hUes –of– h a z e l: —laughs— I just stared at the screen and thought 'he can't possibly be serious'.
Shadow's Rage: Not so much 'love/hate' as 'mutual antagonism'. I suppose I was having to much fun with that chapter to think that others might not approve or be as delighted. Sorry. Too much buildup? I'm glad you liked it, though.
Starlight's Delight: wow. Lots of reviews all at once. I'll just hit the highlights, shall I? 1) Hope you're feeling better. Being sick sucks. (I went image hunting on Google. I never noticed the coloring of him before. Huh.) Xan will be making reappearances, but not as a regular. Yet, anyway. We'll see. 2) Putty's quest drove me nuts. No rhyme or reason. But dang, that Lilipea walked slow! 3) Wow. Lots of enthusiasm there. n,.,n! Thanks.
Lady Icicle: You're welcome. Thanks for reviewing!
Tiamat42: Mindblock sucks. I agree on the Elle and Pearl comment, but they do find themselves a couple of spines by the end of the game, which is nice. —laughs sheepishly— Ah, yeah, I probably did go a tad overboard with Rei's temper explosion. But such is Rei. As for you last comment about Escad? That sounds about right. n,.,n
Echidna:Thank you!
VrtraHex: It is hard sometimes. I hope you and everyone else continues bearing with me during those bare-bones chapters. (Is it a bad thing when you start dreaming Ookami?)
Merry Christmas/Kwanza/Chanukah/(insert holiday of choice here)! Stay safe, hope you get what you wanted (within reason) and for those of us in retail, enjoy the brief, blissful moments of quiet before Returns Day.
———————
Time kept going; soon the first layers of snow lay on the ground and blanketed the bare branches of Haven Tree Cottage. Bud and Lisa were very happy that their teacher had thought to get them new, wool clothing. The years they'd spent in the desert-city Geo had made them unaccustomed to things like snow—"I do not like freezing my ears off!" was how Bud put it. "Who in the Goddess' name invented something as useless as snow??"
"The Goddess, Bud," was Rei's calm reply. She'd been making her students a little worried with how quiet she'd gotten the past few days. Bud couldn't even get her to smile. Her latest adventure hadn't helped much either; she'd gone to find the Diggers' religious leader, the dog Putty, by checking the pirate ship belonging to Captain Tusk. When she'd found the dog hiding in a barrel in a far corner of the lowest deck of the hold, he'd raced off to jump overboard and had washed up in Polpota Harbor. Roger hadn't even said thank you when she'd led him straight to Putty.
Finally, though, a week before Winter Solstice, Rei left her students to do their chores and went down the road towards Domina at an uncharacteristic, sedate walk. Her hair-pipes were hidden beneath her cloak's hood and a cloth-wrapped bundle was carried safely in the crook of her arm. The second she was out of sight, Bud put down his broom (he'd been sweeping snow off the front walk, not needing to worry about the Sproutling that was asleep in the barn) and went around to the orchard to talk to Trent.
Despite the cold, Trent was only drowsing rather than asleep and was able to rouse himself when the Elven youth strode into view. "Why is Rei so quiet?" Bud demanded when he got within a few feet of the old tree. "She hasn't yelled, swore, smiled or laughed in more than four days!"
"Is it the nineteenth of Snow Moon yet?" yawned Trent, rustling his bare branches in a tree's stretch. When Bud nodded in confirmation, Trent sighed. "Then it's the anniversary of the day her parents didn't come home. She's gone, right?" Another nod. "She's off to meet Xan at the cemetery. You won't see her or Xan 'til sunrise tomorrow. They'll come home and act as though nothing is wrong; they'll even forget for a little while during the celebration at Solstice. But Rei won't smile for another few days at least."
Bud scowled; he worked hard to make her smile, damn it.
———
Rei sighed when she reached the graveyard where all of Domina's residents went to their rest. The winter season made it dark and bleak, with thin caps of snow covering the headstones and turning the grass and flowers withered. Out of habit, she avoided the middle of the grounds, where a massive headstone crowned with a stone ram's skull sat in a circle of grass that was dead all year 'round.
Xan wasn't here yet so Rei got to work without him. She pulled a small scrub brush from the cloth bundle she'd been carrying and attacked the moss and lichen that had been trying to grow on her family's tombstone. The cloak was draped across a nearby marble bench by the time the Venstry stone gleamed as much as weathered marble could.
