The end of summer had brought with it a chill wind. Fall had come and gone in a single week, the leaves changing colours and falling so swiftly that, for a few days, Nadia had felt that she lived in a kaleidoscope. It would be an early winter. Lucca's house was warm, though, and Nadia marveled at how just that one fact comforted her. Lucca hadn't asked any questions when Nadia had arrived, with only a pack on her back and wearing clothes that weren't her own. She must have seemed emaciated: she hadn't eaten in two days and had been traveling cross country for both of them. Luccas had invited her in as if she'd always lived in the orphanage, embraced her, and given her food to eat and a place to sleep. The food showed that cooking wasn't Lucca's strong point and Nadia found a wrench misplaced under her pillow, but the hug had been genuine and carried with it memories. If Lucca had noticed the blood stain on the front of Nadia's shirt, she hadn't said anything.

Now, a week later, sitting at Lucca's crowded dinner table in her even-more-crowded living room, Nadia almost felt safe.

"What is that thing, Lucca?" she asked the inventor, or at least what she could see of the inventor. A tuft of uneven purple hair poked out from behind a huge metal box with a clear glass door. Through the door, she could see spirals and twists of metal coils affixed to the top and sides of the box. The whole thing looked very confusing and a little frightening. One of the orphans had perched herself on top of the box, but Lucca didn't seem to mind.

Lucca came around the edge of the box and opened the glass door. She held a plate of rice and chicken in one hand. The other tousled her hair. It was shaped round, like a bowl, and had grown long enough to cover the tips of her ears. When Lucca forgot to cut her hair, Nadia knew she'd been truly busy.

"It's a microwave emitter," Lucca explained, then poked her head into the machine. She added, in time with Nadia's thoughts, "It's perfectly harmless when it's turned off."

"Okay," Nadia said, grinning at the familiarity of such exchanges. "What is a microwave emitter?"

"It excites the electrons inside of an object, or at least, I think it does," Lucca said, her voice echoing out of the box as she placed the plate on the bottom of the machine. "To be more specific, it heats polarized molecules in a uniform excitation."

"I give up," Nadia said quickly, before Lucca could continue. What does it cure?"

"Today? Hunger. I'm going to use it to cook my lunch."

"You can't be serious, Lucca," Nadia said, aghast. "You're not going to eat something that's been... in there!" Then another thought occurred to her. "Lucca. You aren't going to turn it on?"

For an answer, Lucca shut the door and flipped a switch near the bottom of the box. Immediately a low hum filled the room and the metal of the box popped loudly as it began to expand with internal heat, like tin left under a hot sun. Nadia rose from her chair and rushed to the machine. Her first instinct was to shut it down, but she knew enough about Lucca's inventions to know that might not have the desired effect. Halting whatever mad process had been put into place could be more dangerous than letting it all play out. Instead she reached up and grabbed the infant girl from the top of the machine and then quickly backed away, taking cover behind a stack of cardboard boxes filled with tools and discarded pieces of failed experiments.

Lucca had lowered a pair of mirrored goggles over her head. They were ridiculous. Lucca's glasses were already large enough for two people to use and thick enough that Lucca should have been able to see the far side of the moon; the goggles that she had carefully set into place covered these, and were roughly the size of dinner plates. The act of wearing them visually transformed Lucca into something much resembling a giant insect.

Nadia pushed aside a metal tool box that was blocking her view of the machine. A part of her wanted to tell Lucca to get away from the machine but she was also morbidly curious to see what would happen.

Like when you ran away with Ghetz?

The voice came from within her own head. A female voice; it had a familiar teasing lilt to it, though its timbre had grown deeper since the last time she'd heard it. The young girl who had last used it had grown up. It was a friendly voice, but one that meant to do her harm, nonetheless.

"No," she whispered, and the child in her arms turned to look at her with confusion. "That was different."

Oh? But weren't you just a little bit curious as to what would happen?

"It was a well thought out decision," Nadia protested, knowing that her protests were only making her stance seem weaker. "There wasn't another option. None of it had to do with girlish curiosity."

"Nadia?" Lucca called out. "Did you say something?"

"No."

Funny you use the word "girlish." Little girls usually don't think about the consequences of their actions. Remember that.

"Shut up. I'm back, aren't I?

And look what you've come back to. The King is dead, and Ghetz has been left-

"Ghetz is fine."

