….
The Mistletoe has been rather… crowded in the recent days.
Kuro caught the glass that was going to be slid across the counter before his current barkeep in training had a chance to launch it across the room.
.
Someone called out to him. "Nice catch, man!"
…He sighed, again, for the twelfth time. This had been a very tiring few weeks.
"Lucille? We have rules for a reason. Don't just use your semblance all the time for petty things."
She glanced at him. "…"
"Don't use your magic for petty things."
"I wasn't going to just use the air to levitate the one glass smoothly across the room. The cup would have stopped at the edge of the counter, and it it fell, I can cast a simple sp-"
"No." Kuro said. "You were going to end up overusing your semblance. That has some serious consequences if you try it"
Lucille set her hand down. "Fine. I'll just shout across this entire room at the one person who this is for, then?"
"No. You don't do that either. You shouldn't be blasting cups around with magic when there's better things to do. You're using your soul for all these small things. Don't use it for anything and ev-"
He looked at the contents of the cup he was holding.
Lucille hissed at him. "What? Kuro. You didn't end it."
Kuro repeatedly glanced, unsettled at the cup and after three loops, he looked around the room. "Who ordered this inedible thing again? I thought I burned the recipe!"
…
… The room began to slowly quiet down. It was not fast enough for his liking.
…
..
"YOU'RE GOING TO DIE YOU IDIOT!" he bellowed at such intensity that everyone jumped in their seats.
"I'm already seventy, you bastard!"
His arm twitched back for an instant, then he breathed out and calmly walked over to the table where the single man was staring at him.
He appeared to be uncomfortable, though. That was good for him to see.
"Your undrinkable cup of oil."
"Have a good day, you terrifying mountain."
Kuro fumed as he trod back. When he returned to the bar, he whispered quietly to Lucille.
"Burn the recipe page to ash."
…
…
"Lucille?"
She kept staring at… something. He tried to follow her line of sight, and just saw a small speck of light on the wall.
"-Only for what drives you." she muttered.
Kuro started staring at her. "Can you say that again?" he asked. "I couldn't catch that first part."
She nodded her head in time with her exhaled words.
"Use your soul, but only for what drives you."
Kuro nodded and idly replied. "Don't just repeat my words back to me. Try to follow it more."
He turned back to check the list of the next few things people had requested. Fish stew. That's going to be nice.
Hmm….
… Wait. No fish.
He went out from the counter and tried to find out the best path to his destination.
… There. There's the man.
…
"Excuse-"
…
"Need to get through-"
…
A short walk past the edges of the tables resulted in a rather big scare for Ivaldi.
After he was given a moment to settle, Kuro said his piece.
"We have no fish."
The Faunus looked up at him, and raised his eyes like he just saw that the sky was a faintly brighter shade of blue.
"I know. That's why you came over here. It's to explain that I should know that I never did any fishing last week."
….
Kuro spoke in a low, tired tone. "You are infuriating."
He turned to leave, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
Ivaldi started to subtly suggest that Kuro should stay...
"Sit down with me. I need you to see something."
…
"Why?"
"Please. It's about your da-"
Kuro sat down.
…
….
"Did she try to use her ability to help your fishing efficiency again?"
…again? Kuro. That was a… a few decades ago.
… Huh. This is harder to say than I thought.
"No. Have… you taken a good look at her? What do you see?"
Kuro turned to the girl walking around the area behind the counter.
"She's older."
"And…"
"A Faunus."
… Yes. Not that though. Why aren't you seeing what I mean?
Ivaldi looked at her as well. She was looking across the room with perfect posture. "She's very… stilted…"
"Huh. She is. Is that all?"
… "Y… You really don't get it. This is going to sound awful, but I'm just going to say it."
Hooo boy.
"Kuro. She looks dead inside to me. Here, look at this next action."
He breathed in and shouted out. "AYA! SLICE TWO PLANK?"
Lucille instantly turned to face him.
He flinched. Gods. That actually worked.
She then pulled her hand out without hesitation and grabbed one of the older loaves of bread.
Lucille then methodically cut it into equal slices.
After this, she rotated 90 degrees and took five steps to a shelf of plates.
Ivaldi cleared his throat and turned back to his table mate. The clattering was now just a minor bit of background noise.
