My father was keeping it secret, and safe, for if something big happened, and we needed it to protect the kingdom. But then…”

“The elf assassin broke into the castle and found it,” Corvus guessed, and she nodded. He considered the words for a long few seconds, wondering. There was truth to this; he could see it. It didn’t fill in all the gaps, not by any means, but it was important information. He wondered at the implications. “Who knew about it?” he asked, following one thread of thought.

The girl shifted uncomfortably. “Aside from us, and dad, I – think only the King knew. No one else. It’s important, and secret, so – that’s why he sent us after the elf. No one else could know.”

A weapon as powerful as she was implying…yes, that would be something to keep close to one’s chest. Something only to tell the primaries of a Kingdom about, certainly.

But…not to tell Amaya? She controlled the front lines to the entire Pentarchy. What sense could there be in not telling her something so potentially significant? “If it was so secret, then how did the elf know it was there?” he asked, instead of following that up. He doubted the Lord Protector’s daughter would know, or tell him, why her father had judged this too dire a secret for the General of the Standing Battalion.

She blinked, and frowned. “I think it was just by accident,” she said, slowly, as if she wasn’t sure. “Maybe she was told to break into dad’s workshop? It’s not like they wouldn’t know we had powerful mages, and powerful ingredients.”

If the stories were to be believed, it had been dark magic of unspeakable power that had slain Xadia’s monstrous King. Corvus couldn’t imagine anything else managing the feat. If he was Xadian command, and he was sending assassins into the stronghold of the enemy…yes, he thought he’d have them do their best to uncover and remove anything powerful enough to do it again. It made sense. He filed it away. “And what about the princes?” he asked, finally getting to the meat of the interrogation. She’d said the princes ran off with the elf, like she’d seen it. She’d been there.

She scowled, hand clenching on thin air, as though for some weapon she missed. “The elf-“ she started, then shook her head, angrily. “I don’t know how. I don’t know what she said. But – she convinced them to help her.”

Corvus sat up straighter, intent. “Willingly?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I wasn’t there when she found them. I don’t know what she did, or what she said, or if she cast some kind of – Moonshadow illusion on them…I don’t know.” The frustration in her voice, her bearing…it was utterly genuine. The memory angered her. Corvus watched very carefully. “All I know is that when she stole the weapon, and I found them there – the boys helped her get away.”

He nodded slowly. “Tell me how,” he ordered her. She stared at him, mulish, as though considering cutting off her tale. But in the end, she’d already started, and it was easier to get someone to keep talking than it was to get them to start.

“I had a primal stone,” she said. “I was going to hit the elf with lightning to stop her. But – Callum made me miss, and then trapped me, and ran off with the stone, after the elf and Ezran. By the time I got free, I couldn’t find them.”

Corvus blinked. “Isn’t lightning primal magic?”

“Primal stone,” she repeated, impatiently, and – Corvus didn’t know what that was, didn’t have any frame of reference for what it looked like, but…abruptly, he couldn’t help but remember that last glimpse of Prince Callum, right before the wind had hit him. The memory was coloured and scattered by the snapping, searing pain of the minutes that followed, but…

There had been something in his hand.

“What does it look like?” he asked, slowly, trying to blink away the memory of the wind, the cliff, the fall. “This…primal stone.”

Claudia frowned, suspicious. “Why? It’s gone.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Corvus said, and then “Humour me.”

“…It’s like a glass ball, with a miniature storm inside.” She watched him, eyes narrowed. Clearly, she wanted an explanation of her own, now.

He nodded, and the pieces clicked together in his head. “Prince Callum still has it.”

She blinked rapidly. “What? Are you sure?” The incredulity made sense. What kind of elven captor would let her captives, deceived or not, keep hold of something that – in some measure – could allow them to attack with magic?

Still. “I’m sure,” he said, thinking of the campsite that looked like it had been ravaged by an isolated windstorm, of the dead fish floating in the lake, of – of the cliff edge. “And he knows how to use it, too.”

“That’s impossible,” the dark mage said, frowning. “He’s never learned any spells.”

“He knows at least one.” Corvus shrugged. “Maybe the elf taught him. I wouldn’t know. But if you’re in pursuit…” he hesitated, and sighed. He rubbed a hand over his eyes.

That was it, then, wasn’t it? He believed the girl. She had a legitimate – if suspicious – reason to be here, and she and her brother were able to make a pursuit. If they had a chance of getting to the princes…he had to give them something. Any less would be irresponsible. If they caught up and then failed, or were killed, because of a lack of intel…that would be on him.

The girl didn’t fail to notice his change of heart. “You’re going to tell us what we need?” she guessed, watching him.

After a moment, Corvus nodded. “I’ll share my observations with you.”

“Finally!” the Crownguard boy exploded, as though the outburst had been brewing through every moment of his unwilling silence. “I thought you were going to keep us here forever!”

“It would’ve been faster, if you’d been honest from the start,” Corvus told him flatly, and received a very grumpy frown in response. He turned back to the girl, who was waiting for him to speak, shoulders tense with barely-leashed impatience. “Do you have a way to track them?” he asked, instead of speaking. “They’ve gone through the mountains, now, and there were several days of snow to cover their tracks. They could be anywhere.”

The dark mage’s hand drifted to the satchel at her side. “…Yeah, we have a way.”

Her brother stared at her. “Wait, we do? Then why did we take the dogs all this – ow!” he cut off as his sister elbowed him, glaring.

“The dogs were before there was a storm and rain getting in the way,” she told her brother, sourly. “What do you think I was going through all those caves looking for? I needed components. It’s not like they grow on trees.”

Quietly, Corvus gritted his teeth, and banked the flare of fury that surged at her words. There was dark magic to track the princes. Magic that the Lord Protector could have offered…and hadn’t.

Nothing to be done, he told himself, and tried not to react outwardly. It was something else to tell General Amaya. Being angry at this witchling wasn’t going to get him anywhere useful.

“So?” she demanded, when he’d been silent a while. “What do you know?”

He exhaled, and looked at them. The princes knew them; would recognise them on sight. That was…good. If they trusted these two, they might well have better luck than he had. “The princes appear healthy, and don’t seem to have been harmed,” he said, directly. “They’re not restrained, and help with camping and travelling. I can’t say how much of that is willing, but they’re helping.” He hesitated, then finally sighed. “If you attack the elf, they might defend her.”

Both of them stared at him. “What?” the girl asked, bewildered. “Why?”

“She’s an elf,” Soren objected, similarly taken-aback. “Her gang killed their father. Why would they help her?”

Corvus shrugged tiredly, then winced. He had a lot of broken bones, and a lot of bruises, and every movement hurt. “Maybe they don’t know,” he suggested, half-heartedly. “I don’t know what the reasons are. Maybe they really are bewitched. But…” His hand drifted slowly to his sling. “Well. I’m in this House for a reason, you know.”

If they’d looked surprised before, they seemed astonished now. “Wait, but – didn’t the elf do that to you?” The Crownguard boy demanded. “We heard she’d pushed you off a cliff!”

He shook his head, silent. “You heard wrong. The elf – she’s injured. I almost had her, but then…” He couldn’t quite help it. It was all so tangled up in the memory of pain, and confusion, and fear – that image of the terrified boy with the glassy stone in his hand. He laughed, and it hurt. “Prince Callum pushed me off the cliff.”

“Callum?” Claudia repeated, fully incredulous.

“But he’s so scrawny!” Her brother protested. “And he sucks at fighting.”

It was hard to reconcile those words with the remembrance of what had happened to him. “He blew me off the cliff,” he clarified. “With magic. A – it felt like getting hit head-on by a sudden, horrible gust of wind…”

The girl had a hand over her mouth, aghast. “I – are you sure?”

“It certainly wasn’t the elf,” Corvus said mirthlessly. “She was on her back on the ground, and I was about to kill her. So it was either Prince Callum, or Prince Ezran. And Prince Callum was the one who was-“ His wounds ached, and he cut off, feeling a light tremor in his fingertips. Wordlessly, he gestured with one hand, as if holding a ball. It was explanatory enough.

“I…never thought he had something like that in him,” Claudia murmured, seeming almost shaken. “He was always so…goofy. And kind.”

“Maybe he really has gone elf-mad?” Soren suggested, worriedly. “Bloodthirsty, like one of them.”

Corvus shook his head again, and sighed. It hadn’t been bloodthirst, in that face. Only the awful, panicked terror of someone looking a friend’s death in the eye. “Be careful,” was what he said, in the end. “He knows you, so maybe he’ll trust you. But – be careful, attacking the elf.”

“We will,” the girl promised, still looking a little unsteady. “What can you tell us? You said she was injured…”

“She has some kind of magic tourniquet on her wrist that won’t come off. I assumed a dark mage must be responsible for it.” He looked at her, questioningly.

She frowned and shook her head. “Wasn’t my spell.”

“Your father?”

“Dad didn’t see her. He was in the tower.” And there weren’t any other registered dark mages, in this part of Katolis. Who then cast the spell? Something else to note in his upcoming report, to be certain.

“Well, wherever it came from, she’ll probably have lost the left hand by now,” Corvus said in the end, pursing his lips. “She’s a dual-wielder, so it should make her much easier to fight. On top of that – I did hit her, at least twice. She’ll have at least a shallow wound in the shoulder, and one or two severe injuries on her left arm.”

“Finally, some good news,” grumbled the Crownguard, rolling his shoulders as if they were growing stiff from standing still too long. “A one-handed elf will be easy to deal with.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” Corvus told him, remembering the elf’s skill and agility, obvious even when she’d been injured. “She’s a skilled opponent, with the senses and reflexes of any Moonshadow elf. Don’t let your guard down.”

“I was there at the tower, you know,” the boy said, a little irate, and a little uneasy. Like the memory was an unpleasant one. As well it should be; Corvus had heard most of the Crownguard defending the tower had died. How many survivors had there been, other than this boy? How many of his fellows had he seen die? “I know they’re dangerous. But this one’s going to be missing a hand. That’s got to count for something.”

“We’ll make sure to avoid attacking at full moon, too,” said Claudia, looking speculative. “You said you injured her? Like, with a weapon? Did you break skin?”

Corvus eyed her, strangely. “…Yes?” he said, slowly. “I use a hook and chain. I caught her with the hook, on at least two prongs – it was a ripping injury, would’ve been messy, and slow to heal. Why?”

“Any chance you’ve got the weapon around, and it still has some blood on it?” she pressed. “I can use something like that to track her. We’ve got hair from the boys we can track them with, but…” she trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid: if something happened to the princes, there’d be no way to track the elf.

He held silent for a moment. “I had to leave my hook behind, at the base of the cliff,” he said, in the end. “If it’s not buried in snow, there’ll probably be old blood on it. You’d have to find it, though.” He thought for a moment. “The bargemen who found me will probably have directions for you.”

She looked delighted. “Great! That just leaves one thing…”

Corvus lifted an eyebrow.

The dark mage, daughter of the Lord Protector, grinned sunnily. “Do you know where we can find a mountain guide?”

 ---

 Some time later, with a few mental notes taken, Claudia took her brother and her supplies and left for the outskirts.

When they were a short distance outside the town – far enough to deter snoopers but not so far it’d be annoying to get back – she set out her bag and got to work.

“Can you maybe explain why we had to walk out here?” Soren demanded, while she was plucking vials and bunches of supplies from her collection with wild abandon. “I thought we were supposed to be looking for – elf blood, or mountain guides, or something.”

“We can go back later. First I need to know what we can do,” Claudia said, with half of her attention; she was far more focused on the spellwork now.

“That doesn’t answer anything.”

She flapped a hand at her brother distractedly. “Not now, Sor-bear. I’ve got to do some testing.”

He eyed her supplies, expression souring. “Great. More creepy dark-magic-stuff.” She didn’t deign to answer that, and after a moment, he asked “You’re casting spells now?”

“Yep,” she agreed, lining up her ingredients neatly, ready for use.

“But aren’t those, you know, supposed to be rare? I thought you were saving all-“ he waved at her bag, “that, for important stuff.”

“This is important,” she insisted, and eyed their surroundings calculatingly. “This is going to decide which way we need to go. And how big a mountain we need to climb.” She considered a nearby boulder-sized rock with interest, and then a sort of snowed-over grassy bluff of packed soil a little closer, about half as tall as the rock. After some deliberation, she took her selected ingredients and made for the bluff.

“How’s it going to do that?” he pressed, dubiously. “And why are we climbing mountains anyway? Aren’t we supposed to be catching up to the elf?”

Claudia laid her things out atop the bluff, running her eyes over them analytically. “Well, you see, my tracking spell is supposed to be cast from the tallest mountain,” she said, and plucked a leaf from a half-dead oak sapling peeking through the snow nearby. “And normally, that’d mean Kalik.”

Soren blinked. “But Kalik is at least two weeks’ riding away!”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “Which is why I’m doing this. I need to know what counts as ‘tallest mountain’ for the spell. Because it can’t just be tallest mountain ever, right? Pretty sure I’ve read that Del Bar has something taller than Kalik.”

“…The elves could have tall mountains, too.”

“Dad did say the lair of the Dragon King was on a really, really tall mountain. So, you’re probably right,” Claudia mused, and then approached Soren, holding the leaf out. “Here, lick this.”

“What?”

“Lick the leaf, Soren,” she repeated. “I need it for my test.”

He folded his arms. “But why?”

Her eyebrow twitched. “For the spell. It’s not a big deal, just lick the leaf!” She shook the leaf at him, more insistently.

“Why can’t you lick the leaf?”

“Because I’m doing the test! I can’t lick the leaf when I’m the one doing the test!”

“Why not?”

“Because then it won’t work! Just lick the leaf!” She shoved it in his face until it was up against his nose. He grimaced, snatched it from her fingers, and stared at it suspiciously.

“Is this going to do something weird and creepy to me?” he asked her, wary. “Like turn my tongue purple? Or make my pee green? I don’t want to have green pee again.”

“That was one time, Soren. And no, it’s not going to do anything like that.” She pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off a headache. Should’ve just pulled one of his hairs out, she reflected, morose. But no, she’d wanted to be nice to him, and not cause him the admittedly tiny amount of pain that the plucking of a singular hair would involve. Or, technically, two hairs. Maybe more. It’d depend how many tests she needed. Again, she repeated: “Lick the leaf.”

Soren stared at it, grumpily resigned. He licked the leaf. “Happy?” he demanded.

“Let’s find out.” She sighed, plucked the leaf from his fingers by the stem, and took it over to the rest of the stuff. “Stay there.” He made a belligerent noise at her but stayed put, arms folded as he watched her ascend the small grassy bluff again.

She’d been telling the truth about this being important, but still…it galled to be using such valuable and rare ingredients for experimentation. But dad wasn’t here to consult, so she had to make do. One way or another, they needed to know which way to go. So:

Claudia uncapped the wisp bottle, set the oak leaf down as the focus, and reached out to burn.

The heady power of the spell flowed through her veins, swelling behind her eyes. It ached, a little, but it was an ache she’d grown used to over the years; now, she imagined she could feel the way that the strength of the magic grew within her, making her an ever-greater vessel for its might. Great spells did that, dad said. The more magic you cast, the more room there was for it inside you, and the stronger you became. She believed it. She believed it more with every spell she wrought.

This wasn’t a ‘great’ spell. But it was what she needed, for now.

The magic on her lips distorted the words she spoke, so that they came out backwards and echoing. It loosed the spell, and she blinked black eyes as she watched.

The violet of the tracking spell glowed, then shot upwards; it formed an arc from the point she’d cast it from to – well. To the target. The magic came down on Soren and hit him solidly on the head, casting purple wisps all around him. “Claudia!” he spluttered, indignant, wiping furiously at his hair.

“Oh, shush, none of it even stayed in your hair,” she dismissed, observing him sharp-eyed. Well, that worked, she thought, a little disturbed by the ease of it.

An arc. Upwards from point-of-casting, and then down to the target. But it only went so far up.

What would happen if there was something taller between the target and the cast-point?

She had a feeling she knew. But it needed testing. So… “I need you to lick another leaf,” she told her brother, and he glared at her.

“What, so you can hit me with weird glowing things again?” he demanded, and she considered it.

“Yep,” she agreed, honest. “But if it’s any consolation, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to work this time.”

He subsided a little, from confusion more than anything else. “Then why are you doing it?”

“Because I need to understand how it works,” she said. “And if it doesn’t work, then I’ll understand.”

Soren grumbled and complained at her, of course, but eventually she got another saliva sample from him. Then she directed him to stand a good distance behind the big rock, in a direct straight line from the grassy bluff.

She cast the spell again. And, as she’d predicted, the arc of the spell brought it up a short distance….and then its downwards arc impacted the intervening rock. Thwarted. The wisps burst around the stone and began to dissipate.

Claudia sighed, satisfied, then went to retrieve her brother.

“So?” he asked, looking considerably less grumpy now that he’d gotten out of being pelted with magic a second time.

“We don’t need to climb Kalik,” she determined, hefting the strap of her bag back onto her shoulder. “We just need the tallest mountain between here and where the e-“ She hesitated, then amended herself. “Where Callum and Ezran and the elf are.”

Soren seemed appeased by that. “Well, good. So where’s that?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know,” she answered cheerfully. “Let’s go ask around and find out.”

 ---

 For all the difficulty imposed by the snow and ice, Rayla had been right: it did get easier to breathe as they descended. It didn’t do much for the developing blisters on his toes, but he started to regain his breath, and it became easier to talk as they walked. Time passed faster that way. He barely tripped over his snowshoes, he didn’t fall off of anything unfortunate, and the rest of the day’s walking went smoothly. He had the sense that Rayla was beginning to look for somewhere suitable to stop, but…

In the end, a few hours past lunch, their path was interrupted by a river. A very remarkable river.

Callum stopped short as it pulled into view, eyes widening, fingers reflexively reaching for his sketchbook. He had to stop himself from opening it and starting to draw then and there, and just stared with undisguised wonder instead.

Spilling over a rock wall around thirty feet high, there was a waterfall – wide and glittering and entirely frozen.

“Whoa,” he breathed, staring at it, Rayla slowing to a halt ahead of him. She looked back, eyebrow raised, and then back at the frozen river and the frozen waterfall as if it were nothing interesting at all.

“What?” she asked, looking almost amused. “Never seen a waterfall before?”

“It’s frozen,” Ezran exclaimed, neatly summing up the novelty of it.

He couldn’t get his head around how crazy it looked. If it had frozen steadily, he’d have maybe expected the surface of the ice to be sort of…drippy looking, as if water had sluiced down over the existing ice and frozen half-way down. But it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, the ice looked frothy, full of splashing and tumbling shapes that seemed to have frozen in a split-second, preserving all the life and movement of a living waterfall, now motionless in solid ice. The river that ought to have run across their path was frozen, too…although, now that he looked, he thought there might be water running under the icy surface somewhere.

“How does anything even freeze like that?” he wondered aloud, eyes drifting back to the waterfall and its astonishing appearance. It glittered under the sunlight, full of icy blues that deepened towards the middle, the colours shifting as he craned his neck to look at it. “It’s amazing.”

Rayla rolled her eyes, though a smile tugged at her lips as she glanced at him. “It’s just frozen water,” she said, dryly, and stepped towards the river. “Which is less awful than normal water, but…still not exactly my favourite thing. Let’s just cross over and keep going, alright? We’re not here to admire the scenery.”

Ezran pulled his eyes from the waterfall and scurried over to her side, pulling urgently on her sleeve. “But it’s useful, isn’t it?” he wheedled, eyes wide-blue and sparkling like the waterfall. “We should camp next to it! We’ll have so much water to use, right there!”

“We’d still need to melt it,” she said, cynically, and then blinked at the river. Perhaps she’d seen the hints of moving water underneath, as he had. “…Or…maybe not,” she amended. “Hm.” She tilted her head, and he wondered if she was thinking of how long it had been since any of them had washed…well, anything, really. Clothes, themselves, equipment…the most they’d had access to was whatever they boiled in their pot.

Though, he had to admit, he wouldn’t exactly be keen to wash in water that was literally frozen over.

“…It’s not too long from when we’d be stopping anyway,” Callum implored, after a few moments, and saw potential success in the way that Rayla sighed and did not immediately deny it. It was the truth, right? She’d been scoping places out to camp already. “We might as well just set up here.” And then maybe he could spend some time drawing the waterfall from sight instead of from memory, if there was a chance for it.

She didn’t answer, instead looking up at the waterfall, eyes narrowed. She moved her head from side to side, as if trying to gauge the distance, or…something.

“…Rayla?” he prompted, as she stepped a little closer to the ice, still tilting her head like she was trying to take its measure. “Is something wrong?”

“Is there something in the ice?” Ezran inquired, interested.

“This isn’t ‘The Sword in the Waterfall’, Ez,” Callum said, but he was looking too. Instead of answering, Rayla picked her way across the rocks jutting from the river’s ice, and then went up and to the side of the waterfall, peering at something there.

“I think there’s a cave behind here,” she announced after a moment, eyes on the side of the waterfall, by the rocks. “The shadows in the waterfall don’t make sense, for there just being solid rock behind, so…cave. If I can just…” She extracted a blade with her right hand, flipped it to pick-shape, and then hacked at the side of the waterfall. A large chunk of ice cracked off and fell noisily around her ankles.

“Rayla!” he reprimanded, indignant. “I was going to draw that!”

“I’m not going to break the whole waterfall, Callum,” she said, rolling her eyes, still assailing the ice, sending pieces flying everywhere. She might’ve claimed that the moon phase was making her weaker, but it certainly didn’t look like it. “You’ll have plenty left, don’t you worry.”

“It’s not like you wouldn’t just remember it anyway, you know,” Ezran added, from beside him, and Callum crossed his arms.

“I like to draw from life sometimes,” he said, a little sulkily, and then startled at a little at a pronounced cracking sound as Rayla broke through. The next moment saw her literally kicking in the side of that part of the waterfall. A whole section of the ice just caved in, crumbling inwards, and then there was a hole.

Rayla peered in. “Definitely a cave,” she said, with satisfaction. “So long as there’s nothing nasty in there, we might not even have to bother with the tent tonight.”

Carefully, Callum tried to venture across the frozen river to join her in looking in, though he didn’t even bother with attempting to step across the rocks like Rayla had. He’d definitely fall over, probably breaking the ice in the process. At least the river didn’t seem at all deep. It was basically just a very wide stream. The snowshoes were rough enough to offer some purchase on the ice, so – carefully – he crossed over, stopping by Rayla’s side.

He peered through the hole she’d made. Behind the ice, the river was still running shallowly, streaming down the ice, and…sure enough, there was a deep yawning shadow behind the waterfall that seemed to go quite far back.

“Define ‘nothing nasty’,” he said, after a moment, beckoning Ezran over. “Do caves usually have something nasty in them?”

“Caves are good places for animals to live!” Ezran chirped, still inching his way carefully over the ice. Bait was following grumpily at his heels; he loved water, but wasn’t a fan of ice. “They’re warmer and more sheltered. So there could be a bear or a banther or something in there.” He eyed the waterfall with interest, as though trying to peer past its darkness to the hypothetical animal denizens within.

And there was a thought. “Can you feel anything?” Callum asked, curious. “Like you could feel where animals were during the storm?”

Ezran blinked, taken-aback. He plainly hadn’t thought of that. “I mean, maybe? I could try?” Rayla nodded at him encouragingly, so he clamped his eyes shut and went silent. Whatever he was doing seemed to be a struggle. Evidently the power of the storm had magnified his abilities beyond what he could manage now. “…There are some alive-things in there,” he said, finally, opening his eyes. “But it’s hard to feel them from here. I think they’re pretty small, though.” He frowned. “And…fluttery? With wings?”

“Bats?” Callum suggested, thinking of fluttery winged things that might live in caves.

“Bats don’t like places this cold.” He sounded dubious.

Rayla didn’t comment on it either way, just tilted her head at the dark passageway. “Pretty narrow, a little further in. Don’t think a bear could get through there,” she decided, after a moment. Then she whistled sharply into the cave, seeming to listen to the way the noise of it resounded along the stone. “Goes pretty far in.”

“I want to see it!” Ezran said, intrigued, looking as though he were about to step into the darkness that very second. Before Callum could do anything, Rayla put a hand on his brother’s shoulder to stop him.

“Why don’t you let me check it out, first?” she suggested, gently nudging him back. “I’ll just go take a wee look around, make sure it’s alright.” Her lips twisted with a hint of humour. “Keep an ear out, and run if you…I don’t know, hear me yelling about mountain lions, or something.”

“I’d like to meet a mountain lion,” Ez objected, wistful, and Callum patted him absently on the shoulder, already distracted with watching Rayla stalk into the mouth of the cave, weapon still at the ready. Within a few moments the shadows had swallowed her, and he couldn’t see her at all. It was weirdly nerve-wracking; uncomfortably reminiscent of watching her disappear into that awful blizzard. He exhaled, forced himself to relax, and waited.

After a few minutes, for lack of anything else to do, they started speculating idly on what she’d find. Ezran wanted some cool animals, winged or otherwise. Callum wanted a nice vacant space that would make a sheltered and less-cold camping ground. Ezran agreed that a sheltered campsite would be nice, but remained very certain about wanting to meet some cool animals.

He was in the middle of unfolding the tale of the bats he’d found under the castle machicolations last year when Rayla suddenly re-emerged, bereft of her packs, looking intrigued and bright-eyed and in general not as if she were being urgently pursued by the occupants of anything. Nonetheless, she materialised so suddenly from the narrow darkness of the cave that he jumped a little, pulse jolting with surprise.

“I’m back,” she announced unnecessarily, her cheeks pink with excitement and a smile upon her lips. Reflexively, he found himself smiling back, a little startled by her obvious cheer. “The cave is – you’ve got to see this.” In a flash, she’d disappeared into the cave opening again. He stumbled after her, mildly alarmed.

“Er, Rayla?” he said, into the dark, exchanging a bemused smile with his brother. “You know we can’t see in there, right?”

There was a pause, and then she ducked back out into the light again, just close enough to the cave mouth that he could see her eyes glowing in the shadows. “Forgot about that,” she admitted, and then a hand extended from the darkness. “I’ll lead you in.”

He eyed it, shrugged, and reached out to close his fingers around hers. “…Sure,” he sighed, and then reached out behind him for Ez. “C’mon, Ez, take my hand. I’ll try not to trip over anything.”

His brother snickered at him, but obligingly reached out, and then they were walking in a little row along the tremendously narrow cave passage towards…whatever Rayla wanted to show them. Bait started glowing a while in, which at least let Callum see where he was putting his feet, and from there on it was easier to follow where she was leading. The air tasted like an echo of the waterfall, all damp rock and wet air. It was oddly pleasant.

“This goes pretty far,” he noted, craning his neck to try to see whatever she had found so remarkable. The air grew palpably warmer as they turned a narrow corner, squeezing past the rock, becoming damp and humid rather than damp and cool. A new scent came into the air; something green and verdant, like the smell of wet moss in an old forest.

“It’s pretty warm in there, actually,” she said, as if echoing his thoughts, still cheerful. “It’ll be a good place to camp.” He was opening his mouth to question her when she cut him off, announcing “Here we are!” Then, with a flourish, she bowed them into the wider cavern.

He stared, open mouthed, and stepped tentatively out into the open space, ghostly light spilling around him. Rayla slipped ahead of him and turned back, grinning a little as she watched for their reactions.

He tried to say something, but all he managed was “whoa.”

The cavern was relatively large, tall enough to accommodate thrice or more Rayla’s height, and wide enough that they could comfortably put up six or seven tents if they felt like it. The whole place was suffused with light: it glowed on the walls from strange phosphorescent mushrooms that grew in frilly clusters upon the rock; it glowed in points of light in the thick damp mosses under his feet; it glowed in the strange little wisps that danced around in the air. There were butterflies too, or maybe moths, fluttering this way and that in the glittering air, casting gentle light from their wings.

