this may be the only update for a while with school starting, thanks for being so patient!

Old Miss Hana looked up at the whine of her door, her beady eyes locked onto the snow white haired boy with burnt wrist and clothes, small bits of steam rolling off where the fire hit. Despite the obvious cinders steaming on his wrists, the boy had a big, happy smile on his face, his eyes mostly closed as he stood before her. Taking the wooden pipe out of her mouth, she waved at him with a slight sneer, "Burnt again boy?"

"A little," he said.

"Said something your parents did like then."

"I was too honest. But they also said that I can never lie. And no matter what you do, Sandy will always be fat," he laughed.

The old woman grunted at that, waving her pipe to the chair across from her, her other hand pulling a worn spell book to her side. "You should have made yourself a sage with how often you get hurt," she grumbled."That way you can heal and hurt."

The boy shrugged. "I don't really see myself as a healer." With a giggle, he added, "And I don't see anyone rushing up to me for healing."

"I'm the ugliest old hag in the whole village, people still come."

The boy hummed. "True I suppose, but I think its more with reputation, isn't?"

"Yes for I'm just a bundle of flowers. Now sit still." With a cackle of bright energy she swept them over his wrists, easing away the burns to faded scars, though the still remained, waiting to be wiped away. Still smiling, he wiped the warm liquid off his throbbing wrists, enjoying the thumping feel that echoed after the hurt.

"Thank you," he bid with a chirp, Old Hana waved him away with a sharp grumble. "Just get out, flee to the woods like you always do. Grima knows what you do in there." He nodded as he stood and headed out, only to pause by the door. "Hey Miss Hana? Grima is that black dragon them Grimmy mages were spouting about, right?"

Old Hana shot him a dark look with her squinting eyes. Wagging a crooked finger at him, she spat out, "Don't you go sticking your nose in that Grimleal business."

"But he's that black dragon right?"

Old Hana huffed as she turned away, back to her desk.

He still had yet to leave from where he stood by the door. Absently, he voiced aloud, "I wonder if I prayed to that dragon, would he kill my parents?"

"Just get out of my house and back to your woods boy. Back to where you belong."

With the food bundled up and secure in the bag the crows snatched up, Henry was content as he trailed after Robin as she wandered around, walking much closer to her than before. Close enough that if he walked just a little faster, his hand could brush against the long feathers of her wings that hung a little ways behind her. It made him giggle each time his fingers brushed against the soft feathers, half tempted just to stretch the wing out and trace over each one. It was a little funny that the more he traveled with her, the more her white wings reminded him of a crow wings. Maybe that's why these birds always followed her around.

Maybe that's one of the reasons he followed her too. Her white crow wings.

And the mystery.

Certainly the mystery.

It was a fascination. He won't deny that. A little bit of her past revealed to him, he can't help but be drawn to her, intrigued about her situation, her mother, and whatever relation they had with Grimleal. It was a puzzle that had to be solved. And the best way to get those answers was to find the mother.

They stop when they hear a loud rustle, and before he could brace himself, her wings flew back open, knocking him off his feet, as a fox darts past them. Hearing her startled gasp, at the fox or for knocking him over, he didn't know. As she turned to him, the tips of her feathers brushing over his face and through a bit of his hair, he laughed at the tickling sensation and at the surprising force. He didn't know why he found it to be so funny, but it was.

Knocked over by giant wings, and tickled by those wings.

It was just hilarious for some reason.

"Are you ok?" Robin demands, bending over as he giggles on the ground, her wings hunched over him, making him feel like a rat caught by and eagle, the larger predator looming over him, hiding the world from him. It didn't entice a sense of fear in him like he was sure it would with many others, he actually liked the large looming wings hung over him. For the moment, against the light grey sky, the wings looked black.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly, reaching out a hand for him and easily pulling him back to his feet, her wings helping by keeping her steady, pressing against the ground.

"A little jumpy?" he humored.

She pouted at him before looking away, her wings curling around her again in a feathery blanket. He notes that she does that a lot when she's nervous or scared. "I'm scared about coming across those men again. I can fight, but I don't like too. And I can only sense magic, not other people that don't use it."

Humming, he glanced at the wings, realizing that spreading out like that was a defense mechanism. Startling the attacker with a suddenly bigger figure. "Besides wings," he said, "how else can you fight?"

She perks up before smiling, pulling out a knife from her belt, and opening the purple robe that was a little too big for her, she showed him a thoron spell book. She held the two items up proudly, much to his curiosity. A knife and a spell book. A little weird combination. People either used one of the other. Mages only used knives when they were experimenting, but never in a fight. Battles were too out of control for them to be restricted to blades, and usually the metal had ways of affecting spell books poorly. And there were factors that some mages were too physically weak to handle weapons. There was only a small handful that he could think that worked with weapons and spells.

And then the warriors themselves, most always had a hard time figuring out magic, much less grabbing the spell from the pages and throwing it out. It takes years of training for anyone to learn both. Yet there was this girl, silently showing him that she knows how to use both.

And she looked younger than ten.

"You know how to use both?"

"My mother taught me. Well, how to use spell books. One of the guards in our village showed me out to use a knife in a fight. I studied both so I know how to use both."

"Curious," he mused.

"Why?"

"You're the first I know that uses both and doesn't have a steed."

She raised her own white brow back at him, her head tilting to the side. "That's weird. Why do you need a mount to use both?" Henry simply shrugged. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, they won't catch us. And we're two powerful mages with a flock of crows. We got nothing to worry about." He was sure that the crows would sound the alarm if there was trouble too.

By the look on her face, Robin silently agreed with him as she slid the knife back onto her belt and hid the book away. She looked up suddenly, Henry following her example as he heard a frantic flutter of wings, and the insistent cry of a drooping crow. Holding her arm out, she let the bird settle on her arm, cawing endlessly.

"There's a town nearby," she told him, looking nervous. "I haven't been in a town since I got separated," she said, glancing up at her wings. "You can make them disappear?" he asked, gently holding one up as he observed it.

"You think its a good idea to go in?"

"Well, there's where you can find people."

Biting her lip, she closed her eyes as she concentrated. He watched in curious fascination as the wings shuddered, a sense of magic growing around her, cold and gentle as it brushed past him and filled the air. Each feather broke and fell away, crumbling away faster and faster with each second, and as they broke apart, they shattered into silver dust, disappearing into the air. His hand reached up instinctively to grab them, only to feel soft powder roll past his hand.

And then she was a normal girl, wingless and red eyed with long platinum blonde hair.

Looking up at him, she met his gaze as he stared at her, soaking in how much smaller she suddenly seemed, how much more skittish now that she didn't have those big wings around to shield her from the world. Smiling, he offered his hand as crows hopped around them, jumping up and digging their talons into their shoulders. "Lets go to the village," he said, "lets see if we can find your mother there."

i do like the idea that robin learned all fighting from their mother, but it always bugged me a little that she was a tactician class too. from what i got from chrom and lissa, robin is the first to have their own unique class, shared with only morgan when married to chrom, walhrat, or olivia (lucina if you want to count future kids). being the first magic and weapon class without a steed, i like to think robin invented it unintentionally, or grimleal themselves made it for grima.

this actually makes me sorta wish they renamed the class to something else since the term also falls to whoever is good at strategy, like aversa.