Fae, Olivia, and Sonya sat beneath the boughs of the golden tree. Gentle wind tossed their hair. For a long time, they chatted with the Orphan of the Dawn, and even more so with each other.
They were getting to understand each other even more. But even though they could hear each other’s thoughts, could feel what was in each other’s hearts… they refused to rely on that. It was likely that this condition of being bonded so intimately in mind, heart, and soul would not last forever, and indeed, that was what they hoped for. Right now, it was necessary, a connection that helped Fae’s body withstand what wickedness had been done to it by Wasuryu.
Knowing all of that, they did their best to talk, openly and honestly. They’d spent a great deal of time on deeply personal matters, though, and so their conversation turned to lighter, easier topics. Food, for one. They each had a lot to say about their favorite and least favorite foods, and once again, Olivia’s love of broccoli on her pizza came up and was met with shock and disdain. Olivia had hoped Sonya, also a resident of Renault, would understand — fresh vegetables and fruits were in short supply in Renault, so even something like broccoli was often viewed as a treat — but Sonya wasn’t about that at all.
“There’s a reason dietary supplements and vitamins exist,” Sonya said, surprisingly passionate about the topic. “The scarcity of fruits and vegetables in Renault isn’t a factor in whether they taste good or not. I say it’s a good thing.”
Evidently, Sonya wasn’t fond of the majority of vegetables or fruits.
They talked about clothing, and flowers. The conversation occasionally turned to art, but that was a subject they were each so passionate about, such a core element of their being, that there was a powerful shared understanding already. There was more to learn about each other in that regard, to be sure, but they wanted to take some time talking of lighter things, of things they were less likely to know about each other without bringing it out into the open.
And they talked about Renault and Grimoire, and their different approaches to keeping magic secret. While Renault itself was a hidden, secret city, Grimoire had chosen to have its mages hide their own magic, something that both Olivia and Sonya already knew about, and yet still found appalling.
“It’s no way to live,” Sonya said. “Why hide who and what you are? Magic isn’t such a terrible thing.”
“Then why is Renault itself hidden from the rest of the world?” Fae asked. “People without magic do view it as a frightening, sometimes terrible thing.”
“Then why not just hide Grimoire like Renault?” Sonya asked.
“Renault was specially equipped for that,” Olivia said. “The ancient peoples who once populated Renault hid the city with magic that we’re still trying to understand to this day. We’ve reinforced those ancient magics, but without them, Renault’s only defense would be the fact that it’s in the most inhospitable place on the planet.”
“Apparently, things are changing,” Fae said. “I… well, none of us were really paying attention to the city when we were there, but… those without magic know about it, now.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Sonya said, her chin in her hands, eyes narrowed in thought. “I’m not very optimistic about how that will go. Eventually, Renault’s secret may be compromised as well.”
“If we’re able to deal with that, we can count it as a blessing,” Olivia said. “Those future dilemmas will only exist if the Endless Night is stopped.”
The future. It was a precious, frightening, amazing thing. How much, and how often, had the future changed from what Fae had hoped for and envisioned? And how often had it turned in her favor?
But Olivia was right. If they reached a future where they had to deal with these issues, that would be a blessing. Because it would mean that the future actually came to pass.
And though Fae’s future had turned out to be so much more painful than she’d ever envisioned or hoped — a fate shared by Olivia and Sonya — there was also a sense of… definitely not happiness, but peaceful acceptance, of a sort.
So much of this future hadn’t just been Fae tossed about by the whims of fate. She’d made choices, and many of those choices had resulted in wonderful, amazing things.
Her choices had rescued the Fates, and Kairyu, and Nocta, and of course Olivia and Sonya. Her choices had led her to Oliver at the Celestial Shore, and had given him the advice and courage needed to one day face Selphine again, to know that she wouldn’t reject him, but welcome him once more.