And there were plants! Not just mosses, but thriving leafy shrubs, and even what looked like a couple of young pine or spruce saplings – little trees with delicate needles on their branches. There were even a few larger ones, almost tall enough to brush the roof of the place, wreathed in glittering vines that climbed up their trunks. The whole cavern, trees and all, seemed suffused with a blue-green glow, moving and shifting as the light-wisps roamed.

A few of the glowing moths fluttered past, and he lifted a hand to one. He wasn’t really expecting anything, but – it landed on his finger, wings opening and closing, and he was absolutely certain that his face looked completely ridiculous right now, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He stared at the moth with wonder, admiring its enormous pale green wings and the metallic bronze patterning, and kept staring long after it fluttered away from his finger again. “Wow,” he breathed, looking out at the cavern with a sort of stunned awe.

“It’s so pretty,” Ezran said, similarly spellbound, and when Callum glanced at him he was already covered in the wispy light-things, and was amassing an entourage of moths. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“It reminds me of some of the parts of the forest I live in, back in Xadia,” Rayla spoke, and there was a contented smile on her lips as she looked around them. “All the glowing things, you know? And the colours, and Moon-moths. Feels a little like home.”

For a second, Callum was very, very jealous. But that envy lost cohesion quickly in the face of this kind of awe. He stared around, eyes drinking in the cave and committing it to memory as best he could. This kind of environment would be hard to do any proper justice with just charcoal and paper, but…with luck, in the future, he’d have access to paints again, and could capture this scene properly. “I can’t wait to see Xadia, then,” he said softly, and looked back at Rayla just in time to see one of the light-wisps fall into her cupped hands.

The wisp flickered gently in her palms as she smiled down at it. A moth had landed on her left horn, and another on her shoulder, and the wisps followed in their wake as if moving on some invisible current. She looked at once far more serene and far more content than he thought he’d ever seen her, and – and suddenly, he couldn’t quite seem to look away. The shifting light over her skin drew his eyes to follow it; he watched her white hair reflect the colours of the glowing cave, her eyes luminescing as though to match all the other magical things around her.

He forced his eyes away, heartbeat strange in his throat. More in an effort to distract himself than anything, he asked aloud, “How are all these plants even growing in here? Don’t they need sunlight?” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Bait already off trying to hunt moths, and shook his head. Those moths were huge. Maybe too huge for a glow-toad. But then again, what did he know? Bait ate all sorts of weird stuff.

Rayla looked upwards at the cave ceiling as if trying to find some hidden aperture to the sky, then shrugged. “I guess not?” she offered, still with that small contented smile. “Magic’s like that, you know. Things that shouldn’t be able to live somewhere just…can. And then you get places like this.”

And, supposedly, that sort of magic was everywhere in Xadia. “I can’t wait to see Xadia,” he reiterated, fervently, and cautiously set his bag down. The ground was carpeted in moss of varying thickness, with very few patches that were just lichen-encrusted stone. He eyed it for a few more moments, and said “You know, we probably don’t even need to set out our cloaks to sleep on.”

Ezran turned his attention to the cave floor, his body still entirely shrouded in light-wisps. They seemed to like him, enough so that he had to brush a few away from his eyes to see. He giggled as they passed over his skin, and then carefully lowered himself and his bag to the ground, bouncing experimentally. “Yeah, this moss is pretty comfy,” he reported, cheerful. “What a great place to camp! I wonder if there’s any animals in here?”

Rayla huffed with amusement, wandering over to ruffle his hair, displacing a few wisps. “If there are, I’m sure you’ll find them.”

Within minutes, Ezran was off prancing through the cave, investigating every tree root, every stalagmite, every mushroom. It was such a delight to see him this happy that Callum didn’t even consider calling him back to help with setting up; practicality could wait a while.

“It’s good to see him so cheerful,” Rayla said to him, a smile on her lips, as if reading his mind. “I was worried.”

“Yeah,” Callum agreed, gut twisting a little at the memory. “Last few days…it’s been pretty tough.”

She glanced at him, sidelong. “They have,” she agreed, after a moment. “But-“ she broke off, and muttered to herself, “Of course you wouldn’t know,” before looking back at him again. “He’s having trouble sleeping.”

He blinked, and re-evaluated his memories of his brother throughout the day. Ez had looked tired, sure, but…well, recent times had been tiring. It had made sense they wouldn’t be fully recovered from it. But… “He is?” Was he having nightmares? Callum would have expected to wake up, if his brother had been having nightmares. He always had in the past.

“Mm. Azymondias is keeping him awake. I woke up a bit last night, talked to him.” She shrugged, looking briefly uncomfortable. “Don’t know how much sleep he got, in the end.”

Callum grimaced. One more repercussion from that awful storm. “Well, that’s not ideal,” he said, now a little worried. This kind of travelling was hard enough even on a full night of sleep. He’d slept pretty well last night, after all, and everything had still been exhausting. What if it was a persistent problem? What if it kept keeping Ezran awake? That…wouldn’t be good. “…Maybe it’ll pass? When more of the storm-magic is gone.”

“Maybe.” She didn’t look convinced. After a moment, she sighed and shook her head. “Well, we’ll find out, I suppose. For now…” she gestured at their bags, hers on the ground and his still on his back. “We could get set up?”

“We won’t need the tent today, right? It’s really warm in here.” A novel experience, really. Even the tent last night had turned chilly by morning. A thought occurred to him, and he huffed. “Gonna be weird to have space to sleep again. We’ve been squashed in that tent for weeks now.”

For some reason, she flushed and looked away. “Yeah. Weird,” she muttered, ears flicking back, and turned to kneel to the bags. “…We won’t need the tent, no. But I reckon we should get everything out anyway. The tent was covered in frost this morning – it needs to dry.”

He nodded, and crouched to help her. “And if we’re going to be washing clothes and stuff, we should probably get all of that out, too.”

“Might as well,” she agreed, and so, without further ado, they started unloading their bags. Over the next ten minutes or so, everything came out; even the slabs of frozen, yet-uncooked meat that had been wrapped and tied to the sides. Rayla took those out through the cave mouth to sit behind the icy waterfall, there to remain frozen, with the exception of an already partially thawing one that she left to defrost in the corner.

Ezran noticed her coming and going, and then noticed that they were doing work without him, and came over to complain. “You should’ve called me, if you were going to be doing stuff,” he said reprovingly. “I can help.”

“I know you can, Ez,” Callum smiled, and reached out to ruffle his hair. “You were having fun, though. And it’s not like unpacking is hard.”

“Still,” his brother insisted, and looked at what he was doing, calculating. “We’ll need wood, right?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

Ezran nodded, determined. “I’ll go get that, then.”

Rayla returned in short order, and the two of them went back to their tasks while Ezran saw to his. With clothes, food, medical supplies, and other miscellanea separated into their discrete piles, it became clear how much cleaning really needed to be done. “I really bled over a lot of clothes,” Rayla said, sourly, inspecting the torn shirt, undershirt, and jacket she’d been injured in. Not to mention the sweater she’d started to bleed through, early on. “These stains aren’t going to come out.”

“That’s…fine,” Callum said, trying not to think about the blood too much. “It’s just clothes, and we’re travelling. It’s not like we need to look good.”

She glanced at him. “Yeah, but these aren’t just dirty, they’re ripped. I can wear them, maybe, but only if I cut the arms off. Might be worth more as cloth to wrap food with.” She frowned at the clothing, and sighed. “Well, whatever. I can put my clothes back on, after this. They’ve got the arms bare, anyway.” Left unsaid was the fact that, with bare arms, it would be easier to get at the bandages. Though he couldn’t imagine she’d be travelling without a sweater on any time soon, with how cold it was.

Callum nodded, sparing a moment to despise the fact that she had to plan her outfits around how hard it would be to access her wounds. “…Is it hard to get in and out of, though? I don’t think I could get at your shoulder through your assassin jacket thing.”

She made a face. “Right. Shoulder. Stab-wound.” She shook her head, annoyed. “No, the light armour is kind of a pain to get dressed in.” Her eyes slid to her own arm. “Suppose I’ll just have to stick to what I’m wearing until I’ve healed up a bit more.”

“…You can always borrow some of my stuff, if you need to?” he suggested, vaguely abashed to suggest it. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been borrowing and wearing his clothes for most of the journey already. “I mean. I think most of it needs washing, for now, but…”

Her expression was amused. “I’m technically already borrowing your stuff, Callum.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He coughed, embarrassed, and changed the topic. “So – how exactly are we going to wash everything? Break a hole in the ice?” The idea of having his hands in water that cold was very far from appealing, but…

“We’d freeze our hands off,” Rayla said, shaking her head. “Nah, I’d best just find somewhere we can heat water and make a pool to wash everything in. There’ll be somewhere that works for it around here.”

True to her words, Rayla went out into the cave again and did a quick circuit of all the walls, eventually finding a rocky hollow behind the waterfall where water had pooled and frozen. She promptly grabbed a sword and went to break the ice out, claiming it’d work just fine for what they needed. They lit the campfire outside the waterfall, Ezran making several trips around the surrounding area for wood, and steadily started heating pot after pot of water to create something vaguely warm and usable in their makeshift basin.

Washing everything took a while. They each did a round of clothing first, and Callum had the opportunity to use his primal stone for the first time in days, setting some of it to drying faster. When there was something vaguely dry for everyone to change into, they took it in turns to wash themselves in the swiftly-cooling pool; Rayla went first, after briefly and grumpily soliciting his aid in getting her sweater and second shirt off. She went away after that, handling the rest of her layers alone.

“It’s really nice to not feel like I’m covered in blood anymore,” she announced upon returning, newly-clothed in the somewhat-dry things they’d just washed. Her hair was wet, reflecting the lights of the cavern even more than before. “Might want to put some fresh water in, though. It was getting pretty gross.”

It took a few more rounds of heated water, and a little more taking of turns, but eventually they’d washed just about everything they had that needed it, themselves included. The rest of the clothes they hung on various cavern trees to dry, and then, miraculously, they were pretty much done. Callum sat back down in the cave beside his brother, the sensation of cleanliness bizarrely foreign after days of accumulating grime.

“Feels better, doesn’t it?” Rayla asked him, as if noticing his bewilderment. There was a wry twist to her lips.

“It really does,” he agreed, clothes and skin and hair still damp, and weirdly pleasant for it. He’d got used to being grimy. It had just…sort of fallen into the background, a sensation beyond his notice. And while he wouldn’t say he was immaculately clean, not when all he’d had was a little bit of soap and a rag and an increasingly dirty pool of lukewarm water…he felt strangely lighter for having washed some of it off.

She smiled ruefully. “Yeah, travelling’s like that. I’d never really done anything long-haul before this mission, so I wasn’t used to how gross it gets.”

“I’m pretty used to getting covered in mud and dust and stuff. Me and Bait go exploring in the tunnels a lot, or in the forest,” Ez claimed, blinking slowly at the egg in his arms, newly retrieved from the bag. He’d taken a moment to wipe it over with a cloth too, and now was just…sitting with it. Looking suddenly bleary. “It’s…kinda different when you can’t just wash it off at the end of the day, though.”

“I’m going to remind you you said that, next time you complain about me telling you to wash up,” Callum informed him, and received a half-hearted snicker in response. He frowned at his brother, noting how abruptly out-of-it he looked. “Something wrong, Ez?”

Rayla looked over too, alerted by his concern. In short order they were both scrutinising Ezran, who looked…very tired. Considerably more tired than he had even five minutes ago. “Feeling sleepy?” she guessed, looking at him.

��…Zym’s asleep,” he admitted, after a moment. “He’s been sleeping some other parts of the day, too, but…I wasn’t holding him, then.”

“And you didn’t sleep well last night.” Rayla peered at him, frowning. “Maybe you should have a nap, or something.”

He blinked, looking startled. “Isn’t it kinda late for a nap? And…isn’t there stuff to do?”

Callum, who’d been about to suggest the nap himself, shook his head. “What, you think you’re not going to be tired enough to fall asleep later?” he asked, rhetorically. They were all tired enough to just about pass out they second they lay down, after all. “A nap isn’t going to go that far, Ez. And anyway, we’ve already washed everything, it’s fine.”

“But…dinner?” The objection was very faint. Rote, more than anything. He looked on the verge of dropping off already.

Silent, Rayla took the opportunity to drape Ezran’s cloak over him. Callum approved. “We’ll take care of dinner, Ez,” he said, voice gentling. “We’ll wake you when it’s time to eat, okay? You just…nap there with Zym.”

It was a little alarming, how quickly sleep took him. He’d barely been laid down, arms around the egg, when his eyes closed and he very plainly fell unconscious. Callum stroked a hand over his brow, frowning lightly, though he didn’t speak. He looked questioningly at Rayla, and she nodded towards the cave mouth, so they stood and quietly made their way out.

“It’s kind of worrying me,” Callum said, finally, when they were at the other end, behind the ice of the waterfall. “His…connection. To the egg. I just…” he sighed, following Rayla further out to where the fire still burned, growing sluggish from lack of attendance. She glanced at him, plainly listening, and knelt down to add another branch to the embers. “It was pretty terrifying, how he got during that storm,” he said in the end, softly. “And you saw how fast he just fell asleep. What if that happens while we’re walking? He could – he could get hurt.”

She hummed understandingly, and gestured him over, waiting until he sat down at her side. “We’ll keep an eye on him,” she told him, gentle but firm, and rested a hand on his wrist for a moment. “Make sure he doesn’t drop off a mountain if he does come down all narcoleptic.”

He nodded, wincing. ‘Falling off a mountain’ was about the size of what he was worried about. “Yeah. I’ll make sure he walks ahead of me, or something.” He paused for thought. “I guess we can always try to switch so one of us is carrying the egg instead? He seems a lot more affected when he’s close to it…maybe it would help to take it away?” Rayla eyed him for a moment, as if he’d said something unusual, and he frowned, trying to figure out why. “What?”

She shook her head, the corners of her lips twitching. “Nothing much. I was just thinking about how neither of you’d let me anywhere near the egg when we first left, and now…”

Callum blinked, and tried to remember. “That feels like so long ago, now.” His stomach dropped weirdly, in a sensation alike vertigo, as he recalled how much he hadn’t trusted her in those first days. “How long has it even been?”

Rayla frowned, and shrugged. “Dunno. Ten days since we left, maybe? Eleven?” Her eyes went distant, as though looking at something he couldn’t see. “Feels about right, from the Moon.”

He pursed his lips. “I’ll go get my sketchbook. I was keeping track of it a while back, I think…”

So he rose, walked back through the cave as quietly as he could manage in the dark, feeling his way along the rock walls to the magical glow of the cavern proper. He checked on Ez, finding him still solidly asleep, and then receded back out with his sketchbook and an armful of medical supplies. It was about that time of day, after all. Rayla was poking critically at the fire when he returned. “Might stake some of the meat, today,” she said as he sat down again. “There was a big bit that had kind of…unfrozen, so that’ll need cooking first.”

“Sounds good?” he offered, setting himself and his things down. He shivered a little; none of them had wrapped up as warmly as usual after washing, what with how temperate it was inside the cave, which meant he was cold now. He inched closer to the fire. “You want any help?”

“Nah, I’m good. You can draw, or something. You brought your book, right?” At her words, she looked over as though to check, and evidently noticed the other supplies he’d brought: bandages, a couple strips of willow bark, scissors, disinfectant, lilium. “…Oh.” Her hand went reflexively to her arm. She was only in a short-sleeved shirt, so he could see the bandages there, arrayed thickly beneath her fingertips. They looked damp, like she’d got them wet while she was washing.

“Needs to be done at some point,” he offered. “It can wait till later, though. But you should maybe have some painkillers now.”

She opened her mouth, glanced at the supplies, and frowned. “I…don’t know if I want to take the lilium again. At least, not today.”

Callum paused, looking at her. “…Because of addiction?” he guessed, and watched her shift uncomfortably.

“Suppose,” she said, noncommittal. “I can just take more willow bark. It’s…fine.” She threw another stick into the fire. She wasn’t looking at him, in a way that felt decidedly avoidant. He watched her for a few long moments, concerned, and she seemed to notice. Her shoulders hunched a little. Finally, she spoke again. “I just…don’t like how it makes me act,” she admitted, eyes still averted.

“…Fair enough, I guess.” Tentative, he shuffled a little closer, so he could see her better. “You know we don’t mind, right?”

She glanced at him, then; quickly, and then away again. There was a hint of a flush on her cheeks. “So you’ve said,” she muttered, sounding embarrassed, of all things.

He took a moment to think of why, and then actually remembered how she’d behaved the previous evening. She’d been…cuddly. And had seemed to have some very definite opinions on her medically-indicated hand massage. Right. “…Still true,” he managed, abruptly a little flustered himself. He hadn’t lied, though; it wasn’t a problem, how she’d acted. Not at all.

She looked at him again, from the corners of her eyes. “Ugh,” she grumbled to herself, and tossed another stick in. It crackled. “Just the same, I’ll stick with the bark, today.”

Callum nodded, a little dubious. He really didn’t want to pressure her into taking addictive, mind-altering drugs, but… “Has that…been working out okay? Through the day, I mean?”

Rayla lifted her arm a little, as though testing it, and grimaced. “Okay enough,” she said, seemingly annoyed at, presumably, her wounds’ continued insistence on being sore and swollen. She must have caught the way he frowned at her then, because she elaborated “It’s not as strong as the lilium. Still hurts when I move it. But it at least stops it aching as much.”

“…Have some more bark,” he suggested, and passed a piece over. She sighed, but agreeably put it in her mouth to chew. “I can change the bandages now? Kind of looks like you got them wet, so…”

“Probably not the best idea to let them sit, no,” she agreed begrudgingly, and waved him over to her left side. “Go on, then.”

So, with the increasing efficiency of practice, Callum set himself down beside her and unwound the old bandages, looking over the wounds carefully. As yesterday, there didn’t seem to have been much change. They were still lividly swollen, as from a fresh wound, and there hadn’t been any obvious healing on the surface at all. They still weren’t showing any signs of infection, at least; that was a mercy. “Well, they’ve not opened,” he offered optimistically, and reached out to daub around the edges with an edge of alcohol-doused cloth. “And they’re not infected.”

She winced a little at the touch, even as careful as he tried to be. Clearly, the willow bark wasn’t going very far. “Best we can hope for at the moment, I suppose.” He winced, and nodded.

He did his best to be gentle, he really did – but she had two great big jagged tears in her arm. There was only so much that ‘gentle’ really counted for, with wounds like this. She winced and flinched several more times through the procedure, and all he could do was murmur apologetically at her.

He cleaned everything and set the fresh bandages on, then peeled back her collar as politely as he could manage to get at the shoulder stab wound. That was still doing fine; it was a much cleaner injury, after all, and smaller too. And then there was just the wrist.

After a while with its bandage off, the sores there had gone hard and dark and dry, like old scabs. He felt at the edges of them, very carefully, noting where the binding was even now applying pressure. “How are these doing? Are they painful?”

Rayla shrugged, uncomfortable, and flexed the fingers of the hand. “Maybe a little? It’s…really not much, compared to everything else.” She twisted the wrist a little beneath his fingers, experimental. “It hurts where the binding is,” she said at last. “That’s mostly it.”

Healing, then. But very slowly. She’d said that was normal, for this part of the lunar cycle, but it still left him anxious. He tugged at her hand to bring it closer, inspecting the tiny blister that had formed on one of her fingers, what felt like so long ago now. It, too, hadn’t progressed very far. It looked similar to the wrist sores, if on considerably smaller scale. “It’s barely healed,” he muttered, unhappy.

“New Moon,” she said, by way of explanation.

He made a low noise, disconsolate, and stared at her hand as he held it. “At least your hand’s mostly okay now, I guess.”

She didn’t answer. When he looked up, she was staring at the her upturned palm, brows furrowed as though it were troubling her. She didn’t look like she agreed with his words at all.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, a little anxiously, eyes moving back to her hand. The colour seemed fine, but…was there something else? Something she hadn’t mentioned?

Rayla remained silent for a few long seconds, then said “It doesn’t hurt.”

He blinked, startled. “…Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Well, it’s nicer than pain, I suppose,” she said, still staring at her hand as though it were something alien and disturbing, rather than her own limb. She pulled it away from his grasp, and started pressing her own fingers into its palm, as though testing it. She turned it over, and ran her thumb lightly over the back, tracing her knuckles.

Callum watched, worried, as she poked and prodded along her fingers as though searching for something. Her expression was bleak, her shoulders tense. It took her a while to speak again.

“It doesn’t hurt, anymore, except maybe…tiny aches, and prickles, I guess.” She trailed fingertips lightly over one edge of her hand.  “So…that means it should be better, right?”

Slow, uneasy understanding dawned on him. “But it’s not?” He guessed, and shuffled closer, leaning to inspect her hand more closely.

Rayla flexed her fingers outwards until they trembled with visible effort; it took him a moment to figure out she was trying to straighten them. It…hadn’t worked, really. They were shaking as though strained beyond endurance, but remained somewhat bent. She clenched the fingers closed, well within his view, as though to demonstrate something…and the fist seemed looser than the amount of effort seemed to indicate.

She held the fingers straight again, or tried. The fingers shook badly, as if being forced beyond their capabilities, but still failed to extend properly. “I can’t straighten them out anymore,” she admitted, lowly. “I’ve been trying, but I just...can’t. And my grip is – not right. Weak. Before I thought it was just…recovering, you know? But now – it doesn’t hurt, but it’s still…” She didn’t finish, eyes dark as they rested upon her still-bound hand.

He’d noticed some of it, of course. The way she’d seemed to have difficulty with using the hand, the way its gestures had noticeable lagged during the sign language lesson today...he’d noticed. But she hadn’t wanted to talk about it. “…It hasn’t been that long, yet,” he pointed out, voice quiet to match her own, heart aching with sympathy. “Sometimes the deep stuff takes longer to heal. It could still get better.”

She made a noncommittal sound, and touched her fingers to the back of her hand again. “The skin feels weird, too,” she stated, not responding to his words, her eyes hooded. “Here, especially.” She traced a finger along the thumb side of the back of her hand, in a broad line along it and then up the first two fingers. “But the rest of the hand feels off in places too.”

He looked at it, and restrained the urge to reach out. “Off, how?” he wondered, and watched her press fingers against her own skin.

“Depends, really,” she said, and stroked along the back of the thumb, for a brief second. “Here, light touch is…it doesn’t feel right. Sort of itches, or prickles. If I press deeper, it feels a little bit numb.” She moved her fingers. “The rest of the back of my hand is weird with the light touch too. Firmer feels normal, but light...it’s weird.”

“…How long have you been noticing this?” he asked, uneasy, because there was a hint of practiced familiarity to how she laid out the symptoms. As if she’d chartered the strangeness in every inch of her skin, over and over, while he wasn’t there to see it.

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “Over the last couple days, I suppose. Since it’s been hurting less,” she said, turning her hand over. “It’s been easier to notice, since I’ve been using it more.” She hesitated. “I’ve…been trying not to think about it.”

Callum held quiet for a few long moments, thinking. He was familiar enough with medical principles to know that certain types of wound could have effects on the mobility and sensation in parts of the body, but…he didn’t know nearly enough of the specifics to understand what this meant. He didn’t know what was causing it, didn’t know if it could be made better, didn’t know anything. “I guess we’ll just have to keep an eye on it?” he said, finally, reaching out for her hand after only a moment of hesitation. He took it between his own with a gentle familiarity, palm turned upwards, thumbs lingering on either side. “How’s the palm?” he asked, after a moment. “Is that prickly too?”

Rayla pursed her lips, watching him. “No, it feels mostly normal.” She admitted. “It’s not numb either.”

“Mostly the back of your hand that feels off?”

“Pretty much.”

He hummed, and wondered what that meant for the daily hand massages. Should he change anything? Be a little firmer on the back of her hand, maybe, to avoid setting off the prickling that seemed associated with lighter touch? “I wish I knew more about healing,” he said, the words slipping out before he could stall them. His shoulders hunched, and he glanced up to find Rayla’s eyes on his own.

“Can’t be helped,” she said, after a moment. “I wish I knew more about one-handed fighting. But I don’t. So.” She shrugged. “At the moment, I’d be pretty useless in a fight.”

“…More use than I’d be, anyway,” he muttered, somewhat distractedly, his gut unwilling to renounce the vague sense of guilt and self-recrimination. If he’d only learned more, that feeling said, he’d be able to help her. He could have done something different, would know what to do now…

Rayla shot him a sidelong look that seemed oddly penetrating, as though she knew precisely what he was thinking. She nudged him in the side with her elbow. “Stop beating yourself up over not knowing literally everything about healing,” she ordered him, words just a little gruff. “We had a deal, remember?”

He exhaled, and the breath felt a little shaky as it emerged. Some complicated emotion twisted in his gut: shame and gratitude conjoined. “Yeah,” he said, voice a little thicker. He glanced at her, hesitated, and shuffled just a little closer. Their shoulders brushed together, the pressure strangely reassuring. “…Thanks,” he said, more softly.

Her eyes lingered on him for a heartbeat longer, strangely intense, before she quickly looked away. She mumbled something indistinct that sounded vaguely like ‘you’re welcome’, eyes fixed forwards on the fire. Her fingers twitched in his hands, but she didn’t make any move to take her hand back. After a few moments…well, it just seemed sensible, given they were already there, for him to move his thumbs inwards and start pressing into her palm.

Rayla offered no objection. She just glanced down at their hands, then looked away again. She shifted, just a little, to move the arm more solidly across the front of his chest, fingers uncurling outwards from her palm. “It’s a little funny,” she said, after a moment, and he looked across at her to watch her as she spoke. “I started sleeping on my back because my hand hurt too much to sleep on. But now my hand’s stopped hurting, but I still have to sleep on my back. Because-“ she nodded towards her arm.

Callum considered that. “’Funny’ isn’t the word I’d use, probably,” he said, and she huffed, lips twitching.

“Funny in a depressing way, though.”

He was already thinking, though. He’d not known that her hand was why she slept on her back, but it made enough sense. Particularly after the fight with that tracker, when she’d gained the arm injuries as well as the abdominal bruising… “Couldn’t you just sleep on your right side?” he wondered, and blinked at the way she immediately barked out a laugh.

“If I did that, you’d probably slap me in the face twice a night,” she informed him, mirthfully.

His hands stilled on hers as he spluttered. “I’d – what?” Then, a second later, he remembered her previous comments about how active a sleeper he could be. “Oh.”

She held his gaze for a second, then ducked her head away, ears dropping. “And that’s if I was lucky,” she said, but now, abruptly, she sounded a little embarrassed. There was a hint of colour in her cheeks. He wasn’t sure he had the courage to ask.

“…I’m still an annoying tent-mate, huh,” he deduced, a little morosely, and wondered how badly he tended to keep her awake. She didn’t need that on top of everything else. “We can change places? I think Ezran mostly just hugs Bait or the egg when he sleeps now, so he probably doesn’t move too much…”

Rayla was quiet for long enough that he started to fret, particularly with how she was still determinedly avoiding meeting his eyes. “…No, it’s fine,” she said, eventually, a note of something odd in her voice. “Honestly, I think I’m getting used to it. I’ve hardly woken up in the middle of the night at all, lately. And when I do it’s because Ezran wakes up, not because of you.” She shrugged, trying for nonchalant and failing. He eyed her.

“If you say so,” he accepted, albeit dubiously. “I can swap with Ez, you know? If it’d help-“

“It’s fine,” she repeated, now with a distinct spot of colour on either cheek. She shook her hand aggressively at him, reminding him that he still had it and was supposed to be doing something. “Just – get on with this, would you? We need to get the food cooked.”

Callum huffed, said “Yes, ma’am,” and did as he was told. He pressed his thumbs into her palm, wondering if it hurt at all without the lilium. She’d said it still ached a little, right? He glanced at her furtively as he worked. She…wasn’t flinching, or wincing, and didn’t seem to be in pain. She did seem a little embarrassed, still. She was sat closely enough that he could literally feel the way her shoulders were hunched.

