Over the next few weeks, the twins and I spent almost every day at Santoff Claussen, sometimes even staying the night. Mr. Qwerty taught them while Ombric was busy with the children's lessons and then Ombric would take over just before sunset. Once Mr. Qwerty was freed up I spent time with him, sometimes reading, sometimes talking. A few times he asked me to add some new stories to his pages. "No one has added fiction in quite a long time... I miss it" He smiled sadly at me. "Katherine was the last person to write such lovely stories in my pages. Ombric only adds mathematical equations or facts. An occasional spell, but stories are something entirely different." His smile turned happy again. "These stories you've added are quite exciting." He shivered a little, his pages rustling. "You said that these are all ones you've read?" I mumbled something like uh-huh. I was trying to concentrate on copying down the story as closely as I could remember. Personally, I had a habit of paraphrasing and if this was his first time hearing about any of these stories I wanted them to be as close to the original as I could remember. "Your memory is miraculous! You've gone through four other tales so far - I can't believe you haven't mixed up the stories by now - I do that a lot." The second part of that last sentence was spoken more to himself than to me.

"It's not that much of a miracle. I just learn in a lot of different ways, one of them is by sight. A lot of the math equations I remember by picturing the whiteboard while the teacher wrote it down." I smiled a little. "But stories are different. They become a part of me and I feel like I leave a little bit of me in return. Whenever I think of them or re-read them I feel like I'm coming home and... well that makes them as easy to remember as my own face." The warm fuzzy feeling that I got whenever I reminisced on any story I'd ever read also appeared whenever I talked about why I love them so much. "But that means that sometimes a few details get fuzzy to shush and let me finish this one."

I didn't get many changes while at Santoff Claussen to spend time with the twins, and while we were home it was straight to bed and back to studying first thing. I did, however, watch them in their lessons a lot. Ain was inquisitive and bubbly and an all around honor student. Had she been at my school growing up she'd have had straight A's, hands down. Aldebaran was a little slower on the uptake, but that was more from resistance to certain things as opposed to lack of brain cells. I could see that some of the things our world did frustrated him, he wasn't taking everything the best. When Ombric taught the two of them the history of all the wars we'd had I caught Ain crying, and Aldebaran just looked lost for a moment. When he taught them about how most of the immortals here had been created neither of them had taken it well. Apparently, it was rare back home in the Golden Age for anyone to be brought back once they'd died, and even then only if they'd been in the running for a position beforehand. They didn't even know the half of it.

That day when we took a break for lunch - which I was participating in because it smelled delicious - they were talking about it between themselves. They did that a lot, hold a conversation and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. I was eavesdropping because I do that with everyone and couldn't help but wonder how they were going to react if and when they ever went to Legends. It took me a moment after they stopped talking to realize that they did. I blinked and looked up, noting that the two of them were staring at me expectantly. Before I could ask what they wanted, Ain cleared her throat. "Story, Professor Shalazar informed us yesterday that many -"

Aldebaran cut in. "If not most."

"Of the Immortals on Earth had... had died before becoming thus." It clearly disturbed Ain to think that we hadn't had a choice in the matter. Aldebaran hid his emotions well, but I could detect the same in his eyes. "Is this true?"

I hesitated for a minute before setting down my utensils and taking a breath. Here we go again. "For those Immortals created by Manny - Tsar Lunar - yes. Not a lot of people in the past knew that the gods they worshiped used to be human. Less even believed magic was possible in the time I was mortal." I shrugged a little. "We barely have anyone alive now who believes the truth let alone knows it."

"But why? Part of the Guardian's duties is to be the median between the populace and the Constellation that rules them." Ain looked shaken. "Individuals are supposed to be put through training for their position first, then the applicant with the highest aptitude for said position is granted immortality in turn for their position. Professor Shalazar makes it seem as if none of you had an idea going into it what your duties were."

"That's 'cause we didn't." I shrugged. "Most of us didn't know we'd ever wake up again let alone have magic powers and a new job to come with them. Some of us can't stand Manny - Tsar Lunar - for saddling us with a job we never wanted and a life that never ends." I looked away for a second. "I'm not one of them but a good number of my friends are. Jack was the same was until he became a Guardian." I looked over to see absolute shock on their faces.