With a sound like overripe fruit hitting a sidewalk, the chicken in the machine exploded, splattering the glass doors with burnt skin, bits of meat, and a healthy dose of overcooked rice. Lucca opened the glass door and then stepped quickly back with a sharp intake of breath as superheated steam splashed across her outstretched hand. She brought the burnt spot to her mouth, lightly sucking on the spot where the thumb connected to the hand.

"Well, you were right," Lucca said, taking her hand out of her mouth and shaking it vigorously. "This isn't edible at all."

Lucca turned and her casual smile collapsed at the corners of her lips, falling into what could have been concern, a fearful grimace, or even anger: it was impossible to tell with the goggles obscuring half of her features.

"Nadia," Lucca said softly. "Your face..."

Unsure of what Lucca meant, Nadia reached her right hand towards her face and stopped as she caught sight of the fingers. Nadia had always had pale skin but the hand she now held in front of her had moved beyond a normal pigmentation. It was white in the way that a corpse turns white when the blood has drained from it. It was white in the way that the world is white after the first snowfall. She turned the hand over. The tips of her fingers were blue and frost had built up on her fingernails. A sudden whimper from next to her reminded her that she was holding the young girl with her other hand. The child was squirming to get away from her grip and Nadia realized how warm the child's skin felt against her palm. Nadia let go with a startled movement and the young girl ran to Lucca, grabbing onto the inventor's grey overalls and turning a fearful face towards Nadia. Nadia looked back at her hand. It was whiter, even, then the other one. It must have been freezing to the child.

Lucca nodded. "It's coming back," she said. It wasn't a question. Lucca turned towards the child and smiled. "Go check on Kid," she said. "And then you and Sera can go make some more drawings for me. Would you do that?" The child's nod was reflected in the dark mirrors of the goggles. She ran off without another look at Nadia, standing rigidly by the boxes.

Lucca scratched the side of her head and turned the black mirrors on Nadia. "When did it start to happen?" she asked.

"When I heard," Nadia said. Her eyes carefully avoided looking at Lucca. She studied the tool box in front of her with unnatural detachment, her mind empty of everything except the pounding of her heart. The box was very red. A fine mist had formed on its surface. Brief patterns of condensation spread and then withdrew in a steady rhythm. It took Nadia a moment to realize it was her breath, hitting the box with repeated chill gusts.

"I'm sorry," Lucca said. "I'm sorry for not talking about it before. I knew you had to know, but... I couldn't talk about it."

There was a heat in the back of Nadia's throat and a pressure building up behind her eyes. It wasn't quite painful but it demanded her entire attention. It was fighting a fire. It was holding a door shut. It was a desperate swim to the surface of a deep lake. Lucca had been reaching to take off her goggles only seconds before, but now she seemed happier to let them stay in place.

"You couldn't have saved him. There was a coup. They would have killed you, too."

"Did he really burn the forest."

The heat had turned cold now. Nadia didn't need to hear the answer to her question. It hadn't really been a question, besides. It had been a memory. It had been knowledge, rising to the surface against all the other emotions and leaving her cold with its touch. Her breath steamed again against the tool box, but now she looked away, turning her eyes back towards the inventor.

"I can't go with you, Nadia," Lucca whispered.

Suddenly Nadia was across the room and hugging Lucca tightly. The inventor's hands found her back and rested there peacefully.

"I'm frightened, Lucca."

"I know."

"I think this is goodbye."

"Try not to think poorly on Crono. He loved you. He loved all of us. I don't think it was really him at the end."

"I shouldn't have left him."

"I don't think you ever did."

"I love you, Lucca."

"You can always come back. The doors will be open. I will be here. You can always come back."

Nadia didn't say anything. She pulled away from her friend. They stared at each other for some time. Lucca would later wish she had taken off the goggles and looked at Nadia with her eyes, not through some tinted window. But at the time she needed their protection more than ever. She needed to be safe from the kind of emotions she hadn't felt in two years, when her parents had died, leaving her alone.

Eventually Nadia broke the silence. "I have to go," she said softly and smiled. "I have to get ready."

Long after Nadia had left for her room, Lucca stayed next to the machine, wondering if there was anything she could have said, at any point in the past, to change what was happening now. Steam was still coming out from the inside of it, rolling across her back like the heat of a hot springs. But all she could feel was the freezing cold where Nadia's hands had gripped her.