It didn’t last, though. After a minute or two, she slumped against his side, sighing. She still wasn’t looking at him, but…she wasn’t so tense anymore, either.

It wasn’t quite like the evening before, where she’d been so down in the marshes as to cuddle up without a care in the world, admitting things that she probably never would have uttered sober. She was self-conscious, he thought; like he’d been self-conscious last time, like he still was now. But this time she was fully in her right mind, and was sitting with him like this anyway. He liked it a lot better.

She looked at him, once; there and then quickly away again, as though checking his reaction. Then she mumbled something indistinct to herself, vaguely embarrassed-sounding, and settled a little more. She sighed again, and very slowly, started to relax. He could feel it in the ebbing of tension in her, could see it in how her eyes went half-lidded as she stared into the fire, watching the flames as they flickered and danced. He wondered at it a little, but…she had seemed to find this very relaxing, the other times she’d not been in pain from it. Maybe that applied now, too, even without the lilium.

Callum sat there with her hand in his, her form solid and reassuring against his side, and started to get a new, quiet sense of calm from it. Before, he’d always been too occupied with how much pain she was in, or how embarrassing the situation was. Now, though, he thought he was getting used to the whole thing. It was technically a subset of wound care, so it felt weird to actually find it nice, but…well, that was probably better than being awkward about it forever.

Rayla stayed there unmoving through all the quiet minutes of his working, and seemed a great deal calmer by the time he finished. When he glanced over, she looked…comfortable. Not half-asleep, as under the influence of lilium, but calm.

He let the quiet sit for a little longer, not quite wanting to speak. Eventually, very gently, he nudged her. “Alright?”

Rayla blinked, as though realising he’d finished, then looked across at him. A hint of colour rose in her cheeks. “…Yeah,” she spoke, soft. “Thanks.” For a moment, her fingers curled around his own. A tentative smile ghosted over her lips.

Some strange, light emotion fluttered in his chest.

Then she took her hand back, tugging it gently away. She didn’t move beyond that, at first; just looked at him, eyes lingering on his. Then she sighed, and sat up, the warmth and solidity of her vanishing from his side. “Time to get the food started, I think,” she said, still quiet, as though reluctant to break the calm that had settled over them, and started to shuffle closer to the fire.

He nodded, cleared his throat, and looked around. “Anything I can go get?”

She inspected the items around the fire: a stack of firewood nearby, the iron pot with the defrosted meat in it, and one of her swords. She shook her head. “Nah. I’ve got everything, thanks.” Again, she shot a smile his way. “Weren’t you going to figure out how long we’d been travelling, or something?”

Callum blinked. “Er, yeah, I was,” he admitted, rueful, and sat up to stretch a little, shoulders clicking. “I forgot.”

“You do that, then.” Without further ado, she set about cutting the meat and spearing the pieces on an array of sticks, arranging them carefully around the fire. She remained a lot calmer-looking than she had earlier; relaxed and loose-limbed in a way he hadn’t really seen outside of the influence of lilium. It was…nice.

He smiled to himself, oddly pleased, and reached for his sketchbook. He’d been keeping track of the days on a loose page tucked in at the back; he peeled it out, readying his charcoal, and inspected it. It hadn’t been very thorough, barely more than a tally. He considered it for a while, and finally, in script as small as he could manage, started trying to count back the days. He added a little note for each one: waterfall cave for today, left thundersnow cave for yesterday, and so on. With a little twist of grief, he oriented learned about Harrow onto the page, and then a note for the day before, and before that, and before that…

“The full moon was on the night of the twelfth,” he said to her, finally, when he was done. “So we started travelling on the thirteenth. It’s been twelve days since we left the castle.”

She looked up from the fire, blinking. “Feels like longer. But yeah, seems right.” She shuffled over to look at his notes, tilting her head to read. He’d noted the day she’d first had the binding loosened, and the day she’d been injured by the soldier; her eyes lingered on those for a while. “Probably a good idea, to keep track of things like that,” she said at last.

“Yeah. It might be important, if we ever find a proper doctor or healer for you to see.”

Rayla snorted. “Fat chance of that, in the middle of Katolis.”

“We won’t be in Katolis forever,” he reasoned. “And in Xadia – you have to have magic healing, right? If nothing else, someone over there should be able to figure out how to get your binding off.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” She lifted her wrist, staring at the binding. “Never heard of one of these being broken, though. Not sure how it works.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, determined. “Somehow.”

Rayla’s lips turned up at the edges. “I hope so. Can’t exactly keep Ez and his dragon loosening the thing for the rest of my life.”

Callum winced, a thought occurring to him. “And there’s another good reason he can’t just go back to Katolis and be King right now,” he muttered, chagrined. “Pretty sure Azymondias can’t do the binding on his own. You’d lose your hand.”

She blinked. “I…didn’t actually think of that.”

He hadn’t, either. With this holding pattern of loosening it, again and again…it was easy to forget that her hand wasn’t safe, yet. If anything changed, if Ezran’s trick stopped working…she could still end up losing it. She was already starting to have to face how much damage had already been done, but – that wasn’t necessarily the end of it. As long as the binding was there, she was still in danger. “…We’ll figure something out,” he repeated, as much to himself as to her. She grimaced, but didn’t reply, and he cast about for a change of subject. “You said new moon is in a few days, right?”

Rayla grimaced even more at that, expression sour. “Yeah. I can already feel it coming on.”

Carefully, he wrote out the dates for the next few days. “Do you know exactly what day it’ll be?”

She paused for a moment, as though consulting her magic lunar-sense. “Not the day after tomorrow, but the one after that.”

He noted it in. He had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to be a good day, and thought it might bear planning for. “At least we’ve probably got enough meat for a while. You won’t need to go hunting.”

“Yeah, we’re not going to run out of that in a hurry,” she agreed. “Still got loads. It’s something, I suppose. And on that note-“ she turned back to the fire, checking on the cooking. Already the smell of roasting meat was making his stomach growl.

She attended to the cooking, and after watching for a while, Callum returned to his book. He noted down a few more things in the makeshift travel-log, then set it back into the pages, folded. He flipped through the other loose sheets, finding Draconic vocabulary, his rough map, a sketch of some noteworthy rooms in the Banther lodge; mementoes from earlier in their journey. It felt so distant. He wondered how he’d feel in a month, or two, or three. It would take that long to get the egg home, wouldn’t it? Getting to Xadia was only the start.

Already it felt like his entire world had changed, and two weeks ago seemed almost a dream of a past life. What else would change? Would he think on today in a week or two, and feel like it had been an age ago?

He sighed, and turned the page to the front. Nostalgic, and a little homesick, he started to flick through. He lingered for a long time on the drawings of Harrow, grief twisting in his chest. And then he flipped onwards again.

Finally he was to an empty page, and he remembered where he was. Even now, he was sitting beside an entire magnificent frozen waterfall, at the mouth of a cave that held a little refuge of magic in its belly. There was plenty to draw. Plenty that wasn’t depressing. So, determinedly, he set his charcoal to paper, and made a start.

He’d made a respectable sketch of the waterfall and its surroundings by the time Rayla deemed the food ready, and put the pot back on the fire to boil some water. In went a few handfuls of pine needles, and away went Callum’s sketchbook. They brought everything back inside the cave when it was done, settling near Ezran and coaxing him awake.

“Ughhh,” Ez offered, groggy and grumpy as Callum tugged him upright. “I – what…?”

“Dinner, Ez,” Callum said to him, sympathetic, and coaxed him into putting the egg down on the mossy stone. That seemed to help; a hint of alertness returned to his brother’s eyes, and he blinked at the pot with sudden recognition.

“Oh.” With some difficulty, he seemed to pull himself awake, wiping a hand over his face. “Right. Bait?” he called for the toad, who was off in the cave somewhere. “Do you want food?” A croak echoed back from somewhere behind a tree, and Ezran nodded. “He’s fine, he’s been eating bugs,” Ez explained to them, shuffling lethargically over. “Can I just…eat and go back to sleep? I’m so tired…”

“That’s fine, Ez,” Rayla said, and passed him a jar. He accepted it, and stared at it with consternation for over ten seconds before he seemed to realise what it was.

“Tea?” he questioned, plaintively.

“Sadly, yes,” she nodded. “Drink up. The sooner you do it the sooner it’ll be over.”

Callum rolled his eyes, a little amused by how much they both seemed to disdain it, and waited patiently for Ezran to finish with the jar so that he could take custody of it. He sipped his with quiet enjoyment while they ate, then got a refill, and slowly depleted it while working through his own dinner portion.

He ate more than he’d have expected to manage, in the end. Meat really wasn’t that filling on its own; or at least, not in a way that lasted. He wondered if they’d be able to start finding more wild edible plants again, once they descended far enough for there to not be snow and ice on everything.

“I’m getting kinda sick of just meat,” Ezran mumbled, groggy and ill-tempered with it, evidently having similar objections as Callum. “It’s just the same thing, every day…”

“Travel’s like that,” Rayla said, shrugging. “It sucks, but unless you find stuff along the way, or can supply in towns…”

“What did you do?” Callum asked, curious. “Your…team. When you were travelling. You wouldn’t have been able to carry that much food, right?”

She looked briefly nonplussed, and then a little uncomfortable. She averted her eyes. “Well, we had…nutrient pills, and stuff,” she said, after a moment. “It didn’t go really far, but it at least meant we weren’t missing out on anything important if we did just eat meat. And we had some packets of seasoning and the like, so it wasn’t as boring.”

He inspected her, tilting his head. “So you’ve been eating mostly meat for like, months now.”

“I got sick of it a long time ago,” she agreed, expression sour. “Now it’s just sort of…fuel. I really miss proper food.”

“I already miss proper food,” Ezran sighed.

Callum looked between them, and his lips twitched. “…Would this be a good time to do that sign-language practice about our favourite foods?”

They both shot him disgusted looks. “No,” Rayla said, grumpily. “I had enough of missing Moonberries earlier, thanks.”

“Aw, come on, it’ll be fun,” he wheedled, and after a little more cajoling did actually manage to get a little practice going. It had the foreseen consequence of making them all hungry again, so they actually ended up eating almost everything they’d cooked for once. Rayla approved of that, at least; apparently none of them were really eating enough to support themselves on a meat-only diet, and she was getting a bit concerned about it.

“I’m thinking of cooking up a lot more tomorrow night, so we can just sort of start snacking as we walk,” she confided, when they were putting the pot away and filling up their waterskins for the night. “We’re never hungry enough when we stop for breaks. All the exercise, you know.”

“Probably a good idea,” Callum said, though his stomach rebelled at the thought of eating during exertion. “I never really feel full. Even when I stop eating…I don’t know, it feels like I just can’t eat anymore, instead of actually having enough?”

She looked troubled. “Yeah. It’s not great.”

“Maybe we can get some bread or something, when we get to Greatport,” Ezran mumbled, trailing along sluggishly at their heels. He hadn’t become significantly more alert over the evening, and had stumbled through the sign language as though half asleep. “That would be nice.”

Callum didn’t point out that Greatport was probably a good two weeks away, or that they lacked money of any kind. He supposed he could…try to sell something? Or trade? He wasn’t sure what he could sell that they didn’t need, though. “It would,” he agreed, instead of voicing any of his thoughts, and ushered Ezran gently back into the cave.

In the end, he settled his brother in the thick moss beneath one of the cave-growing trees, egg situated a careful distance away.

“I know you like to keep him close,” Callum said to him, laying the cloak over him like a blanket. “But it’s probably going to make it harder for you to sleep, if he does wake up in the night again. We’re not in the tent, there’s tons of room, so just…leave him there, okay?”

Ezran sighed. “Yeah, okay,” he blinked up at him, drowsy, and blinked as Callum settled the cloak on. “You gonna tuck me in?” It was a joke; it had been a good long while since Ezran had wanted tucking in at night. But Callum paused, nostalgia stirring in his chest, and leaned over to do precisely that, tucking in the cloak around his sides.

“Comfy?” he asked, leaning back as Bait shuffled over and insinuated himself under Ezran’s arm.

He smiled, small and sleepy, and hunkered down under his cloak with a sigh. “Mmhm,” he agreed, and then closed his eyes. Barely seconds later, his breath started to settle out into a familiar rhythm; already asleep.

“…He drops off fast,” Rayla said, very quietly, from where she’d been watching. Her eyes were soft when he turned to face her, and just a little sad. He wondered what she was thinking about.

“A lot of the time, yeah.” He gave his brother a last glance, then went over to settle where he’d left his bag. Rayla followed, sitting down beside him as he rubbed at his eyes, suddenly feeling his exhaustion. His legs were sore from all the climbing, his toes hurt from the descending, and he was just…tired. “…How late is it?” He couldn’t really tell, inside the cave. He’d been outside only a little bit ago, though, and it had been almost fully dark.

Rayla paused in that increasingly-familiar way, consulting a sense that was utterly foreign to him. “Not too late, yet,” she said, finally. “Maybe eight?”

He considered that. “I’ll go to sleep soon, I think,” he decided. “I’m…really tired.” He paused.

“But not yet?” she guessed, looking at him. He looked back, for a long moment. In the soft glow of the cavern, she looked…she was just…

He averted his eyes. “Not yet,” he agreed. “I want to draw a little more, if there’s time.”

“There’s time.” She blinked at him, eyes luminescing gently, and shuffled closer. Callum opened his sketchbook and hesitated for a long while, exhaling softly, nudging his artist’s mind away from the way it seemed to want to fixate on the light flickering on the edge of her face. He turned to the waterfall sketch, and kept drawing.

Rayla glanced at him, and when he didn’t object, settled in to watch. They didn’t speak for the rest of the evening, sitting in companionable quiet, until at last Callum’s exhaustion got the better of him and he put the book away.

Even with the whole cavern available to them, Callum settled only a metre or so from Ezran; in turn, Rayla settled a similar distance from him. Close enough to smile at him as she pulled her cloak over herself and nestled on her front into the moss, and to mumble a good-night as her eyes closed.

He echoed it, already half-gone, but…glad, in a way he couldn’t quite put to words, to have her nearby.

In the warm quiet of the cave, sleep came quickly; his dreams spun images of light and moon-moths all through the night.

 ---

 The window was large, and wreathed in a cage of tightly-packed metal bars.

Runaan had assessed it as an avenue of escape when he first saw it, but more as a matter of instinct than of anything else. He was in no condition to stage an escape attempt, even if his captors had been more lax with their restraints and security. The bars were solid, and deeply embedded within the stone walls; even with how recently they’d evidently been placed, it was too much for him to pull out as he was now. Were he at his best, he would be stronger and faster than any human his size, but even that would do him little good against quality metal like those bars, or the restraints wreathed around his surviving limbs.

So, there would be no escape through that window. But he found himself pathetically grateful for its presence, anyway.

There was nothing of interest to be seen through it. The window opened out into some sort of courtyard, his location evidently high up enough that he couldn’t see any of the movements of the people within. Instead, he had an uninspiring view of the castle and its dark windows, and a decent strip of sky above it. A sky that offered light.

An hour after he’d been moved here, a well-ornamented Katolian soldier had entered the room, flanked by two adjuncts, the dark-clothed observer waiting behind. With a stiff posture and cold eyes that spoke very well of her animosity, she’d read to him the letter of the Millennium War Crimes Accords, a piece of legislation that he, as a prisoner of war, was legally entitled to the knowledge of. Within that knowledge had emerged the reason that he’d been permitted a cell with a window. The Pentarchy, it seemed, knew a little more about the weaknesses of Moonshadow elves than he was entirely comfortable with.

Despite it all, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret the presence of the window. Even if that lack did signify weakness.

Daylight was harsh against eyes that had spent so long in the dark, but welcome even so. Moonlight, though…

He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it – how much he’d weakened in its absence – until the waning Moon rose, and cast moonshadows from the bars on the window that filtered onto his skin. It had felt like an awakening – or like coming alive. In that moment, heedless of all the years he’d spent training, the years he’d spent uttering the creeds, a part of him had stirred and opened and yearned for life; even though he was already dead.

A few days. A few days more without moonlight, and he would be dead. The agony in his body and rasp in his lungs was stark testament to that. But already, the livid swelling on the stump of his left arm seemed cooler. Already, he was breathing easier. A few days more, and it would have been over. But now…

Strength and energy and vivacity filtered into his blood via the touch of the light through the window, and he was helpless to do anything but adore it, as must any creature who owes its magic to the Moon. He sighed, the exhalation shaky with relief, and could not help but feel the shame of the weakness.

I am already dead, he reminded himself. But…

It was deceptively hard to believe, with moonlight on his skin.

His eyes fell on the dim shape the moonlight cast through the window, with its bar-slatted shadows and the gentle shading of the near-New Moon. His impulses warred with him, and he did not know that he had the fortitude to resist them for long.

The length of his chains allowed him to move about the cell. They were heavy with weights, and fastened firm to the walls, but he could stand. He could walk, if only two paces in either direction. He could choose to sit in the slatted square of light cast on the floor in front of the window, and bask in the moonlight. If he were stronger, he might have been able to resist that call. Might have been able to stay to the shadows, and let the absence of the Moon chase a little more vitality from his body with every passing moment. If he were stronger.

But he was not so strong. The moonlight called to him, and weakened and diminished as he was, he was powerless to resist it.

So it was that Runaan settled in the Moon’s path with a metallic clatter of chains on stone, and stayed there for hours, trembling incessantly with the relief of the light. It was a testament to the days spent caged away from it that even the light of a near-dark Moon could affect him so, when usually this stage of darkness would have been chasing strength from his body. It drifted across the sky, the angle of the light upon the stone floor shifting, and he moved with it, turning to follow its path like a puppet on a string. He could no more have ignored that pull than he could have willed his blood to stop flowing. So he followed the Moon across the floor of the cell, mind gone mercifully quiet behind the soul-deep benediction of the light.

Until, a few hours from dawn, something strange flashed in the gloom.

His eyes, held half-lidded to behold the moonlight through the bars on the window, snapped fully open. His mind came awake as though pushing through fog, following that hint of strangeness, of movement; a conditioned response that had been stamped and fastened into him through year after year of his work. He stared, unerring and alert, waiting.

Another flash of light.

This time, he was looking for it, so his eyes sharpened quickly upon it: someone, in a window loosely opposite and to the left of his own, across the courtyard, was flashing light in this direction upon a reflective surface. Probably a small, hand-held mirror. Runaan watched, eyes tracking the light with more intensity and focus than he’d managed to muster since the first few days of his privations.

Humans wouldn’t have been able to pick up on signals as dim as this. Even most other elves wouldn’t see it. Their eyes were too blind to the moonlight. The differences in light levels would be too small for them to see these flashing reflections of the light of a waning Moon; perhaps they’d notice something, but not enough. Not nearly enough. But Runaan was Moonshadow. He could hardly fail to notice this.

The light flashed every ten seconds for the next two minutes, a standard opening to any coded transmission. His heart, though still weak and laboured, beat a little faster as he watched and waited. Then, finally, the light shifted to the shorter, more precise signals he knew. He watched them avidly, decoding it as it passed, and any chance of this not being the work of a Xadian operative passed into extinction.

Ave, sicarius, said the coded light, in the standard ancient Draconic, and he felt his breath escape him. ‘Hail, assassin.’

He’d have closed his eyes to brace himself against how powerfully those words affected him, but he needed to watch for the message. He felt himself trembling, felt his heart racing enough to make him dizzy in his diminished state, but kept watching.

The code came through entirely in that same Draconic, as was usual for communications between mixed forces covert operatives deep in enemy territory. Codes could and would be compromised, but very few humans had enough knowledge of Draconic to interpret such messages, even if they were capable of reading the moonlight, and capable of interpreting the code. It was secure, after a fashion.

Hail, assassin, said the message, in the usual abbreviated shorthand of ictus. I am watching. I am reporting. Take no drastic measures. Xadia wishes you home. Abide, and await further word.

He had nothing in the cell that he could possibly use to reply, over this sort of distance. No mirror, no candle-flame; and the metal of the chains was dull enough that it wouldn’t be anywhere near the level of reflective that he’d need. But….

With considerable effort, he stretched his foot across the cell far enough to retrieve the tray his evening meal had been given upon. It had been nothing but gruel in a bowl, and of course he’d ignored it, shoving it away across the cell in rejection along with the medicines he’d disdained, but now…now, he picked up the still-full bowl with his only remaining hand, fingers dipping into the gruel from the awkward angle, and set it carefully aside. Then, shifting his grip several times to get the proper leverage, he raised the tray.

The coded light was going through its second repetition of the message by the time he reached the bars, and raised the tray with his trembling hand to hit it against the bars. The noise was raucous and rang painfully in his ears, shrieking out through his skull as though to amplify every dull ache and sharp pain his skull had to offer – but it was necessary. The flashes of light stopped instantly as he rose against the window, and stayed gone while he shakily clanged out his response, in the same code. Noise was indiscreet, and would certainly invite investigation from the guards outside, so – he had to be quick.

AG, he spelled out with that sound, as hastily as he could. The signal for agnosco; ‘I acknowledge.’

He sat down as quickly as he could when the keys rattled in the cell door, pulling the bowl of cold gruel to his side. He painted his features with a scowl as the guards entered, bodies tense and hands at the swords on their sides. Their eyes ran over him, over his chains, over the state of the cell…and then they settled a little, though their features were tight and hard.

“What was that noise in aid of?” One of them, the man, demanded.

Runaan, of course, remained silent. He sneered contemptuously at the both of them, and maintained the expression until the man uttered an irritated tch and turned away.

“Of course you choose now to be silent,” he muttered, voice wearing the same contempt as Runaan’s face. His fellow nudged him, a friendly and supportive gesture, though her posture and expression remained coldly professional.

“Leave it,” she said, and offered Runaan a last cold glance as she ushered herself and her companion out of the cell. The heavy reinforced door was locked and bolted again, and he heard them muttering beyond it: “The hunger must have finally got the better of him,” the woman was saying, as they retreated a little way down the hall to their customary posts. “He had the bowl he threw away earlier, did you see? The noise was likely just him retrieving the tray.”

“Seemed a bit too much noise for just pulling a tray towards him.”

“Then maybe he was being spiteful. Either way, just add it to the report. If it becomes a habit…well, we’ll talk about it then.”

Runaan quietly acknowledged the words just as the other guard did. He couldn’t make a habit of sending ictusian code by noise, then. But it had been worth it this time, to tell the spy that he was watching. And, at least, in the absence of any scheduled meetings between himself and guards or healers…the code-breaker was not here to notice that someone had contacted him. That was good.

He listened, wary and guarded, for any sign that the guards were going to return. When there was nothing, he lowered his eyes to the cold slop in the bowl he held, brows lightly furrowed. His only meals these last weeks had been force-fed. He had accepted no medical aid that had not been administered by force, and the medicines the human healer woman had left were still sat tidily in their glass bottles to his side. Without sufficient feeding, and without the medicine…even the moonlight would not save him, soon. He had been counting on it.

It had been his duty as a captive, as a Moonshadow assassin, to die without giving the enemy anything of worth to use. This deep in enemy territory, it was standard procedure to consider oneself lost if captured, and hasten towards an honourable death through every reasonable measure. It was his failing that he had not succeeded yet.

But the message changed things. There was an operative here in Katolis – though whether a transient, a stray entrenched operative, or the more likely deep-cover agent, he had no way of knowing. But they were here. They were watching. They were reporting. Xadia had commanded him to live.

For the first time since his capture, Runaan allowed himself to consider the idea of returning home.

A face flashed in his mind and his heart at once; the pang was physically painful, and he closed his eyes to breathe past it. In the next second he thought of Rayla, and his heart clenched anew. Where was she, now? Had she managed to evade the General? Was she still on her way home…or was she lost, when he had only now gained the hope of being found?

He had no way of knowing, unless the agent deigned to risk themself sending him news. But…

Xadia had commanded him to live.

I am not dead yet, he thought, with a strange rush of energy. Hope, and fear, all at once.

He raised the bowl to his lips, and drank.

  ---

End chapter.

Chapter Notes:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OGBo7nKVDIfWjhxGe90fwaS3lP0IfQJ3?usp=sharing

Link to PIAJ chapter notes folder (Google Drive folder including worldbuilding, commentary, medical notes, research notes, and misc notes for all applicable chapters within this section)

This chapter's notes cover: author’s notes on various scenes in this chapter, dark magic tracking spells, minor worldbuilding notes, and extended commentary on The Runaan Scene.

Timeline: https://docs.google.com/document/d/107eD8zmLAAFBWSOgsLyl8g4pAdQF4EgMh4rpN_m91U4/edit?usp=sharing Link to PIAJ Timeline Google doc ( to be updated as story progresses)

PIAJ Masterpage: https://tenspontaneite.tumblr.com/piaj Link to PIAJ Masterpage on tumblr (containing links to chapters, meta, art, Q&As, and resources) (Link may not work properly on mobile/app)

Author Notes:

God, I can’t believe I finally got to a Key Scene. I’m so proud.

There’s a much higher than average proportion of Really Old Scenes in this chapter. The frozen waterfall, glowy cave (first bit), and Key Runaan Scene were all written in 2019, I believe. Some of the cave scene could’ve been 2020 though, but not all. They were all edited of course, but it was nice to be able to give these scenes the light of day, metaphorically speaking, at last. Extended notes on these scenes, particularly the Runaan one, can be found in the chapter notes document.

A good chunk of chapter 25 is already written. I’d say it’s maybe 40-50% done? Not sure how long that’ll take, but either way, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Comments, as always, are appreciated.

(PS I might not update the timeline or the tumblr masterpage tonight as I’m very tired and it’s late)

[sunnysviolin]

BESTIE I WANT A HEROMARI VERSION OF THE MOMENT WHERE THEY’RE FLYING AND HOWL SAYS “That’s my girl” TO SOPHIE IN THAT REALLY LOW AND SEXC VOICE 🤲🏽

CAN I RETCON AN AU I JUST STARTED??? ABSOLUTELY I CAN FOR YOU SOUPMATE....Yes you guys I did have my best friend send me an anon just so I could write this. She’s so fucking good I really don’t deserve having her in my life. So Yes I will change the AU I just started to be even more HeroMari. @cerasus--flores This is related to your ask, so I figured I would tag ya! This is also a Part Two!! 

Instead of having Hero and Mari meet at the exact time they both find their siblings....let’s work with this a bit shall we?

Kel has drifted off somewhere again, and Hero is just so fed up. He knows that Kel isn’t in the castle because Aubrey told him so, and they’re not too far away from the nearest town....Hero swears when he finds Kel he’s putting a sticking charm on him so he can’t leave his bed for a month. Kel knows why they have to hide in the Wastes, and the castle isn’t small. If he wants so badly to explore, why not explore the rooms? 

Hero grabs his cloak and puts it on, trying in vain to cover his dark blue locks. He liked making his hair fun colors, it was one of the little bits of magic he still did just for joy, but it made him easily recognizable. With a little bit of a disguising charm he left the castle and flew over to Farawaytown. 

Luckily the town is in the midst of some military parade, and everyone’s eyes are on the strapping soldiers, not a young boy hiding under a cloak. He scans the cheering fans at first, but with no traces of Kel, he begins to search the alleyways. 

Hero does a quick locator spell, letting a beam of light flare up in his palm. It starts as a ball but quickly shortens into a pointed spire, spinning like a compass. He says Kel’s name, and the spire turns a soft glowing orange, pointing southward. 

He follows it, keeping a sharp eye for any soldiers or citizens who might notice the very obvious display of magic, but the back streets are deserted. He crosses a divide in the alley, but hears a soldier laughing. Hero quickly walks backwards, cupping his hands and starting to extinguish his spell, when he hears a girl’s voice. A familiar voice. 