The knife-fighter wiped sweat off her forehead and pulled her cloak back on as she looked around her, concern furrowing itself above her eyebrows and turning emerald eyes dark. Where was Xan? He was normally here within a few hours of dawn, and here it was approaching noon with no sign of her brother. So she kept her head up, scanning constantly for him as her hands kept moving in a pattern of long habit. Sticks of her mother's favorite incense were lit and placed in the small holders, soapstone carvings of her father's particular favorite foods that had been created painstakingly over the past year were set on either side of the incense.
Which left her nothing to do, afterwards, but sit on the aforementioned bench and wait for Xan. It was his turn this year to bring their father's preferred incense and mother's food offerings, as well as his task to create the snow-flowers that were going to be placed on the grave. Rei's talents lay in warding and physical crafting, not the delicate spells that let someone make snow into equally-delicate, beautiful flowers that would last for weeks. For all the massive weaponry Xan preferred, his magics tended to follow the path of their father's, mage and artisan that he'd been.
As she waited, glad of her heavy winter cloak, Rei's eyes were caught by a wisp of something that traveled slowly over the white ground of the graveyard. It was heading with obvious reluctance towards that unnerving giant stone, a blue flicker against the grays and whites.
A spirit? Rei wondered to herself, rising and following the wisp several feet back. But it's broad daylight, it shouldn't be out like this… The spirit touched the stone and vanished.
Her foot came down on the edge of the always-dead grass, and a rumbling voice cried from empty air, "Warrior! I shall test your strength!"
There was a bright flash that spiked in Rei's head, then nothing.
———
The next thing Rei knew was that the air around her was warmer than it had any right to be. After that registered, the pounding of her head began making itself known, only to fade as she sat up and groaned, "Did anybody get the name of that Du'Inke? Damn thing stepped on me."
"So you've awakened, then," came that rumbling voice again, not nearly so loud as the first time she'd heard it. Rei cracked her eyes open and looked; a yard or two away, there stood a wolf-like man in polished red armor, his muzzle's upper lip folded up into a half-smile. Behind him was glittering stone, all around was stone, never touched by the hand of mortals. Nearby on Rei's right there was a strange creature floating above a fire set into a natural chimney; it saw her looking at it and gave her a wink. "I am Larc, dragoon to Drakonis."
And it was all familiar to her in that strange way that the Tower of Leires had been.
"That doesn't tell me as much as you think it might," Rei grumbled, getting to her feet and dusting herself off. Her cloak was nowhere in sight, so she assumed it had been left back in the graveyard when the wolfish Larc had jumped her. "What's going on?"
"I brought you down into the Underworld because I thought you a powerful warrior," Larc explained in that rough voice of his. "If you want to know more, you should come down below with me."
"I don't suppose I have much of a choice unless I want to try to smack answers out of you."
That won her a slightly bigger smile. "Not really. And I'm not so easily beaten."
"So be it." Rei checked her blades: those were still there, as well as a panpipe flute that she'd made recently, and all were undamaged. "I might as well go with you, then."
Larc gave her an unexpected courtly bow that made his armor creak. "We shall descend into the depths. Go at your own pace, and I shall follow."
"I don't even get directions," Rei grumbled in complaint, but she went forward, heading for the door-shaped hole in the wall that Larc had been standing in front of. "All part of the test, I assume."
"Something like that," agreed her new companion.
"Just so you know, my brother's not going to be happy with you at all." Rei told Larc as their feet carried them down into the heart of the Underworld. "You have very bad timing."
"And fewer opportunities to find worthy candidates," was Larc's unperturbed reply. The knife-fighter scowled but didn't continue trying to bait the dragoon.
The hole—Rei could hardly call something that roughly made a doorway—led into a tiny bubble of a room, which had a crack on the far side large enough for even Larc's bulky frame that let misty purple light spread onto the floor. The knife-fighter strode on through, pausing at the sight of two more of the same creature she'd seen hovering a moment ago over flames drifting in an aimless fashion near the top of wide, shallow steps that led down.
"What are you?" she asked the nearest of the twain, its body candy-cane-striped in pink and white.
It replied in a sing-song voice, "We're Shadoles!"