"Jack Frost has died?" For once Aldebaran found his voice first. "I never imagined that one of the Guardians would have lived through that."

Ain held her hand to Aldebaran's shoulder, more for her own sake than for his. "That poor boy."

"Don't pity Jack for having died." An edge had crept into my voice and I tried to smother it. "He died saving his little sister from the same fate, Immortality was his reward for being so selfless that he'd sacrifice his life for another. The hardest thing for Jack was that Manny hid his memories from him for three hundred years. He was alone with not a single believer in the world. Half the immortals hated him because of how much of a prankster he is. He had no one." Ain was tearing up and Aldebaran was speechless. "Manny took his memories so he wouldn't lose himself when his sister eventually died of old age - and I can't hold that against him, but the fact that for more than two centuries after, Manny did nothing to return them, is what makes my blood boil. I can usually understand why Manny does what he does, but I can't, and more importantly, won't forgive him for putting Jack through that much heartache."

I took a breath to calm down lest I go on a rant again. "So yes, ninety percent of us have died, that's why Mors is so important. But it's not the end of the world." I picked my fork back up and took another bite of food as they processed the knowledge I'd laid out.

Surprisingly, after they'd done the same for a few minutes, it was Aldebaran who broke the silence. "Did you?"

"Did I what?" I said it around a mouthful of food. I was in the home stretch and I was trying to down the last of it.

He cleared his throat. "Did you die?" I froze with my fork halfway to my mouth.

Ain's fork clattered to the table. "Aldie!"

Aldebaran was defending his question when I put my fork back down and sat up straighter. "Yes." Neither of them heard me at first but then Ain looked at me to see how egregiously offended I'd become by her brother.

To her surprise I was calm. "Story, I'm sorry, Aldie and I had agreed to not ask anyone if they had perished in the past." She shot him a glare.

I shook my head, Aldebaran eyeing me all the while. "No it's okay, I did." Ain's hand rose to her mouth to hide her sympathetic horror. I turned my gaze to Aldebaran in full force. "Before I became Immortal, I'd wished for magic to be real my entire life - to the point I'd been willing to go to the darkest depths of it if only to prove I was right. Then I met Jack, and it was one of the best days of my life because he was living, breathing proof that magic was not only real but that it had come back to me." I was tearing up a little but I didn't care. "So when I died a few months later I didn't care that I was dying two weeks before my birthday. I didn't care that I'd never gotten to see even a fraction of what I'd wanted to. I didn't even care that I hadn't finished school. Because I'd had magic - I'd had Jack."

Ain reached for my hand but I pulled back. This was one time I didn't need comfort. "Then I woke up. Jack was there, and Manny's voice was whispering in my ear that I was Story Tale. I cried. I had not only a second chance but the chance to really live. I could fly, something I'd always dreamed of. I was magic!" I held up my hands, trying to express how grateful I was to Manny for what he'd done for me. "Even with everything that's been lost to me over the years, I would always choose the same. I would always choose this life and these people." I dropped my arms, shrugging a little. "And Manny knows it. There are some of us out there who feel the same, and they're enough to keep us all going."

Ain was speechless from everything I'd laid out. Aldebaran looked like he was soaking it in and filing it away. In the silence following my statement, we heard steps that ended up being Ombric coming to join us for lunch. After that, we went back to what we'd been doing for the past few days. The twins with their lessons, and me enjoying the vacation. Something I noticed though, was that Ain wasn't trying to talk to me as much as she had previously. I don't know if she was freaked out by the fact that I'd died, or if she was trying to not push things so much after the info she definitely hadn't expected me to share. Either way, she was avoiding me. Aldebaran on the other hand, seemed like he was trying to talk to me more than usual. I wondered if it was because we'd spent more time together and he felt more comfortable with me, or if it was because of him wanting to know more about things that Ombric and Mr. Qwerty would only talk about in an educational verbiage as opposed to a realistic one. Either way, he wasn't leaving me alone.

