This was a chapter that I had started writing AGES ago. Like, before I started with the spring formal chapters. As a small artifact of that, this chapter is super short (1,272 words without the author's note). This really short length may persist into the next three chapters as well, since I was writing two of them in junction with the Valentines chapters.

Thank you for reading!

Ephemer was mortified. As he paced through the halls to find Skuld, he was almost certain that this was the year he would stop being friends with her. First she had to up and poison herself, making him more wary of what she was doing. Then she made him wary of himself and his feelings for Anora. And now, now, she had forgotten to tell him something very important that she likely should have mentioned before he walked into health class this morning.

Finally, after far too long, Ephemer found Skuld in the home economics kitchen. She was perfectly minding her own business- mixing something in a bowl that was starting to look like bread dough.

"Why didn't you tell me that seventh year health starts with sex ed?!"

Skuld barely looked up at the beet red Ephemer as she said, "I thought you knew. You had my notes."

But Ephemer only shook his head in reply. Even with a quick side glance, Skuld could tell that his face was burning an even deeper red.

"What's wrong with you?" she finally asked him. "It's not like they ask you to watch naughty movies or anything. Some of those tapes still have VHS tracking on them."

"Try telling my lame imagination that."

Hearing this, Skuld paused. She turned to Ephemer and gave him a good, hard look. When it finally clicked, Skuld let out a laugh so loud and unflattering that Ephemer nearly punched her.

"You..." she choked through her laughter. "You were actually fantasying about…? With that crud?! Good Ub Iwerks, Ephemer, that's-!"

"I'm well aware of the situation." he deadpanned. "Thank you, Little Miss Peanut Gallery."

Skuld only continued to laugh. She was starting to wheeze as her face turned red- she had to step away from her mixing bowl for a moment just to try to catch her breath. Ephemer waited, impatiently, for her to finish.

She laughed for a full five minutes before regaining her senses. It wasn't without a little chortle here and there, but she was definitely coming off of her amusement. When she finally calmed down, she looked at Ephemer and put on a light smile.

"Do you remember when we dated?" she asked him- her voice still bubbly from her laughter. "It only lasted for three months, but do you still remember it?"

Ephemer flinched. "Yeah." he admitted. "I was the one who broke it off."

"When you were the one who insisted we get together in the first place." Skuld agreed before turning her attention back to her mixing bowl. "We did a lot together back then; going to the movies, walking through town, just spending time together..."

The young man looked back at his friend with a nose scrunched in distaste. Did she have a point to this? He really hoped she had a point to all this. Otherwise, she was only reminding him of how badly he had actually treated her. She was just laughing at him not a minute before- so why stop at that?

"I didn't think about it much then," she went on, "But I realized something; you still only saw me as a friend."

For a moment, Ephemer gave an absent blink and let out a confused, "Huh?" despite knowing now that she was right. He came to the realization when they were dating, after all; it was the excuse he gave when they broke up. A classic 'it's not you, it's me' kinda deal. For the longest time, if Ephemer cared about such things, he would have called himself asexual. Might still have called himself that, but now bordering on demisexual instead. It was a sliding scale, honestly.

Skuld gave a small tilt of her head. She stirred the dough as if she was lost in another thought.

"When you look at Anora, it's different. There's just… something about you that changes. You see her more than just a friend. I know it sounds absurd, but I can feel it. You never looked at me the way you look at her. It never felt like there was something more between us. We were just… friends. Friends who put a label on their relationship because it was expected of them; not because something was there. But then you look at Anora, and you look like it's your first time seeing the sunset. You mention her or even breathe her name, you get this big, dumb grin on your face."

Ephemer's face started to pale. "Is it really that obvious?"

"To everyone but Anora, apparently." Skuld agreed with a chuckle. "But she's never really shown an interest anyone yet, has she? She didn't even bat an eyelash at Brain during the formal. Even I was taken aback at seeing that guy in a suit. Sometimes I still think about it during the Dandelion meetings. It's a blessing that he's pretty chill about all the girls that fawn over him. Can you imagine the amount of power you could exploit if you were actually aware of your own charm?"

"I can only imagine." Ephemer grumbled as he folded his arms in front of his chest. "Do have a point, Skuld? Or is your brain scrambled from getting back to schoolwork again? I'm kinda in crisis mode here, if you haven't noticed."

Skuld only offered a small snort. She instead started to dust some flour onto a sheet of parchment paper and carelessly plopped her dough in the center.

"Didn't we already have this talk?" she curiously asked him. "You know all of this. The only one holding you back is you. If you just keep waiting, then someone is going to step in."

"Skuld," the young man huffed, "I still don't see your point."

Sighing, Skuld didn't look at her friend as she told him, "I guess what I'm getting at is this; tell her."

"Tell her what, exactly?" Ephemer then asked, choosing to be angry. "Oh hey Anora, since summer vacation I've been thinking about making out with you, wanna try it? Maybe we can even take each other's clothes off and do the things that make adults really mad!"

To his annoyance, Skuld only laughed.

"That's not what I meant, you idiot." she snorted. As she started to knead the dough, she even added, "And you know it."

Desperate, Ephemer tried to find some mean thing to say to her. But he couldn't. He did know what she meant, and he hated all the implications that came with it.

"Skuld," Ephemer finally admitted, "I'm scared."

"I'm not surprised." came the rather callous answer. Skuld then looked up at him, placing her wrist (since her hand was covered in flour) against her chest. "May your heart be your guiding key."

Unconsciously, Ephemer mirrored the gesture. He looked down at his own hand, clenched his fist slightly, then murmured under his breath, "May my heart be my guiding key..."

There was always something so comforting about that phrase. To him, at least. Even now it helped keep him slightly level headed about the whole ordeal. It didn't wash away all of his fear, however. That was when he finally asked the question that had been bugging him this entire time;

"But what if she doesn't feel the same way?"

"You won't know until you tell her." Skuld insisted, moving to wash her hands off. When she came back, she placed in her hands into Ephemer's and smiled at him.

"You're always there for me, so now it's my time to be there for you." She squeezed his hands tight before telling him, in a very excited whisper, "Go get her."