The spell lights up lavender, and spins wildly once more. It lands in the direction of the soldiers. Hero clasps his hands together, barely even daring to breathe. His heart is racing with a furious beat, but he can’t help to peer around the corner. 

She’s gotten taller since he’s last seen her, her hair is longer too. She always used to keep loose and flowing around her shoulders, but now it’s in a tight formal braid. Her dress is plain, and her hat is straw. Hero only ever saw her wear rich velvet robes and sparkling dresses, and Mari had always detested hats. 

He wouldn’t have believed it was her if she hadn’t spoken just then, telling the two soliders leering at her to leave her alone. They only came closer, and Hero blinked his eyes twice, searching their intentions. He could tell they didn’t actually mean her any harm, but Mari was still frightened. 

It was fine. She would be fine. He should just walk away. Getting close to her meant getting close to Solomon, which would put Kel in danger. He should just go. But Mari was scared...

Hero cursed at himself and straightened up to his full height, walking with confidence towards the trio. He put his arm around Mari, pulling her close to his chest. “There you are sweetheart. Sorry I’m late, I was looking everywhere for you,” 

Mari stiffened up, and Hero managed to brave a glance down at her face. She was staring up at him with a mixture of horror and wonder, but there was something else there. Something that sent a spike through Hero’s heart. She was confused, frightened of him. 

She didn’t know who he was.

Damn Solomon. 

The soldiers were annoyed at his intrusion, snapping something at him. Hero ignored them, not bothering to answer their questions. He held his right hand up over Mari’s shoulder, fingers crooking like they were holding marionette strings. He sent the two soldiers away, giving them instructions to join their platoon once more. Now it was just him and Mari alone. 

She was still frightened of him, and Hero lowered his hood to show his face to her. Even seeing him fully, his eyes and the glinting earrings she had given him as a birthday gift oh so many years ago, didn’t jog her memory. Damn Solomon. 

Hero tried not to let his disappointment show on his face. He gave Mari a small bow and apologized for intruding. She accepted the apology with a mumble, pulling on the sleeves of her conservative green dress.

On a whim Hero offered to “escort” her to wherever she was going. It wasn’t the smart choice, and probably the wrong one, but he had spent four years away from Mari and now that she was here in front of him, he didn’t just want to let her go. Besides the questions were beginning to pile up in his mind. Why was she not at the academy? What had Solomon done to the bright confident girl he used to know? Why didn’t she recognize him.

“Oh um...I’m just going to the bakery. I think that uh, my brother might be there, and I’m...I’m looking for him,” So Sunny was involved in all of this too. Hero shouldn’t be so surprised. Sunny managed to involve himself in plenty of trouble in their childhood. If Kel was here, chances are he had already found Sunny on his own. Hero gave Mari a small smile, the kind he knew made girl’s around him swoon and clutch at their hearts, and held out his arm.

“I’m looking for my brother too. Shall we look together?” She nodded and took his arm, placing her small hand in the crook of his elbow. They walked in silence, Hero too preoccupied, Mari too overwhelmed to speak. Then Hero noticed a familiar sight, a tiny brown mole peeking around a corner. He leaned his head close to Mari and whispered in her ear

“Don’t be alarmed, but I’m being followed. Act normal,” Mari acted even more alarmed, and Hero quickened his pace, a plan beginning to form in his head. Solomon may have taken Mari’s memories, and maybe even her abilities, but she would still have her natural talents. Maybe a taste of what she used to have would bring out some of the old times they used to share

Moles were beginning to sprout from the walls, closing them in from all sides. Mari gave a quiet shout of fright, and Hero smirked. He grabbed her securely around the waist and flew them both up high into the air. The wind made her dress a balloon, and the moles chattered angrily from below. 

Mari had her eyes shut tightly, fear making her shake. Hero frowned, and then shook off his negative feelings. He took his hands away from her waist and linked their fingers easily together. “Open your eyes,” Mari shook her head, a quiet whimper of fright managing to escape her lips. He squeezed her hands once, “Trust me,” 

Mari cautiously opened her eyes one by one and gaped at the sight. She had never been this high up before! Still something about it felt right, like she had done it a thousand times before. She turned back towards the wizard she had recognized by his strange colored hair and gave him an uncharacteristically wide smile. 

She had been so scared when the wizard Hero had first put his arm around her, thinking back to all the things the other girls at the flower shop said. But all of those rumors couldn’t be true, not about this boy with his soft spoken voice and gentle smiles. 

“That’s my girl,” He whispered into her ear, heart fluttering at the joy on Mari’s face as they glided through the air together. Hero gave her instructions to straighten her legs and start walking, and they continued their jaunt high above the heads of the rest of the world. She clearly still wasn’t herself, but it felt nice to do this with Mari again. 

This was something they had done countless times in their youth. Flying was one of Mari’s favorite things, and they had often danced around in the air while they waited for their next lessons to begin. 

“Not so hard is it?” Hero laughed, placing his boot down on one of the rooftops and launching them higher into the air. Mari gave an exhilarated giggle, and Hero couldn’t take his eyes off of her. They landed on the balcony of the bakery, the band below finishing their waltz with a dramatic flourish. Mari had stars in her eyes, staring at him in childlike awe. Hero couldn’t help the blush that dusted his cheeks, turning away from her and towards the long hallway ahead.

“Let’s see if those brothers of ours are down below, hmm?” 

[c-rose2081]

Flying Higher:

Chapter 1

—

In the dark of night, Mal’s great aubergine wings stirred the air, and her heart beat loudly within her chest. On the school rooftop, Audrey’s wicked smile gleamed up at her, illuminated by the sickly tint of Dragon Eye. Celia was caught between the older girl's arms, held out in front like a shield. It was the only thing between them - Mal was so close to ending this - but her fire was too broad and hot. She’d hit her.

“Careful not to fry your little VK buddy,” Audrey taunted, pulling Celia closer which resulted in a sharp cry of pain. Mal wasn’t sure what to do. Glancing down at the lawn, Uma, Harry and Gil watched her from the grass. There wasn’t much else they could do but wait and see what happened next. Glancing down, Mal opened a clawed hand to reveal her fathers ember. The stone was dark and waterlogged...but maybe...maybe she could try one more time?

“Come here, you little brat!”

Lifting her head for only a moment, Celia had managed to get away from Audrey’s hold, running to the other side of the rooftop. Mal breathed a plume of flame around the Ember, hoping her last ditch attempt would work. The heat was only slightly warm against her scales, but didn’t sear her fire resistant leathery hide. The gem in her grip flashed excitedly back to life, revived by the heat of pure Dragon Fire. Mal felt its power flex in her hand, responding to what little of Hades magic she had in her blood. Audrey had given up on Celia, standing alone on the rooftop with a vicious gleam in her eye.

It was now or never.

She cackled loudly, wielding the scepter in front of her as the stone illuminated brightly. Mal thought of the Coronation a few years before. Would turning the power of the Scapter back on Audrey work to negate her powers? Swinging to the side as there was a jet of pink magic, it just barely missed her already sore wing. She didn’t have time to sit and think about it. Mal wasn’t sure what the spell would do to Audrey; she wasn’t the same as Maleficent. But as the Princess raised the scepter for another strike, Mal lifted the ember to counter. There was a brilliant flash as two beams of pink and blue collided. Mal couldn’t see Audrey through the neon haze, but she continued to push her magic into the light show.

“No!” The other girl's voice was barely a whisper in the whipping wind as there was a loud crackle and a piercing shockwave as the Ember’s Magic made contact with Dragon Eye. Mal felt her chest explode in pain as she was forced to retreat, falling ungracefully back to Earth. She landed on the grass with a hard grunt and a shallow thud, sore and forced back to her human self by pure exhaustion. Uma was by her side in an instant, grabbing at her arms and hoisting her up into a sitting position.

“Did you do it?” She asked, staring up at the rooftop as a ball of magic flashed and illuminated the sky, “what’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” Mal admitted, holding her chest and wincing hard. She felt the Dragon Fire go cold in her lungs, leaving a prickling winter chill in its wake. The ember pulsed in her hand, beating slightly at the same rate as her heart. But the magic Mal had come to know since leaving the Isle of the Lost felt faint and small in comparison. Staring up at the rooftop, Mal knew in her gut it wasn’t over yet. Something was wrong. Last time, turning Maleficent’s magic back on her had cancelled out the spell. According to Fairy Godmother, she was reduced down to the smallest amount of love in her heart. It was fast, and happened in an instant. Everyone was freed, and that was it.

But the ball of Magic above them only seemed to grow brighter, and even from a distance Mal could hear Audrey screaming in pain somewhere within.

“It’s not over yet,” she croaked, “the magic...it’s to different. It should’ve negated her powers. It should’ve made all of this stop!”

“So what did you do?”

Mal couldn’t say, but she was silenced as there was a burst of power from above. She and Uma were forced to cover their eyes as to not be blinded. But Mal’s skin prickled at the sound which echoed across the landscape.

A roar. A long, loud, billowing wail which resembled a twisted bird call.

“Oh...god...”

Uma’s words were low and disbelieving as Mal peeled her eyes open. On the rooftop, a large dragon perched at the edge of the brick and mortar tower. Elegant magenta wings stretched out from a muscular but limber body, catching on the moonlight and sparkling like an early dawn. She had her long neck extended up into the sky, eyes closed as she breathed.

“What have I done?” Mal croaked, glancing to Uma who shook her head.

“You turned her into a dragon.”

Mal opened her mouth to respond, to defend herself, but was cut off as Audrey roared again. Her head tilted downwards as cat-like eyes flicked open, revealing piercing green irises surrounded by pure midnight black. A long tail with fur at it’s tip thrashed wildly, Audrey’s front claws struggling to keep her balance as she spread her wings even further, yelping out as she awkwardly took flight mid fall. The stones of the tower crumbled under her weight, the pink figure gliding away from the school in a plume of mortar dust and sand.

“Well, that wasn’t what I was expectin’ te happen,”

Harry, who had arrived at some point with Gil, hauled Mal up off the grass with two arms, “I thought ye were tryin’ to beat the lass?”

“I was,” Mal snapped, stumbling on her feet as Gil caught her arm and held her aloft. Uma furrowed her brows in confusion, folding her arms tightly.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not sure,” Mal admitted, holding her chest which burned with cold, “it’s like everything’s been sucked out of me. I’m so tired,”

“Can’t you go after her?” Uma asked wildly. Mal shook her head.

“I can’t feel my dragon fire; it’s just so cold,”

“Alright, fine,” Uma huffed, “Harry, you and I will get Mal back to the palace. Gil, you go up and get Celia. Make sure she’s alright,”

“Aye, aye,”

Gil gave a little salute as he ran into the school, while Uma and Harry hoisted Mal between their combined shoulders. It took forever to get back to where they started, and waiting for them there was Jane and Fairy Godmother.

“Oh dear!” The FG cried lightly, bustling forward as Uma and Harry gently guided Mal towards a place she could sit.

“Guys!” Jane said, breathless as she hurried down the alabaster steps from the Castle, “you did it! The spell has been broken,”

“It’s not over yet,” Mal coughed, groaning as she was left to sit on the side of the ceremonial fountain, “I think I messed up,”

“What happened?” FG asked, “where’s Princess Audrey?”

“I used the same spell to reflect the power of the Scepter back onto her, like I did to mom at the Coronation,” Mal explained, “I thought maybe it would cancel out the spells she cast with Dragon Eye,”

“You were quite correct,” FG nodded, bristling slightly with what appeared to be pride, “as you can see, I’m no longer a garden decoration. What else happened?”

“I don’t know,” Mal yelped out, pulling at curls of bouncy purple-blue hair, “there was this flash and a bang when the magic collided, and then there was this massive ball of light. And Audrey...she was...turned into a Dragon, somehow,”

Both Jane and the FG blinked in surprise as Uma and Harry nodded in agreement.

“That’s the jist of it, FG,” the Pirate confirmed, “and Mal here can’t fly after her, or use her dragon powers to reverse it, because she’s...cold,”

“Cold?” Jane asked curiously, “that’s never stopped you before,”

“It’s not that simple,” Mal growled out loud, tossing Uma a dirty look, “it just felt like everything was sucked out of me at once. I’ve never felt so disconnected to my fire before,”

“Hm, that is a bit worrying,” FG mused lightly, “the spell you used at the Coronation transformed Maleficent into a creature which represented the love in her heart. Itty-bitty,” the FG made a motion with her thumb and forefinger as Mal bobbed her head, running a hand across the back of her neck which was prickling with sweat, “I don’t know why it would’ve been any different for the Princess.”

“You aren’t saying she turned into a dragon because she has a huge, loving heart,” Uma snapped, “she nearly killed everyone! And that might be really awesome where I come from, but y’all are way to...good, here,”

Uma made a face as Mal dropped her head into her hands, groaning hard. She felt very sick to her stomach, like that time she had ridden the Super Coaster with Ben at the Boardwalk.

“Uma! Jane! FG! Thank the gods you’re alright,”

Mal glanced up as Evie’s form appeared from the forests edge, followed by Ben, Carlos and Jay. They were safe. Probably still mad at her - she couldn’t blame them - but safe.

“Evie,” Jane embraced the bluenette tightly as the boys caught up, happily exchanging fist bumps and shoulder slaps with the pirates, “thank goodness you’re all ok,”

“The spell is broken. Does that mean Audrey is...?”

“Not yet,” Mal spoke up, forcing herself to stand despite her dizziness, “there was a complication,”

Evie lifted a fine brow, but said nothing as Ben engulfed Mal into his broad arms, hugging her close to him.

“Mal,” he breathed into her ear, clearly deeply relieved as she sighed and sunk into his embrace, “I’m sorry. I haven’t been a very good boyfriend. I promise I’ll...”

“We have to talk about this later,” Mal croaked, pulling back slightly to look into her fiancé’s face. He looked hurt, but she smiled and gently caressed his scruffy jaw, “I promise we’ll talk about it. Properly, this time,”

“As touching as this is, lovebirds, we have a problem,” Uma announced, tossing an arm across the lawn. Down the street, a plume of pinkish smoke was rising into the night sky, its bottom illuminated by licks of flame.

“That looks like the Museum,” Carlos announced. Ben looked horrified.

“Did Audrey do that?”

“Yes, but it’s complicated,” Mal insisted, “we need to get over there. Now!”

And so the group - minus FG who went to speak with the King and Queen, and the Pirates who returned to the school to find Gil and Celia - hurried across the grounds towards the billowing ball of destruction. Mal wasn’t sure what to expect when she got there - a scene from an illustrated storybook wasn’t it.

Audrey, her deep magenta scales and rich pomegranate fur illuminated by the fires raging around her, had punched a hole in the ceiling of the museum. She used her hooked wings and long tail to attach herself to the building, clinging to it like a lizard on a wall as she ducked her long neck into the ruins.

“That’s a dragon!” Jay cried in alarm, turning to Mal with wide eyes, “a dragon who isn’t you,”

“I don’t know how it happened,” Mal managed, trying to wave away some of the haze accumulating around her nose with a cough, “when our magic collided, I tried sending it back towards Audrey,”

“Like you did to Maleficent,” Evie concluded as Mal nodded firmly.

“Right. I thought it would maybe reverse the Scepter’s power to what Audrey was before. But...it obviously didn’t,”

“What is she doing, exactly?” Carlos puzzled. Mal, who wasn’t sure herself, glanced up to watch. Audrey was just pulling her head out of the Museum’s main hall. And even though they were further away, she could see the glint of something sparkly in the dragons claws.

“She’s...hoarding, I think,”

“Hoarding?”

“Yeah. It’s that instinct in dragons that makes them enjoy big piles of gold and stuff,”

“So she’s collecting sparkly things,” Evie mused, “but why?”

“Not sure. Like I said, it could just be instinct,” Mal mused, “I have to fight mine off too, sometimes.”

“Uh guys,” Carlos spoke up, “Ben is running right for her,”

Mal’s head shot up as she looked beside her. Ben was no longer at her side. He was instead sprinting down the street.

“Ben! Damn it, it’s like Cotillion all over again,” Mal hissed, “this is what I get for falling in love with someone who’s diplomatic,”

Evie laughed lightly as the four VK’s followed after the King. They were just in time to hear him start yelling in Audrey’s direction, waving his arms to get her attention.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Mal hissed, “and I don’t have my powers.”

“Audrey!” Ben yelled, “Audrey, stop!”

Mal was about to grab Ben’s arm and chide him for yelling at a full grown dragon, but Audrey’s hearing must’ve been exceptional. Her looting stopped as a narrow head pivoted sharply. Three ear flaps lifted up and twisted their way, and Audrey released her grip on the museum walls as she stalked towards them. Mal wouldn’t ever admit it, but Audrey was a lot more terrifying up close then she expected. After all, her dragon form was pink. Like a Princess.

But as she slammed down to the pavement from the museum roof, vibrating the earth and cracking the asphalt under wicked silver talons, Mal gulped thickly.

“Ben, this isn’t a good idea,” she hissed, goosebumps rising on her skin at the horrible growl which tumbled in Audrey’s chest.

“Audrey! Please, listen to me. You have to stop this!”

Mal felt Evie grab her arm as the dragon opened her mouth to hiss, revealing a maw of horrible silver teeth. Pink smoke — like the smoke used to put everyone to sleep — billowed from under her tongue, cascading like a heavy fog onto the ground between them. Mal reacted quickly when she saw the golden glow of a spark in Audrey’s throat, and pulled Ben backwards, keeping him from going up in flames as the cloud ignited instantly.

The fire was hot, unearthly so, and Mal pushed Evie towards Jay and Carlos as Audrey’s form leapt through the billowing pink and blue curtain of inferno. She growled again, unfurling her wings and hissing like a snake. Mal tightened her grip on Ben and urged him to step back, but he didn’t move, staring into fierce green eyes with a lip jutted out.

“Audrey,” He said again, “please, if you can hear me you have to listen,”

The dragon licked her lips with a forked tongue as she began to circle them, long tail flicking back and forth, back and forth angrily. There was nothing human in her hungry green eyes, Mal noticed. She didn’t know how much good talking would do. Audrey could’ve been dead, with this monster replacing her.

“I know now how much I hurt you,” Ben insisted, “how much we...hurt you. And I know how much pain you must be in right now, after all of this. But I know you. I’ve known you for a long time. And I know somewhere inside, that kind, sensitive, gentle part of you is screaming to be let out,”

Audrey merely hissed again, lowering her body to the ground like a big cat ready to pounce.

“Ben,” Mal croaked, “I don’t have my powers.”

“Audrey,” Ben inhaled shakily, “I know you don’t want to hurt Auradon. And I-I’ve owed you an apology for a long time. I’m...I’m so, so sorry,”

Mal didn’t react fast enough. She felt a steel-like tail crash square into her chest. Something inside of her screamed as she was thrown a few feet back, hitting the ground hard as something cracked. Gasping with pain as kaleidoscope flowers blossomed in her vision, she watched Audrey grab Ben’s shoulders with her claws and push off into the air like a bullet.

“B-Ben!” Mal cried, unable to move from her place as Evie, Jay and Carlos ran to her side, “Ben!”

“Don’t move,” Evie insisted, “even I heard something break,”

“But where’s Ben!”

At that moment there was a sharp scream from above them. Mal looked straight up and saw Audrey drop the young King from her claws, sending him plummeting down towards the ground, “no!”

Mal’s throat was sore from the shriek as her fiancé fell, unable to stop himself. Mal tried to summon her powers, to transform and catch him, but she was still cold inside.

“I can’t watch,” Evie croaked, shielding her eyes as Jay and Carlos stared with open jaws.

Was this it?

Wincing as Ben got closer and closer to the ground, Mal’s heart leapt as there was a blur in the sky above. Audrey was lithe in the air, nearly invisible against the backdrop of pink smoke. She dove without fear straight down, 90 degrees towards the street. Then, at the last moment, she opened her wings which billowed like glittering sails. Her back claw grabbed Ben by the jacket, and with one mighty flap, he was placed gently back on the ground.

Mal couldn’t believe it. She saved him.

She didn’t have much time to think about it though as the street suddenly swarmed with figures. It was all a bit blurry as royal guards grabbed Ben and pulled him away from the danger. Audrey cried out sharply as something long struck her in the chest. The pink figure was laced with ropes and forced to the ground with a mighty thud.

“Don’t hurt her!” Ben cried, though I fell on deaf ears as Audrey began to chirp a pathetic, crying wail. She was in pain. Mal tried to sit up, but was immediately forced back by Evie.

“Stop. Just...rest for a minute,”

Mal wanted to complain, but her adrenaline was running out. Every corner of her body was flooded by ache and exhaustion. And as her eyes fluttered closed, all she could hear was a ghostly, melancholy dragon wail before everything went black.

[let-it-show]

A Surprise for Anna

I wanted to participate somehow in Elsanna Week. Idk if I will have time or energy to do more than one prompt but...here we go for Reunion. So- Elsa does something special for Anna!

Getting Anna to agree to her plans for the day was difficult. Elsa understood, she got it, but she really needed Anna to go. She had a surprise for her little sister that she knew she would love.

Anna was a grown woman, a queen alongside her, but she still dug her heels in, crossed her arms and shook her head like a stubborn child. She was having none of it and Elsa had been ready to encase her in ice and have Sven drag her. Fingers were pointed, voices were raised, and threats -  none of which were very serious - were made. It only lasted so long before Anna managed to crack herself up, smile, and laugh. She kissed Elsa on the cheek and said if she made it worth her while later in the bedroom, she'd go.

That didn't mean she would stop whining, though.

Elsa had readily agreed to the terms. She already looked forward to whatever 'revenge' Anna might cook up for later. It was getting to the Ice Palace that was rough.

"We're almost there, Anna," she told her as they rode on a wagon hauled by one of Elsa's big ice bears. "We're almost there and...Anna..."

To her dismay, Anna had balled herself up a bit next to her as they went on an incline. Her eyes were wet and she simply looked ahead. Elsa knew why she didn't like going there. For some while the palace had remained empty, none of the crazy laughter and fun that they would walk into when they visited before Elsa was called by the North Wind. Marshmallow might have been grumpy now and then but the snowgies were always up for some chaos. Usually, Olaf encouraged it.

"We really have to go? Is this surprise worth it?" Anna asked in a small voice. Even the whining she'd been doing was somewhat lighthearted, with moaning about being hungry or her butt falling asleep.

"Anna..." Elsa put her arm around her and tried to bring her closer. It wasn't really working, so she moved her own body, brushing one of Anna's braids out of her way. "It's well worth it. I know you will love it. You'll have the biggest smile you've had in forever," she said quietly, stroking Anna's freckled cheek with her finger. Her skin was warm despite the cold temperature of the breeze around them. The North Mountain was always cold.

"Everyone live in Ahtohallan now. It just...it just makes me think and makes me feel alone, even when I'm in there with you," Anna said with a sniffle, adjusting herself to hug her knees to her chest, fingers digging into into her beige dress. "We go in and it's empty. I don't want to go, Elsa."

She should tell her. Elsa knew she really should tell her. And yet...she knew the joy Anna would feel when they went inside would be incredible. When she saw the surprise she would be so, so happy. At the same time, Anna was clearly upset. She didn't want to be reminded of the period of time they were apart and nothing was as it ever was. While it wasn't truly terrible, according to Anna herself, it'd been a struggle.

Elsa hugged her and kissed her head. Her reaction was yet another sign that she played down how she'd felt in those months. Thinking about it made Elsa's heart hurt.

But she was back. She was back to stay and she was never leaving Anna - her Anna - ever again. Anna was hers to hold close and speak soft, love-laced words too. And she was hers to make happy.

If they could just make the last curve before they actually had to take a short walk to the stairs, it would be okay. Anna was fighting off actually crying and if she did get there Elsa knew she would have to tell her what was going on. So Elsa kissed her head again, and then her cheek. "I promise it'll be worth it. You'll be grinning from ear to ear. I know you will. You might cry from happiness," she told her, lips finding her cheek again.

Anna let out a slow, controlled breath. "Elsa..."

"I promise," Elsa repeated. "And if....if it's just too hard I'll tell you what's going on. We can stop and I'l tell you. It's just that I can't wait to see how thrilled you're going to be," she said, playing with Anna's braid.

Anna studied her quietly and then sighed. "I trust you. I know you really think whatever this is will make me happy and I-I trust you."

For a moment, Elsa simply looked at her. She didn't want to do the wrong thing. She really didn't. Keeping the surprise was a good idea...she was going to stick with it. "Thank you for that. I...thank you," Elsa whispered.

When they arrived at the stop, Elsa hopped out first and went around to offer her hand to Anna. "Come on, darling," she told her, coaxing her sister from the wagon.

Anna slowly took her hand and let Elsa help her down. She leaned into Elsa and then turned fully to wrap her arms around her, running her hands through Elsa's long, loose hair. She didn't appear to be sniffing anymore. She'd managed to swallow her sobs evidently and Elsa hoped that didn't made her feel worse. She squeezed Anna's warm body against her own.

Nothing ever felt so right as Anna did in her arms.

They held hands as they walked through the rocks, Anna's squeezing Elsa's regularly. Anna pointed out where she had tried to mountain climb years prior when searching with Kristoff. She did that each time they visited the palace in the past, and Elsa loved it. Sometimes Anna even imitated where she pushed back from the rock and knew Kristoff would catch her because he was 'a smelly guy, but a nice one'.

Then it was the ice stairs, and Anna was hesitant. With one hand on the glistening railing, Anna bit her bottom lip and stared. Elsa rubbed her back gently, and encouraged her to keep going up. As usual she followed behind her. If Anna slipped, Elsa would easily catch her. She'd done so before, and Anna had giggled and looked up at her before scampering up the stairs to go see everyone.

Elsa watched the usually optimistic girl drag her heels up the ice.

When they arrived at the door, Elsa told her to stop. "Knock!" she told her, stopping beside her. "I uh...knock."

Anna looked at her oddly but raised a fist to bang loudly on the door. Elsa never quite understood why the knocking sounded like a bang on a big wooden door, but if it sounded like ice should sound when hit, she guessed it wouldn't attract as much attention.

The door opened slowly to reveal...

Olaf.

"Olaf?" Anna asked.

The little snowman laughed and waved her in with his stick arm. "Come on in Anna! Come on!" he said and reached for her hand.

Anna took it, shooting Elsa a confused look over her shoulder. Elsa just grinned. She had felt guilty getting Anna all the way up to that door, but there she was...about to be very pleasantly surprised. She followed them both into the ice castle where everything was the same as always, just empty...

Until a figure slide down the icy bannister of the glorious staircase in front of them. One little white figure followed by another. Then another. And another and another! Olaf was giggling and snowgies started to bounce down the stairs on their heads, legs, and midsections. They were laughing and making an awful lot of noise that echoed off the walls of the palace.

"It's..oh! It's Flurry, Sludge - WILLIAM!? Is that you?" Anna squealed, and she and Olaf ran for the bottom of the stairs.

"And Powder and Ansel, even Huggy and Skate - it's everyone!" Olaf said, bouncing around and letting the snowgies take off his head to bounce it around. They were climbing on Anna already, letting her scoop them up and hug them as even more flooded down the stairs.

"Almost everyone," Elsa answered, approaching them. She snapped her fingers and on the balcony above them, heavy footsteps could be heard. Anna looked up along with the snowgies, who turned Olaf's head in the proper direction. A hush fell over the crowd and even the snowgies on the stairs slid and slammed into stops. Elsa waited, excitedly, even though she knew it was obvious who was approaching.

Then Marshmallow made his appearance, peering over the railing at them. "Now, now it EVERYONE!" he bellowed, and the snowgies started to bounce about, once again. Olaf's feet and bottom started flying in the air at random while his head cheered.

Anna clapped her hands and bounced while the flood of snowgies continued to pile around her, lifting her up as Elsa finally made her way to her. Elsa wasn't surprised to see her cheeks were wet.