After another week or so, we all took a break from Santoff Claussen and decided to stay home for a day or two. Ain shut herself up in the guest house for most of the time, but Aldebaran actually spent a while in the library. On day three of our break, I went in to read on one of my books and saw him sitting there with delight in his eyes. It was the most alive I'd seen him since I'd met him. I noticed the book he was reading and I couldn't help my own smile grow. It was one Tanya had published way back when and that she'd all but thrown at me, telling me to add it to my collection. Aldebaran was right about to the part where the main character had one of her particularly snappy comebacks and sure enough, as I watched he laughed out loud, snorting as he did. The sound elicited a chuckle out of me, as well.

Aldebaran looked up from the book somewhat alarmed but still laughing. "Oh, hello, Story. I did not hear you come in." His eyes went back to the page, his slime returning. "This book of yours is quite entertaining. This girl - Marjory - is very witty and an impressive fighter."

I grinned and sat in one of the other chairs. "I think so too." I watched his eyes rove the page for a few seconds. "I'm glad you like it."

"I've always enjoyed reading whenever we were not on duty." He marked the page and set the book down. "I prefer fiction as it is a nice reprieve from daily life." He glanced at some of the other books on my shelves. "It seems that you are the same way."

"Oh, yeah." I pointed towards the book he was reading. "My favorites are where the hero of heroine has more problems than just the epic ones. Where they're battling anxiety or loss or having to make decisions that affect a lot more than themselves. Ones where the story feels real."

"I've always preferred the sort that are set in fantastic and far away lands that seem outrageous at first but then on second thought seem plausible." He chuckled lightly and shrugged. "Being a Star Pilot I've seem many varied worlds in my life and yet books always seem to come up with worlds that even I have a hard time believing in. Even so, I still do believe in them, in the end."

I couldn't help my smile then. He was one of the first people in a long time that I'd met who got it. "Yeah... they have a way of making you feel like you're part of the world you're reading and then you wake up and realize that they're just words, marks on paper." I giggled. "I remember something I saw someone write years ago that said 'Books are the weirdest things on Earth, they're just lines on paper but when you read them you go somewhere that doesn't even exist.' No truer words have ever been said."

"I must say, I have to agree." He looked thoughtful for a second. "Though I've never thought of it that way before."

We laughed at that for a minute. "Have you and Ain taken a look around the area yet?" He shook his head. "Do you guys wanna go on a walk? It's a nice day out and I thought it'd be nice if you guys got to see my backyard. You know, get out of the house and get some fresh air."

He smiled sincerely. "That sounds nice. I'll go and get Ain."

We both stood up. "I'll meet you guys in the living room here, the staircase goes down to the ground on this tree only." He nodded and headed out before me. I glanced back at his book and for a second wanted to put it away. Instead, I left it there. If he was going to enjoy my library, I was gonna let him feel at home in it. I walked upstairs to grab my bag off of my bed. Then I headed to the kitchen to grab a handful of snacks and a water bottle that I filled. I figured that I'd stock up for the hike, more for them than for me. A few minutes later, Aldebaran came back alone. "Ain said that she would rather rest. I would still like to explore the surroundings a bit if you don't mind leaving her."

I shrugged. "I'm fine, I figured you'd be more broken up about it than me." At his questioning look, I elaborated. "You guys don't go anywhere without each other, from what I can see."

He shrugged. "We have different interests and hobbies. She is my family, yes and the most important person alive to me, but we do enjoy occasionally doing things separate from each other."

I shrugged my bag up onto my shoulder. "Alright, then. Follow me." I gestured over my shoulder and started walking down the endless steps. After we left the tree, I took him to the nearest path and headed for the lake that was nearby. The guest houses windows looked out towards the lake so I knew he'd find it familiar. We chit-chatted on the way, mostly him talking about all the stuff he'd learned and asking what certain plants were called. Once I had to pull him back from some poison ivy that had crept over the path. When we finally got to the lake we sat down and took a break.

Aldebaran looked around him, one of his arms resting on his knee. "I can see why you chose this place for your home. It looks like a scene from a book."

"A specific book, actually. It's called Maximum Ride and there are these bird kids who live in a house way up in a canyon, but then they have to go on the run and then end up sleeping in trees at night. I was spending some time here and I felt like it was meant to be." I shrugged. "I'd always sort of wanted a tree house." I looked over at Aldebaran. "What was your home like?"