"That… is not the actions of a living creature. That is the actions of a machine trying and barely passing at being a person. Your daughter's messed up way of moving aside, there is something that is now much more important about how she's acting."
"Which is…"
Ivaldi pointed at him. He started grinning a bit too widely.
"How does she know?"
"Know what?" Kuro asked.
Lucille went over to the table and set down a plate. He glanced at the contents of it, and pulled out a smug little smile.
"Four bread slices and cheese." he said, gesturing over the table.
Ivaldi closed his eyes, waiting for the cries of astonishment.
…
…
He looked at the bear after a complete lack of response. "Kuro. This is the part where you realise the impact of this."
Ivaldi turned to the girl. "You mind sitting down a moment?"
She sat down in a chair as Kuro looked at him, confusion obvious and apparently uncleared.
"Your daughter's remembering us. Long, long ago, she tried to help me increase my net catches. As we all know, it failed spectacularly."
Kuro nodded. "She blew your boat ten feet up into the air."
"But what you didn't know is that, for our lunch, we just had some bread and cheese from my stores. I thought it would be funny to talk in completely ridiculous terms to keep her from weeping all over. How. Does. She. Know. Those. Terms?"
Ivadli watched his friend's face turn into understanding. It was a good feeling.
Kuro turned his head and spoke to Lucille. "Lucille. That is a very good example to support what I taught you. Your heart was in it back then, but you were doing it so Ivaldi would congratulate you."
Lucille's face gaped at his dialogue. "I…I did not do that! Ivaldi! Help me here."
She turned to him and started rapidly speaking, her hands fidgeting all over. "It's fully possible to use magic without being tied back by my emotions! Even if I did want you to congratulate me then it would not be a significant change to me that pride and desires for praise would do to cause such a change to the spell! Even if I am against an opponent with intent to kill, it is a sign of a talented person that you can stay calm enough in a battle to not become flustered! What you were describing was either an untrained young girl failing under her powers and stress, or that cyclical pillar of air was the spell, and what she used was a badly controlled kind of spell like my Cyclone, further disordered because she didn't know how to change the spell's origin to her target location, thus causing the spell to use her as the origin and launching the boat into the air."
Lucille took a breath.
"All in all, this young girl you are describing is just a young mage. She's untrained and let her emotions get in the way of her spellcasting. Ivaldi, if you were trying to fish and you were distracted, that's not the fish's fault. It's yours, but you can also be skilled enough to not let your distraction impact your fishing! See?"
Ivaldi pointed to his friend, raising an eye in a questioning look. "See?"
"I'm good at magic! Even if I'm annoyed at him for saying I was just arrogantly looking for praise! Here! I can even prove it!"
...
Ivaldi's face fell quickly after hearing that.
Lucille stood up in her chair and snapped her fingers twice, while waving her hand across the room.
Nothing happened besides everyone turning to look at her.
"You lot are good?"
Lucille spoke. "We're fine. Everyone, drop your empty cups."
People slowly set glasses down with a ripple of clinking.
She turned to Kuro as she came down from the chair. "I know what I'm doing. My soul's always been driving me."
Lucille straightened herself up and walked with purpose to the counter. She leaned her arms against the wood and looked around slowly.
… Lucille spoke clearly, but slightly absentmindedly. "Ah, I forgot that step."
She reached out her left hand and a familiar sound came from a different room. However, this wasn't before a loud banging came alongside a shout of "LUCILLE. STOP TRYING TO GET YOUR STA-"
The staff in question darted to her hand with a soft impact. A few chuckles came as Vassa soon followed.
"Don't you DARE try anything else, gir-"
A blue light flashed through the room as every glass in the room spun up into the air. With a quiet whistle the glasses floated to the counter and were smoothly set down.
She silently took all the cups to the kitchen.
Upon her return, she saw her staff being recaptured once again in the hands of Vassa.
Vassa was smiling.
"It's good to hear you're remembering things. I wish this wasn't how I learned of it, though. We're continuing the grounding, Lucille."
"This is detainment."
"This is preventing you from violently chasing after a criminal, Lucille."
….
..
..
..
Violently chasing after a criminal.
"Well, fuck me."
Branwen looked over at the girl. She didn't look deadly, but he had a basic rule that had been serving him pretty well:
Assume the weird women can kick your ass.