That left Rei gazing in outright fascination: so these were the creations of the previous lord of the Underworld? She didn't remember off the top of her head which history book in her library had told her about them or the specific details of who had made them, but back before the war that had left the Mana Tree burnt to ashes, a Faerie had been lord here and had made himself servants, calling them Shadoles.
Take a rounded hourglass-shape, add stubby arms and legs, and stick on a head-growth to match the foot-long tapering tail. Paint them like candy-canes, some color always alternating with white stripes. Round eyes and mouths with no lips were practically the only way to tell them heads-from-tails. These were the Shadoles, guides to the dead and now the wise-cracking henchmen of the current lord of the Underworld, the ex-general and Wisdom, Olbohn.
Bud was going to flip out when she brought him down here to meet his fifth Wisdom.
The second Shadole let out a cackle and pointed at the red-clad dragoon behind Rei. "Hey, newly-dead! Watch out for that guy!" And it cackled again.
"Chyeah, no kidding," Rei told it as she passed, following the steps ever downwards until they bottomed out into a larger chamber. There was one crack/doorway leading into more purplish light, but a second one on Rei's left shone with golden mist. Rei found her feet carrying her straight for that second opening without so much as a by-your-leave. Behind her Larc made a pleased sound and trailed into the new room on her heels.
Inside was a room the size of her cottage, with thin ribbons of brown stone leading around the stalagmite-thick walls to an opening that slowly bubbled different colors of flame towards a hole in the ceiling. Two Shadoles patrolled here as well, with one at the bottom of the steps and one waiting by the opening leading into Goddess-knew-where.
Larc took the lead now, guiding Rei up the steps to the second Shadole. "I need you to pour some flames over my new friend here…" he began coaxingly, only to have the Shadole interrupt.
"No way, Jose!" it told him flatly. "Ain't nobody gonna receive no Baptism of Flame without Olbohn's permission!" And it proceeded to boot him and Rei out of the chamber.
Larc dusted off his armor and shot a look at Rei, daring her to so much as snicker. But the knife-fighter was too busy putting her hair-ornaments back to rights so she completely missed the look. Clearing his throat, the wolf-kin dragoon said after a moment or two, "I suppose we'd better go see Olbohn."
"Mm-hm," was Rei's distracted reply. She was trying to think how she'd break it to Bud that adventure had found her again, this time definitely 'nil she', and how she should convince him to brave the graveyard in order to see the Wisdom. Not to mention she was still trying to get her pipes to stop standing askew.
"Out of curiosity," Larc spoke as they walked towards the gap that was bleeding violet-lit mist, "what are those things and how do you get them to stay?"
"They're just ornaments for my hair that Xan got me for my birthday back when we were kids," Rei answered. "They stay with a little bit of magic and a little bit of cloth wrapped around my hair and stuffed into the ends. They're quite secure, normally. A bit of a hurry like that shouldn't have done more than made them chime a little."
"I wouldn't think they'd stay at all, even with magic," Larc said, sounding a little uncomfortable for no reason that Rei could figure.
"Well, it helps that my hair is so thick." Meanwhile, the two had been walking down a second flight of stairs, lined with the same sort of vertical, wall-clinging carvings of claws found in the Baptism Chamber and spaced, like the first staircase had been, with leering stone faces and brackets holding torches. It ended in a low-ceilinged corridor of rough stone, and Rei's sense of I've-been-here-before had her walking straight down the hall and into the first round doorway she came to.
Larc gave her a look of surprise that she couldn't see as she strode through the bubble of a room with another door-crack on the other side that plunked them into a brighter, more finished corridor. "How did you know which door to turn in?"
One bare shoulder rose into a shrug. "The same way I know every inch of Leires: I have no idea. What's down this way?"
"What we're looking for, sort of. You can go on if you wish, but all the doors around here are closed to you. You must report to Olbohn first, or else you won't be able to get around."
"And he's down this-a-way?"
Larc nodded. "His chambers are near here. He's a Wisdom—"
"Knew that."
"—and the manager of departed souls. He keeps the dead from getting out of hand."
Rei gave him a crooked smile and walked down the hallway. "He's doing a good job, then. This place is dead-quiet."
"Like I haven't heard that one before," groaned the dragoon, following after. Rei glanced at him over her shoulder and winked.
"I had to at least get one bad pun out. Ask Elazul, if you ever meet him. I pun at him all the time."