He stiffened up a little bit and the jovial look to him faded away. He shifted his position before starting to talk like he was trying to close himself off. "Home wasn't all it was cracked up to be." He glanced at me for a second. "I am using that phrase correctly?" I nodded. "It was appealing, yes, and everyone was pleasant, but that's all it was - pleasant. Everyone was nice and no one ever said a word against anyone else. It was a utopia for many. Then one day we met Sanderson." His demeanor changed again and there was something in his posture that spoke volumes. "He was already a Star Pilot at the time and had been for years He'd come to our home planet for his duties and had decided to stop in for a few days to recuperate. As the children of Tsar Taurus, Ain and I were sent as emissaries to greet him and make his stay comfortable." He smirked. "Ain fell for him then and there. One word out of him and his voice had her under his spell." He chuckled lightly, shaking his head. "I'm sure you've never heard his voice but it was soft and almost sounded like someone speaking a lullaby if you can imagine that."

His smile was starting to get infectious. "He was undoubtedly kind and a very courteous guest. He didn't ask for anything and accepted the bare minimum in return. He was as pleasant as the rest of the world but there was something different about him." There was a look of wonder on his face that North would be proud of. "We asked him about the life of a Star Pilot and the stories he told us about the worlds he'd seen sounded like something from an authors imagination." His eyes were shining and I do believe I was grinning. "When he spoke, I realized - for the first time - that I'd never really been awake before. For the first time in my life, I wanted to do something with it." He turned his full smile on me. "Ain and I had long since chosen to decline the role of the next Tsar or Tsarina, but we hadn't chosen anything past that with our lives. The night before Sanderson left, Ain and I agreed that we wanted this life... to be Star Pilots."

He laughed. "Of course, Father didn't approve at first, though we didn't really give him much of a choice in the matter. We ended up taking one of the crafts from the fleet and following Sanderson to the base. The moment we arrived, we began training." He shrugged. "Ever since then, 'home' has been our Star." He frowned all of a sudden. "I've just realized we are homeless, now."

I felt for him, I really did. It had to be terrible to find something you love, something that just feels right, and to have it taken away by circumstances you didn't really have control of. "If you're worried about your Star, North's already looking at it - Bunny too." He looked at me like I was out of my mind. "Bunny's been around ships from the Golden Age more than anyone else on Earth, and North is arguably the best tinker on the planet. If they can't fix it, no one here can."

He looked out across the lake. For a few minutes, he didn't really say anything and I thought he might be mad at me. Eventually, he sighed and shook his head. "It's not our Star that worries me. Yes, it saddens me deeply that it has been destroyed, but even more so that we -" He sighed a little. "That I will never sail the stars again." He looked at me and I could almost see tears in his eyes. "Space was home to me, more than my Star or any world I've ever set foot on." He looked up at the sky. "It's lost to me forever now."

I watched him for a few moments. Just like when Sam had first told me about his history with Salem, I couldn't hold in my comments. I cleared my throat a little, more because it felt scratchy than to get his attention. "My little brother died five years ago." I wasn't looking at him, but I could feel his eyes on me. "When I first became Immortal I accepted that I was giving up everything I'd ever known and I was okay with that... except for him. A few years later I went home and he ended up being my first believer." A bittersweet smile was on my face then. "His eventual wife was my second. I actually set them up." I chuckled, remembering the day they first met, how red Caeden's face had been. "About ten years later they had their daughter. The day she was born was the day they stopped believing in me." My smile faded. "Elizabeth believed in me alright, but they never saw me again." I swallowed.

"She stopped believing in me when she was in college and the chain ended there. I'd kept an eye on all of them because they're my family, and I don't want them to disappear into my memories. But, um..." I ran a hand that was faintly shaking through my hair. "One of my birds gave me a heads up that Caeden was in the hospital and I got there right before he died. Some part of me kept hoping that he'd see me before he died, that I'd be able to say goodbye to him, but..." I blinked hard. "I'm only now starting to get over it. I'm still not back to the same way I was before but I feel normal most days, so I guess there's that." I sniffed and ran my hand over my face. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I understand what it's like to lose something that feels like home." I gave him a sympathetic look.

