Cover by Kimbeekitty, and posted with permission.

I was going to post this earlier this week, but I came down with a pretty terrible case of the flu. Updates will generally happen around the 23rd of each month barring anything major going down in my personal life.

Regardless, I'm pretty excited to get this fic under way!

Name notes:

Scilla - a genus of very pretty plants with a wide range of habitat, including subalpine regions; I named the village that to keep with Fairy Tail's trend of naming places after various flowers

Larkspur - a species of flower, also known as Delphinium; named to keep with the flower names trend for locations

ísfjall - "ice mountain" in Icelandic, which is why Lucy gets confused about the lack of the word "mountain" in front of it as she doesn't speak the language it's actually in (I have probably butchered the grammar here, if anyone knows for sure please feel free to message me).

Making Arrangements

The guild master was already up in her new office, perusing one of several glossy bridal catalogues that were spread out across her desk, having wasted no time in getting started on her dress hunt. She looked up when she heard knocking on the open door. "Lucy," Erza greeted as she set down the magazine she'd been looking at. Her eyebrows then raised significantly upon seeing the ice mage in Lucy's wake. "And Lyon. Did you two need something from me?"

Lucy strode over to her with confidence in her step and held out the job request, which Lyon had returned to her earlier. "Lyon and I want to team up on this job."

Erza glanced back and forth between the pair several times before looking around her office, peering into the corners with suspicion written across her features.

"No, you're not being pranked again, Erza," Lucy reassured her. "Besides, it was Happy that pulled that one, not me. I don't do pranks."

"Oh," Erza replied, finally settling and looking over the flyer. "This is pretty unusual, however. You don't normally take jobs outside of your team, Lucy. And I didn't think that you two knew each other well enough for something like a joint job. I mean… for being from different guilds."

"We're friends," Lucy stated, a note of finality in her voice to discourage Erza from prying further.

The redhead shrugged. "I have no objections, then. I'll call up your guild master and run it by her, Lyon. But I don't think she'll have any problem with your taking this job, either. I'll be sure to let the client know to expect the pair of you."

She sounded remarkably like a competent guild master just then. Lucy could feel her heart swelling with pride at Erza's growth over the past week. If she kept this up, she might just make a great guild master, yet. Provided the paperwork didn't kill her, that is.

Erza regarded the request a moment further, recognition suddenly brightening in her eyes. "I just had Mirajane post this on the board today, actually. I'm sure the client will be happy at such a fast turnaround." Reaching into her desk, she withdrew a stamp and pressed it into the paper. Handing it back, she smiled at them. "Anything else?"

"Yeah," Lyon answered, surprising Lucy. "Can you tell the client that we'll need three or four days to get there? We need to see about supplies, transport, acclimation… that sort of thing."

Erza nodded in acquiescence. "I can do that."

Feeling this was a good time, Lucy added, "Can you maybe also not… tell the rest of my team where I'm going? Or that I'm going anywhere period?"

Erza fixed her with a hard stare, her brown eyes boring into her teammate and her voice flat. "Lucy."

"Don't," the blonde warned, her finger pointed at her friend. "You remember when I tried to take a small solo job when I first joined Fairy Tail? And all of you crashed it and destroyed everything?"

Erza looked offended at the accusation. "I did not crash any job of yours!"

"You're right," Lucy replied, her face souring further. "The dynamic duo did. Which is why they're not allowed to know where I'm going."

Lyon wondered if he should just… give them some private space in order to hash this out. He was not really great with confrontation, and it felt as if one was brewing in the air, like a storm.

Heaving a sigh, Erza relented much more quickly than Lucy had anticipated. "Fine. If they ask, I'm going to tell them that you're on a job. I will not deceive them. But I won't volunteer the information. If Natsu comes sniffing after you, however, there's nothing I can do about it. Will that satisfy you?"

"I will accept that," conceded Lucy, snatching up the approved flyer. "I'll just have to make the trail difficult to follow."

That Lucy had a contingency plan for this worried Lyon a bit.