Her choices had led her to reconnect with Shana, and gave her hope that she might be able to do the same with Delilah, and maybe — maybe — with her brothers.
Frankly, she’d never felt all that close to her brothers. They were weird.
But maybe it was worth it to give them an honest chance.
“There are things I wish had never happened,” she admitted to Olivia and Sonya. “But… there are things that never would have happened if I hadn’t made these choices. And they’re things I wouldn’t trade for anything.”
And she meant it. And that, more than anything, helped her see who she’d become.
She could smile as she gazed out at the golden fields, at the beautiful flowers. She was broken, held up and able to feel the wind on her face because of friends she’d never expected to make, of a group of girls who were right here with her, sharing her burden.
For the first time, she thought there was something strangely beautiful about that.
“We put up so many walls,” Olivia said, shaking her head. “We held everyone back. Although… I’m glad to have met all of you… I still… I wish that… it hadn’t taken all of this to realize what we needed.”
“ ‘Why must it be that healing and understanding so often come only after great trials and pains?’ ” Sonya asked, a wistful, dramatic tone to her voice. “That’s from As All the World Begins to Turn.”
Fae and Olivia admitted they’d never even heard of it, and Sonya immediately launched into an explanation. It was an epic fantasy series, a classic, one of the first of its kind, from long before Sonya had been born. The quote in question came from the protagonist, exiled knight Sir Roland Riledge, after a vicious duel with his brother, Richard Riledge, who had sold his soul to the Obsidian Throne for the sake of power. After a desperate, seemingly impossible duel where Roland very nearly had to kill his own brother, he managed to break through the Obsidian Throne’s control, and the two sat at the height of the Alabaster Tower, thinking of all it had taken for them to finally come to understand and love one another again.
And, well… there was a lot more than that. The series was a favorite of Sonya’s, and she was a tremendously impassioned fan — and one who didn’t at all mind spilling a million spoilers in the process.
But Fae didn’t stop her. She smiled even more. Sonya had been rather stiff — thoughtful and observant, but often seeming like she was holding back. Now, seeing her talk nearly as much with her hands as her mouth, hearing her voice rise and fall with a wide range of emotion, was a real treat.
They had a lot to learn about each other. And all three of them managed to agree, though it was somewhat painful for Olivia and Sonya…
They were glad that things had turned out this way.
Not glad about every single detail. Certainly not glad about what they’d lost.
But they were glad that, when they left the Orphan of the Dawn, they wouldn’t be saying goodbye to each other. They wouldn’t return to being separated by time.
They wouldn’t have just this moment here at the Orphan of the Dawn to talk and get to know each other properly. They would — if they managed to get through everything that was to come — have their entire lives.
Finally, their friends stirred. Madeline, Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune had fallen asleep on the grassy hill, and had slept soundly and comfortably while the trio had met with Hugo, spoken with Emmeryn, and learned so much about each other and Olivia’s past thanks to the Orphan of the Dawn.
And as they began to stir, Fae braced herself. While she, Olivia, and Sonya had taken time to acclimate to their new condition, it was just the three of them. Add in four more minds, hearts, and souls, and —
Fae winced as a flood of voices shot through her mind, all sorts of strange, ridiculous, absent thoughts — the kinds of things that flit through your brain as you awaken from a dream, the musings that often pass and vanish, never to be remembered. Those musings of four separate people slammed into Fae, filling her mind with a flood of noise, and she strained against its weight.
“Okay, hold up, stop!” Mercury said, leaping to her feet, holding out her arms, her long blonde hair wildly askew and sticking up in places. “Let’s all pull it together, because we can’t keep doing that. That freaking hurts.”
“You’re not kidding,” Jupiter said, the second to rise. Madeline and Neptune took longer, clearly more shaken by the sudden torrent of shared thought than Mercury and Jupiter.
“Good morning,” Fae said as she shook off the pain. Thankfully, the pain from mental feedback wasn’t something that lingered for too long. “You, uh… sure like to make things lively right when you wake up, huh?”
