ut I still want to be paid!

'You did so well.'

No one said that.

Not grampa, not me, not even the whistling night breeze. But I still hear it bubbling inside me, in a silvery voice that's not my own. It makes the pit of my stomach oddly warm and my chest feels contradictorily tight as well as light.

'Thank you.'

I don't get near enough the thanks I deserve!

Oh hoho, I'm making more than just money with the identity of the young miss Rosalia. Just you wait. I'm hardly getting started as the ultimate villainess. The nobles will all shake and bow shamefully before my power. The commoners shall fear how much they love me, or well my stuff. I make things, they enjoy them, for a price. Everyone wins.

"Huh? Didn't expect them to sprout after three sessions. Well that's my girls for you!" grampa laughs, petting at our heads.

"It was nothing, right Lily?" I huff.

"Push push and cheer with Rosa!" Lilyanne exclaims.

"Is that so? How wonderful." grampa imitates her, cheering along with imaginary pom-poms. Definitely not a cute image.

"We've done practically nothing but nap all day. Now we have plenty of energy for our age group. Since we've completed so much on this end already....." I start in my business proposal mode.

"Hmmm whatever it is, it will definitely wait till at least after dinner pumpkin. It's time to be getting back! Remember to use charm on your mama girls! And don't ask how her day went!"

"Yaaaaay mama! "

"But the food here sucks! What did you do to mother? Wait, don't distract me." I count off the list of things I can immediately see to, even as a toddler.

As grampa carries us off back to the troop's buildings and to the tunnel wagon ride, I verbally document them out. It's very professional and not at all like someone nodding along to a rambling child.

"I want to get into the leprosarium. You're responsible for its major construction plan, right? I want to see it up close, and there's probably plenty to improve on. What do you all know of safety and sanitation? You, people, make weak soap out of pan grease, nothing like my bars. I should be standardly paid for those. Let's make an official renewable contract. This place is so isolated...should I start a branch factory out here? And do you understand elements and grouping? Or how the world works and is made up of atoms? Ahem, and there's something I'd like to test out in regards to Lilyanne's zap zap, but uh....through me? If that makes sense. "

"Perfectly pumpkin! Let's start by asking permission over dinner~"

Somehow I don't think he understood a thing I just said.

Just wait. Grampa's a closet nerd. He'll surely be interested once I make and pull out the flashcards on this world's version of the table of elements. Let's revolutionize science and understanding! Concrete and soap!

So much to do, so little time. It's already quite complicated and we're not even done with the drawing board.

The staircase colony is still in sight. Medicine and science is sadly lacking. The troops really need more updating and restructuring, while I need clearer info to be effective. The outside will eventually go rife with famine, struggle, and the collapse of power under the veil of Lilyanne's romantic drama. This is not that great of a story to live.

My stomach bubbles distractingly. Perhaps I'm just that hungry? It still burns and tingles, maybe giving my chest that light case of similar burning.

But the open starry sky between dusk looks really pretty out here. It almost makes me feel like it's okay to feel any way I like. I lose sight of it, and the twinkling stars emerging, before it goes full dark, our ride rolling us back away. I couldn't even see the moon.

Not that it went anywhere.

'Thank you. I love you.'

"I love you?" I feel myself mouthing before I can stop it. Huh odd?

"*gasp* Awwwwwwww pppppuuuumpkin!!!"

"Lily and grampapa loooooove Rosa too!"

"Wait no that's not what I meant. No! Get away! Get your huggies away!"

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Bonus content ft Lukas (and Gable) and the snowy border control. Here. Late but here. Thank you for waiting.

Also optionable and skippable.

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"Gable! All I do is homeworks and a lot of nothing. It's not cool at all. All my sidekicks are doing waaaaaay cooler hero stuff. Even the stinky baby!" Lukas talks as he walks.

That was nothing new. Only it resounded notably in the emptiness of it all. There were no trees or scattering little wildlife like in their neck of the woods. Only open air and the snow that still clung to the rocks.

"...sidekicks." Gable looked down at the adorably walking bundle.

Ronald told him this morning that he was overdressing the boy, after all it was summer. But up here at this high elevation one couldn't be too prepared. Believe it or not, Gable was more worried about sunburns.

He himself was cloaked to prevent against the elements but not anywhere as thickly as Lukas. Their steps left vastly differnt imprints in the vast snow behind them.

"One and two. Amar can be sidekick one because he's first. Rosa's number two even though she's not very strong. But there's lots of kind of strongs." Lukas explains, counting under his mittens. They just, couldn't see his fingers underneath there.