"So, Anna?" she asked as she looked up at her. "Is...was it worth it?" she asked. She felt very silly asking, but she had to be sure Anna was okay.

"Yes!" Anna answered loudly, cheer in her voice. "So worth it! Oh thank you, thank you! Are they...?"

"They're staying." Elsa smiled. "They all wanted to come back." She didn't mention how tired Nokk was of fishing wandering snowgies out of various parts of the Dark Sea.

"Oh!" Anna wiped tears from her eyes. Her mouth opened but she didn't say anything. Instead her lips morphed into a happy smile. She sniffed and wiped more tears before holding her arms out. "Elsa!"

"I-OOP!" Elsa felt herself suddenly lifted. The snowgies surrounded her heels and took the train of her white dress. They latched on and with a just plain weird amount of strength, they lifted her up and brought her to Anna, nearly throwing her on her sister.

Anna's hands and arms found her, bringing her in close for yet another hug. Elsa closed her eyes as she buried her face in Anna's neck, doing nothing but listening to the merriment around them. Olaf was laughing. Marshmallow was making his way down the stairs, the snowgies were absolutely losing their minds. Anna was giggling and the sound was music to her ears.

Everyone was home.

[theofficersacademy]

Days grow ever shorter as the cold deepens across Fódlan, sprinkling the first powders of hoarfrost from its icy hand. Roaring fires become the eye of every household, a halo of red to match that which cloaks the silhouettes of wolves under the growing moon. Their distant howls strike fear into the hearts of shepherds in the dark.

The north winds of Faerghus bring not only the promise of winter, but whispers of concern surrounding a particular Kingdom nobleman. Rumor has it that this man has been acting strangely - erratic one day and lethargic the next, occasionally mumbling gibberish under his breath. His sudden disappearance has resulted in calls for the Church to investigate. After the fiasco in Leicester, however, those who are called to look into the matter have been ordered to shed their uniforms and make their identities a secret. As eastern Faerghus settles in for an impending snowstorm, no one will bat an eye at travelers searching for warmth and shelter.

Golden Deer Mission: Investigate Duke Philip!

GD Mission Board

Faerghus' winter storms come early this year. The bone-deep chill you feel as a strong wind blows through your group is worse than the priests back at school forewarned. Unless you're planning to become a popsicle, you should do as the Faerghans do and try to build yourself some shelter.  

You stick out like a sore thumb in your school uniforms, and they're not quite enough to keep you warm either. On your travels, you come across a ransacked village, scorched and trampled... it's an opportunity to find more appropriate clothes, even if you're mixed on the idea of becoming a second group of bandits. What’s more, the destruction seems fairly recent...   

Ill-prepared for the weather as you are, you manage to get lost in the forest just outside of the location you’re supposed to be investigating. Part of your group builds a fire to stay warm as the sun begins to sink, while the other sets out to regain their bearings. It’s just as dusk sets in that the trees come alive with low moaning and the sound of something being dragged through the leaf litter. You brace for a monster, but instead you find humans - around half a dozen - with ashen skin and their eyes rolled back into their heads. One swings at someone in your party and sends them flying into a tree, but unfortunately your attacks aren’t so potent. Standard weapons bounce right off of these things. Fortunately for you, Nessie of the Knights of Seiros is with you, and one strike from her gauntlets reveals the monster’s weakness: Relics. [Grants +1 Reason or +1 Brawling]  

With Nessie’s help, you make it to the village at last. There seems to be some sort of ritual or festival going on - one that doesn’t correspond to any holiday you’ve heard of. Not to mention that decor seems half-rotted already, and the houses look to have been neglected for weeks. There are people in dark cloaks, their faces concealed, shuffling in between crowds of those same corpse-like monsters you fought in the forest. Except Nessie recognizes a handful of them by name, and you come to the cold realization that these are people. Dressed in robes yourself, you go unnoticed by whoever is leading this strange ritual. Try to keep a low profile as you observe. [Grants +1 Faith]  

You’re on the lookout for a Duke Philip - the man supposedly in charge of this village, and the one whose report you initially received. There’s a house at the far end of the village with doors and windows both completely boarded up. But through a hole, you manage to see a glimpse of a shadow pacing back and forth at all hours of the day. The cloaked figures in the village also seem especially interested in this place, as there are often three or four patrolling the area at any given time. Make too much of a commotion and your mission will be in jeopardy.

NEW ! As time goes on, you begin to notice a pattern. Occasionally one of the villagers will be called to the house on the far end of the village. Some never return. Others return more irritable and irrational, similar to the people you discovered in the forest. It's reason enough to try investigating the building more thoroughly. You find a way in through a trap door, where stairs lead you down into a basement, dark save for the familiar glow of magical energy. It's hard to comprehend what half of these contraptions are for, and even harder to make your way around the room. Your foot catches on something, and clanging metal precedes a strange "beeping" sound that comes from a tall tower-like object in the center of the room. You already have a bad feeling about this, and the bolt of thunder magic that shoots from the tower only confirms it.

NEW ! Over the past few days, the buzzing noise in your ears has gotten louder and louder. It breaks your focus and deafens your thoughts, and as your friends approach you and voice their concerns, your only thought is to push back against them and shut them up. Perhaps permanently. As your mind begins to fray under whatever has been influencing the villager's, can your friends bring you back to your senses?

NEW ! It started with only a few to begin with, not enough to prove conspicuous. But as the month drags on, there's no two ways about it: the shambling villagers going through the worst of this curious blight share at the least one thing in common. Each of them bears a lance, all the more suspicious for how normal the weapons appear at a glance. A closer look may reveal more to the puzzle, though that will first involve prying a villager from their prize - an endeavour that will require planning lest you bring the horde of them upon yourself. [Grants +1 Lance]

Non-Mission Tasks

The local cats and dogs of the monastery have been anxious recently. One of the students, who had been known to play with them and leave them food, has recently gone missing. Your investigation into the matter leads you behind the abandoned cathedral, where you find a giant Demonic Wolf crouched over her body. As it licks her hands, growling and whining, you spot a bright pink ribbon tied around its neck, nestled in its matted fur. The wolf takes notice of you, steps forward protectively, and growls low.  

As the days grow colder, students balk at the idea of walking around outside in the cold, especially late at night. Whispers of a shortcut quickly spread through the student body: if you're coming from the library, you can go through the gallery hall to get back to the dorms. It's not long until this path is marred by rumors of an armored thief stealing people's books and essays late at night. There's a reward if you unmask the criminal, but soon enough you find out that there's more to this criminal than you thought. Too bad the realization only comes when one of the armored knights on display is magically brought to life, brandishing its sword at you. [Grants +1 Sword]  

Cold weather is on the rise, and the students are eager for new games to entertain themselves with. Luckily for them, the mage club has been happy to provide! Inspired by the visiting wyvern flock last moon, they have devised a new contraption: the magicanical bull! Combining magic and mechanical parts, this faux bull does its very best to throw its rider off its back. The name of the game is to last as long as you can! How long can you hold on before you fall? [Grants +1 Riding]  

The staff of Garreg Mach are calling for volunteers! On a nearby snowy mountain sits a large, abandoned tower from days long past. Lady Rhea wishes to bring this building to this century and create a recreational space for the students. There are floors to sweep and beds to make, but the discovery of a large hot spring tempts you to play hooky....  

With only weeks to practice for the White Heron Cup, students busy themselves by ordering their ball attire and practicing their dance moves. Even the stodgiest grump can't help but feel energized by the excitement in the air.

NEW ! A recent snowstorm at the base of the Oghma Mountains has blown a group of lumberjacks into Garreg Mach's castle town. The Society of Axe Personnel (proudly referring themselves as "SAP") are grateful for the assistance that the Church has offered, and in return they decided to put together a lumberjack skill competition! Practice climbing trees, logrolling in the fishing pond, and carving wooden statues with your axe! [Grants +1 Axe]

NEW ! Strange magical happenings are a dime a dozen these days, and the administration has taken notice. For the students' safety, the faculty have devised a new winter session course in defending against magical attacks, geared towards those with little resistance. If the sight of heavy armor and broad iron shields doesn't earn a groan from the students, the words "mandatory for all Officers Academy students" in the course description certainly will. However, the talented mages in the student body have some tricks up their sleeves. One morning you arrive at class with the armor already in use, the students using their shields to bash at a flaming ball of magic and bring it closer to the goalposts on one side of the field. One of the players notices you and calls out. They just invented this cool new game, do you want to play? [Grants +1 Heavy Armor]

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the divided task board work?

This season’s mission is assigned to the Golden Deer. Therefore, tasks from the ‘GD Mission Task Board’ must be undertaken by someone that is affiliated with the Golden Deer.

Tasks from the ‘Non-Mission Task Board’ have no house restriction and can be undertaken by anyone.

These aren’t the only threads I can do, right?

Of course not! These are just prompts to help give some ideas of possibilities. You’re always free and encouraged to make up your own threads. You’re also more than welcome to worldbuild on your own, using these prompts as a base.

How do I claim the skill points?

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[nukyster-blog]

Changing Course Chapter 22) Crossfire

.-.-.

Ivar was brought back to the shed and dropped on his stomach, although he wasn’t aware of his transition. Unconsciousness momentarily redeemed him from the flaring pain spreading all over his back like a wildfire. The battered skin in between his shoulder blades had ruptured due to the lashes, leaving large bloody gashes.  

In a flash, he regained consciousness as his faithful guardian took it upon herself to disinfect his wounds. Although her touch was soft, pain seared through his upper body better than a branding iron. 

Bloody cloth after bloody cloth dropped aside Ivar’s writhing body; pain taking over a good portion of his brain. It was all consuming, his mind  conceding in agony but aware of the necessity of Piglet’s torture. So he balled his fist and tried his best to lessen the primeval noises that come from his mouth; that of a dying animal. 

The pain burned and radiated, it should have shattered  his soul but deep down Ivar saw the blessing in his pain, it brought him closer to his Gods, it made him realise he was inviolable.

Piglet applied a salve, which smelled of honey, plantain, and chamomile while humming her song in candlelight. Ivar listened and turned his head so that he could look up to her. The young woman’s face revealed how badly his wounds were; her forehead puckered, lips set in a grim line and her hands were shaking. 

“Lay flat,” she said matter-of-factly, which was an unnecessary order, because he wasn’t planning to move, not even an inch. He lay still as hay tickled his face and nose.

Piglet eventually curled up on her side to face him properly. 

“Thick-head,” she sneered, eyes clearly upset over the hell he’d put himself through.

“Savage cunt,” Ivar murmured back apologetically. 

“Did he come for you?” Ivar asked when Piglet was done rolling her eyes skywards, “last night?” 

“No, he walks funny now,” Piglet revealed with a devilish grin, “you’re a mad dog.” 

Ivar gave her an all-tooth smile, very pleased with the thought of marking the young ruler.

.-.-.

Ivar’s punishment had caused a change inside the castle’s walls. Although daily routine started as winter swiped through the shed with icy claws like an eagle, the atmosphere was different. The Giant spat his orders into Piglet’s face, but kept far away from Ivar’s box, as if his cripple slave was stricken by the plague. 

Ivar had expected the brute to give him another kick after, definitely now that he lay battered and defenseless on the floor. 

But the Giant left along with Piglet, leaving Ivar to face boredom and cold. His mobility was close to none, every moment hurt and could cause the cuts to rip further. Being exposed to fresh air would accelerate the healing process; the downside was being awfully cold. 

Ivar slept for the most part of the day and was awoken by the fluttering footsteps of the two linen maidens. Both young women seemed anxious to step over the threshold, but eventually curiosity got the best of them. 

With large doe-like eyes the two maidens kneeled down at his box and took in every inch of Ivar’s battered body. 

Being the main act of their freak show wasn’t actually how Ivar had planned his afternoon, but aside from throwing daggers with his eyes there wasn’t much he could do about it. 

One of the two maidens then did something unexpected, she clasped her hands together and started a soft prayer while the other placed two thick woolen blankets next to his trough. 

After a brief hail Mary, both maidens hurried to get up and fled the shed, leaving Ivar completely dumbstruck. 

That same event occurred two more times with different people. A peasant mother and daughter snuck inside the stable to behold Ivar’s beat down form and placed a bowl of goat milk aside his box before leaving. Two youngsters ogled him for a while before daring to enter the stable and, instead of throwing stones, left one of their most treasured possessions; a sling and a wooden miniature toy horse.

Piglet was less humble about entering and burst out laughing when she noticed all the gifted items. Shaking her head, she nicked the milk and brought it closer to Ivar. It was awkward drinking milk while lying flat, but Ivar managed without spilling too much. 

“Ivar the bloody,” Piglet sniggered and drank some herself, “martyr.”

And so, Ivar learned he’d been given a new nickname among the poor population of de Haar. ‘De martelaar’, The Martyr, as Piglet put it. She explained as good as her Nordish vocabulary allowed her that a martyr was someone who suffered persecution and death for advocating a religious belief or for a good cause. Apparently, Piglet’s life was useless, yet her virtue was considered sacred enough to fight and nearly die for in the eyes of the slaves, serfs and servants. 

Although Ivar completely despised the way his punishment was now silently considered a holy statement, he did enjoy the benefits; proper food, warmth in forms of decent clothing and blankets. And he must admit, the smoldering eyes of the female population fully in awe of his quote on quote ‘scars of true heroism’, flattered his ego greatly. 

Piglet managed to keep her lips in a proper shape and hands clasped together as she registered all the gifts and from time to time ushered spectators out who dared to take too much time of the healing martyr. 

After a few days Ivar managed to turn on his side without rupturing the gashes, Piglet wasn’t happy with it, but Ivar had to place himself in another position. Laying still for an extended amount of time caused so much ache in his legs he’d rather cut his own skin open again.  

His body was no longer an unblemished canvas, but he had come to  treasure his first won symbols of victory. He victored a Christian death, for even his crippled body was stronger than that of the enemy. 

Was Ivar simply a stubborn young man, willing himself to survive torture, or did he lay there as something sacred in the punishment brought upon him? 

Whatever it was, his new near holy status made it possible to survive the upcoming cold. The Giant did not bother him and stayed away from the shed. 

It even placed him on a pedestal of the more fortunate of castle De Haar...

.-.-.

A week. It took Ivar a week to be able to place himself into a sitting position. It hurt, badly and he couldn’t maintain the position for long, for it was impossible to place his back against the solidness of a wall. 

But it allowed him to massage his legs. Kneading his calloused fingers into the poor muscle tone of his calves his heart ached for a hot bath. And the warmth of a fire. And the satisfaction of a belly filled with mead. 

The fallen prince extended his wish-list and glanced up puzzled as the door creaked. It was an odd hour for his so-called worshippers to risk a peek. Everyone should be working, it was way past lunch. 

Cocooned in the finest of silk and furs, the fair maiden desecrated her sandals as she tiptoed into the shed. Ivar’s mouth dropped as she came closer, Kattegat was known for their beautiful women but this maiden outshone them all. 

He could not breath, eyes drawn to her golden locks that gently caressed its way down to her neck, reaching her bosom. If her God was real, Ivar told himself, then this woman was one of His masterpieces. 

She was scared, petrified. Ivar failed to find reason in her fright, for he was still recovering and enchained  for the matter. Her hurried glances over her shoulder revealed her true dread; she wasn’t supposed to be here.

Now, this drew Ivar’s full attention. Why would a noblewoman, with so much to lose, put herself at risk for a crippled? Now this was interesting. 

She kneeled down, and with that pulled her cloak around her tighter to stave off the keen wind. Closing her eyes, the fair maiden started to pray, clasping her hands together and bowing her head. 

Now this was very interesting. Her submissive demeanor drew Ivar closer. As his chains rattled, the fair maiden hunched further forward and trembled. Oh, she was scared, a lamb willingly walking into a lion's den. And why, for gossip and rumors spread by her lessers? 

Ivar edged closer, as close as the chains allowed him. And he waited for the fair maiden to finish her prayer, out of curiosity, for he wondered what she’d do next as she’d face him from up close. Lowering her trembling hands the fair maiden found enough bravery in her heart to look up. And her eyes, they were, in one word, beautiful. Her eyes were a perfect spring sky and along with terror they were incarnated with sanctity. 

Ivar found himself bizarrely fascinated by the fair maiden’s utter devotion of her faith. She was risking hers to lay eyes on his skin, for he who was De Martelaar. 

With one swift move Ivar grabbed the back of her head and pulled her in. She was close, so close that he could see her heartbeat gallop underneath the fair skin of her neck. She smelled of rose water and jasmine, pure and unblemished. 

Ivar looked down at her trembling hands, her ring finger still lacking a wedding ring. 

“Poor little lamb, you’re sold off to a monster,” Ivar murmured with pity, “but I bet you already know that.” Their eyes locked like magnets and although the fair maiden couldn’t understand his language, his humble bit of sympathy didn’t go by unnoticed. With wide eyes she watched as the crippled martyr slowly rose his free hand and pressed his index finger down in between her brows. She took in a sharp breath as he drew a small cross and spoke a blessing with sencernity:

“God zegene u.” 

They were the words their holy man spoke at the end of every service. Ivar didn’t know the depth of the words, but witnessing how the fear drained from her face and got restored with hope, he knew he did little right today. 

“How lost you must be, if you perceive me as something biblical,” Ivar scoffed soft, lips turning in a sideway smirk, very pleased that she still allowed him to touch her. A noblewoman on her knees in filth and animal dung, so desperately in need to find a shatter of hope. 

Ivar’s fingers ran down the bridge of her nose fully aware that he was playing with fire, enough to burn the entire castle down. 

Ivar did not know what emotion drove him, was it a simple payback in regards to her fiance? Was it selfishness? Weakness? Lust? Or a simple consideration towards a beautiful young woman, to briefly veil her from the terrible truth; that she was going to be married to a monster? 

Whatever it was, Ivar kissed the fair maiden and the world fell away. The touch was light and soft, comforting in ways words would never be, for language was their barrier. His hand moved and rested below her ear, his thumb caressing her cheek as their breaths mingled. 

The sounds of a tearing potato bag broke their spell. The fair maiden jerked her head in the direction of the sound and Ivar managed to look over her shoulder. 

Piglet lingered in the doorway, holding the torn bag against her chest with a pile of potatoes spread around her feet. Still as a statue the slave gawked at the scene in front of her. 

It was the fair maiden who broke the awful silence. As being touched by fire she jolted back, struggling to get on her feet. Shame-faced she whispered something to Piglet and managed to shove something in her hands before evacuating the shed. 

Piglet managed a deadpan expression all while striding with large steps into Ivar’s box. There she exploded, beating her fists into his chest and smacking him across the face. 

Alongside the curses in her mother tongue she managed to slip in some Nordish: 

“Thick-head, do you have a death wish?!” She repeated numerous times before dropping on her knees and staring up skywards. 

“IDIOT!” She exclaimed and thrusted her fists into the ground. “Hamar! Stupid idiot!” When Ivar failed to speak she crawled back on her feet and marched off. At the doorway she took a small pause and threw the fair maidens item across the shed. 

Ivar played marble until he no longer could see the back of Piglet’s head before reaching forwards in the way. He picked up a woman’s necklace. A golden cross dangling at the end.

.-.-.

A/N Yeah, so this happened. This was not supposed to happen. But then again, Ivar is into blondes so yeah maybe I shouldn’t have let her get down on her knees. Also I didn’t have the intentions of making Ivar a Martyr, but it’ll get the pair of them through winter and c’mon you know how good this is for his ego. Mister God complex. But fuck, why did they had to kiss. Yes I’ll I seriously need to recover from this. 

Also ‘God zegene U’, means ‘God Bless you’ in Dutch. So at least he blessed her before making out with the fiance of the guy who’s responsible for tearing his entire back open. I’m team Piglet with this one, he’s a complete and utter idiot. 

So, what are your thoughts of our young Prince smoothing up with the WORST OPTION in the entire castle….

Xoxoxo Nukyster 

The kickass beta: @Sarahh-Jane

The tagged ones:

@youbloodymadgenius

@xbellaxcarolinax

@saldelys

@shannygoatgruff

@pieces-by-me

@apenas-mais-uma-pessoa

@readsalot73

@lauraan182 @conaionaru

@sarahh-jane

@peachyboneless

If you’d liked to be tagged, please let me know:)

[benscursedkid]

*title from the song of the same name by ricky montgomery and based on this post from @weirdcursedvaultkid*

i | ii | iii

he’s singing, "she's a, she's a lady, and I am just a line without a hook"

year one

Everything is bigger than she imagined. 

The walls are much higher, the tables longer, Dumbledore’s podium taller. She takes a look up to the ceiling and finds that there is no roof. Constellations freckle and connect across the dark expanse of space above her. The number of floating candles about burn brightly enough to trick her eyes into believing that there are even more stars all around her. 

She’s trapped somewhere in the middle of the group, surrounded on every side by the anonymous and mesmerized faces of strangers. Rowan is nowhere to be found and suddenly she feels very, very alone. 

Once or twice she catches herself looking around for Jacob. His familiar bush of messy brown hair and bright sparkling jade eyes. The easy smile he always gave her that made everything feel better. 

But he is no longer there. 

The reminder of what she’s lost has her head spinning. She can hear her heart pumping in her ears and feels the beat of its rhythm in her temples. Things were supposed to be different. He was supposed to be here—

Something prickles at the edges of her awareness, the burning phantom of a stare somewhere just off to the side of her peripheral. Slowly, her head turns to her left, her focus still settled on the mass number of identical black shoes. Whoever is staring at her doesn’t move, nor do they look away, and Rebekah chances a glance up to their eyes. 

Not a lot registers for her once she finally sees his face. The only thing she can focus on is the warmth that radiates from him in gentle waves. Thankfully, she does not have to crane her head up very far to look him in the eye and for a moment she forgets why she was afraid. 

Because he is even more so. 

Shakily, he turns away and goes back to trying not to catch anyone’s attention. His cheeks burn a soft shade of red and Rebekah thinks that, just for a minute, maybe things won’t be so bad. 

Another name is called from the platform the tall woman stands on, but Rebekah’s mind is elsewhere and it sounds fuzzy on the ends. She does not catch it. However, her attention piques when the boy moves. 

His steps up to the chair are hesitant, small strides. His eyes flicker about for a few seconds before he screws them shut. Gryffindor, the hat says, earning it many a baffled expression from its audience, the boy included. And unlike many others, the boy does not rejoice. He simply shuffles his way to the table where he is greeted with a number of questioning looks and a handful of upturned noses. 

Gryffindor, the hat had declared with certainty—and dare Rebekah wonder: are hats able to smirk?—it's got to be Gryffindor. 

It’s a joke that I got put in Gryffindor, the boy—Ben—said to her later the next day, his eyes low and downcast. I’m scared of everything.

Everyone is afraid of something, she offered as what she hoped was a small piece of solace. He regarded her as if he did not believe her words to be true, but was hopeful enough to imagine it anyway. And as he did, the corners of his lips curved up into a wishful smile. 

The sight itself washed over Rebekah like a remedy, lightening her shoulders and easing the lump in her throat in a single swift movement. She smiled back, transforming the one on his face into something much more dazzling, yet still soft around the edges as his eyes shone a dark amber in the morning sun. 

It was then that she realized that was the first time she had smiled since stepping into this large and looming and grandiose castle. All because of someone else's dream. 

She hoped, then, to make a habit out of it.

Ben crouches down to be level with Rebekah as she sits on the lip of the fountain, his eyes roaming her figure for any sign of pain or injury. His own qualms forgotten, he no longer seems to notice the ripening bruise on his own arm or the gathering crowd around them. 

Are you okay? He asks carefully, his brows furrowed into a knot and an exaggerated frown pulling at his mouth. She didn’t really hurt you, did she?

Rebekah blinks for a moment, her thoughts drawing a quick blank at the sight of his worry. Around them, she can hear the whispering of students who care little for hiding it. They point and gossip and Rebekah isn’t sure if they’re talking about her or them but either way, it makes her skin crawl. 

Concern flashes across his eyes for a moment before he looks around and remembers himself, his cheeks pinking a little to match hers. His hand ghosts over her forearm as if unsure where to put it or what to do with it. 

Don’t worry about them, Ben whispers almost to himself, but just loud enough for her to share in the secret. His hand balls into a fist before finally settling back to his side and Rebekah isn’t sure if she’s thankful or disappointed. You were amazing. 

This does not do well for her fair complexion as his words only deepen the blush on her face and she quickly drops her gaze in an attempt to hide it. A beat passes and neither of them speak. Idly, she wonders where Rowan has gone off to, before Ben opens his mouth to respond. 

His voice is hushed and soft, light and mostly air as he informs, They… they aren’t saying anything mean. In fact, they seem happy that you knocked Merula down a peg. At this, Rebekah shrinks a little, their blatant attention burning holes into her skin. Ben hesitates before shifting in his place to block her from view. 

You don’t like the attention? He guesses to which Rebekah can only nod. Ben returns the gesture, but his shoulders seem to loosen up at her answer. 

He goes for what she thinks is meant to be a comforting smile. It works. Me neither. 

A spot on her elbow tingles with heat as she looks back up to face him, only to realize that his hand has moved from its place by his side to settle there instead. From the way he relaxes slightly as he continues in his original task of making sure she is okay, Rebekah can only assume that he has not noticed. She decides not to comment on it.

It seems, though, that their short moment of serenity was not meant to last very long as a flash of long, flimsy black robes and tiny circle rimmed glasses peek into her vision as their charms and potions professors make their way over to the group of gathered first years. 

At once, Rowan throws her an apologetic look from her place by Flitwick’s side, clearly having been the one to alert him. Rebekah shakes her head in a silent display of forgiveness as her and Ben stand to greet them. 

Somehow, Rebekah finds that she feels strangely complacent. She helped her friend today and for that she will never apologize. 

His grip turns his knuckles white as the wind rakes its fingers through the short strands of his hair. Even over the whistling of the wind in his ears, Ben can hear the rapid beating of his own heart in his chest, though it feels suspiciously closer to his throat for his liking. 

How is it possible that he is flying? Briefly, his mind flickers back to the cartoon witches he used to see plastered in storybooks. At once, he is reminded again that this new world is not the ‘fabrication of his own overactive imagination’, as his parents used to tell him when he complained about the ghost in the attic. 

Faintly, the sound of excited clapping drifts up to him and instinct forces his eyes back open. Anxiety is quick on his heels as he immediately finds himself looking down to the ground below him, but something else stands out against the stark green backdrop of grass. 

Rebekah stands, the only student to remain on the ground, her head craned upward to peer at him. Her eyes, kind and curious and sparkling as though home to their very own galaxy, are trained intently on him. 

She follows his every movement against the wind, every turn of his broom is caught with enthusiasm. The Ravenclaw pulses with pure and unadulterated excitement and Ben finds himself drawing energy from her and she jumps on her feet, waving up at him with the widest smile Ben has ever seen adorn her face. Strands of her ink black hair fly into her eyes, but she does not seem to mind, content with simply cheering him on. 

In that moment, it does not escape Ben’s notice that the sight, though infinitely welcome, only serves to quicken his heart rate until it begins to race even faster than before. 

His eyes have gone starry, glossed over in faint astonishment as Rebekah tells her story. She can feel her lips moving, her vocal cords vibrating in tandem, but as she looks at him she finds that she cannot hear herself speak. 

Her cheeks feel hot. 

She finishes and Ben grins, it’s giddy and goofy and Rebekah can’t help but offer him one of her own in return. 

Wow, he whispers, his eyes glued not to the vast galactic sky that they can afford to see clearly in their place up in the astronomy tower, but to her. I can’t believe Dumbledore actually took special notice of a first year!

Rebekah chuckles and rubs at her wrist bashfully. It’s not like I gave him much of a choice, she whispers back. 

At this he simply shakes his head and strangely, he looks as if there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. His smile does not falter, his big brown eyes bright. No, he says, It’s impossible not to notice you.

She’s not ready for it to end. 