Mercury and Jupiter both stared at Fae in surprise, and Fae stared back, confused. The beginnings of a pair of thoughts began to hit Fae’s mind, but suddenly both sisters opened their mouths and spoke aloud: “You just bantered!” they said in unison.
“Bantered?” Fae asked, not getting it.
“Like, you made a sort of joke,” Jupiter said. “You don’t usually say stuff like that.”
“Even though we hurt you,” Mercury said, and then she looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s going to take a lot of getting used to,” Fae said. “We’ve… had a lot of time to realize that. Time you four haven’t had.” But then, she realized something strange. “Hold on. Even though you were asleep, there should still have been all sorts of subconscious thought, even dreams, going on.” She looked up at the golden tree. “How come we didn’t get hit with any of that? Not even the slightest sensation?”
“I… protected you,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “I believe that such subconscious thought will be shared more once you leave this place.”
“You believe?” Madeline asked. “You don’t know how much you protect us?”
“I do not control the severity or specificity,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “I can initiate the connection between you, but the way in which I dampen the mental and emotional feedback is… something passive, unconscious, out of my control.”
“Interesting,” Madeline said. “So you really don’t know how much things will change once we leave here.”
“Unfortunately, I do not,” the Orphan of the Dawn said.
“Where’s Toryu?” Neptune asked, looking around.
“And Ciel?” Madeline asked, scanning the horizon.
“Toryu said he was going for a walk,” Sonya said. “Ciel went with him.”
“I think…” Olivia started, “that they’re trying to give us space.”
That’s nice of —
“That’s nice of them!” The thought started from Jupiter as feedback in everyone’s minds, but she cut it off suddenly to spurt it out verbally. It helped, a little. The fact that it had only been Jupiter’s voice in her mind had lessened the feedback, and correcting her mistake as quickly as she did meant that the slight jolt of pain had only lasted a moment.
Collectively, all seven of them let out a sigh.
“This is gonna take a while,” Mercury said. “And… every time we screw up… we end up hurting each other.”
“I don’t think it’ll be that way forever,” Fae said. “Olivia, Sonya, and I — we’ve gotten to a place where we can feel what’s in each other’s hearts, we even hear each other’s thoughts sometimes still, but…”
“It’s like there’s a harmony to it,” Sonya said. “A sort of… acceptance.”
“Is that what we can hope for when we leave here?” Madeline asked, looking up at the golden tree.
“I hope so,” the Orphan of the Dawn said. “If you can come to the same acceptance that Fae, Olivia, and Sonya have with each other before you leave, it will certainly aid you once you leave my protection.”
“So the more we get used to and learn now, the better it’ll be for us when we leave,” Neptune said.
And Fae felt it, then — the thoughtful analysis, but also the fear and discomfort, that Neptune felt. And beyond Neptune, to Jupiter, who was anxious and self-conscious about making another mistake, to Mercury, who was excited but also carried a subtle fear, and to Madeline, who was thinking carefully and trying her best to hold it back.
Nervousness. Anxiety. Self-consciousness. Worry. They were all struggling with these things, trying to hold themselves back, but also trying to let enough of themselves free, careful, tentative, hesitant.
Trying to trust. To trust each other, and to trust themselves. Any mistake could hurt the others in this seven-part bond. And yet…
“It’s… amazing, isn’t it?” Olivia asked.
All eyes turned to her.
“No one else has this kind of bond,” Olivia said. “And it’s frightening, for all of us, but it’s also… something amazing. We can know each other, better than we ever could otherwise. I think… we all have the same kinds of insecurities that make us hold back from such a connection. But… maybe that makes this even easier. It’s not just the three of us. In a lot of ways, all seven of us are… not the same, but…”
“Maybe not all seven of us,” Mercury said, laughing slightly, shaking her head. She wrapped an arm around Jupiter and pulled her in close. “I mean, come on! We’re not — I mean…” She started trailing off, her smile fading.