"Ah. Yes. Various sorts of strengths in this world, it would be unwise to disregard them simply because they don't look to be the same as yours. "

"Bacon is best but it goes better with potatoes and eggs and bread and anything. They can be the eggs to my bacon. Or my mashed potatoes and gravy. Or baked potatoes Or or or-"

"I believe I have the full picture, Lukas."

The bright sunlight was very harsh reflecting off the steadily melting snow. It made Lukas squint the whole time he walked. Slush was harder to walk in than snow so sometimes he stomped around and made it all fluffy again.

Just the areas the Gable pointed out to him, but eventually, he was figuring out the pattern. Freeze up the slush where they walk, sometimes look for more things.

He doesn't know exactly what but it was fun. Like a treasure hunt!

"Rosa said she founds stuff under the old tree. Can I do that too?" the boy asks, looking around.

"Perhaps. Magic isn't entirely dependent on your innate talent. It must be refined. Honed. Like steel to a sword, where it once was but hidden in rock. When extracted and molten you can shape it to your best ability. That is why we must grow your knowledge, and thus abilities."

"Booo, you just want me to do more homework studying!"

Well, he exactly wasn't wrong. Gable hummed in response.

The reflection of the sun glared across the snowy surfaces. Sometimes, with one wrong step, Lukas would even disappear into a snow bed. Just sink himself in from bodyweight alone, forcing Gable to constantly be pulling him out.

The boy could freeze the path around him instantly, so it was clear that Lukas was enjoying the sudden snowdrops and consequent attention. When Lukas was falling a little too often, Gable started suspecting he was doing it on purpose.

"You're figuring out where the powder spots are? " Gable prompted patiently.

"Uh huh! I'm awesome like that! Rosa said when she's with the stinky one, she can feel magics and stuff but they all look different. So are spots without. So if I try really really really hard it gets easier to feel snow and better the stuff that's not snow." Lukas shook off the fluff.

"Interesting turn."

Gable tries, he really does. He's pulled out all the archives and storage of books and tomes, carefully transcribing them by level for Lukas to learn. Then when he figured the obvious...discrepancy in Lukas' literacy levels, they started from scratch. Bottom-up.

But honestly, it seemed that Lukas learned best by example, and especially so around the other children.

When first tackling the neverending mission that was Lukas' eduction, Gable found it wasn't entirely hopeless. The little boy was very eager to please, much more so than Maria had to subjects at that age. While not particularly studious, and definitely behind a noble's tutoring, there were certain...unexpected strengths.

"Amar's much better at counting and stuff and it helps you climb stuff better and sneak around." then Lukas would answer why his sense of numbers, calculations, and even shapes were much more advanced than his other subjects.

It made sense, given how Lukas tended to stick to the other child in their time at the troops. IF the boy was willing to attend, let along keep awake, to any lessons, it would most likely only be ones with Amar in tow.

"Speaking people is hard but marking is worse! Too many words. Amar and Yuna explained it lots better." the boy would subsequently cry over his writing practice scripts, little hands cramping unused to the finer work.

Also reasonable. The boy's past closer to Ronalds's than Gable's. Only the most rudementory of lessons, since his fountains were so lacking. Well, at least Lukas could hold his quill without too much difficulty...or breaking every single one. It's fine, they had Maria's old talon quills. Though chalk was much easier and less wasteful.

"Tree histories of nobles is stoooooopid, so stuuuupid. There's too many losers. Even Rosa says they're stupid and she reads all the boring stuffs. Why do I gotta know dis?!?! No one cares! Waaaaahhhhh." Lukas would sob and tantrum in frustrated boredom after any grains more than a quarter of a glass, of attempting to learn the noble houses and lines.

That particular lesson plan was put on full hold. Perhaps when Lukas was...much older? And more patient?

Or as Ronald would say, "you can't teach them to fish without actually taking them to fish." Though that often came along with lots of teeth, screaming, and waterlogged crying children. Yeah. Gable hasn't trusted Ronald in over 30 years and he's not starting again any time soon.

The point of the matter is that Lukas could roll around and cry into study material for years, learning at as reasonable a pace you can expect from a hyperactive 6 year old, but pick up things at lighting speed when properly exposed. Like how he was now picking up exactly what Rosalia reported to see and sense unnaturally, but in his own way.

This was especially the case in all things physically active.