"I still don't like it, though, Lucy," Erza added, as her teammate walked away. It was strange to see the redhead look as squeamish as she did in that moment, out of harmony with the confident and strong image she projected – made all the more powerful by the mantle of a guild master. "Friends shouldn't keep secrets," she said softly. "I… you all taught me that."

Lucy paused at the door. Her grip tightened on the doorknob, and she let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping. "I know, Erza. I just need some… space from them for a bit. Nothing major, I promise."

Her friend nodded firmly in response. "Good, then. I will make sure they behave in your absence."

That drew a snigger from Lucy. "If anyone can, it's you, Erza." She began to step out, but then halted in her tracks, forcing Lyon to pause at the threshold once more lest he collide with her. "Oh, I almost forgot. Erza? White bridal dresses on the guests would be in poor taste."

A flush crept into Erza's cheeks and she hurriedly stuffed the magazines she'd been looking at into a desk drawer. "I know that! But I can daydream, can't I? Now go!"

Lucy grinned and practically fled the office, a grateful Lyon in her wake. Once they were standing outside the office, Lucy motioned for Lyon to follow her. He did so, close on her heels as she led him down the stairs, and past the crowd of mages towards the exit. Although mildly surprised that they weren't going to rejoin the guild proper, it was overshadowed in his gladness that the awkward conversation between her and Erza was over.

Once they were safely outside the guild doors, Lucy turned to face him. "So how do we want to go about this, exactly?" she inquired. "You told Erza three days to prepare, so I assume you already have a plan in mind?"

"Yes. That's not going to be a problem, is it? I'm not overstepping?" Lyon wanted to be certain. Although Lucy was a friend, he didn't yet know where precisely the boundaries lay in their relationship, professional or personal. Though he assumed that this job would reveal them to him in short order. Being thrown into incredibly stressful situations with near strangers had that effect, or so he had discovered over the years.

Lucy shook her head at him. "No, that's fine! I like plans." And it was a refreshing change from her team's general policy regarding plans – which was to ignore them entirely.

Relieved, Lyon suggested, "How about we meet up tomorrow and discuss everything? I'm afraid that I need to go back to my guild for the day, but maybe we could get everything hashed out over coffee?"

"Sure thing. Sounds great," Lucy agreed readily. "Where at, and what time works for you?"

"I don't actually know of any good places," Lyon admitted. He wasn't really the café sort of person. "Do you know of any good ones?"

She brightened. "Yeah, there's a nice café here in Magnolia, if that works for you? I can give you the address."

"Then let's say… two in the afternoon?"

Nodding, she stuck her hand out in front of her. "I think that can be arranged."

With a smile, he shook her hand, her warm palm comfortable in his grip, and just as calloused as his own.

The job seemed to be off to a good start already.

Lucy found herself sitting down at a quaint coffee shop in the district near her home, well in advance of the allotted meetup time. It was a quiet little place that she'd found one day after Fairy Tail disbanded, when she'd been wandering the streets out of boredom. The food they served there was excellent, and the coffee was exquisite. As she also liked the owners, a friendly elderly couple, Lucy had even managed to get a small article about the place published, since interest pieces like that were always welcome in Sorcerer Weekly.

As a result, the business had exploded, and there were rumors of a second shop possibly being opened sometime in the near future. Lucy was extremely happy for them; they deserved all the attention they could get.

Once she was seated, with a great deal of ecstatic hugging from Rebecca and Hayley, the owners, Lucy opened up her menu to order. She was surprised when, a few minutes later, someone slid into her booth opposite her. Lowering the menu, she relaxed at seeing that it was Lyon.

"You're early," she told him.

He shrugged. "As soon as you mentioned the name of this place yesterday, I remembered that article you wrote about it a few months ago. Since you said the food was good, I thought I would get here early to try it out. Should have known that you would have done the same. After all, it was your article."

Lucy raised her menu back up in order to hide her slowly spreading smile. "So you read my little article, and even remembered it?" For some reason, the notion tickled her pink. Even after hearing that most of the other guild members had followed her short-lived journalism career, it was something else to hear that someone from a completely different guild had as well.

