Hello, my favorite people! Welcome to the new decade! I doubt my new year's hope of writing more frequently is gonna pan-out but a girl can hope. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this update and yet again I would like to bring up the fact that I do not have a beta reader or any of the sorts, so if there are any mistakes, I am sorry.

All in all, let's get into the chapter!

The next day at school, I tried my best to keep my reserve about the situation. I kept to my wits and stayed with any member of the small crew that we have created of Claire, Darci, Mary, Toby, and I. It was rather awkward for myself with spending time with Toby due to how he had no idea of my actual lineage or who I actually was, but he also helped me due to that as well. He made me feel as if I could fit into this world that I had awakened to as well as showed me many new ways of life that the girls have yet to show me.

"Dude! Why does everything within high school have to be like a poorly written drama or some stuff?" I smiled as he took a big sigh as we walked together. He was speaking about another student who went by the name of Steve, who from what I could tell, was giving Toby problems. From how Toby spoke, it was normal what this Steve man has been doing to him. He stated frequently that it was something he has grown accustomed to over the many years that it has occurred. Which I also learned from Toby was coined as "bullying".

As someone that was raised by a witch and was noted as a "damnation of life", harassment and sharp words were both something I favored more than sharp swords when it came to the weapons of those that deemed me to be an abomination of man. I would much rather deal with statements than with an armored angry drunkard like I have multiple times within my past. But from I learned about this "bullying" action that Toby with witnessing, it was something that was both physical as well as verbal. I would love to relish Toby with my father's own words about the situations that I have come across, but I don't think he would understand their meaning.

"Even Lucifer was once an angel. Even the devil came from good."

Even the damned were once praised. Even the damned have their reasons. To go further into detail, it all matters on how you treat your damnation. If you treat it like something that will be forever apart of you, you will fall like Icarus. But if you take your damnations and make them your own for your own redeemable reasonings, than that damnation means nothing.

"I just wish this Steve guy would lay off of you. Only so much weight can be added to one's back because they snap." I looked over to Toby as I heard him snicker.

"Man, I'm never going to get used to your mannerisms. They are just so weird compared to everyone else's. I hope it never changes though." I smiled at his statement. This was exactly why I enjoyed him. He was like talking to the girls but without the baggage that came along with it.

They know who I am and the major parts of my short life that I lead long ago, but with that understanding, there is also this feeling of dread. It makes one feel as if they are holding others down by their own traumas when the people around them have their own issues to deal with as well. With the girls, especially Claire, I feel as if I put a lot more onto them than I wish. But with Tobias, I don't have that emotion. To him, I'm only Jim. I'm not a knight or a warrior from a dead time. I'm only Jim.

I actually quite enjoy it. It's selfish, but I enjoy it.

"Hey, guys! How's it going?" I looked over to see Claire walking toward us with a hand full of flyers as well as a beaming smile across her face. It was obvious she was overly joyous about something.

"Hey, Claire! Nothing much. Just chilling with Jimbo here." I rolled my eyes and Toby jokingly punched me in the arm. I shrugged and gave her a smile as she rolled her eyes as well.

"What do you have there?" Claire's smile reappeared as she handed me one of the flyers almost instantly.

"These are from Miss Janeth. She's directing Romeo and Juliet for our play this fall." I look at the flyer to see it was printed with the iconic scene with the balcony.

"Shakespeare? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date?" I watched as her features went from softly shocked to rather impressed. She pulled the flyers closer to her chest as she had a grin spread across her face. "How could I be shocked that you know Shakespeare?" She shook her head lightly as she looked back down at the print. "Let me guess, you act as well?" I shrugged lightly at the assumption.

"Only once long ago, but as Toby had been pronouncing to me endlessly, my mannerisms are like that of linguistic England." I heard a soft giggle be stifled quickly out of the Trollhunter as I looked over to see a rather confused Toby standing beside us. He looked as if he was trying to calculate numbers into an endless equation until a smirk appeared on his face. I looked back at Claire as she started to speak again.

"Well, I've got to go hang up these posters. Want to join me?" I looked back to Toby who's smirk implanted itself further into his cheeks as a knowing gleam sparked within his eyes.

I have been fearful for many reasons, but that shimmer of unknown to me knowledge was something I feared the most within recent days.