We sat there in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, listening to the wind and the birds chirping. "I imagine that's what dying feels like." I turned to look at Aldebaran. He hadn't been looking at me when he'd said it but he did so now. "Ain believes I should apologize for asking you about it the other day... I don't agree. You strike me as someone who prefers to be open." I looked away. "What I don't understand is why you lied about not caring. You died. The greatest gift in the cosmos isn't enough recompense for that. For someone who loves life as much as you clearly do, dying must have been terrifying." I looked back at him. I wanted him to stop talking because if he kept it up I'd be revealing things that I probably shouldn't. "I just, don't understand."

"Dying, or my reaction?"

He went to answer, then hesitated. "Honestly? Both." I searched his face, looking for what he really wanted to know. Oh, come on. We both know you're gonna tell him. Actually... why don't we show him? Inside, I blinked in surprise. Outside, I pulled my bag closer, opening it to search for one of the snow globes I still had stashed inside. "What are you looking for?" I found one and pulled it out, standing up as I did and swinging my bag over my shoulder.

"Come on." I gestured at him to get up, which he did.

He noticed the globe in my hand. "Where are you going?"

"We." I corrected him. "I'm gonna show you where I died." I whispered to the globe and tossed it in front of us. The portal appeared and I walked through, with Aldebaran right behind me. When we stepped out it was in the field just north of the fateful intersection. And it was drizzling. I smirked. "Even the weather matches - sort of." I walked to the road with him following and stopped right before we reached asphalt. I pointed down the road, towards my old school. "I was coming home from classes and it was raining so hard I couldn't see more than ten feet in front of my car." I stepped onto the road. "I was looking for somewhere to pull off and park and I knew there was a parking lot coming up just past this intersection." I pointed towards the copse of trees and the church that still stood even now.

If I was being honest with myself, coming back here while it was raining was something entirely different than coming here in the sunbaked days of summer. Looking down the road I was right back there in my car. I blinked and started walking towards the inevitable end of our little excursion. When he hit the incline I stopped again and picked the story back up. "I got to right about here and another car pulled off of that road there and turned towards me. They didn't have their lights on and I only noticed the car when my headlights glanced off of the hood. I pulled hard to the right to avoid them." I looked down the slope. "I pulled too far and my car crashed down here."

I started climbing down the hill, not seeing the present day at all. The rain had made it real again. I felt like I was in a trance. "When my car stopped it was laying here. I couldn't call for help and I couldn't get out. I kind of knew I was gonna die, but I still believed someone was going to come and rescue me." I looked up at the sky, seeing the clouds. "No one did. I was mad at first - not scared. I was furious that I was dying but once I realized that I was living up to all those promises I'd made for magic I accepted it." I hadn't looked at Aldebaran since we exited the portal, but I looked at him now. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost. "All my anger left me and I was just sad. Sad that I was missing out, sad that I hadn't done anything, sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye... sad that it was over. I'd always said that, if I got magic - real magic - then I promised to like a normal and boring life... and I had."

Aldebaran started at me, the horror fading from his face. "That's ridiculous." I blinked in surprise. "A promise like that is utterly unfair and one that no one in their right mind would agree to. You least of all." I blinked again. "In the scant few weeks I've known you, you have been livelier than half of the people I've ever known. I saw your face when we reached Santoff Claussen that first day. You were glowing with excitement. You were alive and in love with the world. You of all people would find it a nightmare to struggle in mundane life." He shook his head in adamant disbelief. "I cannot accept that because if I do then there is no hope for this world and there is no room for me in it." He looked me dead in the eyes. "If there is anyone who could find me a place on this world, it is you."

-

Not long after that, we used another snow globe to get home. Sandy was there when we arrived and Aldebaran and Ain decided they were going to spend some time with him together. I gave them some space and stuck around in Brother for the rest of the night. I pulled out a lot of old drawings and just sat there staring at them. Some were mine, some weren't. There was a drawing Elizabeth had done of me, Jack, and Sam, the latter two completely from descriptions. One I had done of something I'd seen in one of my more vivid and erratic dreams. Some I'd done while being inspired, some I'd done while being bored. Some my believers had given me, and one that Jamie had. All were ones that stirred something in me.