"He has my utmost sympathies."
Rei went into the one open door with Larc right on her heels, both of them hesitating in the doorway at the sight of the gray-skinned, bulb-headed male sprite that hovered above the floor by spinning several pairs of arms like a propeller around his neck. One pair was left free and was crossed over his thin chest, as three large blue eyes gazed steadily at them both.
"I am Olbohn, keeper of the Underworld," the sprite intoned, narrowing all three eyes at the sight of the red-armored male standing behind Rei. "Larc, Dragoon of Drakonis." Larc remained silent, staring challengingly back. "Why do you bother me, bringing this person down here?"
"As a dragoon," rumbled Larc, "I must follow the will of my master."
"But this time you've brought quite a lively one," Olbohn said, eyeing Rei up and down. The knife-fighter bristled, insulted at the casual way she was being examined. "So will Drakonis' evil plans succeed now? I would love to help out if you had a nice spot for me," he finished, sounding unexpectedly eager.
"If you really mean it, then give permission to perform the Baptism of Flame. But if those words were meant to insult my master, then mind you…"
"Permission granted," Olbohn said airily, waving one of his free hands. "Perform the Baptism of Flame. The Shadole will guide you." With another wave, a yellow-and-white Shadole popped into the room from thin air.
"Thank you, Olbohn," Rei said, walking over to the Shadole. "Hi."
"Hi! The Underworld's pretty big, but I can help you get around. The surface, Chamber of the Baptism…"
"To the Chamber, please."
"Okay! See ya!" With a cheerful cackle the Shadole cast a spell that sent Rei's stomach hurtling towards the floor. When she opened her eyes again, the knife-fighter and her companion were standing just outside the entrance to the Chamber. Larc nudged Rei inside and they climbed the stairs to the waiting Shadole.
"So what's on your mind?" it asked as they approached.
"We have permission," Larc told the Shadole. "Perform the Baptism of Flames."
"Here ya go, daddy-o!" sing-songed the beastie. Rei let out a yelp of surprise when brightly colored flames exploded around her, the knife-fighter nearly jumping out of her skin from shock. After a brief moment of floor-shaking and blinding lights, everything subsided. The Shadole squeaked over the ringing in Rei's ears, "Now you can go to the bottom levels."
"Thanks, but right now I'd rather have my hearing back," muttered Rei, rubbing at her ears.
Larc grabbed her arm, triumph in his eyes. "Let's go! Our master awaits!"
Rei shook him loose, raising her head as high as it could go in order to stare coldly into Larc's eyes. "I have no master, Larc, save the Mana Goddess. Just you remember that."
The dragoon blinked, taken aback at the sudden change in her attitude. The knife-fighter had been taking things surprisingly well, neither immobile with shock or noticeably upset, until now. He cleared his throat and apologized, watching as Rei immediately calmed down and resumed acting like someone who'd resigned herself to a whirlwind of events.
"Oh!" Rei smacked her fist into her palm, remembering. "I need to go back and ask Olbohn something!"
Not wanting to have another mood-swing pulled on him, Larc readily agreed and the two went back the way they'd come, through the hidden passage to Olbohn's corridor. The doors were open here, as promised, and as Rei went past the first one a piece of her soul shivered, chiming like a struck crystal. The knife-fighter stopped dead in her tracks, then whirled and darted into the room, eyes wide.
Inside, a familiar figure in the flame-licked robes of a monk of Gato Grottoes paced, impatience written in every line of his body. Rei stood and stared, the man's name rising to her lips in a gasp. "Rubens!"
The Jumi Knight's spirit turned, surprise blooming in dark red eyes. "What are you doing here? Are you dead, too?" Mutely, Rei could only shake her head, feeling remorse and sorrow creeping up her throat. Rubens began pacing again, gesturing at the walls around him. "I may be stuck down here, but I'll never give up!" he told her, nearly shouting. "The Jumi will survive! We do not exist simply to be stolen." He came back over, catching Rei's hands and catching her gaze with his own, willing her to believe him. "We can exist without Florina, and without Pearl. I will not give up until the last Jumi is broken! I'm sure Diana would say the same," he finished sheepishly, cheeks turning faintly pink.
Grief and sorrow were banished in the face of Rubens' conviction, Rei moving her hands to clasp them with the Ruby Knight's. "Then I won't either!" she replied, grinning at him. "I swear it!" Something occurred to her, and the smile faded a little. "But why would you need Pearl?"
