“I think I’m better with it than when I first arrived,” Kaspar said. I sat at his desk with him on the bed, another round of snow shimmering through the bright skies beyond. “I’ve been searching myself and I don’t believe I care that much about not earning a merit. Nor even that you were the only among our cohort to receive one. Ah – I do care you got it for your own sake. Genuinely. Do excuse me: the hangover is rendering me babbling and incoherent.”

  The transcription papers for the results were posted around the fountain and many of us had gathered, chatting, drinking, eating, hand-holding, reassuring, commemorating, commiserating, all hanging on for the stroke of midnight when the text of the results would become visible. A curious sound rippled through the crowd as they appeared, not quite a cheer nor a sigh of relief nor a wail of having to come back and try again next year. A fascinating combination: a cry of ‘our lives have changed in this moment; the world has shown what path we will tread’. Customarily, many of them proceeded to get drunk at a speed that would embarrass a tavern of Dreadfallers. Customarily, I headed to my room and tried to sleep and did a pretty poor job of it.

  Was it the promised safety of another few months here? Partly, but for the first time in my life, I’d been vindicated in my existence. I could be something different. I was good at being something different. An entire town could degrade and deride through my whole childhood and adolescence, but down by the fountain was a piece of paper that told me better. And apparently that’s all I needed to spend the night mostly awake and feeling it over in a way that I greeted the morning light pretty sorely dehydrated.

  I’d told Grove and Holly, and I’d sought out Kaspar – dehydrated similarly, mechanically distinctly. And when he told me I’d pronounced vindicated wrong, he did it with a smile and knocked me in the shoulder, then pulled me in for an embrace. A friendly hug, nothing more, but that was all I needed.

  “Do you want me to pay your next semester for you?” was his next question and it made my bones itch. “Consider it a scholarship of sorts from the Bank of Avernas.”

  “...Can I have some time to think it over?” The snowflakes were so lovely right now. Didn’t want to besmirch them with questions of coin.

  “Of course,” he said. “But, uh, do bear in mind: really it’s the money of my family name. I haven’t exactly laboured to earn it. The duke and duchess would abhor the idea of someone of your echelon becoming successful, especially on their funding, so do take advantage of the opportunity to do exactly that. The sweet irony of my parents’ ignorance of it all would please me greatly.”

  I turned my head. “Oh? Don’t you want me to be successful?”

  “I want for you whatever you want for yourself,” he said with a glimmer of a smile. “My head aches like a woodpecker got stuck inside and bored of waiting for the exit to reopen. You’ve told me how they drink in your town – have you garnered any cures in your time there?”

  “In Dreadfall? Shout loud or pick a fight to drown out the torment inside.”

  “Respectfully to your renounced culture, I’d rather not.” He groaned and levered himself up by the bedpost. “You know, I met a girl last night by the fountain, and I think we got on well.”

  I leaned in over the chair. “What’s she like?”

  “Not as pretty as you, don’t worry,” he said, a little sideways. “We got along rather naturally, and I recall her hoping she’d see me again. If we do, I’ll tell her upfront what she ought to know about me.” Kaspar examined me blankly for a few moments. “...Do I have your blessing?”

  “To get involved with her? Of course, but why would you need it?”

  He shrugged lightly. “Just thought I’d ask. I trust your judgements of me, and moving into the next semester, I do want to show that to you.”

  *

  On Frostfest, I’d been woken by a blast of cold air from the balcony as Grove returned from watching the first light of the solstice. “My family and I used to climb to the top of one of the nearby hills to watch it every year, but I got a letter saying not to arrange plans as my grandma wouldn’t be able to go right now,” they said. “I didn’t want to miss it. Sorry for waking you.”

  “It’s alright, and I hope she gets better soon,” I said and I realised I really meant it. I was awake and responsive, even if my tail and one and a half legs weren’t yet. “And I hope she knows how much you talk about her. It’d mean a lot. Are you getting to see her soon?”

  They nodded brightly. “We always have a big feast in the afternoon and we invite the assistants from our emporium too. You can come along if you’d like, though it’s a fair coach ride.”

  “I would but I’ve got a guy down in Baronbridge who’s nabbed me already,” I said.

  “Ooh, a date?” they asked.

