"Good morning, Llana!" the ponytailed beauty began her day by once more cheerfully offering a deep bow towards Llana as she entered the cabin. She looked almost radiant under the morning frost, her voice bouncing with earnest charm.

  The grumpy Llana, however, did little more than send back a curt nod in response. Her attention quickly returning to the ledger below her as she sat perched over the windowsill of the cabin. The shine in the girl's eyes appeared to dim faintly in response. However, she was quick to gather herself again, the bright smile returning to her face as she made her way through the doorway and out of sight.

  Roan watched from the field behind the cabin, his hands loosely grasped around the wooden pole he swung in the air ahead of him.

  Couldn't she have at least said "hi"...?

  He pondered as he took another swing. This time however, he threw his weight too far forwards. His feet were quick to slip below him, planting him face-first into the snow below with a grunt.

  "MMPH MMFFF"

  A puff of white escaped the mound of snow he found his head buried in as he struggled to pull his head back into the open air.

  "Distracted by princess beauty again, huh?" A mischievous voice was the first to greet his ears as they returned to the exterior.

  Roan popped his head up, his cheeks flushed as he turned around. "N-no. I'm just not used to practicing in this snow."

  Arton leaned on his training stick, appearing impressed. "Not used to the snow? Wow, I didn't know that was possible for someone who's lived with it for, what, sixteen years?"

  Roan pushed himself upright, brushing the frost off his shoulders. "I meant this snow. It's different from the old training field. I still don't get why Llana forced us to back over here. i was just fine training where goddesses fell from the sky."

  "Roan! Arton! Stop talking and get back to training!" Tetsu's voice bellowed from behind the pair, not missing a beat as he continued to swing his wooden pole ahead of him in precise, measured repetitions. "I'm sure we're already weeks behind the other Detas in terms of training time alone!"

  "Yes sir!" Arton was quick to call back to him with exaggerated vigor, hardly stopping himself from throwing a salute in his direction as he did so.

  "That training freak... He only opens his mouth to say 'Do more training!' or 'Why aren't you training? Let's do training!' Bleh.." Roan grumbled his breath as he attempted, quite poorly, to mimic the giant's voice.

  "You know what I think?" Arton suddenly asked, his gaze trailing up towards the cabin window, where Llana was hurriedly scribbling something down in her notebook.

  "Huh?"

  "About why we changed training spots."

  Roan blinked. "What-"

  "I think Llana doesn't buy your Princess Beauty's story about losing her memories," Arton continued unimpeded, his eyes narrowing as he spoke. "And if that really is the case, why lie unless you're hiding something? Something big?"

  Roan swallowed. "Like... what?"

  Arton paused for effect, his hand rising to his chin dramatically before his next words. "An invasion, maybe?"

  "Invasion!?" Roan yelped, nearly slipping again on the snow.

  "Quiet down, headass." Arton hissed, smacking Roan's shoulder. Roan followed his glance to see Llana peeking silently over her ledger, her eyes briefly meeting his. She looked back just as quick, but the damage was already done.

  "What do you mean invasion?" Roan asked again, his tone hushed and voice now edged with panic.

  "A scout." Arton replied quickly. "Someone sent to infiltrate enemy lines, check what we're made of."

  Roan's breath caught, the air suddenly feeling much colder against his skin. He quickly looked towards the garden, spotting Chase at it's distant gates --she smiled softly, her hands gently brushing over a plant's leaves as she watered it.

  Arton snorted. "Hey, don't get distracted by her appearance man. That's exactly what they want sending someone like her. Get everyone's guard down, and then when you least expect it --boom, she disappears, information gathered."

  Roan flinched. "Wait, how'd you--?"

  "You're drooling..." Arton said, his face deadpan. "Creep."

  Roan yanked his sleeve to his chin, wiping furiously.

  "Yikes," Arton added, recoiling in mock disgust. "Maybe she's the one who needs to worry about being attacked..."

  "Chase wouldn't do something like that." Roan ignored his last remark as he retorted.

  As if on cue, Llana suddenly looked up from her ledger in a far less masked motion. Strangely, her eyes trailed directly toward Roan once again, her lips curving into a smile as she met his eyes.

  Roan froze. A real, genuine smile. From Llana?? There was no way. She must be trying to send some kind of signal. Had she heard their conversation?

  No way. Arton was right. She's a foreign spy. I've doomed the village--

  - Wap -

  With a sudden, metallic weight, an open palm fell onto Roan's shoulder and cinched quickly around his collar. Before he could find the time to yelp, he was yanked upward like a sack of flour. Beside him, he noticed Arton in the same position, his arms folded as an irritated look crossed his face.