“What, you’ve got insecurities and hang-ups?” Jupiter asked, studying Mercury’s face. “You’re the last person I’d expect.”
“Y-yeah…” Mercury said, ducking her gaze. “I… I mean…”
Do I have to?
That quiet, frightened thought reached all of them. And unlike so much of the other mental feedback, this thought didn’t hurt at all.
“It’s up to you,” Fae said. “But… I think it can be an opportunity. Not just for us to understand you, but… for you to understand yourself.”
Mercury looked up at her, and tears shone in her bright blue eyes. “I… but I don’t…” she started, and then shook her head, rubbing at her eyes. “Ah, what the heck is this? Stupid… tears…” She let out a shaky sigh. Looked around at every one of them. “I’m… the spotlight girl. The poster girl. The front girl. The one who’s always in the lead, always stealing the show, the core of the band, the life of the party, the perfect smile, the perfect hair —”
“And starting to sound perfectly arrogant,” Jupiter said, narrowing her eyes in disappointment.
“No, it’s not that, I just…” Mercury started, waving her hands. “Listen. I… that’s what everyone says about me. That’s what everyone sees. And… I know they’re right, but… it’s not just what everyone else sees. It’s what they expect. And I’m happy to please, happy to smile all the time, and I love my life, and my sisters, and our music, but I…” She sniffed, rubbed at her eyes again, then sat back, planting her hands on the ground, gazing up at the sky. “I keep thinking back to the Unreturning. That stupid trial we had to go through to get to the Silver Star Sanctuary. And how it… how it made us say such terrible things to each other. And Fae, you… all of us tried to say ‘Oh, it made us say things we didn’t mean,’ but you disagreed. You said all of those nasty things were things we did mean. They were what we actually felt. And I… I never wanted… I never meant to say…”
“You’re an idiot,” Jupiter said, poking Mercury in the cheek.
“Hey!” Mercury protested, bloodshot eyes shining with tears. “I’m trying to spill my guts out here, and you —”
“I already knew you weren’t just the smiling spotlight girl,” Jupiter said. “Everybody’s got layers. And no matter how perfect everyone else thinks you are, I’m your sister. So I know better.”
Mercury glared, just for a moment. And then burst out laughing. She leaned against Jupiter, her head against her shoulder, shaking with laughter, and with crying, as tears spilled onto Jupiter’s shirt.
“It’s okay to vent or throw a fit now and then,” Neptune said. “Especially with us. And as long as we have this seven-part bond between us, you really can’t go around holding back. We’re all going to learn your every dirty secret before this is all over.”
“Shut up, I don’t have dirty secrets,” Mercury said, shaking her head. She then grabbed Jupiter and Neptune both into a hug, tackling them to the grass, laughing and crying. “I’ve just got stupid emotions. And sometimes I get really fed up with you guys.”
“We get fed up with you sometimes too, you know,” Jupiter said, rubbing her knuckle against Mercury’s head. “Little Miss Perfect.”
“Shut up,” Mercury said, but she was laughing. She rolled off of her sisters to lay on her back, staring at the sky, and let out a heavy sigh. “Ugh, this sucks. I hate crying.”
“That’s because you don’t cry enough,” Neptune said. She reached across the grass and held Mercury’s hand.
“Hey, when is Feelings Hour over?” Mercury asked. “Because I… oh, can someone else just pour their heart out for a bit? I can only deal with so much.”
“But you’re the chatterbox of the group,” Jupiter said. “If you don’t spill your guts, who else will?”
“We’ve been together long enough, I ought to be rubbing off on everyone,” Mercury said. “I’ve been told my enthusiasm is contagious.”
“Only sometimes,” Jupiter said.
The sisters laughed, and cried, perfectly reflecting all that was going on here in this strange new bond that the seven girls shared. Fae came to sit next to Madeline, and with a simple gesture, a slight nod, said a whole lot more than she could put into words.