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  *

  Ostensibly we were here because Robin needed to pick some of the flowers every once in a while, but as the snows gave way to a verdant grass and the drystone walls wrapped around, he meandered over to the freshest patch of ground. “Miracles of stardust,” he said, and his voice echoed. I joined him. No one else was here, of course. Why would there be? Just us two, staring at the dirt. Wouldn’t have it any other way. “You don’t seem to be feeling as bad about it now.”

  “I’m… managing. Kicks like a mule when I least expect it, but it won’t last forever – I know that much.” I stared at the dirt some more. “They said awful things to me when I first joined. The muncher one was one guy’s favourite. Bet you’ve heard that one a few times, huh, Robin?” Nothing stirred in the dirt. Didn’t know if I wished it would or it wouldn’t. “Shame it isn’t accurate. If it was, Omen would be having a feast down there better than any of us up here today.”

  “Your jokes about it don’t sound as bitter as they did before.”

  “Not much you can do about it but keep trying to live the best you can,” I said. “Keep being a miracle of stardust while you’re afforded the chance.”

  While I monitored the dirt – still unmoving, yet – Robin wandered away for a few minutes. Came back with a hand spilling over with forget-me-nots. “That’s what grows only here?” I ran a gentle fingertip across the petals. “Fitting, huh. What are they useful for?”

  “Nothing I know of. But sometimes people come in and take them to put on cakes or salads or things.”

  “Huh. Alright.”

  “I thought that too at first. But then why does everything have to be useful all the time? Maybe making something around a bit nicer is enough?”

  I slipped one out of his fingers, knelt on the ground, and carefully dusted it into a patch of the fresh dirt so its small blooms glittered out from the soil. “I think you’re right,” I said as I stood.

  We both watched the dirt a bit longer but it seemed shy today. Perhaps another day. I had a lot of things I still wanted to say to him, but now I had more days I could come back and say it. It wasn’t much of a second chance, but there were no invisible time limits on this one. And my days were a privilege I’d make the most of. “Did you love him?” Robin asked in that never-any-preamble way of his.

  “...I don’t know. Honestly at the time, I would’ve said yes. Later, no. There’s a lot of different kinds of love – more than we have words for in our language.”

  “Oh. So did you feel any of those for him?”

  “Probably. But I’ve felt them for other people too. I think it’s not what you love or how you love, but what you do with the love that you've got. What you do with any of your emotions. Your fear too. Do you use them to make something? To create? To help? Or do you use them to destroy and to hurt?”

  He shuffled on the dirt. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Give up, mostly. I’m giving up on the things that don’t help me. I’m focusing on my studies and I’m seeing you when I can. I think I’ll let Kaspar pay my fees because he’s my friend and he’s asked, and we’re happy being friends. I’m giving up on trying to do everything, and only doing what I can.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “That Kaspar’s... I saw him when I came looking for you. I can see what he'd do for someone. He's...” Robin filled in with an insinuating smile and I knew exactly what he meant.

  “He is. And he deserves someone, but that someone isn’t me. I’ve got you and I want you.”

  He shuffled again, closer to me. Robin brushing against my side was all I needed. “Are you ever gonna go back to your parents to tell them all the cool stuff you’ve done?”

  “...Honestly? I was so close to sending a messenger to tell them I’d died on the war front. Unpleasant, yeah, but a clean end to the tension. A clean end sounded so good. But then with Omen…” I sighed dryly and stared down. “I can’t do that to them. Not anymore. Really, I don’t think about them at all, and they’re probably fine and happy without me. Not that I was a pain to them, just that… We have very different ideas of what we want from the world. They seem happy drinking their lives away, cheering over the good old days, not thinking about the future. And I’m happy not seeing that. I don’t wanna distress them any more. Between me and my brother, they’ve been through enough.”

  I wasn’t going to bother about the couple of tears in my eyes but Robin offered a handkerchief and I couldn’t refuse it. “You care a lot about stuff. Even about stuff you really shouldn’t care about. Do you think they’d accept you for who you are?”

  “I’m not gonna concern myself with that problem right now,” I said as I dabbed. “Not till I’ve worked on accepting my own self for who I am. Then I can think about dealing with my parents.” I expected a response, didn’t get one, and when I looked at him he returned an amused grin. “What?”

  “Did you really just say that? I won’t concern myself with that problem right now. I’ve never heard you say anything like that before.”

