Author's Note: Hey everyone! It's been awhile, but no, I have not abandoned this (and will not!). Getting back into gear, so short chapter, but something is better than nothing, I think...right?

Kerchen studied himself in the mirror. He was a bit gaunt, but since he had always been wiry, this would go unnoticed. He had donned a clean set of Greys, his makeup covered every mark of his past, and the Healer had Healed all his fresh wounds-it would be impossible for Alys to say he was anything but recovered.

Now to convince myself of that. He had futilely clawed away at the barrier in his mind that Alvira had set up all night like a cat caught out in the rain. By morning, his despair had slowly turned to anger; he resented that Alvira had so easily reneged on her promise to stay with him.

If she really disagreed, she should instead try to explain why I'm wrong. She's punishing me out of hand, taking away her support until I give into her wishes. So I won't. He repeated that to himself for the hundredth time. He wanted to be more angry, angry enough to forget the other things that she had said-that the other Companions didn't trust him, that she might have Chosen wrong-and he was almost succeeding.

A bout of incessant knocking grabbed his attention. "Ker' are you up? It's time to go!" Surprised, Kerchen opened the door to greet Alys, her hand poised for yet another round of pounding.

"You are up early," he remarked, inviting her in. Whenever they were going to town, he normally had to dig her out from under her pile of cushions. This morning, however, she had as much life in her face as she did during afternoons.
"Of course!" she declared proudly, as though she always got up at this time. "Hey, do you know what day it is?"

"Er-"

"The height of the Festival! Today's the day when everything shuts down and everyone goes home!" Kerchen raised an eyebrow. Dieder certainly wouldn't approve of this definition of "height" for any festival. "Since you don't have any family to visit, you get to visit my family!" She then smiled suddenly, struck by an idea. "Or you could join my family! What say you, Ker'?"

"Um-"

"Oh right, you must be wondering. I come from an orphanage-we lived pretty simply, but from royal funding we were never too down on our luck. After Lani Chose me, I've been sending things there all the time," she answered immediately, even though that wasn't what he was going to ask. "Anyway, I bought all of the children presents, but because of that, I wasn't able to carry the couch I made!" Couch? "You'll help me carry it, right?"

"I-I suppose-" As soon as the confused words left his mouth, he found himself dragged down the stairs, with just barely enough time to shut his door. Her hand not letting up on his, Alys led him all the way up to her room, and swung open the door with her mouth open in silent fanfare. One of the cushion piles in her room was pointed toward him, and Alys in turn pointed to the pile.

"That's the couch I made," she said brightly. "I wanted to color it, but I'm sure the littles will do that for me much more creatively anyway. It's too big for me to carry, so I was hoping you could help!"

"Y-Yes, certainly-" he began, baffled, but found the enormous featherbag already shoved into his arms. Sighing, he let himself give a slight smile and hoisted the oversized sack over his shoulder. On any other day, he would have told her to try to help at least, but today, he simply followed her lead. Her rudeness was strangely lifting his spirits, as though all he needed was a bit of her vibrance.

The orphanage was located in the outermost ring of Haven, so the walk was long, despite Alys having led him down all sorts of shortcuts.

"I'm sorry about that last butcher," she apologized, "Normally his wife lets me through their house without any trouble."

"I do not blame him," replied Kerchen, still feeling a bit embarrassed about that incident. "It is not right to use other people's homes as roads."

"Then they're being too stingy!" Alys concluded, and continued trotting down the dirt path, occasionally chasing a pebble down the road with her foot. He strongly suspected that she was being unreasonable, even by Valdemaran standards. "Anyway, I'm glad you decided to come with me! Lani didn't seem to want to come-I think it's because last time, the kids were pulling her tail and braiding her mane." A pause. "Maybe if I had told them to braid the tail and pull the mane, she wouldn't have gotten so annoyed?"

"I think it is the same." Alys put a finger to her chin in thought, and then shrugged, resuming her zigzag path down the road. It hadn't snowed the day before, so the road was still quite clear. Due to the sparseness of the houses, this part of Haven resembled a village more, with the occasional resident walking to or from the city proper. The houses were slightly rundown but not filthy-all in all, a rather quaint part of town.

Alys suddenly veered to the right, following a much smaller path up to a large, squat brick house, enclosed entirely by a short wooden fence. The yard, both inside and outside the fence, was littered with snowmen, some more crude than others. As they passed mazes of footprints and snowcastles, Kerchen had no doubt that this was her orphanage. While he had been expecting something more subdued, the jaunty atmosphere the place exuded even in this cold seemed to match Alys's disposition entirely.

The moment Alys opened the (unlocked) gate, a trickle of children began to pile out, faces ruddy with excitement. A chorus of unsynchronized screams erupted, yelling out her name and that she was here and what did she bring. Despite the large cloth bag she wore on her back, she enthusiastically picked them up and swung them around effortlessly as though they were dolls. She is stronger than I realized-sharper, too-was it my mistake? Have I, a former agent, underestimated her? Or did she simply change? If so, what could have caused it? Although he tried to puzzle this out, he soon found himself swarmed by children half his height.

"Everyone say hi to your new friend Kerchen!" Alys called out from somewhere deeper in the building.

"Hi!" They cheered together, with some older children mumbling "heyla".

"He brought you a couch and he wants to play with you!" Another collective cheer. Kerchen looked to Alys, eyes silently pleading her to tell him what was happening, but found himself overwhelmed by the littles before he received a response. Paying no mind, Alys headed off into another room, and yet another, and yet another. While he wasn't sure what she was doing, it became clear very soon that she was preoccupied. I suppose I'll take care of these littles for now..

That was precisely what he did for the next few hectic marks. Rambunctious and playful, the littles were not like the subdued children in Karse, and not at all like those at the Holding. He wasn't really sure what to do with them, but they seemed eager to teach him. As they babbled at him in broken phrases, he discovered that these children knew a lot of games, many more than any little he had come across. He was, at different times, chasing them, being chased, sometimes with a ball, throwing things, hopping around, and in general doing things he wasn't used to doing. Although the level of exercise was hardly that of his classes, he found himself strangely exhausted halfway through. He persisted, if only out of sheer stubbornness not to be done in by a lot of children, and surprisingly found himself enjoying some of it. Some of the littles would burst into tears for whatever reason, but overall, Kerchen thought he had done a pretty good job of occupying them. He'd just finished another backbreaking round of Heralds and Companions when Alys came back, wooden spoons in hand.

"It's lu-unch!" She called out in a singsong voice. Most of the children bolted for her, yelling and running past her with seemingly boundless energy. She walked over to Kerchen, who sank down onto the floor. "They're fun, aren't they?"

"Energetic," he gasped. "Are they like this always?"

"Of course, they're kids," replied Alys matter-of-factly. "By the way, nice job playing as a Companion! I already had some littles tell me they wanted to play again after lunch." Kerchen swallowed his groan out of dignity.