This was often added with the rule of thumb he applied to Aura users: They can kick your ass easily. Having the weird young woman that just stared like a corpse while helping make the meals also be the same mysterious Aura user that nearly killed him in a snow crash… was not comforting.
Oh, wait. That wasn't the full story, though? It turned out she was in trouble with her… parents? Think so. That old woman had spoken nicely to the girl. Definitely her mother.
Spoken kindly about grounding the freak for trying to chase after a criminal?
Branwen took a long time to recover from that previous snowy incident, and now he just learned she was after him?
… Stay composed. Strength in stability. Strength in stability.
"OI. Just let her deal with the bastard! Saves us from having Déa get buried twice!"
Who just said that?
Branwen's face was as still as he could ever hold it. His mind was currently trying to find out who he needed to punch in the face. His plans of violent retaliation was unwillingly made to stop as he heard someone sit down in the chair opposite him.
He ignored it by having his covered eye face their direction. A clear sign of ignoring someone, and rather effective.
"Hello. Is something wrong?"
His right eye darted to look without his control.
Shit.
"Kid. Nothing's wrong."
She leaned towards him and he nearly moved his chair back to get away.
Branwen stopped before moving his legs. That… is not a good idea.
… The girl tilted her head. "Have you met me before?"
"No." I also don't think I'd survive meeting you a third time.
She just stared at him. It was really creepy. He stayed still and uncaring on the outside, though.
…
…
…
"Are you going to fucking do anythin-"
"-Want a burger?"
Branwen blinked twice in surprise. "I.. what?"
"I have a burger. Do you want to eat it?"
She reached below the table and pulled out a plate. It held a single, picturesque burger.
…
Branwen stared at it like he couldn't believe his eyes. "The fuck is this?"
"You hadn't eaten anything. All you drank was one alcoholic beverage from flask. So, I'm offering you my food. It's… polite."
… she frowned. "Unless you can't eat meat. Or bread. Or cheese."
He picked up the plate, and the girl stood up to leave.
"Kid."
She turned around and watched him look at the food.
"Did you see a big lake like a star when you were walking about that snowy nightmare of a place?"
She paused for half a second.
"No. I didn't."
She then left him to the food.
…
Branwen looked back down at the food, thinking on something.
Whatever he was doing, he stood up with the plate. After this, he began walking to the door that led outside and prepared to just pull it open with his
foot.
… No. That's going to hurt.
He set the plate down, opened the door, straightened his gear, and left the Mistletoe Horn with the plate.
"FuckFuckFuck-"
The food had been untouched.
….
..
..
The burger was softly set down onto a stand in the corner of a dimly lit room. A small tapping and shuffling was prevalent all around, echoing in the air.
Branwen sat down for three seconds, then heaved himself up and went to stand over a mound of fabric.
Gods that hurt like a raven slashed it but he was going to do it anyways.
"This is the part where you eat. Starving is not a strength. Being able to survive on little food is a strength, but this isn't that."
…
Ending his lines with a harumph, he went back to a chair.
"Hrmm?"
"You fell asleep again? Why do I even try with you?"
"Beccc-"
Branwen straightened, nearly knocking over a few rolls of some parchment or another. "Go on."
"Because I am the person willing to let you live in their home."
Branwen picked at a couple callouses before glancing up at Déa's mound.
… "Wait. You wanted me to stay here? Why? I could have just bunked out on the ground if I felt like it."
The bundle shook themselves out and a wiry haired person looked up at the man.
… "That is not a smart action to do in this weather, Mr Branwen. Stubbornness is not strength, it is vice."
Branwen muttered. "There's no reason for you to do that."
Three sharp raps came in reply. "No. There is. I can get you to help me in return for me housing you."
Ah. Blackmail.
He knew how to deal with blackmail.
"If I may also note, you decided in your own to stay around and help me with my work. I had no hand in that."
"Says the man blackmailing me to work?"
"I just decided to allow you to stay here. Before that, you were not under any obligation to stay here. The only think that keeps you from leaving was a damaged leg."
…
…
"I brought you a burger." Branwen said, gesturing at the side table-shelf thing.
Déa started thumbing through their map, quietly scraping off some of the region with thin cuts. "… Kuro must have been taking notes a while back. Are you going to eat it?"