  “People can change,” I offered with mock indignation. “Speaking of… I’ve been thinking about what you said about the face tinting and the nail painting. While I’m off classes for the deepfrost break, I think I’d like you to paint a couple of my claws. If you’re okay with that?”

  His face illuminated. “Really? What colour?”

  “Whatever you think would suit me best. I’m giving up on controlling that too. And I trust you. More than anyone I’ve ever known.” I tried to slip my hand subtly into his, ended up making him drop a dozen forget-me-nots. I apologised and picked them up and instilled them back into his hand, slid around him to hold his other.

  Robin lent his head gently on my shoulder. “Oh, I stole that phrase, by the way,” he said. “I had a neighbour who could read when I was small. She’s not here anymore either. When she was, she talked about the things she’d read and how I reminded her of a character. She told me the book title and I remembered it.”

  So that’s why it had sounded familiar. “...You don’t happen to remember what it was about, do you?”

  “I wasn’t told and I couldn’t read it even if I found it, so there’s no point in me going to a bookshop and asking the bookkeeper if they have it.”

  I blinked blankly at him. “A what?”

  “A bookkeeper. They keep books. My neighbour also said it’s the only word with three –”

  “No, sorry, a bookshop? They sell those things?”

  It was Robin’s turn to wear the bewildered expression. “Where did you think people got them?”

  “I thought they…” The Institute would likely bar me from their libraries if I admitted my first thought aloud, and they’d want to kick me straight out if I owned up to the second. I shook my head out. “If you show me where one is, I’ll buy the book and read it to you.”

  *

  We found the lone bookshop still open on Frostfest, Robin found a bemused assistant sequestered in the aisle, they in turn found the title, and I found enough rounds to cover the cost. One frantic walk through a thicket of market that’d sprung up overnight and attracted a murmuration of market-goers – I think that’s the group noun – and we were back at Robin’s apartment. I recalled the cover, one I hadn’t seen for so many years, its last appearance coinciding neatly with the advent of one of Dreadfall’s coldest deepfrosts. Together we lifted the cover and huddled over the pages, barely finishing a chapter over the afternoon. Reading so slowly. Slow enough that our entwined fingers could brush over each individual word as I read it aloud, so Robin could start to learn. I had a few weeks to myself now, and I knew how I wanted to use them. Each page was a journey, and this close to him, I couldn’t help but wonder all the other journeys I could take with Robin at my side.

  *

  I sliced another potato with my hunting knife, dipped it through the herbs, and set it to sizzle. Best use the blade could have, honestly. We sat around the Ooh, Holly and Grove and me, and while we speared morsels to chew on, Grove showed the progress on their book. “It’s more a reference codex, really. I can see it being an invaluable resource to me through my life and everything I want to make in my part of the family business. Now I’ve got a few weeks of spare time, I’ll be able to add a lot more in from my piles of note papers. These glyphs were done yesterday , so that’s where I’ve got to so far. I’d like to alphabetise it for easy reference eventually but I’m unsure how to do that within this. I think I’d have to be able to add pages in or move them around.] It hummed with a latent energy as they leafed back through. “This one’s my favourite right now. It can’t create a cooling effect nor determine its physical scope, but it can enhance one within its boundaries. If you could figure out the correct balance of ligatures to sustain a phlogiston flow, you could combine many of them to create a region of regulated cold.”

  “Like an Ooh to put in the room of anyone you really don’t like,” said Holly.

  “What would it be used for?” I asked.

  “You’d no longer need ice to keep an ice box cool, nor store the food in the ground, and since it draws directly from the worldwell, you wouldn’t have to maintain it either. Frozen meats or vegetables could be stored reliably. Or imagine a baking hot verdance where you could pull ice-cold drinks from a box in your kitchen whenever you liked, or carriage if you were travelling. I see a market for it.”

  “...Or, ya could buy a cold box and an Ooh, sit one inside the other, hit all the glyphs, and see which one wins.” Grove gave Holly a withering look the magnitude of which my harshest professors would be humbled by. “The customer’s always right, so I’ve heard.” She beamed.

  “Amazing how fate could be so cruel to you with your hearing, and as cruel to the rest of us that you can somehow keep hearing everything you need for all your bad ideas.”