Madeline returned the gesture, shook her head slightly, tilted her eyes away. And they both knew. It was their little secret language, one they’d come up with completely unconsciously, something that had developed between them over the years without them ever really talking about it, but always understanding.
“What’s all that?” Jupiter asked, sitting up, watching the pair.
Fae looked at Madeline, silently asking her permission. And Madeline let out a long, slow sigh, then nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s going to come out anyway, now that things are like this. And… you’re right.”
“Right about what?” Mercury asked, sitting up and watching the pair. “Hold up. Did you guys just have a whole conversation without saying anything? But we didn’t hear your thoughts.”
“No thoughts to hear,” Fae said. Slowly, she explained. It wasn’t easy, and it felt kind of silly. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought about — Madeline, either, because she tried to help explain things, too, but she didn’t do much better than Fae. But they both came to an agreement about one thing.
“It’s like how things are with all of us, now,” Madeline said. “This… understanding. Being able to know more about each other than we sometimes would like to. It’s not the same as hearing each other’s thoughts, or feeling each other’s hearts, but it’s similar. A way of communicating, of expressing ourselves to each other in a private way, in a way that… works really well for people like us.”
“People who don’t like showing their emotions, you mean,” Mercury said, and then cried out as Jupiter tackled her.
“You’re one to talk,” Jupiter said, her forehead pressed against Mercury’s. “Honestly.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mercury said, shoving Jupiter’s face away. “I… know.” Slowly, she sat up. “We all need to learn to better communicate like Fae and Madeline. To… trust each other. To understand each other. Not just on some surface level, not only in ways that make us comfortable. We’ve gotta embrace the discomfort!” She pumped a fist in the air and smiled her perfect smile.
“Nice try,” Neptune said, hugging Mercury from behind and resting her chin on her shoulder. “But the cat’s out of the bag, now. You like this kind of discomfort the least.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re all tied in our distaste for discomfort,” Mercury said, letting out a sigh. “So… okay. What do we do now? It’s not gonna be Feelings Hour every second of every day, is it?”
“No,” Fae said, laughing. “And we can’t be entirely sure how things will work once we leave this place, so what we practice and get used to here might not be enough out there. But… oh. I know where we can go from here.” She turned to Olivia and Sonya, and they both understood. Each of the three pulled out the sheet of paper they’d received from Hugo. For Fae, a drawing. For Olivia, a musical score. For Sonya, a short story. “He said that we’d only really be able to understand these when we shared them with the whole group.”
“Then shouldn’t we be inviting Toryu and Ciel to join us?” Mercury asked.
“I think we can start with just us,” Fae said. “But we’ll definitely include them once they return.”
“So?” Mercury asked, leaning forward. “Who’s gonna start?”
Fae opened her mouth to volunteer, but it was Olivia who beat her to it. “I will,” Olivia said, standing. She pulled off the strap that was slung crosswise over her shoulder, the one that held the viola she’d received from Hugo. At the sight of the instrument, the Star sisters immediately went quiet and scooted closer, excitedly watching. Olivia opened the case and pulled out the instrument, its polished wood reflecting the golden skies warmly. Then she pulled out the sheet of paper, the musical score that she’d received from Hugo. “Could… someone help me? There aren’t any music stands that I’ve seen, and with the breeze here, it would just blow away.”
“Ooh, pick me!” Mercury said, leaping to her feet and coming forward, holding Olivia’s score for her.
Olivia raised her viola, taking a moment to check its tuning. After a few slight adjustments, she set her bow against the strings, and…
She paused.
Fae felt her hesitation, the wild, powerful mixture of emotions whirling within her. She hadn’t played the viola since before she left Renault, one hundred and twenty years ago. So there was fear and anxiety there — would she remember how to play? Would it come back to her, or had music left her behind like so much else?