"Pearl is a Guardian, so she is the one of the last who can attain the rank of Clarius and regain the ability to shed tears," Rubens explained. "The Clarius is the only one who can return life to Jumi cores."
"And Florina?"
"Our last Clarius. She disappeared just before the war with Deathbringer over the Mana Stones. No one knows what happened to her, and she's not down here; I've checked."
Rei gripped his hands tighter with a determined expression. "Then I'll find her for you, if I can."
The gratitude she saw in his eyes made her forget, for a brief moment, that he was dead and trapped here in Underworld. "Thank you…" he began, and then his mouth crooked into a lopsided smile. "You know, I never did learn your name."
That made her laugh, a pealing sound that echoed off the walls and ceiling, and for one moment the laughter and her smile banished the gloomy aura of the place. "It's Rei, Rei Venstry!"
Rubens bent down a little and left a kiss on her cheek. "Then fare you very well, Rei Venstry, and I hope that our determination and prayers will be answered."
"May the Goddess make it so," agreed Rei fervently, hugging the Knight before she left. Larc was her armored shadow, as always, as she walked slowly down the corridor.
After several long moments, the dragoon spoke. "You seem very fond of him." It was hard to tell around the growl that was his voice, but Rei couldn't detect anything but simple observation. "How long have you known him?"
"For less than a day before a jewel-hunter named Sandra stole his core and killed him," Rei answered, feeling her optimistic nature at last shake itself loose from the unexpectedness of being down in the Underworld. "He's a good man, dead or not, and I swear that Sandra won't get away with it!"
"You are a very loyal person, Rei Venstry," Larc commented, giving her an odd look. "You remind me of someone I knew a long time ago."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"It's not a bad thing," the dragoon said slowly, "but we'll still have to see if it's a good thing."
———
The monsters that could be found in Underworld weren't much different from those in Leires, though the strange little wooden puppets were new. And rather annoying. Still, it was nice for Rei to be fighting alongside someone who wasn't more worried about her skills than his own. For once, she was able to concentrate fully on the fights instead of keeping an eye on apprentice or pet.
It didn't take long for them to reach the bottom level of the Underworld, and Larc paused her just outside of a final hidden entrance. "Now we shall see if you are worthy enough to serve my master. Are you ready?"
"I don't 'serve' anyone, Larc, but I'm ready for this test-thing you want to put me through," Rei grumped, pushing her bangs out of her face.
"Then let's go!" And they raced into a room whose walls were covered in hand-like carvings and four carved faces bigger than either fighter. All of them had spiraling horns emerging above their eyes, and all of the stone faces smiled cruelly down at them.
"That's not creepy at all," muttered Rei, before her attention turned to a monster that appeared in the middle of the room. It looked like a drama mask that had been painted orange-gold and white, surrounded by pale golden flames. Rei couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of what Elazul's reaction would be if he was here now, then she threw herself into the battle.
———
Rei was grinning at Larc at the end of the brief battle, watching him brush his gauntleted, furry hands over charred spots in armor and his dark gray coat. "Now, this is why every time one of those faces started giggling, I ran for cover," she told him with no little amusement, winning herself a grumpy baring of teeth. The mask-thing hadn't been much of a challenge, but the carved stone faces had been more than a bit of trouble. The monster had kept disappearing, which triggered the faces to send out glowing beams of caustic green light, or space-warping rings of gold, or both.
Which was why, whenever the mask-thing went poof and the faces had started giggling silently, Rei had ducked into the thin space by the door where neither beam nor ring could reach. Unfortunately, Larc didn't seem to have picked up on such a wise action immediately and had gotten hit with them more than once. So Rei had escaped with little more than a scratch or two, while Larc had holes in his armor and fur.
"Incredible.." Larc sighed when he'd finished and given Rei a quick glancing-over. "My master will be most pleased."
"Oh, good. Now we get to the answers part of the tour," Rei chuckled, sheathing her blades and following him through the father door onto a broad expanse of empty stone that dropped away into a lake of molten rock. In the distance, half-hidden by the rippling waves of burning air, sat a castle that even from this far away gave Rei the creeps.