  “Hey!” She jabbed at another potato. “Be imaginative! If you upgraded the cold stuff in a few years, you could show off its new power by having, like, five Oohs turned on inside and it can still keep the whole thing cold. And then you could upgrade the Oohs and show the potential by it heating up the place against the…” The skewer poked thoughtfully into the air. “Best I’ve got is the Brr. Hm. Leafy, any ideas?”

  I shook my head and swallowed. “I’ll think about it if you can manage to make anything colder than Kaspar’s heart,” I said. “Nah, that’s not fair. Sorry. He’s been nice lately. The Brr sounds perfect to me,” I said clearly. “Fits well with the Ooh.”

  “Then the Brr it shall be,” Grove declared. “Though I think making one would likely be a job for when it gets warm outside.”

  “I probably won’t be here by then,” said Holly. “Crazy to think how quick it’s gone. Five semesters down, one left. I wonder how my professors will cope without me. They all adore me. I pictured myself leaving on some grand adventure to wherever I need to be, but I still don’t know where that is. Somewhere I can figure out where in the world to start with the healing magic – if it’s even possible. My professors say it’s likely not, but hey, if one day I can’t hear the people telling me to invest myself in something else with more chance of success, then they can’t stand in my way, right?” she said brightly. “I’d love to even do the tiniest thing for it, to prove it’s possible, but right now I really don’t know. I don’t care if I’m an alum, I swear to goodness with Clover and Willow’s help we’ve scoured every shelf of every library here a hundred times over and not found a single obvious starting point.”

  “I found a place,” I said before the weight of it had registered, “high up in the woods. I heard they tried stuff like that up there. But it’s a little weird.”

  Two sets of eyes fixed on me. “So that’s where ya’ve been running off to?”

  “It’s, uh, all in ruins now. So…”

  “Why did ya smash it up?”

  “It was like that when I got there!” I laughed. Didn’t shake the deep discomfort of opening up and the surge of spilling my sanctuary out to the world. “But it has to stay secret between us three. A proper secret, Holly. Swear it on something important to you.”

  I’d expected her to pick a really good cake baker or theatre performer or something, knowing Holly, so when she said, “I swear it on your trust in me, Leafy,” all the discomfort flooded away. She had this way of flipping between joking and being absolutely genuine, and right now she sounded as heartfelt as I’d ever known. “Whatever it is, if you think it might help, you don’t have to tell me anything else ever again if I let it slip. I promise.”

  So I told her. And Grove sat and listened to while I opened up, and neither of them needed to know it was the first time I’d felt I had friends, real friends, in many long years. People I could trust without worrying. People who’d listen to me without judgement or without my aching nag of feeling like they’d really wanna be anywhere else in the world than here next to me. And Holly said when the snows thawed a bit and it was, in her words, Clearlander-safe, not just for people like me, people who knew what they were doing, she’d love to come along and see the place. Grove said they would too. And I realised the surge in my heart wasn’t the dread or aversion or panic or loathing for the idea I would’ve felt before, but excitement. A future joy to look forward to. Something I could share with my friends. “I dunno how much it could help, but you’re welcome to have everything I know if you might get somewhere with it. Maybe there’s other similar places around the Valley too. We could try finding them one day.” And Holly smiled and thanked me, and offered me a really nice slice of potato that’d crisped up perfectly.

  “So now you know you’re staying,” said Grove, “what are you going to do?”

  “Whatever in the hells I want,” I said. “Pick my battles and leave the rest. Let my life be easier. I don’t need to fight everything to be strong. I learned that. Or really someone much smarter than me told me it and I ignored it until I didn’t have a choice anymore. But apparently I’m good at… this.” I gestured vaguely around at the place, the room, the Institute, and everything I’d done here. “For the first time in my life, I’ve found something I’m good at. I’ve found somewhere I can belong. So what am I gonna do, Grove? Only what I want. I’m no longer running from what I don’t want.” And it really did feel like that. Like I’d stopped running and found somewhere I could rest. The war may rage on not far away, but I couldn’t do anything about that – only stick to what I could do. People may come and go from my life and I’d try to keep the best ones but I could only do so much. Step by step, stone by stone, I’d make something for myself. A house I could live in. The house of my life. And at least for now, at least here, at least for a while, I’d finally found some peace.