  "I thought I told you two to get back to practice," Tetsu growled, hoisting them in the air with pressured grips.

  Llana's laughter echoed loudly from the cabin window as Roan realized too late the true reason behind her smile.

  "Not this again! -Let...ugh...me...down!" Roan flailed, kicking the leftover snow on his boots into the air.

  "Yeah yeah, we get it already. One-hundred and fifty swings, we'll do it now. But we can't do much of anything from up here." Arton added in favor of Roan's sentiment, though he hung far more peacefully from his collar beside him. "Let's not be dramatic."

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Tetsu's face contorted faintly at Arton's words. "One-hundred and fifty? Is that what I said?" A furious smile was plastered on his face as he continued. "I'm not sure. I'm thinking now that I should be a little more dramatic. How about three-hundred? That sounds dramatic enough."

  "What!? There's no way that's fair! I'm sorry, okay! I'll go back to it right now! I swear! Just go back to One-Hundred and Fifty." Roan pleaded as panic overtook him.

  "Yeah... Please." Arton sighed, relenting.

  "Starting now." Tetsu said sternly, immediately releasing the boys from his grip like discarded fruit peels. As Roan found his face planted once more into the snow below, Tetsu turned back without another word, moving back toward Rafal who gripped his pole cautiously --as if a fisherman who'd accidentally caught a sea monster.

  "It should be the eldest's job to be in charge. Why is he the group head?" Roan scowled as he brushed the snow from his attire once again.

  "Maybe the old man took one look at the height difference and figured, 'Yep, definitely not him'" Arton mused from beside him as he hunched over to pick up his training stick.

  "I am! Elder Souan must've been tricked by him somehow. I'm sure of it." Roan scoffed, but his eyes remained glued on Tetsu who corrected Rafal's posture with precise instructions. Roan listened in, quietly adjusting his own as he did so.

  "Damn him," he muttered. "Why does he have to be so good at this..."

  "Heh." Arton let out a quiet chuckle from behind him as he too began to swing his stick.

  ______________________________________________________________________________

  The shed door scratched unceremoniously against the already scraped floorboards of the shed as Chase stepped inside. The familiar aroma of dried herbs and crisp morning air met her in the interior as she offered her usual smile, bright but slightly measured.

  “Good morning, Llana.”

  Her voice carried the same polite lilt it always did—hopeful, maybe—but not overeager she hoped. It was the third morning in a row she'd said the words in exactly that way. And the third morning in a row that she was met with nothing more than a brief nod from the woman perched over the windowsill ahead of her.

  Llana didn’t look up from her ledger, her ink-stained fingers moving methodically across the page.

  Chase felt her smile falter, just for a second. But she quickly restored her exuberance.

  She knelt at the doorway, her fingers loosening the ties of her softer soled house shoes before slipping into her work boots. The leather was cold, and stiff where it hadn’t yet softened to her stride. As she straightened back up, her eyes flicked sideways—just in time to catch it again.

  Llana’s right eye, always more narrow than the left, twitched slightly open. Not enough to be obvious but just enough to send a measured glance at her forehead.

  Chase didn't say anything. She never did. But she'd caught it too many times now to believe it was accidental.

  She turned away, pretending not to notice.

  Why did she keep looking at her like that? Was she really that strange? Did Llana think she was unnatural? Some kind of monster? Ever since what had happened with the child, she hadn't looked at her the same.

  Chase’s hand brushed against the doorframe as she stepped through into the garden, letting her touch linger for an extra second. When she finally glanced back over her shoulder, Llana was already hunched over again, eyes buried in the battered ledger she had poured more and more of her day into over the past week.

  Chase paused, standing just beyond the threshold before swallowing her disappointment and walking forward into another day of work.

  The garden soil still held a light frost from the night before, clinging in pale rings around the roots of the herbs. Chase knelt beside a row of budding korlans, her hands already dusted in dirt. She reached carefully into the soil, fingertips testing the looseness of it, before beginning her work.

  It had been a full week now since the incident.

  A week since she’d woken up in an unfamiliar bed, one far removed from Llana's shed. Usra’s house was a place she hadn’t entered before the incident, but where she’d woken up afterwards all the same—disoriented, aching, and alone.

  Llana hadn’t been there.