I smiled as I looked back at Claire. "Sure." I waited for her to lead the way but before I followed Claire, Toby grabbed me by the arm.

"Dude, you totally have a thing for her don't you?" I swallowed rather forcefully as his words took me by full surprise.

"Uh, maybe?" Was the only thing that my shaken voice could muster as the knight within me face-planted at my inability to speak.

He gave me a subtle chuckle as he let go of me and pointed as a Claire that was now just far enough to not understand but was looking at us a little worried. "We are totally talking about this later, man. Now go on Romeo, Juliet is waiting patiently." I gave him an uneasy smile as his smirk still gave me a feeling of unease. I walked away, joining Claire without a single word muttered about the incident.

I little while later with time spend plastering or pinning the flyers to the walls of the school, we were left with only a couple on hand while within a rather unoccupied hallway. As Claire put up one of the last few within her hand, I could tell that she had something on her mind. My thoughts were proven as she glanced back and forth within the hall before looking toward me.

"Say, you've said that you were born in 1721, right? What was theatre like back then? I know Shakespeare's time was in the 17th century, but you have shown to know his work rather well." I smiled before giving her another piece of tap, noticing that the poster was lopsided and needed an adjustment.

"He was still popular within my time. It had changed due to the works within the 1600s though as it went from crude jokes of the early comedy plays to that of intimate endeavors into the human mind. It was made to make people feel and think about their manners. I was raised in the darkened bits of its time. It was as if my life was even further back than what others lived." I looked at the poster as she adjusted it slightly to make it even. "I lived in the mortalities of knights as others lived lives with petticoats and puffy collars." I laughed a little as my mind made a joke of the circumstance. "As like now, I'm behind what is the known as the now. I still live within a past older than myself."

She looked to me as if the words were heavier in meaning than I had intended but seemed to lighten in her features as she seemed to notice that there was no pain on my end. "Didn't you feel alone?"

I took the moment to digest her question. The fluttering seconds passing by as if I was an impatience painter waiting for the hues to dry upon his canvas. Even though I wanted to answer "Never" so quickly, I knew that it was far from the truth and the lass before me deserved more than white lies.

"Well, yes." I took a moment to look back to the poster with Romeo's and Juliet's figures being my main point of attention. "It was why I liked literature at a young age. It was why I liked the few days my mother would take me in secret to see a show. It gave me moments where I did not have to think about the lonesome emptiness within the places I called homes." My eyes slowly drifted down from the poster, remembering the empty houses that had echos of silence unlike that of which I live now. "It was why whenever I saw my mother, I didn't try to fret on the moments I had without her. I relished within the ones I was blessed to have. I had resentment against her absence, yes, but I knew it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault to be born with powers that were misunderstood while surrounded by creators that feared what they could not understand."

I gave Claire a soft smile and I turned my head to look at her. "I feel the same way now. I'm happy to have people that care about me once more. Especially new friends like yourself. It makes me feel blessed to have you by my side, Trollhunter. It makes the lonesome days I lead worth the moments I live now. If it wasn't for my past and who I was born to be, I would not have met any of you." I felt as if I over shared as the skin upon my cheeks seemed to rise in heat as I watched Claire softly smile in return.

"I'm glad I met you too, Jim. I'm sure everyone is."

I played with my pen as I stared at the roster that I had freshly printed in front of me. I leaned back in my chair as there were multiple names crossed out as two, in particular, were circled with red messy lines. My main goal for myself within this moment was to try to figure out who would be in cahoots with the knight and the huntress. It was obvious between pass encounters with the young lady that she had never worked alone before, but now it was obvious since the young squire was now acting as if he was born within the recent two decades.

If teaching has taught me anything, it takes multiple people to teach a struggling child anything new. I personally doubt that James was any different.

I popped the cap of the pen off and then twisted it back on again as the thought swirled within my mind.

It's obvious that there would be an adult involved. A magical one at that. For James to not age even the slightest within 300 years, someone with a magical background must have been the reason for such a result. Human technology was so futile within that time, it could have never been done by a mear mortal.

I looked at James's name rather closely as I went even deeper into thought.

How did that old nursery rhyme go? The one that the other older changelings would tell during the time of the war?