"Prepare yourself, for my master comes," Larc intoned, dropping to one knee and bowing his head. "Lord Drakonis…"
With the faintest shiver of magic, a man with a thin, pale face appeared on the stone in front of them. He wore long, heavily embroidered robes despite the heat, and a turban encrusted with tiny jewels. All of his clothing was the same dark red silk, a color that nearly matched his neatly-trimmed mustache and goatee. And right now, he was smiling at his dragoon in a way that set all of Rei's instincts screaming.
"So you finally found one, Larc…One who can defeat Hitodama."
"Yes, my lord," replied Larc, keeping his head bowed.
Drakonis' head turned to Rei, who was standing there with her weight balanced and her hands resting on the pommel-stones of her knives. With a rustling of fabric, the man dipped his head in a gesture of acknowledgement. "Enough pleasantries, great warrior. My name is Drakonis. I summoned you for a reason. I want you to return the magical powers stolen from me by three dragons."
Rei kept herself from mentioning that Larc, not Drakonis, was the one who'd dragged her into this mess, and instead asked, "Why?"
Dark eyes glittered in remembered anger. "Long ago on the surface, I was once the Emperor of Dragons. But three jealous dragons stole my powers. I was made to wander the Underworld in this weakened form. I awaited the coming of one who could defeat the three dragons in my stead."
Rei lifted an eyebrow and tilted her head around Drakonis to look over at the kneeling Larc. "Translation, Larc?"
The dragoon coughed his surprise, peeking up at his master in a request to stand. When the man nodded, Larc rose to his feet and spoke. "What my master wants is for you to defeat the three dragons."
"Oh?" drawled the knife-fighter. "And if I still say no?"
Larc looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Either way, you must cooperate. Because if we leave you as a half-spirit…you will eventually turn to nothingness."
The two males watched as all the blood drained from Rei's face, leaving her pale and shaking in what could be fury or despair. She looked to Drakonis for confirmation, and he nodded. "I could not stand letting so strong a warrior to fade away," he said quietly. "If you defeat the three dragons, I will return you to your previous form."
"Then it seems I have no choice at all, Lord Drakonis. I accept your offer." Rei's voice was flat, and boded trouble for Larc the moment the two got out of earshot.
But Drakonis seemed not to care. He laughed and told Rei, "I am in your debt, strong warrior."
Indebted, hell, this is blackmail you bastard, and I won't forget it, the knife-fighter thought to herself, baring her teeth at the dragon-man in a mockery of a smile.
———
A few heartbeats later, Rei found herself once again on the snowy surface, dizzy and slightly disoriented from the rush of Drakonis' magic that had carried them fast as a whip-crack out of the Underworld. The next thing she knew was someone throwing their arms around her and shouting her name in relief.
"Hi, Xan," grunted the knife-fighter, prying her brother off of her to a more comfortable arm's length. He was wearing the shirt made from shed Rabite fur that Rei had made him a few years ago; the warm, naturally caramel hue set off both his skin and hair nicely, she'd always thought.
"Goddess bless, woman, where have you been?" he demanded of her, giving her the once-over and frowning harder than before. "Your energy flows are out of whack like nothing I've ever seen! What's going on?"
"It's a long story," Rei told him, breathing the fresh winter air gratefully. The air had been, to pardon the phrasing, completely dead down below, with never a breath of wind at all. "And I'll explain later. But first…" She turned to Larc, who had been standing by the massive memorial stone with wariness tightening every line of his body. "Larc, I'll meet you back here a week from today, about midmorning, all right?"
Larc looked to her, then took a moment to look Xan over, noting especially the massive sword resting easily across his back. "Very well."
"Thank you." And she began pushing her brother towards their parents' grave. There was a shiver of magic, and then Larc was gone. Presumably back down to the Underworld.
"Right. So, mind explaining?" Xan asked as they stopped at the grave now blanketed in a layer of glittering white flowers around the bottom of the headstone. Rei ignored him for a few breaths, using the time to bow respectfully to the white marble stone and to note that her brother had done much as she had: there were new incense sticks burning as well as new little carvings of their mother's favorite foods.
Mother, Father, our family's weird luck is holding true, as always, Rei sighed in her head. Here's hoping I don't end up getting myself killed.
Then she accepted her cloak from Xan and began to explain as they sat down on the marble bench nearby. They both still had things to do before they went back to Haven Tree Cottage.
———