The tips of Lyon's ears turned pink, and he coughed. "Well… yeah. You're my friend. And Wendy is your friend, too. Even if I hadn't already read it she would have explained it to me in detail later." He paused, and with a wry quirk of his lips, he added, "And she did so anyway, despite my assurances that I had, indeed, already seen it."

The waitress returned then, and asked if they were ready to order. Once their orders were taken, the waitress collected the menus and disappeared.

Lucy withdrew the job flyer from her bag and laid it out on the table between them, along with a small notebook and a pen. "Since we're both here, we may as well get this worked out while we wait for our food and drinks."

"Sounds good to me," Lyon replied.

"First let's decide on how to divide the reward," Lucy suggested, tapping that section of the flyer with her pen. "No sense in getting through the rest if we can't agree on this." At his answering nod, she continued. "I want the keys more than I want the money. But the keys are going to be silver, since all of the gold keys presently have owners. Unfortunately, they range a great deal in price and this makes no mention of how many keys or which ones, so we're going to have to make a guess as to how much they might be worth."

Lyon had no knowledge of the current market for celestial spirit keys. Or the market for them at any point in time. He had no use for them himself, and they were so rarely offered as rewards that he'd never had to figure out an exchange rate before. In fact, now that he thought about it, the only celestial spirit mages he knew of were Lucy herself, and Yukino from Sabertooth. Which made sense that the job was offered at Fairy Tail, since Lucy was a well-known member and known to be a celestial mage thanks to the Grand Magic Games the year before. Which meant that the client was fully expecting Lucy to be the one to answer the request. Or Yukino, if the job had been offered at Sabertooth as well.

He wasn't quite sure why, but something about that raised little alarms in the back of his mind.

Which he shook off as leftover paranoia from everything that happened the prior year with Tartaros and the dragons. It made logical sense to offer a job that requires a specific type of mage at a guild where that type of mage was known to work.

…But then again, it was by all appearances… a fetch job. What sort of fetch job required a celestial mage specifically to scale a snowy mountain?

No. It was just paranoia. The client had celestial spirit keys, and if they weren't a celestial spirit mage themselves it would make sense that they'd want to efficiently divest themselves of useless items. They were also probably just a fan and wanted to use this as an excuse to meet Lucy in person. Happened all the time with the more popular mages. Lyon had even been on a few jobs like that before. Though clients like that usually did not pay with so many zeroes. Then again, rich fans existed as well, he supposed.

"I really don't know what any celestial keys are worth," he finally told her, suddenly aware that he'd been weirdly quiet for an extended period of time, and Lucy was staring at him awkwardly. "But what about splitting the Jewels… seventy-thirty?"

Lucy considered it. "Hmm… sixty-forty? Unless there's a pile of keys, they're not going to be worth that much." It was truly an impressive number of zeroes.

Lyon agreed. "That sounds good to me, but if there is a pile, we'll switch back to seventy-thirty."

"Okay." Lucy accepted his response easily. This day and age, no one had a pile of celestial keys. There was just simply no point in stockpiling them if one wasn't a celestial mage. Too bad, though. Lucy would have liked to have seen such a thing. Unfortunately, her own collection was the largest she knew of, and it was hers, so it didn't really count.

"So… the job," Lyon redirected, now that the monetary issue was settled. "We're supposed to check in with the client at… Scilla Village." He frowned, staring closer at the job request. "I can't say that I've ever heard of it, actually."

"Neither had I, so I looked it up last night. With a little help from Crux, one of my celestial spirits." Lucy took a map out of her bag, and spread it out onto top of the job request. She pointed to a mountain to the northeast of Mt. Hakobe. "It's over here, on the same mountain the job request is for – ísfjall." She peered a little closer at the text. "Huh, I'm not seeing the word 'mountain' or 'mt.' anywhere."

Lyon looked at the mountain that Lucy's finger almost completely obscured. "Do you have a more localized map? It will be kind of hard to locate the village based on this."

Color spread through Lucy's cheeks. "Yeah, I do." She rolled up the first map, and then brought out a second. "Here it is. But here's where the problem in getting there lies." Lucy tapped the line leading to the village. "As far as I can tell, there's no train directly there. So we'd have to get off at the nearest stop and see what we can arrange from there."