The Lady in waiting.
The Lady of blue.
The Lady of wanting.
The Lady of new.

Came from the water,
spawn from hell.
The witch of the slaughter.
in the sea, she'll dwell.

Met a young mortal,
as foolish as he.
That he could tame
the lady of the sea.

Ever so quickly,
his bones were to break.
The story so sickly,
the Lady Of The Lake.

I felt myself smile slowly as popped the cap off the pen once more so I could scribble a name next to the young squire's as I did a quick search to see his contact information for his guardians.

I knew it.

I wrote down her name under her original and sat back with a knowing smirk.

The Lady lives.

Welcome back from the dead, Barbara.

I opened the front door and dropped my bag onto the stair rail's end and grabbed out a folded version of one of the posters that Claire and I were putting up around the school and walked over to the counter that connected to the kitchen and sat in a bar stool. I unfolded the poster and flattened it out onto the counter. I sighed a little as I was trying to juggle the idea of keeping up the routine that I've created with the same amount of training from when I was younger as well as school, yet to also try to add the play into the schedule. It was obvious that Claire had a lot more practice in keeping up with appearances than I am, but it made my headache with how much calculation one has to place within their life to tick every box on the list that was placed before me.

"Hello, my boy! You're home earlier than me. Color me surprised." I looked over my shoulder and twisted at my waist to meet my mother with a smile.

"Yeah, I had some thoughts that I need to herd." I went back to staring at the poster as I heard my mother's shoes tap against the floor. Soon after I felt a hand place itself onto my right shoulder and I was placed into a side hug as I knew my mother was leaning over me to see what I was doing.

"Oh! Romeo and Juliet? After I thought that most of this time had forgotten what mine had created."

"Mother, not to be disrespectful, but you've been alive for almost seven hundred years."

"I choose to be represented by the time that didn't want to try me to a blazing pyre." She put her purse on the counter and dropped her keys alongside it. "Also, I remember a little boy who used to love the time he spent with me during the small shows that would come to town." I smiled at the memory as I looked over to her. It was obvious that my mother was rather tired due to her daily work that was explained to me. She's taken her love for healing others and learned the normal human's way of treating their own ailments. I was told it was strenuous, but as I saw the little dark circles that laid under her eyes and the tired smile that was plastered on her face. I'm sure if she didn't see me, she would of went upstairs and went straight to her bed for at least an hour.

She has always pushed herself to help others. Even if it meant her life. I remember how much it meant to her to ease another's pain. I truly believe that she deserves the rest, but it is also wonderful to speak to her. The idea of being able to say I love you to her without the probability of never seeing her again makes it easier though.

"Claire had asked me after helping her with putting them up today to join her in auditioning, but I feel as if I might bite off more than I can chew. There's already a load upon my back with what they claim as school these days. Add that onto the multiple hours of training that I do with or without her and the others, I might collapse if I'm not careful."

"But?" I looked over to my mother, unknowing to myself that I was looking back at the poster once more, with a shocked look upon my face.

"How did you-?"

"James, I'm your mother. I might have been missing a lot within your main developing years, but I know you better than you think." I smiled at the idea and looked down at my hands that I now placed into my lap.

"I don't want to disappoint her."

"Is it that you don't want to disappoint her, or the fact that you want to spend time with her?" I shrugged at the idea.

"Maybe both? I have no clue. I've never been good at understanding my emotions, mother." I felt a hand place itself under my chin and lift my face until my eyes were looking into my mother's. She stared at me for a good moment and then a soft smile appeared on her face.

"You are just like your father." She shook her head slightly with a small laugh before tapping my cheek. "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." I tilted my head at the statement, knowing well that it was from Shakespeare.

"What does Midsummer Night Dream have to do with me being afraid of Claire's disappointment?"

"Because you're looking with the wrong idea within your head, my son." She placed the hand that she had on my cheek and instead patted the top of my head. After a second, she pulled me into a hug that I fully reciprocated. "Just follow your heart, my boy, all will go well. I love you." I smiled into her shoulder as I took her words and placed them next to my heart.

"I love you as well."

Alrighty, everyone! The next chapter is going to be a memories chapter but y'all are not gonna be ready for this one! I hope you guys enjoyed this update and have a wonderful day! :)