Branwen looked at the thing. "You missed my earlier sentence. You now possess one object of food. No idea how the girl pulled it out of fucking nowhere, but it's food, and you're going to eat it."
"… It's a slice of meat inside two slices of a bread?"
Branwen glanced at the food. "Yes. Do you not know what the food is? It's a recent discovery or somethin-"
"I know what bread covered meat is. What girl?"
Branwen shrugged briefly, feigning nonchalance. "The massive man who runs the bar had his daughter working at it. It turned out that she's the Aura user, the one that buried us." Damn bitch. "Also, you wanted me to ask everyone if they saw that lake you were trying to go to? I'm willing to bet a hit in the leg that she knows about it."
…
…
Déa slowly set down their scalpel. "Lucille?"
… "Huh? What?"
...
...
"You don't investigate much, do you?"
Wh- That's insulting. Do you know who you're even talking t-
Glass glinted at his face. "Kuro often told me he worked at the counter of his workplace. I saw him there when I had went in. He only had one daughter, unless he had a new one more recently and just completely hid her from the world."
… "honestly, with what happened last time, I wouldn't blame him if he tried to do th-"
Branwen stopped the rambling with a sharp "What? Explain that."
"Did this girl control wind?"
…
Branwen stayed silent and just watched him warily.
"It's her, then. That… is interesting."
"I'm going to have you to explain what all the fuss is about this kid," Branwen said. "I counted multiple looks of astonishment when people looked at her the last two weeks. Some were even from the same people. Who is this annoying Aura-using snow-blasting kid?"
Branwen crossed his arms and pulled out a look that suggested bad alternatives to verbal discourse.
Déa turned their head away and continued their work while calmly beginning to speak.
….
"Firstly, before we get anywhere else, Lucille hadn't gotten her ability… normally. She just… had it one day."
"… isn't that how people usually get it?" Branwen asked. "Sudden death or poetry. If nobody did the latter, then she just spontaneously had the former-"
"No. People usually are reported to have it in life-or death situations, not by running across the town trying to deliver someone a satchel they mistakenly left behind."
…
..
..
..
..
… Déa stilled for a long while.
…
"She did something ridiculous, didn't she? Broke her neck or got a heart attack or-"
"Lucille flew into me and I lost what remained of my meagre sight." Déa explained.
…Was not expecting that.
"After that, everything she did was spent trying to understand how her ability worked."
… Déa paused and pointed at a low nook on the cluttered wall to the left of Branwen. "4 scalpel?" they asked.
Branwen passed over a thin blade with a small row of raised dots.
…
"This is a five scalpel."
Branwen took the blade back, twirled it around idly, and looked into the nook to find a thinner scalpel.
…Good heft behind this.
"Please stop your twitching." Déa muttered in a quiet voice.
"I thought you just said you couldn't see. Lost your remaining sight?"
"I cannot see details. I can tell you are moving something fast enough to make it grey."
… No idea what that even means.
He stopped his spinning anyway, and found a scalpel with one less dot on the handle.
Branwen stopped moving.
…
…
…
The dimly lit room went still.
"Please hand me the scalpel."
"… I'm going to hold this hostage until you eat that food I brought you."
Déa grumbled a refusal, but still went over to where the food had been set minutes ago.
…
…
"It was eventually discovered that she gained the ability to control the wind. After various accidents and experiments, our definition of her gift extended even further."
Déa took a few bites, chewing quietly.
"Did you know that abilities, Semblances, can grow?"
"No."
"I thought it had worked in a similar vein to how the base ability came to exist. I was trying to find out a theory of why she had gotten this "
…
"How would that power even "evolve"? She just… controls even more winds?" Branwen rolled his eyes.
…
"She controlled snow, as you have noticed yourself-"
Branwen snorted and muttered sarcastically. "Oh, incredible. She picked up snow. What power. She controls wind, Déa. She would just pick up snow with the air."
Déa stood up from the food. "Come and look here."
They went over to a small case, wandering past various tools, parchments, and sheathed maps.
"This box here is the rather small region of Mantle." they said, opening up a well worn lid and removing a sizeable stack of parchments.
…Mantle? I don't need a history lesson.
"Look at this map here. You'll recognise this one."
Tapping a raised trail, they pulled it along a flowing path all around a little square titled "Mantle."