  She hadn’t come to see her, or check on her. In fact, she hadn’t said anything about the two days Chase had spent unconscious. Not the day she returned to the shed. Not the day after. Not any of them.

  Now she lived in the village. With Usra, for the time being, though the Village Chief had already made plans for more. He'd offered her a cabin—her own, tucked near the base of the trees where the woods began to curl in behind the outer homes of the village. She didn’t know why he’d insisted on it being built so quickly, but the sound of sawing wood had started by the very next morning. He said it was a gift --a necessity for someone of her new 'stature'.

  She'd nearly forgotten the offer he made her the day she'd woken up. To become another 'healer' of the village, working alongside Llana to take care of Eiat Deta's residents. She was excited by the prospect at the time, but her optimism had quickly dwindled upon reuniting with her new mentor made colleague.

  The Chief had also promised her a stipend. One-hundred and fifty denar a month. Chase had nodded along, pretending she understood what that meant. Though she cared little for whatever number could've left the man's mouth. His tone certainly made it seem generous.

  It wasn’t as though she had many choices. The shed was no longer an option—Llana made that clear with her silence, and even clearer with the way her eyes refused to meet hers now. She still allowed her to work in the garden, still permitted her inside, still answered her questions. But she suspected it had more to do with her new position than Llana's own will.

  There was something colder in the way she held herself now. Not outright malice—just distance. Like a line had been drawn when Chase was sleeping, and she woke up on the wrong side of it.

  She tried not to let it bother her. But it did.

  Even the boys looked at her differently now. She could've been imagining it, but their eyes always appeared to linger a little too long, like they were always trying to figure her out. She used to think little of the laughter she heard from behind the shed. But now every faint chuckle which sounded from the field felt like another insult she wasn't close enough to hear.

  Chase pressed her hands deeper into the soil and let out a quiet breath. She took out her notebook with her other hand before opening it to a white page soiled by spots of brown muck. She removed her gloves to scribble something down within it before returning it back to her sash.

  She’d caught a brief flicker of something on Llana’s face the day she accepted the Chief’s offer. Surprise, maybe. Or disappointment. But if Llana disapproved, she hadn’t said anything outright. Only gave a tight nod and turned back to her work like usual.

  Chase had wondered, briefly, if it was because she’d accepted the stipend. Or the cabin. Or the title. She would've refused any of them if Llana had asked, but she hadn't.

  And besides… wasn’t Llana the one who didn’t want her around in the first place?

  Still, the feeling lingered --that she’d done something wrong without realizing it. Like she was somehow crossing a line she couldn’t see.

  She reached for a dull-bladed trowel at the edge of the plot, trying to shake the thought, but it followed her like smoke.

  The Village Chief had never looked at her the way Llana did. Neither had Usra. They had questions, sure, but their eyes didn’t weigh her down. They didn’t flinch when she entered the room or speak to her like each word might be a trap.

  It was only Llana.

  Always watching. Always cautious. Always silent.

  Chase pressed the blade into the soil, careful not to nick the roots of the bellfruit she was tending. She wondered, not for the first time, what Llana saw when she looked at her. Did she think Chase had lied? That she was hiding something? Or was it something more instinctive—like the way people flinched from fire even before they felt the heat?

  A sudden laugh broke the quiet.

  Chase looked up from the garden bed, blinking toward the far side of the shed.

  Through the wooden slats of the garden gate, she spotted them again—the boys, training in the usual spot just beyond the cabin. Arton was suspended just above the snow. Roan flailed wildly beside him, his boots on the verge of flying off his feet as he tried to regain control of his body. And towering over them both was Tetsu, one massive hand wrapped around the back of each of their collars as they hung from his grip like overripe red-bulb fruits.

  Llana’s laugh rang out again, drifting through the window above Chase’s head. It was the first sound she’d made all morning that wasn’t a sigh.

  They came out there almost every day. Always just before noon. But strangely quiet about it, like no one was supposed to know they were there, though no one ever said much about it. Chase had never been told to stay away—but their training was something she felt she wasn’t meant to disturb.

  She watched them for a while. Tetsu had already dropped the other two boys in the snow and returned to Rafal's side. The stick in the little boy's hands looked too small for his size—like it would snap under the weight of him.

  Twelve.

  That was what Usra had said.

  Fifteen. Sixteen

  She looked to Arton then Roan. They couldn’t be much older or younger. All just boys, really.

  Fifteen...

  She noted, looking at Tetsu now. That was the only one she found too hard to believe.

  But something that bothered her more as she looked down to her own hands.

  She had no idea how old she was.