And there was a fear for herself. For the music. What it would mean, both to play it, and to hear it.
Olivia had volunteered ahead of Fae because of these fears and anxieties. Because she needed to know, and the longer she hesitated, the more she had to wait, the more difficult it would be to take that first step.
And… there was comfort. Comfort in the girl standing before her, in Mercury holding up the score, smiling reassuringly at her.
Whatever came from this… she didn’t have to bear it alone.
A gentle breeze blew across the hill. And as it faded…
Olivia began to play.
The first note came out clear, slow, resonant. And that clarity and resonance, just that first note, struck a powerful chord within Olivia.
Her music hadn’t left her. She could still play, just as well as before.
From one note to the next, to the next. The song was a perfect match for the viola, clear and resonant, with a depth and fullness of emotion. There was a somber quality to the song, a loneliness that struck Fae’s heart, and Sonya’s, and all of them. They were all together, being swept away by the story the song was telling. Loneliness, and sorrow, but also…
Hope.
There it was. That tiny spark of hope that Fae knew so well. It wasn’t always, or even often, at the forefront.
But all hope took was a tiny spark. A faint candle in the window. A light shining, however small.
No matter the sorrow. No matter the solitude.
A sweeping crescendo began, rising to a tumult of emotion, and then…
The song stopped. Abruptly, suddenly. Olivia lowered her bow, lowered her instrument, lowered her head.
Tears filled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a soft sob escaping her lips. “I… I just…”
And they all felt it, together.
I just can’t.
It was all too much. Too intense. Music amplified emotion, amplified meaning. And this song was written for Olivia, specifically to touch her heart on the deepest level.
Not only that — after so long without her instrument, without her music, without such an integral core piece of who Olivia was… playing again after all this time was too much to bear. She was overwhelmed, and she couldn’t bring herself to finish.
Just that small portion, about half of what was written, was absolutely overwhelming.
So many thoughts and feelings, flooding through her. Olivia didn’t think much with words, but while she didn’t emote frequently or noticeably, her heart was full of powerful emotions.
Music was the language of her heart.
One hundred and twenty years without it… and now it was back. Excitement mingled with grief, love mingled with sorrow, and she just couldn’t finish the song.
Not now. In time, yes. Her first time playing her instrument in so long would absolutely not be the last.
But she needed time before she continued.
Mercury was the first person to approach Olivia, and she wrapped her up in a hug without a word. Held her, as Olivia cried, letting not just the weight of this moment, but the weight of so much, of all the memories she’d recently regained, out into the open. She was able to process just a little bit more of all she’d regained, and all that she’d lost.
Olivia wasn’t the only one who was crying. Her feelings spilled over to everyone else, their hearts connected to hers. All of them cried.
After they began to calm down, Olivia sat, viola and bow still in her hands. She wasn’t going to put it away for a long time, even if she wasn’t up for playing it again right now. Just holding it, having her instrument in her hands again, made a world of difference.
And while Fae made to volunteer once again, it was Sonya who stepped up next. “I’m sorry, Fae,” she said, bowing her head, “but I… I really feel like I need to get this out. It’s… strange. And the sooner we have all of our heads working together on it, the sooner we may come to an answer.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Fae said, nodding. In truth, she wasn’t in a hurry to share her gift from Hugo with the others. She’d been trying to go first because she thought that Olivia and Sonya would want more time, or that they’d be more comfortable after someone else had shared. She was glad to see them stepping up on their own.
Sonya shared the one-page short story with the group, and… it was indeed strange. Titled “Wellspring,” the first thought that came to mind was Sonya’s strange, unique power. But the story itself felt like nonsense. There was a girl, the sole character in the story. She spent her days tending a garden. But when she did even the slightest thing differently, bats would explode out of the garden and get tangled in her hair, carrying her away to a distant cave. She’d spend days untangling the bats from her hair, and then climb down the mountain, come back to her garden, and fix things.