She’s not ready to return home, to a still and empty house where her parents never laugh and no one ever smiles. She does not want to walk to her room everyday where she has to pass by Jacob’s, untouched and void and not at all the same. She’s not ready to see their faces or look into their eyes and be struck again with the realization that she is not enough. 

She’s not ready to continue in a life without her brother. 

But as the train whistles in her ears and the breeze blows flower petals into her hair, she knows the choice is not hers. Slowly, she shuffles her way off the platform and wraps her arms delicately around Rowan, the dark strands of her hair tickling her nose. 

Her friend grins so wide Rebekah fears her cheeks will sting and giggles out a last goodbye, accompanied with a merry promise to keep in touch. A voice sounds from behind her and Rowan waves her off, skipping over to her family with a youthfulness Rebekah has never seen in her before. 

She watches them go with a growing lump in her throat. 

She checks her watch. 

“Rebekah.”

This time, his voice is small, yet as it curls around the syllables of her name she finds that it is no less affectionate than it always is. The girl turns, her eyes catching his for what feels scarily like the last time. 

“Ben—”

He grins when he hears her as if on nothing more than instinct alone and the thought twists a smile onto her own lips as well. 

“—I was wondering if I’d see you.”

“Well, here I am.”

“There you are.”

The sun shines above them and under its gracious attention, Ben’s hair glimmers a more golden color as it flickers in the breeze, landing softly against his forehead. Had Rebekah been older or more poetic, she might have equated it to something like gold or freshly bloomed daffodils. 

But alas the thought escapes her. 

He clears his throat. 

“I don’t think I’ll have much downtime when I get back. Mum and Dad will probably have enough questions to last them until the summer is over, but…” His cheeks pink and he rubs at the back of his neck. “I’ll write to you,” He promises. “When I can.”

And with that, he does his best to lift his chin and walk away, leaving her behind. Yet, as she watches him embrace a woman with white-blonde hair and a tall man with a smile just like his, Rebekah can’t seem to muster a single dour thought. She only smiles and waves at him as he stalks away even if he is no longer paying attention. 

A gust of hot hair rushes over him as his father opens the door to leave, but something itches at the back of his head and he turns around. 

But she is already gone. 

[icequeenoriginal]

An Unusually Anxious Prince

Summary: Roman goes into the forest to collect berries and finds something much more interesting. 

Author’s Note: I couldn’t help myself so I wrote another scene for my Sleeping Beauty AU. I’m still not sure if I’m going to write a whole story for it though, I just really wanted to write this one, it’s my second favorite scene. Also Happy Pride

Here is the original scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXbHShUnwxY (Not the entire scene but it was all I could find on YouTube)

Warning: One bad word in caps, jokes/fears about being eaten

~

Roman opened his window as he hums a melody he has known since he was a child. He smiled as he looked over the beautiful valley he lived next to. This was going to be an amazing day. 

It was his birthday! His 16th birthday! 

This was going to wonderful! He has read in so many of his storybooks that the most amazing things happen on your 16th birthday. Anything could happen!

Including falling in love.

Roman quickly threw on a white shirt and white pants. He posed in the mirror before pausing. He hummed as he felt something was missing. He searched through his dresser before pulling out a black corset with gold string and gold border. He slipped it on and posed in front of the mirror again and smiled at the satisfaction he felt as he looked at his outfit.

He started to descend the stairs but paused when he heard familiar whispering.

“You make the suit and I’ll make the cake, Lolo.”

“How are we going to get Roman out of the house?”

“We’ll think of something.”

Roman couldn’t help but smile. He loved Patton and Logan, really, but they could be as secretive as an elephant trying to sneak through a china shop. He still does not have the heart to tell them that he found out the truth about Santa Clause when he was five after catching Logan wrapping his gifts. 

He couldn’t hold anything against them, they raised him after all. They were the best kind of guardians. They were very doting, always giving him what he asks for, but still raise Roman to never be greedy. Patton would sing to Roman whenever he was scared and Logan taught Roman everything he knows. He loved his dads.

Roman shouted, “Good morning everyone!”. He happily ran down the rest of the stairs

Logan and Patton jumped back quickly, using their backs to hide whatever was on the table. Roman smirked at them, they were very much failing at being slick.

“What are you two up to?” Roman asked, trying not to laugh as he did so.

“U-Up to?” Patton squeaked out, slowly trying to make himself as tall as possible. “Nothing at all!”

“Oh really?” Roman attempted to peer behind Patton. 

Logan gently pushes him back “Ah! Roman! We need you to...to…” Logan back at Patton, his eyes screaming for help.

“To pick more berries!” Patton yelled, startling both of them. Patton picked up a basket sitting on the table. He was going to use it to place flowers in for Roman’s birthday party as a centerpiece but sacrifices had to be made.

“Berries?” Roman asked, clearly thrown off. “But I picked some yesterday”

Patton made a nervous face before smiling, “Well, we need more. We used them all to make Logan’s favorite jam, a-and I ate the rest. You know I get snacky when I’m cooking.”

Roman smiled as Logan placed his red shawl over him. It was his favorite, Patton had made it for him on his 10th birthday. Roman stepped outside of their small but comfy cottage. 

Patton smiled at him and said, “Take your time, no need to hurry back” 

Logan nodded in agreement, “But don’t go too far!”

“Yes and don’t talk to strangers!” Patton added 

Roman chuckles, it was the same speech they always gave him when he left the cottage. He waved as he walked down the path, pretending that the huge excited smirk on his face was not there.

“Do you think he bought it?” Patton whispered rather loudly to Logan 

“Of course he did” Logan whispered back.

Roman covered his mouth to muffle his laughs and headed off. ~ The forest was nice. The weather was warm and the wind was low.

It was nice; calm and quiet. Too quiet for his liking.  

Roman began singing loudly, a melody Patton taught him when he was five. He paused to listen and smiled as the birds responded to his call.

He sang again as the bird flew towards him, one landing on his extended finger. More small critters made their way over to him. Squirrels, rabbits, and small birds surrounded him. Even an owl awoke from its slumber to land in his empty basket.

Roman smiled and pets all of them before heading back on the path to the berry grove. This was much better. A walk through the forest is so much better with company. 

Roman continued to sing, a bit louder, hoping to attract more friends to make his special day even more special.

~

Virgil rode on through the forest with a small frown on his face. He was undoubtedly bored. The journeys to and from home were always boring. Not that he was complaining! He would never leave home if his home again if something “exciting” happened on any of his journeys. 

If there was one thing Virgil did not like, it was trying something different. It was way too stressful and overwhelming to him. He always thought the status quo got a bad rap. It was nice, relaxing, and kept him safe and sane.

Which is why he was screaming at himself for following a random voice in a random forest. Internally of course. He has class.

All he had to do was keep heading straight, he was very close to home. He could do this in sleep. Which he was so he didn’t hear the beautiful voice.

He didn’t know why he wanted to follow the voice. It was probably a siren luring him to be eaten. That thought was enough to make him turn his horse the other way.

The voice continued to sing, this time using words. “I wonder~”

It was a very nice song...and logically it couldn’t be a siren. They resign in the ocean and he was nowhere the ocean. If anything, it would be a fae who is leading him to its circle so it can eat him.

And now he was heading back to the path home...

“To someone~. To find me~”

GODAMMIT!

He turned his horse back towards the way of the voice and used the lope to make his horse go faster do he couldn’t chicken out once more. 

If he got eaten, his ghost will just haunt the fae. It was only fair--

Virgil was so lost in his own mind that he did not realize his horse jumped over a small pond and he was not holding on. Gravity pulled him right into the pond. 

That’s what he gets for following mysterious voices in a forest...

~

Roman happily skipped as his basket became more and more filled with berries. He spins, slowly so not to drop any berries and picks some more berries. He walked over to the rather large edge of the cliff, his favorite spot in the world.

There was a tree with low enough for him to sit and nap in for hours. It was nicely shaded with the higher branches of the tree where his animal friends could rest with him. Best of all, it overlooked the beautiful castle with its gorgeous landscape. 

Roman always pictured himself heading over there for a ball, late at night while Logan and Patton were sleeping. He would look around the gorgeous castle and then bump into someone. As soon as he was done apologizing, he would make eye contact with the man and it would be his true love!

Roman threw his head back and groaned. He turned away from the castle and walks away in a huff. The animals follow him, trying to be as concerned as they could be.

“They treat me like I’m still a toddler!” Roman said as he stomped his foot. He only stopped when he almost dropped his basket. The owl flew in front of him and hooted, seeming interested in Roman continuing his rant.

“My uncles! Logan and Patton! They don’t want me to go anywhere! They barely let me come this far to get berries! Much less meet another person.” 

Roman plopped down in front of a different tree, letting himself stew in his own anger. Once that past, he smiles to himself. “Well, jokes on them! I have met someone!” Roman then jumped up determinedly with a large grin on his face, leaving the basket on the ground. 

The animals moved closer, eager to hear more about this person. The birds tweeted as if to cheer for him.

“That’s right! And not just anyone! He’s a prince! An amazing prince! He’s handsome and kind and the most romantic person I have ever met, after me of course!” Roman giggled as his own joke.

“We usually spend our time talking and singing together as he takes down by the lake on his horse. We will have a picnic together, it would be silent so we could hear the wonderful sounds of the forest. Then when we finish, he picks me up by my waist and then…umm...”

One of the squirrels nudged his foot, demanding that he finish the story he was telling.

Roman gave the squirrel a bittersweet smile, “Well, I don’t know what happens next, I usually wake up around that part.” All the looked down sad, making Roman blush from embarrassment.

“I know, I know, it’s depressing. But uncle Patton always taught me, since I was little, that if you have a dream more than once, it is more likely to come true. And trust me, I have had this dream more than once.” Roman said to them with a laugh.

The animals did not look convinced, causing Roman to sit back down. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. He watched as some of his animal friends run off into the forest but he thought nothing of it. He figured they had something important to do.

~

Virgil groaned as he rubbed his neck. He groaned as he leaned against tree. He turned his head and watched as his favorite cloak dried on a tree branch. It was black it not only matched with his black boots, black pants, and black shirt (he loved the color, okay?) but also was his favorite color.

He pulled off his boots, groaning as more water fell out of each boot. He tossed them under his cloak and rubbed his feet.

“You know what Susan? I probably deserved this. No, I definitely do for a random magical forest voice. This is definitely my punishment, right girl?” He smiled at his horse but frowned quickly when she neighed loud and quickly. Her snout was pointing towards his cloak and he turned in horror as a bunch of animals were stealing it along with boots. 

“Hey! Give me my stuff back!” Virgil shouted as he ran after the animals, Susan right behind him.

~ Roman hummed softly as he gently petted the chipmunk on his lap. He yawned into his free hand, the sun pulling him into a nap. Logan and Patton did tell him not to hurry back…

A couple of his bird friends tweeted loudly, stirring him wide awake. The squirrel from before nudged him again, this time pushing on his face. He turned his eyes towards the direction the squirrel was pushing and bursts into laughter.

His owl friend had a black cloak tied around its neck while two birds held up the ends. Two bunnies were hopping, each in a black boot, under the cloak

Roman smirked as he made his way over to them, “Now what do we have here? Could it be? My dream prince?” He looked at the animals up and down and his smirk widened. “It is! Your highness,” he bows playfully “I had no idea you were coming! What a pleasant surprise! Oh, but what would my uncles say! They would say ‘Roman! Why are you talking to a stranger!’,” Roman frowned turning away the clothed animals but suddenly turned back with a big smile on his face, “But then!” he boops the owl’s beak “I would say...I know you! I walked with you once upon a dream!”

Roman spun around and leaned next to his owl friends, “I know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam”

Roman grabbed the sides of the cloak and began dancing around as he sang, “And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem.”

“But if I know you, I know what you'll do.” He pulls the owl closer by the cloak and giggles. 

“You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.” Roman wraps the cloak around himself. He closed his eyes for a bit, imagining that his dream prince was really there, holding him lovingly.

Roman let go, nearly causing the owl to fall, and began to dance away from the cloak as he sang “La La La La!”

Meanwhile, Virgil and Susan had made their way over to the clearing and took in the sight before them. The voice from before did not come from a fae, luckily from him but a boy. A very handsome boy at that…

Virgil shook his head to shake the thought away, he needed to focus. As the boy danced away, Virgil reached over and pulled his cloak away from the owl. The rabbits quickly followed and, by grabbing the front of his boots, dumped the rabbits out.

He should have just left right then and there, he got the answer of the voice and his stuff back. He should just get back on the road and head home.

“If I know you, I know what you’ll do~.” The boy sang with his back still to Virgil. Virgil recognized the song, from when he was a child. 

Virgil couldn’t help himself, he sang, “You’ll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.”

Roman whipped around and made eye contact with Virgil, “Oh!”

Virgil freezes, his eyes lock with the boy in front of him. He now has a good look at the boy. At his gorgeous brown eyes, his beautiful autumn hair that was long enough to reach his shoulders, his broad chest, and the terrified look on his face as Virgil stared at him.

Virgil jumped back “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I was just...your animals...they...I...you…”

Roman giggled, after calming down from the initial shock, “No, I’m sorry they took your stuff.”

“Oh, uh, n-no hard feeling,” Virgil said with a nod. 

Roman raised an eyebrow, “Have we met?” There was something familiar about this boy, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Virgil couldn’t lie, he felt like he knew this boy, it was on the tip of his tongue. Though his brain was too busy short-circuiting so he switched to his most basic function, sarcasm, “Was it once upon a dream?” He smirked.

Roman laughed and smiled sweetly at Virgil. “Was that it? Hmm…”

Virgil blushes embarrassed as he rubs the back of his neck and laughed nervously. He had no idea what to say. 

“Hmm...I’m not sure, you might be a stranger after all. You’re gonna have to prove it.” Roman says firmly

“Prove it?”

“Mhmm,” Roman stretches out his hand to Virgil “Dance with me,”

Virgil was nervous, to say the least. He wasn’t that great of a dancer and he didn’t want to embarrass himself. He didn’t even like dancing that much but still, something in him told him that he wanted, no, needed to dance with him.

Virgil nodded and took Roman’s hand. They danced so well that it was as if they were dance partners for years. It was magical and romantic and neither wanted it to end. It seemed meant to be, but neither knew why.

But we do. We know it’s true as visions are seldom all they seem. 

But if I know you, I know what you'll do.

You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.

~

Taglist: None this time because this, like the first one, was just a fun little thing for me.

[jq37]

The Royal Report– A Crown of Candy Ep 15 The Two Balls

A Hard Knock Life

Welcome back to A Crown of Candy as we march ever closer to the finale which is good because I can only take so much more chocolate coated drama. The party has just killed the SPF and, as Rina and her crew start to exit the temple, she enters a flashback that’s intense enough that they used a CW so, for that reason, I’m going to put it under the cut.

It’s the year 1196 and it’s almost High Frosting’s Eve (read: Bulb Christmas). A five-year-old Rina is being kept at the Abbey of the Shimmering Cream in the Dairy Seas but she’s not being kept well. As she looks out over the sea, waiting for the day her mom will sail back in and realize she made a mistake in abandoning her as she is wont to do, a nun shows up to bring her to the Mother Superior who’s sent for her. 

On the way there, she catches a glimpse of Lazuli in a mirror who comforts her and says that she’s not bad or wrong for being able to do the things she can do and that, “The world is dark and dangerous but there are forces other than wickedness in this world.” Lazuli starts to say that she’s been trying to help but--and she’s cut off as Rina walks into the next room and loses sight of the mirror.

The Mother Superior is waiting for Rina, switch in hand, and says that she’s heard kids talking about some crazy magic stuff Rina can do. Rina lies and says the kids are making it up and the Mother Superior switches her across the face saying that lying is a sin. She straps Rina to a chair and asks if she sees eyes in the mirror. Rina (who is still being played by Emily even though she is five) says, “Doesn’t everyone?” The Mother Superior doesn’t appreciate the line as much as I do because she smacks her again. She says that all she wishes for Rina is obedience and silence and asks what the woman in the mirror says to her. Rina, knowing that whatever she says is gonna get her smacked, says that the woman says that there’s nothing wrong with her and she doesn’t have to hide the way she is. In response, the Mother Superior takes out a holy symbol of the Bulb and starts heating it up in the fire. 

The box the symbol came out of has enough of a reflective surface inside that Lazuli is able to tell Rina that there are people in her corner and she’s suffering now but it won’t be forever but she’s again cut off by the Mother Superior who says that this self acceptance nonsense sounds like Hungry One talk. Rina says she’s not scared of anything physical the Mother Superior can do to her but, unfortunately, she’s not here to do anything to her body. She’s here for her soul. She presses the now heated holy symbol into Rina’s chest, causing her blinding pain and cutting her off from Lazuli who desperately tries to keep the connection open.

When she comes back to herself, devastated and tearful, the Mother Superior pledges to burn the Hungry One out of her as many times as it takes and send her to her room without sans morning breakfast privileges. Before she can go however, the Mother Superior stops her and asks why she’s always staring across the sea. Does she really think her dad is Prince Amethar? Not only is that obviously false but, even if it was true, he clearly doesn’t want her. Not even her mom wanted her. Rina (sounding like she’s trying to convince herself) says that her mom did want her. She was just scared and wanted to protect her. The Mother Superior says that her mom was trying to protect the world from her because she’s dangerous and her father isn’t Amether, he’s nothing. Rina shoots back that if her father is no one, then how come she can speak to the winds and command the waves? And why is she so scared of her? The Mother Superior doesn’t have an answer for that. She sends Rina to her room.

In the present day, Rina descends the mountain, dragon around her neck, followers by her side, and crown on her head. She will never be hurt like that again.

Ruby watches them go (Theo and Cumulus going with her and talking strategy) and then goes to find her dad who is still on the ledge. She asks Amethar how peace happens? How do you keep living once you’ve been through something like this? He answers that he’s the wrong person to ask. He’s just been going through the motions since the Ravening War ended. But they reaffirm that they love each other and hug before realizing they can’t see Liam anymore. And, speaking of Liam…

Gastronomy and Cosmology

Liam feels himself falling through endless fire and he can smell cinnamon and it hurts terribly but almost in a good way because, as we can recognize by the way Brennan describes it, he is essentially experiencing the sensation of being eaten and he knows that he tastes good.

As we heard last week, Liam felt a hand grab him but it’s actually less of a hand, more of a paw--a little chocolate rabbit’s paw. Lapin! He and Lapin are in this weird kinda semi disintegrated part of the Ice Cream Temple that’s continuing to break apart. Lapin is also disintegrating but not fully. It’s like the pieces that are coming off of him flaking off and cycling back continually, like Thanos is trying to snap him over and over. Additionally, the middle part of him is translucent and there are three foil-wrapped, chocolate egg-wishes in his chest. 

Anyway, we learn that Lapin is essentially there to pack up because the party killing the SPF means he and all the other residents of Candy Heaven have been evicted (which, yeah, checks out--you destroy a load bearing boss, her heaven implodes) and have to go to the Hungry One. Liam asks if that’s a bad thing and Lapin says not necessarily but it does mean they won’t be able to communicate with them anymore. But, on a happier note, Preston is there! He’s apparently not stopped following around Lapin since he was told to.

Liam tells Lapin that they’re super screwed and asks what they should do. Lapin in response takes Liam up to a viewing balcony so he can better see the state of the weird extraplanar space they’re in. The illusion-castle is in the middle of the two titular balls--one red, swirling and consuming, the other bright and shining. The Hungry One and the Bulb. And Lapin gets to fully explain his pre-death realization. The Hungry One and the Bulb have no agency. They’re simple light and dark. Creation and destruction. Two sides of the same coin. Cosmic constants. They’re not really gods and neither are beings like the SPF--(spirits like her are more like living spells). Liam confirms that there’s no way to get back the people they’ve lost and asks if there’s any point in killing more people. Should he just be a seed guy again?

Lapin says there’s nothing wrong with being a seed guy and the three eggs in his chest meld with the three peppermint heart seeds Preston coughs up and float in front of him--one is glowing red, one is glowing gold, and the third is shimmering like Lapin’s robes. They represent the power to destroy, create, and change. Lapin offers him one and Liam--unsurprisingly to anyone who’s watched Ally play D&D for any length of time--picks the change one instantly. Lapin says it’s good to see Liam again and he wakes up in the dragon’s nest, Ruby and Amethar above him. He tells them everything he learned and shows them the egg/wish/seed. None of them can tell exactly how it works or what it does so Liam stashes it for safekeeping.

The gang checks out the section of the temple that had the illusion and conjuration magic. The illusion magic has faded and all that’s left is the conjuration so it seems like whatever they see will be true and what they see is scenes of the past in ice crystals on the walls (before they’re whisked away by Lapin from the other side). Everyone rolls to see what they see--and Ruby rolls a Nat 20. Liam sees memories of dragons past, huge and terrifying. He also sees Lapin in his youth as a street urchin, breaking into a druid monastery, stealing a spell meant to summon the SPF and force her to give you three wishes, and having it Fullmetal Alchemist backfire on him so that he instead had to serve her and give her three wishes. Ruby wants to see who’s loyal and who’s not. She sees that there are people in Rina’s camp, Jawbreaker’s crew, and back home who aren’t on the level but no named characters. Cara’s all good. Joren is and the four sisters were all good. Rina and her closest confidants are all sincere in what they’ve been saying. Amethar sees memories of him and his four sisters. Then (on Ruby’s passed on Nat 20) he sees a memory from when he was about 16 of his sisters having an argument with their mom who they did *not* get along with about the war which hasn’t fully broken out yet. King Jadain is in the middle trying to keep the peace but really trying to just escape the conflict. He says he has to use the bathroom and peaces out to sit on the steps where Amethar happens to be.   

Amethar asks if he’s alright and Jadain tries to play it off like he wasn’t shaking and near tears. He says he wishes he was as strong willed and decisive as his wife/daughters. Amethar asks for assurance that he’s going to fight but Jadain says that their motto is In Sweetness There is Strength and fighting wouldn’t be very sweet. He asks Amethar if he’d ever want the crown because he could have it if he did. Amethar says he doesn’t. He’s a war guy like Joren. Jadain says that there may be a time for war guys soon. He then says that he never wanted to be king. It’s too much responsibility and it’s not fair. Young Amethar says that, regardless, he’s king. He has to be king. Words that echo in his head in the present.

Parties and Planning

Rina and crew gather enough weapons to outfit maybe 100 guys and then Rina blows up the entrance to the Temple so the Sanctus Putris (or whoever else) can’t get in but they can come back later to get the rest of the loot.

They go back to Manylicks which has been retaken and is now flying House Rocks and House Jawbreaker flags. One of Liam’s dick older brothers makes the mistake of trying to mess with the newly minted war guy and gets fully shot on sight. 

There’s a lot of partying for them and, at the end of the week, it’s Liam’s 18th birthday. His dad gives him Chillguard--a breastplate that raises his AC to 16. Joren says that since they’re out of the Concord, he doesn’t have to be a ward anymore and he can come back home but Liam says he doesn’t really want to. He says that he’s asexual, he’s gonna find himself a romance partner someone to settle down with, go back to being a seed guy, and move out because Castle Manylicks kinda sucks for him. His dad says he’s super valid and they hug (and also talk about polyamory because when Brennan gets into it, he gets *into it*).

War updates! There are still crusaders in the South but they’ve been driven out of the Mountains. The Imperial force backed out--Ceresian forces along with them--because Primsy wrote a letter saying, “Uh, hey, remember that Concord thing we’re all a part of? That’s still on and you’re breaking it. There’s another heir.” The crusade is still on though and Cruller is still letting it happen. 

Rina has her coronation which envoys from both the Dairy Islands and Meatlands attend. It’s a fully pagan ceremony but there’s just enough of a veneer or Bulbian propriety that they can stamp their approval on it and call it legit. Post ceremony there’s more partying which at a certain point devolves into a Bulb Bible Bonfire which Cara is super not about because she is an actual, practicing Bulbian. 

Primsy, who arrived with the Dairy peeps, swears to Rina and then goes to see Liam who she has a little bit of a flirtatious conversation with. She’s already been married once so she’ll probably end up in a political marriage with a minor noble like a count (what a coincidence, Liam happens to be a count!) and she’s not interested in being slammed down big style. They go to hold hands and take a walk.

Ruby and Amethar get Jack to give them Jet tattoos over their hearts. 

A lot of espionage happens. Rina uses two artifacts from the temple to help here--a crystal milkshake pool and flock of white chocolate ravens--while Liam (who got a Nat 20 +12) is leading a team of rangers to ambush messengers and intercept messages. Cumulus and his order are also getting a lot done now that their magic is coming back online. 

In the Southern Great Stone Candy Mountains, the above group ends up in a burning town where everyone except Bulbians have been killed by crusaders. Jon Bon pulls a bleeding priest out of the church and demands that he produce a letter and he does--it’s from the Pontifex. As Rina is about to read it, Cinnamon clocks the Bulbian holy symbol he’s wearing and snarls. Rina grabs the symbol and Creates Bonfire on it. As she does that, the spot above his heart on his chest starts to glow just as Cinnamon’s eyes do. Rina takes a moment and then says, “Go for it baby.” Cinnamon leaps off of her neck and starts ripping into this guy and all of her men start killing the other priests. The villagers start to run and the marauders are about to chase them but Rina orders they spare them and her men obey. Cinnamon finishes up the priest by eating his heart and Rina swears, he looks just a little bigger. I hear Feed Me Seymour playing faintly in the distance and I don’t like it.

Rina casts Cone of Cold with Winterscoop to put out the fires and looks at the villagers--the villagers who must be having a roller coaster of a week because they are Bulbian but got conquered by Bulbians and then saw a bunch of other Bulbians get absolutely viciously slaughtered. She says that many of them probably went to the Bulb for salvation, but hopefully today, they’ll see who really saved them.

Cinnamon looks at all the dead priests and looks to Rina for permission. Emily, who also clearly hears the Little Shop of Horror music playing, takes a moment and then Rina allows him to feed and feed and feed.

Oh, and the letter! It’s from the Pontifex to Kerradin and it says that the meeting with all their enemies will be in about 2 weeks. 

Gooey heard news that there are Bulbian crusaders hiding in Port Syrup waiting for the church to save them. Rina sends Gooey to go take care of it and, with some hesitation (and with the help of some dragon-puppy dog eyes), also sends Cinnamon who is now the size of a horse (mmm, don’t love that).

All this info gathered, there is a war council. The attitude seems to be that Primsy’s letter is helping for now but they really need an emperor/empress on the throne or else people will be coming for Candia again. The group talks about going to Castle Candy as a small assassination team (with a small contingent of soldiers) and sneaking in the way Theo snuck out with Cara. They can’t teleport there though because the crusaders destroyed all the standing stones close-by. But they can hitch a ride with Annabelle if it’s just a few people. Rina sends her ravens to look at Castle Candy and sees that there are lot of guys surrounding it but they’re un-unified crusaders so as long as they move really fast, retaking the castle is doable. 

They also plan to send some troops to Castle Candy from the North so it seems like that’s the real invasion force while they sneak in from the Cola River (on Annabelle’s ships). Primsy says that she can write to Cruller to say that she’ll finally recognize him as legit so that when three Dairy Island ships arrive, it won’t be suspicious. 

They go to Port Syrup to meet with Annabelle and see that the town has been wrecked. The Bulbian churches are totally destroyed. People are scared. Everything smells like ash and war. Cinnamon, now the size of a house (!!!), finds Rina to beg for pets like a dog.

Amethar, while wandering the city, finds the corpse of Sir Morris Brie who they left in charge of Port Syrup and, as a Bulbian, was caught up in the sacking of the city. Amethar sadly sits with his dead friend’s body, fused into his armor.

Rina goes to Theo and tells him that she loves Cinnamon so much because he’s the only one who’s ever loved her with the unconditional family kind of love but she knows that, for that reason, she can’t be trusted to be rational about him so he needs to tell her if she’s going to far. Theo says that if they’re going to use Cinnamon, they need to be careful and not just send him off. He also says she needs to discipline him which makes her remember all the ways she was disciplined as a child. 