Gable misses having the Amar around already. That one could get Lukas to sit still and read his damn books. And unlike with Rosalia, Lukas wouldn't come up to him afterward asking the strangest questions on the most inconceivable topics.

Yeah....he'll just leave that part to Ron.

"Gable? What kinds of stuffs are we really supposed to be looking for?" Lukas spoke up, sliding, and gliding along when he got bored.

It was good for him to practice, not just in winter. Making ice itself wasn't too hard, especially in a place like this, coming easy as breathing. But once again, self-control was the boy's greatest trouble.

"What makes you think we're looking for anything? Can't it just be a sort of practice?" Gable slowly asked, seemingly exerting no effort at all in their impossible trek. Seemingly floating. When he wasn't dragging Lukas out of another snow pile. It was easy to get lost.

It was so quiet up here. Echoes and openness. Peaceful even.

"Because it's too sad." Lukas said.

As simply as he states the sun is big or bacon is tasty. This silent emptiness was all too sad.

The sun glared reflected on snow all around, so easy to get lost with no markers. They couldn't even see down to the valley from here, nowhere the other way was, if not for their own footprints. The colony down below, the troops buildings and markers, tunnels hidden into the hills, all gone and out of sight.

If it was any worse weather than perfect summer days, they wouldn't see in a thing. Trapped in this basic of ice and nothing.

There were no fences, no walls nor any sort of barriers separating the valley from the mountains. Other than the main tunnel gate, the only path in and out of the valley, anyone was free to go wherever they pleased unguarded. Where else when there was nothing but the badlands beyond? Ronald gave them more freedom than any other place. Warnings or not, with it came the most danger. It came with the hope of escape.

Perhaps that was a mistake.

When Lukas made for a running jump, this time he didn't disappear into the remaining ice and snow. They blew out, as if the boy commanded gust and wind instead, creating a conspicuous clearing. A crater in all the glaring white.

Gable did't stop him. Didn't try to pull or hold him back.

This was the same kind of risk Ronald offered. Freedom, but for what? This was a price that would eventually be paid. Taking in a child like Lukas. Watching first hand what he's bound to become. Grown.

If it was little Maria all these years ago, Gable would never allow it. There would be no word of it under his rooftops or wherever he could still so reach. He probably wouldn't even allow it now with Rosalia, and certainly not the youngest.

But Lukas was his responsibility, his true and tired tragedy.

He cannot undo the past. He cannot atone for the mistakes made and the ones who suffered for them in his stead. He still cannot face reality fully, ever running even from himself.

He would have ideally liked to leave his past behind. He would have liked to stop dragging Ronald down with him. So close too.

So imagine his shock to find them crashing all seemingly at once.

A lost barefoot child with too much a resemblance Ron, to Maria in all her young and free wilding glory. The man himself, the sight of him alone always enough to knock the air from Gable's lungs. And of course, the child he can never make up to. Cursed before birth with the winding cruel plot after plots of adults. Unwanted. Unloved. Locked to rot.

Abandonment the kindest thing his mother had ever done for him.

Lukas stares for a long time, his little breathes beginning to frost and solidify in the cold. Something he should be able to control. Yet he does not. Maybe he cannot.

The boy stares for a long silent time.

"Scary." Lukas shakily steps forward.

That's enough, that's more than enough. Gable finally, god damn finally, allows himself to move. To pull up Lukas and comfort the tears will be incoming. But the boy slips out of his grasp, the fast in his rush.

Lukas's cries were always messy. Always too loud and too much from the heart.

"It was scary right? It must have been really dark and scary! I know. Sorry! Sorry you went through that. Sorry. It's not dark anymore. We got you out. It won't be scary anymore..." he sobs, chocking on his own hiccups and tears.

Gable would have stopped him from getting close. From touching the infected bodies, frozen as they are. But he feels ...defeated. It was a surprise, yet it was not. This reaction. He should have known this boy, the kind of heart he held beating in him. He already knew it was so different from his own. Closer to the cut someone like Ron was made out of.

Lukas stops anyways, simply drops to the floor but a few steps away. As if his legs somehow lost their tireless strength. It all going into his blows and cries instead.

"Sorry! I don't know what I'm sorry for, I'm just really sorry and my friend says that it makes people feel better. Sorry you were waiting so long. It must have been really dark for a long long time. But look!"

The snow billows and blows, as if every speck was as light as a feather. As beautiful as it was horrible.

The revealed corpses lie peacefully under the frost. Huddled together as if merely fending off the cold of the night. There were small children in the women's arms, even a baby. Men at the forefront. Youths to the side. No less than a dozen of them, not counting the litt ones, scattered paces from each other. Maybe at least until the storm hit.