This happened three times. And after the girl fixed things for the third time, she sat back, and watched as the garden grew healthy and fine all on its own.
The end.
“Oh, you’re right,” Jupiter said, sitting back. “That’s… weird.”
“I don’t think we need to figure it all out right now,” Sonya said, passing the story to Neptune. “The story’s here, so we can keep reading it as many times as we like. I just wanted to get it out there so that we’re working on this problem already. But it may take time to decipher, and I think that’s okay. I’m not in a hurry.”
“You’re so patient,” Mercury said with a smile. “I’d be going crazy if someone gave me this and said it was super-important for my own personal growth and healing.”
“I… suppose I’m used to waiting,” Sonya said softly, gazing off into the distance.
“Then it’s your turn, next,” Madeline said, nodding to Fae.
“Right,” Fae said. She held out her gift from Hugo, an illustration, so that everyone could see. It was a marvelously detailed pencil illustration of the three Spiral Dragons, intertwining with each other, over a floating island in the sky. And above them all, a great Dragon’s eye, so large that it dwarfed the other Dragons, so large that the eye alone was all that could be seen of the fourth Dragon.
“It looks like Otherwhere,” Olivia said, bringing to mind the mysterious land they’d passed through after the Celestial Shore, where they’d gained the clues needed to form their “map” to the Orphan of the Dawn. “But that fourth Dragon…”
“It isn’t Wasuryu,” Sonya said, confirming what both Olivia and Fae suspected. Though they hadn’t seen Wasuryu as a proper Dragon, his eyes were always the same, and the eye of the fourth Dragon in the illustration was very distinct from his. It was an eye none of them had seen.
“Maybe Kairyu?” Mercury asked. “We’ve never seen her eyes, after all.”
“But Kairyu lives in the earth, in darkness, on purpose,” Neptune said. “I don’t think we’ll ever see her eyes.”
“It could be symbolic of her,” Mercury said, pouting slightly.
“Or it’s an entirely different Dragon,” Fae said, looking up at the golden tree. “Do you know?”
“I do,” said the Orphan of the Dawn. “But here comes one that knows far better than I.”
The girls looked over to see Toryu and Ciel returning from their long walk. They were chatting amicably, tortoise-Dragon and little boy, and a laugh reached them from Ciel, raising all of their spirits.
“Ah, it seems we’re expected,” Toryu said, removing his pipe and eyeing the girls. “Have we interrupted something, or…?”
“I believe they’ll need your help, old friend,” said the Orphan of the Dawn.
“Indeed?” Toryu asked. He came over to see the illustration, and after gazing at it for a few moments, he puffed on his pipe for a while, its lovely, incense-like aroma pleasant in the air.
“Well?” Mercury finally asked, gazing expectantly at Toryu. “Do you know what it’s all about?”
“Oh, I do,” Toryu said, a wistful tone in his voice.
“So spill the beans already!” Jupiter said. “We’re all on pins and needles here!”
Toryu let out a long, slow sigh. He removed his pipe, twirled it once, then set it back in his mouth. “You know the three Spiral Dragons, of course,” he said. “And you know me. As I’ve said before, I am their Father.”
“You… were serious?” Fae asked.
Toryu seemed rather indignant. “My dear, I wouldn’t joke about such a thing!”
“Sorry,” Fae said, lowering her eyes. “I just… you seem so different from them. And you did use it to make a bad joke about your name.”
“Ah, well, it’s a rather entertaining joke,” Toryu said, laughing. “ ‘Paparyu,’ indeed. Ah, that was fun. But I wasn’t lying. I am the Father of Dragons. And if there is a Father, then there must needs be a Mother, correct?”
“Hold up,” Mercury said, looking at Fae’s illustration. “This… you mean that eye… that’s…”
“Yes, indeed,” Toryu said, nodding. “The Mother of Dragons. It seems the time will soon be near, Fae Greyson, when you must meet my wife.”