Ruby goes to find Annabelle to try and get some life advice because things are so crazy. Annabelle assures her that things are really bad--she’s not just overreacting--and tells her that when she was stripped of her titles and land, it was a choice she made for freedom over responsibility. She doesn’t know if it was the right choice but it’s what she had to do to be free. Even so, she recognizes that she did turn her back on responsibility. Then she says she has to talk to Amethar.

Annabelle finds Amethar and tells him they found Catherine Ghee’s gravestone. She died in 1196 on the 12th of Harvestdusk. She got really sick after she sent Rina to the Abbey and was really scared of the Rocks family coming after her (or maybe became really religious). Amethar thanks her and goes to tell Rina. Rina accepts the news and asks who sent all the people to threaten her. When Amethar reacts with confusion, Rina explains that when she was a kid, her mom was scared all the time because Candian messengers threatened her. Amethar says that he only sent people to find her which Rina confirms with a Detect Thoughts. He loved her and just wanted to see her again which is news to Rina. Amethar says he’s sorry about the life she’s had and he’s sorry he screwed this up too and Rina says that it means a lot to her that he even tried to find Ghee. Rina also asks if she detected any love for her in Amethar thoughts and is told that there’s a very small part of Amethar that wants to love her. 

Amethar goes back to his quarters and tells Cara the news (and I have to imagine she’s like, join the club buddy). She asks when she died and he says twenty years. Her eyes go wild. When exactly. What’s the exact date? 12th of Harvestdusk, 1196. That’s five days BEFORE he married Cara. Which means he’s NOT an oathbreaker. Which means their wedding was LEGIT. Which means the Pontifex had NO GROUNDS to kick him out of the Concord. He is the RIGHTFUL KING OF CANDIA.     

(”Bastard no more!” Siobhan crows.)

And that’s it for the week!

Things I’m Concerned About

Mmm, ok so Cinnamon. It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario where this doesn’t end in disaster for someone. Like, as the eating and growing was starting, I felt this deep rooted sense of dread and I couldn’t remember exactly what was pinging until the next day and it was, as I’ve referenced twice previously in this recap, Little Shop of Horrors. This is clearly a full Audrey 2 situation except Cinnamon is a lot more ambulatory than a plant. He at least seems like he still recognizes Rina as his mother, which is good but I *really* don’t like where this seems to be going. And listen. If Cinnamon has to go down, you *know* who the person best positioned to do it is. Rina is the most major magic user, she has ice magic which he’s vulnerable to, and he trusts her enough to let his guard down around her. And, most importantly, it’s exactly the kind of mean choice Brennan, “All the Bad Guys” Lee Mulligan would love to foist upon a PC in a season like this. Bad!

And, connected to this, I don’t love how the marauders are handling the whole reverse crusade. Like, not that there’s a perfect way to do this--if someone were trying to genocide me and I had a dragon, I would for sure be deploying the dragon. And Rina did tell them to not kill the people who just happened to be Bulbian in the village but weren’t participating in the crusades so that’s at least some level of care. But what happens when she’s not there to rein them in? Well, we know what happens. Sir Morris Brie. Which is so messed up. You’re a good guy. You stay behind to help with the war effort and protect the town, and then a couple of weeks later you get torched alive by your own team in your armor because it has the wrong symbol on it. It’s messed up. Like, I don’t have the answers on how to wage an ethical war--which sounds like a full oxymoron. I just don’t love what’s happening.

Also, when Brennan said the guy’s chest was glowing before Rina had Cinnamon eat him, I thought it might be that he was unwillingly branded as a child like Rina, but lol guess we’ll never know.

And, addendum, Cara is a devout Bulbian--but obviously a relatively chill one because she’s down with Sweetening Path stuff too because of Lazuli. If she gets caught in the crossfire...like if you’re Ruby and your life just went to hell and your sister is dead and you have a new sister and you’re trying to accept her but you can’t and then her pet kills your mom who you never even really got to make up with? You’re not my queen *or* my sister at that point and it’s instant PvP. I killed a god, what makes you think I won’t fight you? So anyway, hope that doesn’t happen. lol.

So, we now know that the grounds under which Amethar was kicked from the Concord are false which means he is king still and the invasion is unlawful--even without Rina’s existence. But like, a lot of this season has been about political reality, right? So how much utility does this revelation serve? Everyone’s already rallied behind Rina and she has a contingent of very loyal and skilled soldiers who I don’t think would be happy to hear this news (and may think to try and make the problem go away in a stabby way). So if they go out with this info, it calls into question all the work they’ve already built up, forces them to get this new game plan to all their allies, potentially pisses off Rina’s people (and possibly Rina herself depending on how much she’s willing to go with them as allies and without being the lynchpin), and doesn’t give them much more than they’re already getting with Rina on the throne since their goals are mostly aligned as far as we know. And, anyway, Amethar was named emperor which will stand whether or not he’s king. They just need to get his hand on the Book of Leaves and that should be good to go. Rina gets the Candian throne, Amethar gets to be (or has to be depending on your view) emperor. Of course, clearing his name might be important to him and it probably bolsters his position in other ways but I’m just thinking about the big picture politics of the matter. 

Does Ruby keep her Shadow Sorc levels now that Jet is gone? How does that work?

Five More Things

Lol, love how the big twist of CoC is that there are actually no bastards. Only legit children in the eyes of the Bulb. 

Rina as a 5 year old was like that Matilda kind of 5. She was dropping some *intense* lines. Also, imagine having to have your scene right after that one. Yeesh. I recapped that flashback separately from the rest of the episode because it was so much and it was only 14 minutes. Everything else I did in basically one shot!

What did Jadain mean about Amethar getting the crown if he wanted it? What was that about? Brennan gave Lou the Jadain flashback on Siobhan’s Nat 20 so I wonder if that’s a relevant piece of info. Also, the voice for him caught me so off guard. I was like, huh. OK, yeah, checks out. 

Zac, low key king of comedy, in response to Emily/Rina explaining the concept of movie popcorn salad: Are we joining the Ceresians?

Lapin! Oh man, I was so shocked and overjoyed for Lapin to get another scene. I missed that bunny. And to have him kinda allowed out and joking out with Liam (“Are you in pain?”/“All the time.”) was so good. His, “I’m not mad at you,” was so funny and also genuinely emotional? And also, I’m so happy Liam got some closure for Preston. What a banger of a scene. Big props to Ally and esp Zac who also had to give the once per season, “Here is how the universe works,” talk to Ally’s character. 

One More Thing!

Oh man you gotta check out this AMAZING Crown of Candy animatic by @kindlespark. What a killer use of Glitter and Gold. And so comprehensive of the season so far, even recent stuff. So much obvious talent and hard work on display here! 

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

"Pay a man enough, and he'll walk barefoot into Hell."

“First all, Shaw, you’re not paying me anything.  Second, no amount of money would get me to sort through that mess.”  Pyro motioned at the depths of the latrine, trying not to get too close.  He didn’t think of himself as weak-stomached, and he’d used some absolutely disgusting toilets in his travels.  But the stench emanating up from the dark pit was like something from the depths of Hell, and Sebastian actually wanted someone to go down there and paw through the filth.

“Well, I shouldn’t have to pay you to do your damn job, Allerdyce.  We have a mission to carry out.  But I find that people who insist they can’t be bought always have a price.”

“I’ll pay you to do it, Pyro!” Shinobi called out.  He had refused to even enter the ramshackle wooden outhouse, and was standing a good distance away, fanning himself in the sun.  “Would you like your own castle?  I’ll give you a castle if you do this.”

Actually, that was kind of tempting.  A huge, empty building that he could treat as his own summer home and fuck palace and burn to the ground if he so desired.  But still….  

“Why don’t you just phase through, Shin?  The mess wouldn’t touch you,” Pyro called back.  Shinobi turned pale, and stepped back even further, holding a hand over his mouth as if he were about to retch.

“But then I’d have to see it all!  And smell it! And….and the fumes would probably overcome me.  It’s too dangerous to do it that way, obviously.”

“But me going in there is just peachy-keen for the two of you?” Pyro grumbled.

“Well, obviously I need to keep a look-out – “ Shinobi began.

“And I need to stay on top in case we encounter trouble,” Sebastian continued.  “I’m the most physically powerful, I’ll hold off any enemies while one of you two retrieves the Sceptre.”

“Enemies?  What enemies?”  Pyro gestured dramatically at the rolling hills that surrounded them.  “There’s nothing but bloody sheep in every direction. No way in hell are you pawning this off on me, Shaw.  Get your massive hairy body down there and swim in the muck until you find it.  You’re the only one who wouldn’t be overcome by the fumes, since you’re soooo big and strong and tough.”  

Sebastian folded his arms. “The hole is clearly too small, Allerdyce.  You’re the only one who could fit down there.  Or Shinobi, but I don’t expect him to contribute to this mission in any way.  You at least seem to give a damn about getting things done.”

“You could easily make that hole a lot bigger, Shaw.  And I don’t see why getting this Star Sapphire is any of our business, anyway!  Shouldn’t Captain Britain be doing this?  Or one of those Excalibur wankers?  How did it even wind up in a latrine in the first place?”  

“It’s here because Loki has a sense of humor – “ Sebastian began, ticking off his fingers with exaggerated patience.

“Well, then Thor should be the one to – “

“And we’re getting it because we need to maintain a good relationship with Otherworld,” Sebastian continued as if Pyro hadn’t spoken.  “Saturnyne is a very powerful potential ally, and the Star Sceptre, not Sapphire, will give us something to bargain with, or at least put us her good graces.  And the job was fobbed off on us because we’re the squad that does Krakoa’s dirty work.  Elizabeth Braddock couldn’t stand to get her perfectly manicured hands dirty.  So it falls to us.  Or rather, you.”

“No fucking way!”  Pyro folded his arms.  This was a bridge too bloody far.  “Get down there yourself.  Or let’s go get Maddie and have her just lift the thing up telekinetically.”  

“No time for that.”  And Sebastian was suddenly putting his hands on Pyro, lifting him up by the waist and carrying him towards that ominous hole cut in the rough wooden board.  A one-way portal into the Bog of Eternal Stench, and no sexy David Bowie to make things bearable.  “You’re going down there one way or another, so you might as well just find the Sceptre quickly, and then we’ll be done.”  

“NonononoNO!”  Pyro yelled, squirming.  He sent a burst of flame directly at Sebastian’s eyes, one of the few weak points on the man.  Sebastian yelped – an undignified sound that he would later never admit to having made – and dropped Pyro on the floor.  Which was none too clean, and swarming with spiders, but still better than the unspeakable depths of the latrine.

“C’mon you guys, we have to find a way to do this,” Shinobi called, from his position far, far away, out in the sun with the grass and sweet-smelling wildflowers.  “I’ll keep watch while you two work it out.”  

Sebastian reached for Pyro again.

“Wait!”  Pyro exclaimed, scuttling away.  “This Star Sceptre thing, is it flammable?”  

“It’s a mystical object of incredible power.  I doubt fire will harm it.”  

“Then I’ve got an idea.”  

The trio stood some distance away from the outhouse, while Pyro floated a fire ball through the open door, through the hole, and down into the pit.  Flames came roaring upwards as the collected methane gas ignited, consuming the wooden building quite quickly and sending a thrill through Pyro.  It was always a rush, even knowing what disgusting fuel he was burning.

“It’ll be too damp to really burn things away down there,” Sebastian said, as if stating a fact.  Which he wasn’t.  Snobby git didn’t know what Pyro was capable of.

“It’ll burn if I tell it to burn,” Pyro insisted, mentally reaching out to push up the intensity of the flame.  It was out of his line of sight in the pit, but that didn’t really matter when he wasn’t trying to form the fire into shapes.  He could feel it in the core of his being, and he could make it burn hotter, or let it gutter out.  He wasn’t going to stop until everything in the pit was scoured away, leaving the Sceptre exposed and hopefully sterilized by heat.

Sebastian put a sleeve over his nose and grimaced as foul smoke drifted their way.

“Ugh.  It’ll sink into our clothes, and now we’ll all smell like burning shit,” he complained.  “Whereas with my plan, only one person would be…soiled.”

“Nah, I would have thrown that slop all over you if you had tossed me down that, Shaw,” Pyro said.  “You wouldn’t be coming out of this unscathed.”

“I’m just going to stay phased until this is all over,” Shinobi announced matter-of-factly.

There was a moment of silence as the flames continued to roar.

“You know, one of us is still going to have to climb down there and actually pick up the Sceptre.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”  

[manage-mischief]

Regulus Black and the Darkest Shadows

Chapter 3: The Risky Play

Read on: AO3 or FF.net

Chapter Summary: A familiar face graces the halls of Hogwarts.

Notes: Chapter 3! Yay! So, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be posting Sundays every week. Keep a lookout! Thank you so so much to everyone who has reviewed so far. I really appreciate it. Also, thanks to my incredible beta reader: @leah-ravenanne :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

September 6th, 1978

Quidditch tryouts were Saturday and Regulus was quite looking forward to them. He was never happier than when he was playing Quidditch. He had played Seeker on the Slytherin Team for three years now, and had enjoyed every moment of it. The freedom of flying through the air, the wind whipping through his black locks, the sting of the frost on his face—all of it made him feel alive. This year, his good friend Woodrow McDrew, would be captaining the team. Although McDrew was not a member of Regulus’s normal circle of friends, Regulus respected McDrew all the same. He was a highly talented and fiercely kind individual. Avery and Mulciber often mocked McDrew, commenting that he should have been in Hufflepuff due to his friendly, outgoing demeanor and staunchly pro-Muggle views. However, Regulus found McDrew to be a breath of fresh air. He demonstrated the best qualities of Slytherin House, and, despite his disapproval of Regulus’s friends, always treated him with respect. No one deserved to be Quidditch Captain more than McDrew.

“’Ello, Regulus!” McDrew greeted him with a wide smile and a firm handshake. “Have a good summer?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. How about yourself?”

“Oh, you know, nothin’ too interesting to report. Well, until I found out about being Quidditch Captain!” He lowered his voice, suddenly serious. “I’ve been studying up on the other teams, you know? Who they’re likely to keep, who’s gone, and that sort of stuff. We’ll win this year, I know it!”

Regulus laughed, appreciating his confidence. “That’s great. Who do you reckon are going to be toughest to beat?” he asked, although he already feared the answer.

“Ravenclaw, as always.” McDrew rolled his eyes. As if on cue, the Ravenclaw team stormed merrily out onto the pitch, trailed by a hopeful group of newcomers ready to try out. The Ravenclaw Quidditch Team was daunting, there was no denying it. Their offensive strength lay in their elite group of Chasers. Gwenog Jones, who had clearly been named Captain, was a force of nature. Rumor had it that she had already signed a contract with the Holyhead Harpies and would be leaving Hogwarts immediately following the Quidditch season to play for them. George Fleet, a lanky, sandy-haired seventh year, came from a long line of Quidditch royalty. His father had, until very recently, played for the English National Team. Regulus had remembered cheering for Giles Fleet when he was a child. And then, there was Des Lewis. For a girl raised by Muggles, she had immense skill. Regulus remembered the conversation he had overheard her having with Slughorn. Gwenog had taken her to training camp with Holyhead this past summer.

As the blue-clad team passed the Slytherins, McDrew tensed his shoulders. He tersely nodded at Gwenog Jones, who cordially returned the gesture. “Going to the Slug Club next Friday, McDrew? I hear he’s got Ludo Bagman coming in.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” McDrew replied. There was an awkward pause before Gwenog cleared her throat and signaled to her team to move down the field. “See you around, McDrew. Black.” She stomped away.

McDrew exhaled deeply after she had gone. “What a woman!”

---

As Regulus packed up his broom after the conclusion of Slytherin field time (during which he’d flown beautifully, thank you very much), he noted a fleck of maroon in his peripheral vision. Sure enough, the Gryffindors had arrived for their time on the pitch. However, Regulus was shocked to see an old familiar face. Laughing along with the rest of the team, with his untidy black hair and smug grin, was none other than James Potter, the brother-stealer. What was he doing here? Come back to relive his glory days? James caught Regulus’s eye as Regulus stared loathingly across the pitch. Bollocks.

With a new sense of urgency, Regulus haphazardly shoved the rest of his equipment into his bag. He tried to blend in between a group of young Gryffindors cheering on their team as he rushed toward the field’s exit. He wasn’t so lucky.

“Oi, Regulus.”

Regulus walked faster.

“Hey! Hey Reggie, come back!” James Potter sprinted towards him, seizing his robes and yanking him backwards. “Didn’t you hear me shouting?” James asked innocently.

“Oh dear, I guess I’d better get my hearing checked,” Regulus snidely remarked. “What do you want, Potter? Why are you even here? Finally realize that you’re nothing outside of school?”

James looked uncomfortable. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and fiddled with the cuffs of his robes. “It’s…it’s for work! You know what? That’s none of your business! Listen. I need to talk to you. It’s about Pad—Sirius. It’s about Sirius.”

Regulus’s throat constricted. “What about him?”

“Well, he…um. He wanted me to talk to you. He, uh, well… he wants to say he’s sorry for leaving and sorry that you guys lost touch…”

Regulus was shocked and enraged. “Oh, poor Sirius! How will he go on? Well, you can tell that traitor that if he was truly sorry, he’d have come to me himself, not had his replacement family do it for him! Or better yet, he’d have had the balls to come talk to me a year ago when this whole mess started. So, you tell dear Sirius that I’m sorry his guilt has finally caught up with him, but he can take his guilt and shove up it up his—”

“Stop!” James interrupted. “Don’t you understand how hard it was on him? He’s only just come to terms with being disowned. He thought he’d put you in danger by talking to you himself. He didn’t want your mum and dad to hurt you.”

Regulus remembered the threats his mother and father had made before he returned to school last year, warning him against having any contact with his disgraced brother.

“We will know...”

James seized Regulus’s moment of pause as an opportunity to continue. “He’s fine, now. But he…he’s seen how you’ve changed since he left. We can all see it. He’s afraid that you’re going down a dark path.”

Another wave of rage coursed through Regulus’s veins. “Oh yeah? Well you don’t know anything about my life, and neither does he! He went out and found himself a new family. Well, I did the same!” he shouted, not caring about the younger onlookers surrounding him.

James’s faced contorted. He was angry now too. “You think those Death Eaters are your family? That’s sick, mate. Absolutely sick. Sirius always told me that you were different from old Orion and Wally. He said you didn’t really believe all that pureblood, anti-Muggle shit. But, I guess he was wrong. You’re in just as deep as the rest of them. Spineless. You disgust me, mate.”

Regulus blanched. “Just— just because I’m in with them doesn’t mean I believe all they have to say. I- I can make my own decisions!”

Potter scoffed. “Clearly not. You think that old Voldie’s going to let you think for yourself?! Then you’re way too naive to be caught up in this mess! You’re either in or you’re out. This is a war, mate! I know you know what’s on the horizon. And if you choose the side of hatred and bigotry…well…then you’ll get what’s coming.”

With those scathing words, Potter spun on a heel and stormed back towards his old teammates, leaving Regulus standing there, shocked and confused. Sure, he’d been having some doubts but…He was where he belonged, wasn’t he? His mind raced. His cheeks burned with shame. What did Potter know, anyway?

Turning down a corridor into the castle, he ran into Ginger, whose hair was now putrid green. She was covered with flecks of something dark and wet.

“What happened to you?” Regulus asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I heard Lewis use the Dark Lord’s name in the hall. So, I hexed that Mudblood friend of hers, Bode. Used one of Severus’s old curses. It worked wonderfully—he’s in the hospital wing now. But, Lewis got me with this jinx before I could get away. It’s not too bad, though. Avery reckons he can fix it right up. Those little Muggle lovers don’t have the balls to do anything serious! Pathetic!” She cackled. Regulus found it to be a shrill, ugly sound. He realized the dark spatters peppering Ginger’s face and robes were specks of blood. His head pounded. He felt like he was going to vomit.

“I’ve gotta go.” Regulus spun around and quickly walked away from Ginger and the Slytherin Common Room.

Regulus aimlessly wandered about the castle, reflecting on Potter’s words. He had always told himself he wasn’t as bigoted or as prejudiced as his friends. He had attempted to justify his involvement with the Death Eaters by blaming others; but Sirius hadn’t given into the pressure like Regulus had. Besides, Regulus had wanted a family, he had wanted people who accepted him for who he was. But, did they accept him? Or, did they only want him among their ranks because of his prominent, Pureblood status? He remembered when they had approached him during first year.

“We know enough about you…” What had they known, really?

Back then, Regulus had refused. He had felt that he had higher moral principles. Sure, he had been raised by his parents to hate and fear Muggles. But Regulus had never personally believed Muggles and Muggleborns were less than human. He hadn’t then… did he now? He thought of the boy Ginger had sent to the hospital, just for fun. He felt sickened by himself. How had he let himself end up here?

---

The rest of the week dragged on. Regulus had become detached and distant. He poured all of his time and energy into his classes. He barely slept. He thought about reaching out to someone, but didn’t know who he would go to for help. He could send an owl…but who would he write? Sirius? They hadn’t spoken in years, what would he even say? Plus, Regulus still harbored some animosity towards his brother for abandoning him. James? Not likely after that verbal thrashing. Regulus would be too embarrassed. And they had never quite gotten on, even before Sirius’s flight. He racked his brain. He barely knew anyone outside of his Death Eater circle, now. Dejectedly, he plopped himself on his bed and pressed his fingers over his eyelids, trying to block the oncoming migraine. Quidditch practice tonight was going to be a pain.

Quidditch…McDrew! That was it! He would talk to McDrew. Regulus knew he could trust his fellow seventh year. Cheered up slightly, he grabbed his broom and Quidditch bag and headed to down the pitch, hoping to catch his captain there before the others arrived.

Sure enough, the Slytherin Captain had also arrived early and was currently pouring over a strategy book in the locker room as Regulus walked in. Engrossed, McDrew didn’t notice his entrance. Regulus coughed, and the boy looked up.

“Oh, hey Black! Didn’t realize you’d be here this early. I was just reading up on some new moves I want us to try.”

Regulus forced an awkward smile, suddenly extremely nervous and shy. McDrew noticed something was off.

“You alright, mate?”

Regulus sighed. This was his opening. “Can…can I ask you something?”

McDrew raised an eyebrow, confused. “Sure.”

“Do you think I’m a bad person?”

A prolonged silence filled the room. McDrew considered his answer, deep in thought.  “To tell you the truth, mate, I don’t think anyone is really a bad person. I think people make bad choices, especially when they’re lost or confused. But, deep down, I don’t believe anyone can survive without a little bit of good in them.”

“That was philosophical.”

McDrew laughed. “Yeah, I suppose it was.” He became serious again. “But, I think it’s true. Look, Regulus, I don’t pretend to know everything about you. But, I spent my fair share of time around your brother and his friends, so I’ve heard things. Heard things about what it’s like living with your parents, with all of that pressure, with some of their…disciplinary methods…”

Regulus paled and averted his gaze.

“…And I think growing up like that would be enough to send anyone over the deep end. Considering all you went through, you seem pretty sane to me. But, I think you’re lost. You’re angry. You’re scared. And, I think that’s caused you to make some bad decisions. To fall in with some bad people. I know it’s hard. In Slytherin, there’s this expectation to follow exactly what old Salazar used to say. ‘Purebloods first, Muggles are scum,’ that sort of thing. I, myself, think that’s all bullshit. Sure, I’ve made some enemies, especially among those whom you consider to be your friends. At the end of the day, though, I see it as my duty to speak up. To go against the grain, to prove that all that rhetoric is troll dung. There comes a point where you’ve got to make a choice about who you want to be. And, I think it seems like you’re at that point. So, mate, if you decide that you don’t want to continue down whatever path you’re currently on, you know where to find me. Me and my friends’ll gladly take you in. Don’t let the fear of being alone—of making others angry—ruin your own life.” McDrew smiled. “You’re a good bloke, Reg. I just think you’ve lost your way.”

Regulus fought back the pricking of tears in his eyes. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear those words. All he had wanted was to be loved and accepted. Yet, so far, all love in his life—from his family, from his friends—had been conditional. The fear of losing their love had caused Regulus to conform, to become a person he barely recognized. But, here he was, sitting in the musty Quidditch locker room, presented with a way out. A way to rediscover himself and become a better person. Energized by the prospect of this new life, he broke into a wide grin. He heard the rest of the team coming down into the changing rooms.

“Practice is starting, I guess,” Regulus said. “Maybe we can talk more at breakfast tomorrow?”

McDrew smiled crookedly. “Of course, mate! I’ll look forward to it!”

[thebluelemontree]

Why do you think Sandor wanted that song so much? What did it mean to him? Clearly the idea of her singing to him was on his mind for awhile. The song obviously carries symbolic meanings for the reader. But what was its in-universe significance to the man who demanded it? Why was it so important to him that she sing specifically?

It’s part of his childhood idealism and the knight he wanted to be.  The kind that saves fair maidens among other heroic deeds.  The day he saved her in the bread riot was a song come alive for him.  For the first time in his life, Sandor wasn’t just doing his job guarding and carrying out the commands of terrible people.  He was protecting an honest-to-goodness innocent person in need of saving, and Sansa is straight out of central casting as a fair maiden.  From Sansa’s recollection:     

The Hound leapt at them, his sword a blur of steel that trailed a red mist as it swung. When they broke and ran before him he had laughed, his terrible burned face for a moment transformed.  – Sansa IV, ACOK.  

You could read this as nothing more than bloodlust; however, it seems to me his expression was “transformed” from his normal anger into something else.  It’s the presence of anger that Sansa admits is what makes his burned face “terrible,” not so much the scars.  Now that Sansa has a chance to really think about it after some time has passed from the harrowing event, his face was different when he saved her.  I see it as Sandor having a brief moment of elation and pride.  This is what it feels like to be a hero.  This is what his grandfather did for Tytos Lannister.  It’s not all bullshit and children’s stories.  It also tells us Sandor is capable of romanticizing a terrible event, just as Sansa.  He will later fudge the retelling of events to make it seem like the song came as a result of saving Sansa’s life in the riot:  

“… I saved your sister’s life too. The day the mob pulled her off her horse, I cut through them and brought her back to the castle, else she would have gotten what Lollys Stokeworth got. And she sang for me. You didn’t know that, did you? Your sister sang me a sweet little song.“ – Arya IX, ASOS. 

Then later at his death, he will damn himself as no true hero because he failed to protect her from Joffrey.  He botched his own rescue attempt by scaring the daylights out of her.  Because of his frailty and fuck-ups, in his mind, he abandoned her to an even worse fate with Tyrion.  He is the “gutless fraud” he is talking about.  He never deserved that song after all and the way he actually got it shames him to the point he wants to die:

“I hate liars. I hate gutless frauds even worse. Go on, do it.” When Arya did not move, he said, “I killed your butcher’s boy. I cut him near in half, and laughed about it after.” He made a queer sound, and it took her a moment to realize he was sobbing. “And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it…”

Sandor tying Sansa’s song to the riot is important, but let’s back up a bit because the seed for the song idea was planted before that.

 . . . ah, you’re still a stupid little bird, aren’t you? Singing all the songs they taught you … sing me a song, why don’t you? Go on. Sing to me. Some song about knights and fair maids. You like knights, don’t you?“ 

He was scaring her. "T-true knights, my lord.”