"And that would be…" Lyon muttered, following the tracks with his own finger. "…Here. Larkspur." He thought about it for a long moment, and then asked, "Do you have a terrain map, by any chance?"

"Of course!" When Lucy immediately produced the map, Lyon shot a glance at her bag. How were all of these able to fit in there…?

"I should mention," Lucy said, looking sheepish, "that we need to be a little careful with these – I borrowed them from the Fairy Tail archive reference room and I'll need to return them after this."

"Fairy Tail has a personal archive?" Lyon questioned.

Lucy stared back at him blankly. "Yes? Is that… is that not normal?"

"Not really," Lyon stated. "I think that's pretty unusual for a guild." Even more unusual was the fact that the maps clearly bore the stamp of Magnolia's public library in the lower right corner, but Lyon decided not to call attention to it. "Okay, so looking at the topographical map… looks like the mountain doesn't have as high of an elevation as I feared it might. It tops out at three thousand eight hundred meters or thereabouts."

Lucy raised an eyebrow at him. "That's really high, though."

He made a noncommittal noise. "The chances are that the item we are supposed to be retrieving will be well below the alpine level and we won't need to hike all the way to the summit. Since most of the region is subalpine, and since it's already August, we probably won't encounter much snow at all. Though it'll still be really cold." He looked up at her, with a smirk. "For you, anyway."

Rolling her eyes at him, Lucy muttered, "Haha, very funny Mr. Ice Mage Extraordinaire."

"But since it's still a pretty high altitude for the village," Lyon continued, pointing at Larkspur on the map, "we should stay overnight in the town to acclimate ourselves, and then spend a night in the village itself, and possibly a night on the trail up to the village if the terrain is too difficult. It's best to be cautious, here. Altitude sickness is horrible."

"Even for an ice mage?" Lucy teased, drawing a smile out of Lyon.

"Unfortunately, my magic only makes me immune to the cold," he confessed. "Not to the lack of oxygen."

Lucy giggled in response. "Okay, that makes sense. So that's why you told Erza that it would take us a few days."

He nodded. "Yeah, since it'll take at least two days of travel, and today to get everything we need in order. Speaking of which, do you have any mountain climbing gear?"

Lucy shook her head. "No; I do have the right kind of clothes, but I don't have a pack that'll work nor any rock climbing gear. Or any poles if we do encounter snow. I can pick those up once we're done here, though." Thankfully, she had the reserve income to cover the expenses. Having a stable job for a year had done wonders for her finances. And given the amount of Jewels she stood to gain once the job was done, it would be well worth the cost.

Lyon's eyebrows shot up. "Do you know specifically what you're looking for? If not, I can help out."

"No thanks," Lucy told him. "I may not look it, but I've been on an excursion like this once before, when I was much younger. My father's business friends liked to see what mountains they could conquer along with the business market. It's pretty much a rich man's sport, from what I can remember."

She wasn't wrong. Lyon had heard of mages and locals being hired to cart rich folks up and down mountains like they owned the place. They would make exceptional nuisances of themselves, and generally ruin the experience for any genuine enthusiasts. It was something of a revelation that Lucy had once numbered amongst them, however.

Spotting the food being brought out, Lucy gathered up the maps and tucked them away again. After everything had been set down, and Lucy had thanked the waitress, she continued to talk about the job's particulars. "I'll have my gear all ready to go by tonight. How about you?"

"Definitely," Lyon reassured her. "I go on these types of jobs pretty often, as an ice mage. So I already have all the gear I need. About what we're searching for, though…" He rapped his knuckles against the flyer. "This doesn't mention what it is at all, does it?"

"Unfortunately, it doesn't," confirmed Lucy. "When I tried to pry more information out of Erza yesterday about it, all she could tell me was that the client would have the specifics. Including where on the mountain we should be looking."

Sighing, Lyon picked up his utensils. "I don't like going into it without more details, but this will have to do. And we may as well eat before any of this gets cold."

Agreeing wholeheartedly, Lucy promptly dug into her own meal – relishing every bite.