… "Mantle's an entire kingdom in a continent. It doesn't even exist anymore. When was this map made?!" Branwen stared in disbelief at how old this must be.
"Around a decade ago, give or take a few years."
...
...
...
...
...
...
…You're fucking joking.
Déa faced his hunched body.
"This is a map of the area around this town, Branwen. I made it myself. This line I have pointed out is the edge of the raised area of land our town is situated on."
"Like that spot you've been changing all week?"
Déa nodded.
"Please, now look at the previous map." they said, holding out an equally worn parchment.
Branwen looked over the map and tried to spot what was different.
Nothing really changed.
Déa sighed after a few seconds. "The ridge."
… Ah. There. The ridge previously pointed out was far lighter in this map. "What does this mean if it's not as strong here?"
"It is not as significant."
…
Branwen complained about the irrelevant tangent. "What does that have to-"
He glanced over the map, noting some extra details, such as a small region of trees around the town.
… A couple of raised segments, stone, or hills, perhaps.
They never showed up the most recent maps.
There were, counting in multiples of twenty, about sixty changed points on this map.
..No. Noooooo….
Branwen stared, and barely choked out two words. "She didn't."
Déa nodded once, understandingly.
"Geographically, you can't hide that level of change, and you definitely can't just make everything truly forget a girl raising the earth into a new form and ruthlessly cutting away all things on it."
…
…
Branwen stared at the enormity of what this signified.
…
"You can try, of course, but that trying fails if there's any evidence of what's changed. In fact, people did try. According to Vassa, Lucille was brought away under the offer of learning control.
'In the end, you'll be able to help anyone you want to.'
… And so, she left, and we expected her to be back in a four years."
… Branwen laid down on the chair, stunned at this. "This is insane. How in the world did we never hear about this?"
"I didn't expect a group of nomads to care about world events such as this."
"I think we'd at least hear something about a young girl that razes the earth for amusement."
Déa started to seclude the box away. "Would it have changed anything? After all, there's no proof but the work of an old mapmaker."
"Eh-"
…
"Bu-"
…
Branwen furrowed his brows and exhaled.
"Shut-
…
My point is that there's a difference between having strength and knowing how to use it. Anyone that can't do it properly should not have it. All Aura does is cause problems for those who don't possess it. This is a clear example of it. I don't like being lied to… but if I thought about taking advantage of her, others definitely would have tried."
…
"Good point." Déa said.
…
"Our vassal has a semblance."
… "The old woman? Can you at least say her name properly? You lot have hard names to keep track of."
"She is our town's vassal. It is her name, and her title."
… That's ridiculous. "How is that relevant? Thi-"
Déa waved their words down. "You asked, so listen to the story. She can sense the states of the people who she is responsible for. Anywhere."
…
… Fine, I can admit that is useful.
"Your point being…"
"Ignoring our opinions over the past, this is relevant for one reason, namely that Lucille never came back. This meant one of two things: There was no longer any responsibility over her, or she was dead."
…
"Her parents got a letter a few years back. I was present when they read it. It was an unfamiliar address to us all, and there was nothing on it to let us return it to anyone.
'We are sorry to deliver this news of your daughter's death'."
Déa quieted down.
"-There is no way to send back a body, due to death in combat. We are sorry for the loss this letter brings."
…
"And so we mourned, and life eventually moved on past it…"
…
…
"I think there's a 'but then….' missing somewhere." Branwen said.
The two sat there in the quiet of the cluttered room.
…
"Well, that has a simple explanation!" Branwen shouted out. "The girl got her insane power, got taken away by one of those schools, and then they lied about her death when she got the fuck out of there. Simple!"
Déa twitched in his direction. "That… does make some sense."
"Of course it does. I'm excellent at reading situations."
…
..
..
..
…
Branwen muttered a rejoinder, squinting his eyes at the small man. "Enough to know that you only ate four bites of a burger as your first meal all week. Get back over there, you idiot."
Déa grumbled and went to sit down next to the taller man, taking slow bites of the now cold food.
…
…
…
Wait a second. That was weirdly long…
Branwen turned to ask a question. "Couldn't you have just said 'She's an academy graduate,' and ended it there?"
..
…
"I could have, but I don't really care about the feelings of anyone trying to change history anymore," Déa replied.
….