“True knights,” he mocked. “And I’m no lord, no more than I’m a knight. Do I need to beat that into you?"  Clegane reeled and almost fell.  "Gods,” he swore, “too much wine.”    – Sansa II, ACOK.  [Real smooth there, Sandor]

The dot-dot-dots usually mean a character just had a gear-shifting thought.  This is from their meeting on the serpentine steps.  He’s just noticed she’s “almost a woman” then had to remind himself that no, she’s still too young and immature for that.  Sandor’s drunken, less-inhibited brain is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball between his just-awakened attraction and frantically trying to stomp it out.  He’s over-correcting by calling her a “stupid little bird” because (as reflected in his swaying) how off-balance he is thrown by interacting with her.  Not surprisingly, it’s Sandor who is actually showing his immaturity.  Those ellipses indicate a little light bulb has just turned on and it will become an idea that he really latches on to.  Oh, but he can’t just straight up ask for a song.  No way.  Better frame it as a halfhearted dare instead so she doesn’t think he’s actually interested in something so lame, stupid, and the antithesis of everything he’s preached at her.  She reminds him that it’s true knights that she likes, which he must then beat into his own head that he isn’t even a knight, let alone a true one at this point.  He couldn’t be further from the heroes she looks up to.  The song was a dumb idea anyway, right?  So why can’t he let it go?

I would point out just before Sandor brings up the song again, it’s Sansa that has coaxed a poetic “song” about a hero out of Sandor first without him realizing it (whether he willed it or no):

As they were winding their way up the steps, she said, "Why do you let people call you a dog? You won’t let anyone call you a knight.”

“I like dogs better than knights. My father’s father was kennelmaster at the Rock. One autumn year, Lord Tytos came between a lioness and her prey. The lioness didn’t give a shit that she was Lannister’s own sigil. Bitch tore into my lord’s horse and would have done for my lord too, but my grandfather came up with the hounds. Three of his dogs died running her off. My grandfather lost a leg, so Lannister paid him for it with lands and a towerhouse, and took his son to squire. The three dogs on our banner are the three that died, in the yellow of autumn grass. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he’ll look you straight in the face."  He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. "And that’s more than little birds can do, isn’t it? I never got my song.”

“I … I know a song about Florian and Jonquil.“

"Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt. Spare me. But one day I’ll have a song from you, whether you will it or no.”

“I will sing it for you gladly.”

Sandor Clegane snorted. “Pretty thing, and such a bad liar…”

Dot-dot-dot!!! Sansa doesn’t offer to sing about just any knight saving a maiden.  He never asked for a specific song.  It was her choice.  She offers to sing her favorite song, which makes it a deeply personal gift.  So this scene was actually about an exchange of songs, where Sandor gave one that was personal to him as well.  Sansa’s song is also a romantic one, specifically about a maiden who falls in love with an unconventional knight.  He wasn’t prepared for that, nor can he believe it, and as usual, reacts with knee-jerk cynicism.  She’s so pretty that she has to be lying that she’d ever “gladly” sing a song like that for him.  You might want to follow up with this post on those other connotations of the song too because Sansa dreaming of Sandor in her marriage bed gives another ironic twist on having a song from her whether she “wills it or no.”  Even without the sexual innuendo meaning, singing a song for a man is an intimate act which they are both aware of. It’s a piece of herself that she would give gladly to him “one day” in the future.

The problem that will prevent Sansa from being able to give the song gladly lies in Sandor’s immaturity, neediness, cynicism, and untreated PTSD.  Fast forward to the bread riot when he’s high on feeling like one of those true knights she holds in high regard.  He wanted that validation from her but feels deflated when he doesn’t get it in the way he hoped.

"The little bird still can’t bear to look at me, can she?” The Hound released her. “You were glad enough to see my face when the mob had you, though. Remember?”

…

“I … I should have come to you after,” she said haltingly. “To thank you, for … for saving me … you were so brave.”

“Brave?” His laugh was half a snarl. “A dog doesn’t need courage to chase off rats. They had me thirty to one, and not a man of them dared face me.”

So roughly two months have passed (according to the ASOIAF timeline) since the riot and this conversation.  Sansa never even attempted to thank Sandor for saving her, which she acknowledges after some thought that she should have.  For Sandor, it’s a twofold dud.  Not only does he have to remind her, but the thanks she gives is lukewarm and rote.  To be entirely fair, the riot was not a song for Sansa.  She was traumatized by it.  Even the manner in which she was rescued was rife with graphic violence that Sandor doesn’t seem to fully appreciate; however, I’m not sure Sansa would have been so negligent in thanking her rescuer if it had been Ser Loras.  In fact, her nightmare about the riot is an acknowledgment that it wasn’t one of her preferred heroes that saved her.  No one else put themselves between her and the mob.  She would not be alive if it weren’t for the rude asshole with the terrible face standing before her.  A little more gratitude was in order, but Sandor doesn’t make that easy either.  He can’t let on that he cared that much about being her hero or that he was hurt and disappointed by her oversight.  Again, he overcompensates by drastically downplaying it, acting like it’s dumb to make a big deal out of it, and just being an insufferable jerk about everything.  We can see from the way Sandor framed the story to Arya he had fantasized about Sansa reaching out to him post-riot to thank him with a song.  Florian and Jonquil, just like she promised.  It was supposed to be the icing on the cake for his very song-like heroic deed.  And maybe, just maybe, there was a little smidgeon of hope that she reciprocated his romantic feelings thrown in there as well.        

So that leads us to the Blackwater.  It’s always important to keep in mind that Sandor demanded the literal song.  He was never using the word as a euphemism.  He is also in the throes of a major PTSD episode and is not able to comprehend why his behavior is frightening to Sansa.  So why did he have to demand the song at knifepoint?  Why did he demand it at all?  Why was it that important to him at that moment?

“Why did you come here?”

“You promised me a song, little bird. Have you forgotten?”

She didn’t know what he meant. She couldn’t sing for him now, here, with the sky aswirl with fire and men dying in their hundreds and their thousands. “I can’t,” she said. “Let me go, you’re scaring me.”

��

“I could keep you safe,” he rasped. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.” He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. “Still can’t bear to look, can you?” she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. “I’ll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said.” His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."  – Sansa VII, ACOK.

Sandor has deserted during the battle after he could no longer go on fighting surrounded by wildfire. He’s been labeled a craven and desertion is a crime that can be punishable by death.  When he says he’s lost “all,” he means he’s lost his entire sense of self.  Sandor Clegane doesn’t know who he is anymore.  The fearsome Hound has been (in his eyes) unmanned by a half-man without any real martial ability.  His military career and reputation have been torpedoed.  He has no home or position anymore.  Gregor already took everything else.  Everything is crashing down around him, and he’s self-medicating the tidal wave of panic and humiliation with alcohol.  The one person he can go to for comfort and validation is Sansa.  If he can pledge himself to her, abscond from the city with her, be her hero again, then he still has an identity as a warrior and a man.

Sandor had been waiting for her in her room, lying on her bed like a scared little boy seeking some maternal solace.  The way he says “Little Bird, I knew you’d come” sounds more like he had been silently praying for her to rescue him from this place rather than the other way around.  To Sansa, the song is not only an inappropriate thing to ask for at this moment with all the chaos, violence, and uncertainty.  It sounds downright crazy.  He’s covered in blood, drunk, smelling of vomit, skulking around in the dark and grabbing her, but he accuses Sansa of being irrationally afraid as if she has no cause.  He thinks she’s carelessly forgotten the promised song as if that was an obvious and sane answer to her question of why he’s there.  All this suggests how greatly Sandor is disassociating from reality at this moment.     

Offering to protect her and kill anyone that tries to hurt her is as close as Sandor can come to articulating his feelings for her.  Some call it a declaration of love, which I agree that it is, albeit it’s a very misguided expression of love entwined with violence.  He interprets her response to that declaration as her still not being able to look at his disfigurement, even after all that he has done for her and still trying to do.  It makes him furious.  This is where Sandor’s severe PTSD, his desperation to reclaim a sense of self, and his perceived wrongful rejection by her cause him to take a sharp nosedive into his darkest and most cynical beliefs:  that Sansa has finally shown her true colors and she’s proven herself to be just another highborn brat.  All he wanted was just listen to a soft, dulcet voice spinning some beautiful imagery to drown out the sounds of all those screaming, burning men.  All he demanded asked for was to hear her sing about her favorite knight and recall a day when he felt brave and on top of the world.  But damn it, she denied him this one small thing that would help him feel better right now.  Even then he offers up everything he has to take her north, and she spurns it.  No real fair maiden of the songs would ever be so ungrateful and impossible to please.  When she said she’d sing for him gladly, she lied.  She’s a liar.  She saves her songs for handsome faces.  She never intended to keep her promise.  But fuck it, that song is owed to him.  Might as well just take it.  

Sandor is, of course, completely wrong and in the wrong here.  A fact that will dawn on him as soon as the Mother’s Hymn registers in his brain and he can see himself with clarity.  He came to her like a monster, not a hero.  Sansa was right to be afraid of him and to refuse him.  By Sansa touching his face, she is saying he did have her compassion and willingness to comfort him all along.  She even has the grace in her to give it to him now when he least deserves it, which makes her even more of a true lady than she was before.  It was the Hound she rejected, not him.  His anger, fear, and cynicism caused him to see fault in her when there was none. He hurt the person he cared for most in the world and for that he tears off his white cloak, leaving disgusted and ashamed.  The song then becomes a haunting reminder of his worst self rather than his greatest glory.  This is why he finds it so necessary to confess taking the song along with his other failures and bad acts.  To him, it was just as bad as letting Sansa be beaten if that gives you any indication of how seriously Sandor actually takes the meaning of the song.  It was a piece of her that he didn’t have a right to and wasn’t worthy of.  Songs from fair maidens are for heroes and true knights.  Not for a gutless fraud like himself.

[let-it-show]

All The Love I Found In You 6/?

Heeeey so part 5 is right over here! So I actually thought I’d be near wrapped up by now but various parts come creeping in and well there’s more to go. Lol. This is another sickeningly sweet part lol sorry, but it’s nice cause the next part will definitely be heavier.... And not out til next week since I am going on a little trip in the next few days. SORRY. Anyway, Elsa does something for Anna...and makes a big decision. You’ll find part 7 HERE! Enjoy, and tag for @hellodemoiselle !

Pulling themselves out of the embrace to fix up and then leaving the room altogether was near impossible. Elsa decided she was going to stick with Anna the rest of the day. If she had to step away from her anytime soon she felt like she could spiral. That was certainly overdramatic and she knew it, especially since she was starting to grasp some understanding of her feelings.

No matter what she couldn't process being apart from her, which made her think even more  about leaving Ahtohallan.

If Kristoff was going then she definitely wasn't going to abandon Anna again.

Elsa found herself on Anna's arm as they walked into town once again, their heads close together. She felt strange, that with Anna she was also in a protective bubble and all the outside was muffled from her mind. Had she not known otherwise, she would have wondered if she were sleepily drunk.

Some heads turned toward them as they walked and Elsa could swear they were seeing a glow about them. Perhaps some individuals could sense it the way Menander could. Or maybe they were happy to see the sisters as excitement and celebrations were about the town. The party was for the castle and council, staff and such - bu citizens knew they were having a gathering with a kingdom they were peaceful with and that was always to be enjoyed.

The joy in the air only added to how Elsa felt.

She belonged there, in her home that was so warm and beautiful. The Northuldra were welcoming and treated her kindly. But Arendelle had something the forest was unable to imitate.

Either one of them, Elsa had the freedom to choose. She could be free anywhere she wanted and it felt like that thought just then clicked into place even as she had thought of it before.

They stopped outside a clothing shop, and Elsa was briefly able to pull herself away from Anna. That was because, for whatever reason, she felt compelled to get Anna a gift. Anna could have anything she wanted really. Everyone adored her. Still, Elsa felt like she had to do something, get that energy out.

Separating herself from Anna was difficult but once she was inside the shop she was distracted looking for something perfect, something that would really speak to her. Maybe something that spoke to them both was even better.

Initially nothing looked terribly promising, which wasn't a problem with the brightly lit little shop. The clothing was well made by a young woman named Svana. Elsa had met her many times as she had been to the castle to make various items for them. Her work was wonderful but Elsa had to be picky when it came to Anna.

She also made some accessories, and so Elsa drifted off to look at those. The few others shopping looked at her and she tried to meet their gazes with a smile, but she was preoccupied. A necklace with a sunflower? No...too basic. A special ribbon for her hair? That wasn't what she was looking for either. Bracelets, they were nice, but somehow none of them landed for her either.

Then something caught her eye.

Displayed on a little stand was a wooden pendant attached to two black cords braided together and into a necklace. Burnt into the wood was a symbol - two lines crossed with one line featuring two more perpendicular lines sprouting from it and turning the opposite direction of each other. It made what was almost a fully formed square at the center but with half of two sides missing.

Elsa knew what that was and she carefully removed the necklace to buy immediately.

She hurried to Svana with it, not even looking at others inside. It wasn't Anna-like but she didn't care. Svana was a petite white woman with long light brown hair that almost reached her hips. She kept it in a loose ponytail that Elsa imagined would drive her crazy. Svana had a pair of the kindest eyes Elsa had ever seen with a small button nose above a lopsided smile. That smile was offered to Elsa right away.

"Ah, Queen Anna!" Svana greeted her happily. "What a delight seeing you in here! It has been a little while since you stopped in."

"Oh...sorry," Elsa said as she took on a guilty smile. She wasn't sure how often Anna stopped in town to shop. They rarely went in when Elsa visited, preferring to do their own thing together.

Svana shook her head as she took the necklace. "No, no, you are often busy! We know you save free time for your lover or Elsa," she said. "Ah, you've made a wonderful choice here."

"Aha.." Elsa didn't know what to say. Anna's 'lover' who was no longer, how would people take that? "Yes, I certainly have."

"The bind rune for eternal love." Svana sighed. "Such a wonderful feeling. Is this for Kristoff? I almost feel as though he should be purchasing it for you!"

Awkward. "Ah, no, it is-it...it's for me." She nearly said it was for her sister. Normally she probably would have, but what was happening with Kristoff made her hold back for the time being. Elsa was strangely afraid if she said the wrong thing she would end up somehow divulging more than she should, and that information was Anna's to give.

Svana blinked. "Oh." Clearly she hadn't expected that. "How unusual for one to buy a token of love for themselves..."

"Yes well..." She laughed nervously and awkwardly which was at least accurate for Anna. "I like it for thinking about my...love. It reminds me of my love." That much was true even if she was improvising like crazy.

At that, Svana blinked again but her smile grew. "Ah, I see! Oh how interesting that is, I must admit I like it. Sometimes I forget we need our own chosen tokens to reflect our feelings."

"Yes." Elsa reached for money to pay but Svana waved it away.

"No charge for this, my Queen!"

"Oh! No, but I must, you know I don't like to-"

"Please consider it a gift! Today is such a beautiful spring day and there are good feelings all around. I can think of no other conditions under which to gift you with this. It will carry the happiness through to your heart, and make this pendant all the more joyous."

Elsa had been winding up to protest once again, but she stopped, mouth open, regarding what Svana had said. She didn't like to just take things from people and had been given many gifts as a Queen even as she had asked for it not to happen. It felt like too much. Elsa didn't want anyone giving her anything at their own expense; it was even almost embarrassing.

However...what Svana said struck her. It was a special day, and a special gesture. Anna deserved something with so much thought and festivity behind it as well as being from her heart. With that in mind, she decided to accept. "Alright Svana, you've convinced me," she said with a light laugh. She held out her hand as Svana gently slipped the necklace into a little wooden box. "Thank you very very much...I won't forget that you've done this for me," she told her and she meant it. They would have to do something special for the woman.

"Oh Queen Anna, it's an honor," Svana replied as a light brush settled on her cheeks. She placed the box gently in Elsa's hand. "Please enjoy the rest of the day, and I hope you will find a perfect place for this pendant so that you may gaze upon it often."

Elsa knew just the place. She thanked Svana and exited with the little box, seeing Anna was not immediately there. She wasn't far however - just across at a little stand Anna was entertaining a couple of little girls. Her hand spun in the air as she made a little snow duckling dance and do silly things as the kids laughed and tried to imitate it. They fell over each other in their attempts, but that only made them laugh harder.

Anna looked up as Elsa approached. There was an uncharacteristic big grin on her face but Elsa wouldn't be mentioning it. Her heart felt too full and too good to speak a word of criticism to Anna. She just watched her and the little snow duckling. Anna did so well with her powers, and entertaining those kids fit her so well.

"Well, looks like its time for me to keep going," Anna told them, and they gave super sad faces. "Nooo, don't do that..."

"Send them home with a snow duckling," Elsa suggested. Best idea ever? Probably not, but Elsa had indeed created over a hundred tiny snowmen she didn't have control of, so a snow duckling didn't seem like a big deal.

"Ah." Anna laughed. "Okay," she said, and gave the duckling's butt a little scooch with her hand. It peeped as a permafrost spread over it to keep it whole, and scuttled toward the kids who cheered.

And so, they were once again able to move on. "So uh, what did you get?" Anna asked after straightening up and taking Elsa's arm with her own again. Her eyes darted to the box several times. Elsa could feel the excitement radiating through her.

"Let's get to our clearing," she suggested, and Anna tugged her along immediately.

They were able to get there without too much interference. On the way a few more people stopped them, saying how happy they were for the festivities and inviting the Queen and her sister to their various gatherings should they want to leave the castle party. It wasn't totally outlandish - one time they had snuck out of a deathly boring 'ball' and had a better time joining Baggi and some of his friends for dinner. No one had even noticed they had left which was a sign of how terrible the royal gathering had been.

That one time was all it took though for the regular requests to come in.

So they were expected and Elsa thanked each and every individual. Maybe someday they would take up the offer again but too much was on their minds that day and surely that evening. They needed to discuss how to treat questions about Kristoff before the party too.

Elsa had to shrug it off for the time being.

Once they stepped into the clearing, the sunflower could be seen glittering once again. It was a welcome sight. "So, you'll show me now?" Anna asked with a giggle, stepping away from Elsa but holding her hand.

The breeze came and Elsa shivered. "Make us a little shelter," she suggested. "A little igloo?"

"Not a mini ice castle?" Anna teased.

"No." Elsa shook her head as she laughed. "No, I may still be cold in an ice castle. An igloo too, maybe but..." She remembered traveling with Anna over a year ago, and how their tent was destroyed. The result was cuddling each other in an igloo for the night and that warm memory pushed her.

"Igloos are cute." Anna turned away from her and spread her arms, palms out. The snow flowed from them in quick bursts, forming brick by brick. It took but a few moments for the bricks to build and form into a snug igloo, the entry watched over by the sunflower.

Then Anna turned back, took Elsa's hand, and dragged her inside excitedly. Elsa nearly tripped over her own feet in the rush.

Inside the igloo was actually very cozy. With no breeze, it was warmer after all. There wasn't much for light though. Anna seemed to notice immediately and she flicked one hand. Across from them and near the ceiling, a thin sheet of ice formed to give them a window and sparkling light.

Perfect.

"Well then..." Elsa turned the box over in her hand, suddenly feeling a little shy. Was it too much?

"Go on. I'll love it," Anna said gently and touched her arm.

Elsa knew that she was right, but still took a deep breath. Then she held up the box and gently opened it to reveal what was inside. "I-I want you to know-ah, always know how I feel for you. I want you to have a symbol of how we will always be. Always." She was getting tongue tied.

The box was open and Anna's gaze was drawn to it. She stared, and stared, and said nothing for a few seconds. Elsa got nervous...

And then Anna squealed. It was the first time Elsa had ever actually heard herself squeal and it was really weird...but in Anna language, it was a good thing! Her nerves began to disperse as solid thoughts, and a solid decision, came to be in her mind.

"This is-this is the bind rune for-"

"-for eternal love," Elsa finished for her, smiling gently. "This bond, this love between us, it's forever, Anna," she said in a soft voice. "It took a long time for me to actually realize that, and I'm sorry for that. All those years you spent on the other side of my closed door, your heart was so open and ready to understand, while mine wasn't. I've hurt you because I coudn't grasp all that was between us. Anna, I could spend this lifetime regretting it or I could spend it with you, being the soulmate you deserve."

"Elsa..." Anna barely whispered her name, such a difference from her squealing. "Oh Elsa! I...you...I would never want you to regret and I...probably didn't really understand just..."

"Do you like it?" Elsa interrupted.

"I love it!" Anna rocked on her feet for a moment before reaching for the necklace. "I love it...I love you, Elsa. And spending-wait. Do you mean you're going to stay...?"

Elsa nodded, and a split second later she was tackled into the side of the igloo by a tight hug around her torso, arms still out as she tried not to drop the box. It was thrilling and she let out a loud laugh of surprise as Anna embraced her repeating her name over and over and practically vibrating.

"Anna, cold! Side of igloo, cold!" Elsa managed between laughs. Even through her jubilation, she could feel that snowy chill and it was harsh.

"Oops!" Anna made quick work of spinning them around and dragging Elsa closer against her while they hugged against the wall. She nuzzled into the crook of Elsa's shoulder and Elsa rested her head against her sister's.

All was well, until she heard a sniffle. Instantly Elsa took a step back and raised Anna's chin with her finger. "Anna?"

Elsa was met with her face full of tears, but a wide happy smile. "T-tears of happiness Elsa, tears of happiness...here.." She took the little box from Elsa to tuck into a pocket on her dress - Elsa missed being able to create pockets on her clothing - before touching Elsa's arm to turn her.

"What are you...?" Elsa asked as she felt Anna pulling her down.

"Just go with it," Anna told her and down she sat, settling against the igloo and holding Elsa's back to her chest as she sat her between her legs. Anna buried her face against her neck with a happy sigh and squeezed her in her firm grip. She continued to sniffle and Elsa could feel the little tremors through her body.

Despite being fully aware it was happy crying, Elsa still had to fight down anxiety. Hearing and seeing Anna cry always put her on high alert. She was always ready to protect her. With Anna holding her she was able to relax within a couple of minutes.

Once she did, she could really feel the warmth from Anna, and the slight cold on her butt from being on the ground. At least the cape bunching beneath her helped out there. "You're really okay?" she asked quietly.

"Very," came Anna's answer, a little broken from her crying. "You're going to stay. I won't lose you again...will-will I?"

"No, no." Elsa knew she shouldn't speak for the future. She just couldn't see anything that would pull her apart from Anna again. If she had to do something alone, she didn't want to do it, or she would return quickly. She was unwilling to be without her. "I still want to watch some memories at Ahtohallan, I still want to visit the forest but I'll take you with me. I'll show you everything, instead of leaving you alone in the dark." The words flowed out of her mouth without her even thinking about it.

"Show me everything," Anna echoed and hugged her tighter. "Take me with you."

For a while they sat in silence. Anna's sniffling tapered off as she gained some control of herself and Elsa allowed herself to simply take in the moment, her hands resting on Anna's. The icy window drew her attention and she looked up at it in thought. It had always been hard to know when she made the right decision but throughout the recent years she had moments of clarity.

From Anna's sacrifice to save her, telling her she belonged in Arendelle and was not a monster, to chasing the voice of the north wind to Ahtohallan to accept her importance in the world and why she existed, there were those moments where she felt secure. Those moments when she felt the surge of hope and confidence in what she was going to do were so big there could be no question. Sunlight danced on the ice and broke up as it passed through to light on her face. Assurance was what she felt.

"Anna," she finally said and breaking the silence felt criminal. "Anna, you should put on the necklace," she urged.

For a few seconds there was no response. Had she fallen asleep!? And then... "Oh." Anna shifted against her. "But I don't want to move. I'm so happy."

"Me too." She couldn't argue with that, so she decided not to.

Luckily Anna said more. "We do have to go back soon, for supper before the party..it will be fun I guess. I hope you can mostly dance with me."

That's right. She, as queen, would likely end up dancing with Menander and a couple of others just to be friendly and show kindness with the other kingdom, even if everyone was under the impression she was engaged to Kristoff. Ah, Kristoff...she would have to dance with him for appearances and that was going to be awkward. Elsa wasn't feeling too good about that so she didn't bring it up. "I hope so too," she responded.

She felt Anna shifting behind her as she let go of Elsa. She didn't get up though and Elsa didn't move. Unless Anna prompted her to, she was happy to stay down. It mattered little that her rear was getting quite numb. Anna shuffled a little more and then her hands went around Elsa's shoulders with the necklace.

"Anna, I should be putting this on you!" she said as she angled her head to look at her briefly.

"It is going on 'me', silly! When we're back to normal I'll be wearing it. And I like putting it on you while your soul is in there. This bind rune is about both of us."

"I got it for you."

"I know that." Anna fastened the necklace and then touched the pendant where it rested just below her neck. "And I'm putting it on you and I at the same time. Both of us. ...It works okay!?" she finally said with a huff.

"Okay okay!" Elsa laughed. She followed Anna's train of thought and it was very sweet. "Ah, I adore you Anna," she said with a shake of her head and fond smile.

"Lucky me!" Anna replied. "Hey. Um..." Her voice had suddenly changed and Elsa could practically hear the blush. "Will you turn your head again and...I want to kiss you."

Elsa obliged, no urge to comment. Oh, how she loved kissing Anna! Elsa had never thought of herself kissing anyone at all, with her disinterest in any romance. It hadn't bothered her to think she'd never experience it. With Anna the idea of never kissing her again made her heart drop. It was their way to feel and show their love and it was addictive.

Anna's lips met hers right away and Elsa reached up to cradle her head in her arm as her eyes closed. She had much to do, but perhaps they would just stay in the igloo forever instead.

Unfortunately, they couldn't do that. Once more they had to force themselves to release one another, to stand up and exit the igloo. Outside they were met with the snowy outlines of snowmen dancing with each other just above the ground. They twirled together with little stick hands out, then drew close and embraced as they slid in little loops. They continued their fun as the girls walked away.

Elsa couldn't believe the feeling that had so quickly taken her over! She knew it was love, everything that compelled her had been born from love, but she wondered if that was also what falling in love felt like. She'd loved Anna for a long time but as they were sisters much of that was natural. Love grew more as she opened her heart to Anna, then even more as they bled into soulmates.

Where did romance fit in there? Was it romance?

Was it even something she should seek to define?

Perhaps not, she thought as she clutched Anna's hand on the way back to the castle. Her mind seemed to always search, always want to form things into answers she could grasp and make sense of. It'd been that way for so long. Being isolated to her room made her want to learn why she was the way she was and sometimes that came back around to hit her hard. She just had to wave it away and focus on Anna.

Soon enough she couldn't even dwell on that. The castle was already bursting with merriment when they entered. Elsa knew they were incredibly late for  opening the doors to the civilians and entertaining issues but luckily no one seemed to care.

The reason why was easy to see - nearly everyone in the courtyard on the way in right on to the Great Hall, was holding a glass or two of wine. People who had come in seeking the queen, who weren't any kind of royal or kitchen staff? They had wine too.

"Oh dear he started early," Elsa said with a nervous chuckle. Menander usually waited until after supper. Supper! What was he thinking, no one had even eaten!

Anna had a look of horror on her face. "No no no what is he doing! This isn't a party open to everyone who happens to wander in! There's-oh my god what if someone spills drink all over one of the ambassadors and everyone thinks a drunken free for all happened here in Arendelle?"

Elsa nodded, biting her lower lip in worry. The place was festive, nicely decorated with green, gold and purple streamers across the ceiling and hanging decorations featuring the crocus.  Flowers that had been grown in the palace were perched by the windows that were letting light flood in. The chatter was loud but there was a lot of laughter too...

If the afternoon stayed like that as it bled into the evening, then there was hope it would not get too out of control. Menander was good at commanding a party. If he could just steer it in a direction that wasn't utterly chaotic then it would be alright. Elsa wasn't ready to put all her trust in him for that but maybe she had to.

That was when Anna tugged on her sleeve and motioned toward a very long table holding several bowls of some kind of drink. Was it wine? Was it liquors? Elsa had absolutely no idea yet and she wasn't going to drink it all to find out. "Oh Anna," she hissed.

"I know," Anna replied. They exchanged glances and both were nervous.

Regardless, they wandered into the crowd. They were in for an interesting evening indeed.