Eventually, I heard light footsteps and a knock on the door frame. I looked up to see Ain looking in. "Hello, Story. Sanderson just left and I thought you might want to know." Her eyes zeroed in on one of the drawings. "That is magnificent, did you do it?" I nodded, still in a little bit of a haze. She looked at me. "Aldebaran told me of what conspired earlier today. About your brother and about you." The sympathy on her face could give Mother Theresa a run for her money. "I am so sorry for what you have gone through. Losing one's sibling is horrible." The next sentence she said more to herself than to me. "I don't know what I would do if I lost Aldie." She looked up again. "I just... I wanted to apologize for the burden we've been, and thank you again for opening your home to us."

"You guys aren't a burden." I shook my head at her. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

She looked at me in confusion. Personally, I'd said that before I thought about it. "What do you want to know?"

I took a breath. "Has Aldebaran always been so... intense about things? I mean when I first met you guys he seemed like he was stiff as a cement block. No emotions, no facial expressions, just sort of stoic and blank." I shrugged and sort of held my hands up in a 'what are you gonna do' gesture. "Now that I know you guys and I've spent time with you... I don't know. He's just sort of intense about random stuff. Almost like he was a temporary wall up and now that he's learning about Earth he let it down and the flood is just- overwhelming." I sat back, a tiny wave of relief flowing over me at getting that out. The past few days, Aldebaran had become as exhausting to me as I was to a lot of other people. A taste of our own medicine sucks. That it does.

Ain relaxed and smiled slightly. "Aldie seems hard to understand, but he actually quite transparent. When he's uncomfortable, or out of his element, or even just confused - he tends to try and hide all of his emotions. The only things that give anything away are his eyes and how long he hesitates to answer a question." She giggled lightly. "Once he starts feeling like he has some control over a situation he becomes very - as you put it - intense. He becomes invested and very vocal about almost anything and doesn't bother to withhold his opinions anymore." She giggled again. "Much like you that first night we met." She brought her hand to her mouth, trying to hide her laughter. After a moment she took a breath. "Come to think of it, you and Aldie are similar in many other ways, as well."

"I noticed that he's an avid reader."

She nodded. "Yes, that and, he never seemed to fit in before we left home. Not many people noticed, but he was almost always - as you put it - stiff as a block of concrete. He was being stifled." Her grin faded. "When we met Sanderson, there was a light in his eyes that I hadn't seen in a long time." She shook her head slightly. "Aldie found his place in the cosmos the day we became Star Pilots." Her smile returned and with it was a look of almost childlike wonder. "He was alive in a way he had never been before we left home." She looked me in the eyes then. "Much like you. When you spoke of your life before becoming an immortal, I saw desolation and fierce determination in your eyes. Looking at you now... this life suits you. Your place in this world is as Story Tale." She looked towards the guest house, where Aldebaran's light was on. We could faintly see him staring at the night sky. "I know that Aldie felt deep empathy for you when you told us about your demise... and even more so when you showed him where it happened earlier today." She looked back at me. "He wasn't talking about you, you know." Her voice was quiet. "When he said that you out of everyone wouldn't accept such a life. He was talking about himself. What he wished he had told himself long before we left home." She glanced behind her again. "What he hopes to avoid here."

She sighed. "He's terrified that without the freedom our Star afforded us, he'll feel trapped and that he'll slowly become the same person he used to be." She leaned against the doorway again. "I think he believes that someone like you - someone like him - can save him from that fate." She glanced at me one last time. "He trusts you because when he sees you, he sees himself." She half smiled. "One more thing the two of you have in common." Her smile became pleading. "Please... don't fail him. He can't escape this time and for the first time in my life I can't help him."

I looked her dead in the eyes. I didn't know why I liked these two so much, but like she said, I saw parts of myself in them. I wanted to help them. "Don't worry. I don't plan on failing either of you. As long as I have a say in the matter, you guys are never gonna feel trapped."