At least they had each other in the end. They weren't alone.

Gable can't even sigh.

These people knew what they were getting into. No one would stop their escape, but neither would anyone rescue them. The elements themselves were more of a prison wall than anything the could have come up with. They could have lived out their lives peacefully in the colony down below. It wasn't perfect by any means but it was more than most of them could have ever afforded in the outside world.

Large spacious, though oddly built, insulated homes. Stone paves roads and running water. The chance to resume your old trade, or take a new one. Contribute back to the colony provided for free. Raise your family if you had one. Start anew.

Yet they still chose to take the risk. For what? A world outside that would never accept them? What did they have back out there that was worth risking it all?

But it didn't mater in the end.

Ronald was a cruel man. Giving people even a drop of hope when there was none. But he made no illusions. No one would stop them and no one would save them. That was made very clear.

Lukas still sobbed, refusing to be picked up and taken away. Fat wet tears, like the melting snow that ran down the mountain tops in fresh streams and falls. Feeding life into the valley where it cut off the outside world.

Unlike Gable, even as a fully grown adult with decades of sights, Lukas never looked away once. So Gable does not try to stop the tears. He would let the boy cry. Let him face the harsh truth of life that Lukas must have already known, too soon, too close.

And be there to pick up where he fell.

When the sobs and hiccups slow, more out of exhaustion than anything, Gable lights his walking staff. Make it bright enough that Lukas knows even from far behind that he's coming.

Carefully Gable makes to kneel, right over his little boy's side.

"Go on." Gable allows, so quietly it might as well have been in a whisper.

Lukas was obviously tired. The outburst of snow and tears more exhausting than this entire hike. It's with clumsy hands, mitten bound that Lukas finally reaches up. Still hiccuping as he grasps the handle along with his guardian.

The supernatural light grows fat and round. Like a giant dandelion puff, Lukas takes a great painful breath, and blows. To humor him, Gable does too.

Gentler than the snow that buried them, the light burns and wisps. Eating up the long-frozen and fallen. It scorches and cleans, a fire so unfeeling it burns white, tinged only at the tips in shining cool colors like those of the polar lights.

As they watch and wait, Gable tries blowing the cold away from Lukas's pink cheeks and shivering hands. Not with any magic but the old fashioned way. It somehow always works better.

When the flames die out, there's nothing left of the flesh nor bones. Any organic material wiped out, clean, and blown to the wind. What relics they do find, well Gable will hold on to them. Just till they can be returned back down the mountain. It wasn't much. A crude ring. Someone's broken watch. A painted stone with a drilled hole. Nothing valuable but for the sentiments.

But maybe that's all that was worth anything in the end.

"Ready?" Gable asks to the shivering child in his arms, taking out a blanket.

Lukas was so red from crying. Cold from the inside out that frost bit at his little cheeks and pale lashes like diamond bits. Sunlight fine hair peeking out from his oversized hat. He looked as miserable as he was pitiful and so beautifully alive.

"No. I can keep going. There's lots more like them, right? Still stuck in the dark? They must be very scared. Let's go!!!" Lukas huffs, spirited in the way only the young and truly strong could be. Hardship forging them even stronger.

Gable let's out a light laugh, maybe in relief, maybe in something he can't understand. Like how he never understood why he allowed someone like Ronald to stick around. Never understood his own reasons or rhyme.

"Alright. But that's enough for today." Gable comforted by patting his back, carrying a weaker than usual little boy.

Like the very young, Lukas will overdo it. He'll underestimate his weight and overuse his strengths. Like the idyllic heroes that don't exist, Lukas will want to save them all.

"But-" Lukas starts to argue, not feeling his own pain. Diamond dust still freckling under his glacier clear eyes.

"Rest for now, we'll keep looking. We'll keep trying. I promise you."

Something in Lukas must crack, ever so subtly, ever the right way. His little chest hiccups. Cries in softness as he burrows that too pink face into Gable's chest, fresh tears melting the ice once more.

They do not stay up there. In the silent air where the dead finally meet their peace. But if they did, if they were buried against a storm they had no way of fighting Gable was oddly comforted. That at least, they would have each other.

But that is not how it goes, someone's waiting for them. At the dinner table, with a warm bed, the next groggy messy day. A lot of someones.

Two tracks of footsteps turn into one as Gable carries the little weight down. They're all that's left in the glaring white snow.