Chapter 6:

Nobody suggested taking the long way home.

They just did, the way they always did according to Quinn's memories, drifting away from the meadow in the general direction of the village with no particular urgency, afternoon light coming in low and golden through the trees, four sets of footsteps on the dirt path winding back toward the road.

Liora was already talking before they'd cleared the treeline.

"Okay but you have to admit," she said, to nobody specifically and everybody generally, "that the lift at the end was clean."

"It collapsed," Ren said.

"After two seconds."

"Two seconds isn't—"

"Two seconds is two seconds more than nothing, Ren—"

"I'm just saying clean is a strong word for something that—"

"The thread was clean. The collapse was a separate issue."

"The collapse was kind of the main issue—"

"The *lift* was clean."

Sable, walking at Hayato's left, said nothing. Hayato said nothing. They traded a brief sideways glance that needed no words.

[This is apparently just what walking home sounds like,] Hayato thought.

Quinn's memories confirmed it warmly.

                             • • •

The path curved out onto the main road and they fell into a loose natural formation, Liora and Ren slightly ahead with their voices overlapping, Hayato and Sable a half step behind, a quieter current running parallel to a louder one.

"Master Orin said it was a significant output," Liora went on, gesturing with both hands. "For a first water attempt. He said that."

"He also handed you a cloth."

"Because I was wet! That's just being considerate—"

"He had the cloth ready, Liora. Already in his pocket. He knew."

Liora opened her mouth. Closed it. Pointed at Ren. "That is a lie and you have no proof."

"He has a lot of pockets," Sable said quietly, from beside Hayato.

A beat of silence.

Then Ren completely lost it, laughing so hard mid-step he nearly walked into a fence post. Liora spun toward Sable with an expression of pure betrayal.

"Sable."

"I'm just observing."

"You're supposed to be on my side—"

"I'm always on your side. Doesn't mean you weren't wet."

Hayato watched Liora work through it, the betrayal, the logic of it, the fact that Sable was technically right, cycling through three distinct expressions before landing on reluctant amusement.

"Fine," she said. "I was wet. It was still a significant output."

"It was," Hayato said.

Liora pointed at him now. "Thank you. Quinn agrees."

"Quinn always agrees with you," Ren said, recovering.

"Quinn has good taste."

[I agreed because it was true,] Hayato thought mildly. [But sure.]

                              • • •

They passed the mill and the wide pond beside it, afternoon light sitting flat and bright on the water. Ren picked up a stone and skipped it, four hops, which he announced as seven. Liora skipped one right after, two hops, which she called superior for technique. Hayato found a flat stone, turned it over in his hand, set it back down.

[I used to be able to skip stones,] he thought. [Better than that, anyway.]

Quinn's arms. Quinn's wrist. Different weight distribution than he was used to.

He let it go.

"Ren," Liora said, switching tracks with the speed she switched most things. "Tell the story."

"Which story."

"You know which story."

Ren groaned. "Why do you always want—"

"Because it's funny every time."

"It's embarrassing every time—"

"Same thing."

Sable glanced at Hayato from the corner of her eye. "You'll like this one," she said, very quietly.

                              • • •

The story, as Ren told it with maximum reluctance and minimum embellishment, was this:

Three months ago Liora had convinced him that a particular mushroom found near the east meadow stones was edible. It was not. The consequences weren't dangerous, just prolonged and deeply undignified, and had kept him close to home for the better part of two days.

"I told you to check with Master Orin first," Liora said, without remorse.

"You told me they were definitely fine—"

"I said I *thought* they were fine—"

"You said definitely—"

"I would never say definitely about a mushroom, Ren—"

"You said—" Ren stopped, searching his memory with genuine frustration. "You said *probably definitely.*"

"That's not even a real—"

"Probably definitely! Those were your exact words!"

Liora waved this away. "Probably definitely is an expression of reasonable confidence, not a guarantee—"

"It kept me inside for two days—"

"You learned something valuable about mushrooms—"

"I already knew something valuable about mushrooms, and it was to not eat random ones—"

"Then why did you eat it!"

"Because you said probably definitely!"

Hayato was smiling before he noticed it. Not a performed smile, not Quinn's borrowed for the occasion, just his own, rising up without asking permission, quiet and genuine at the corners of his mouth.

[Oh,] he thought, mildly surprised by it.

Sable caught it from the side. Said nothing. Looked forward again.

                             • • •

The road curved and Ren's house appeared first, a broad low building set back from the road with a vegetable garden out front that was clearly someone's pride.

Ren slowed.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asked, to the group generally.

"Obviously," Liora said.

Ren looked at Hayato. "You'll actually stay the whole time tomorrow?"

[Ah.] "Yes," Hayato said.

"Good." Ren pointed at him. "You're the only one who doesn't try to give me advice when I'm concentrating."

"Liora gives good advice."

"Liora tells me I'm doing it wrong while I'm doing it."

"You were doing it wrong," Liora said.

"See—"

"You lifted it on the sixth try, didn't you?"

Ren opened his mouth. Closed it. Pointed at her. "Goodnight, Liora." He looked at Sable. "Goodnight, Sable." He looked at Hayato. "Goodnight, Quinn."

"Goodnight, Ren."

Ren headed up the path to his house. At the door he turned back.

"Probably definitely," he said, with great feeling, and went inside.

Liora threw her hands up at a closed door.

                             • • •

They walked on three now, the dynamic shifting slightly the way it always did when a group lost a member, quieter, the space Ren had filled still warm but empty.

Liora filled it herself inside of thirty seconds.

"So," she said, falling into step between Hayato and Sable with the ease of long habit. "Master Orin thinks I might get the mark."

[There it is.] Quinn's memories gave him a rough count of how many times this had come up in the past month. Not a small number.

"You mentioned."

"I'm just saying. The timing could be soon. My ability's advancing fast, and the mark doesn't always wait until you're grown. There have been cases of kids being marked." She was looking down the road ahead, her voice carrying that particular quality of something turned over so many times it's worn grooves in the mind. "Imagine. Waking up one morning and just knowing. Having a purpose that clear."

[Imagine,] Hayato thought.

Not enviously. Just sitting with the shape of it. The idea of waking up and knowing exactly what you were for.

[I woke up one morning and didn't even know whose body I was in.]

"Wouldn't it be frightening?" Sable asked.

Liora looked at her. "What?"

"Having a purpose that clear," Sable said, in her careful even way. "You wouldn't get to choose it. It would just be yours. Whether you wanted it or not."

A brief silence.

Liora chewed on this with the kind of seriousness she occasionally surprised people with. "I'd want it," she said finally. "I know I'd want it."

"You know now," Sable said. Not unkind. Just precise.

Liora looked at her a long moment. Then she bumped her shoulder lightly and looked ahead again. "You think too much, Sable."

"Someone has to."

                              • • •

Sable's house came next, a narrow two-story building at the bend in the road, a lamp already lit in the downstairs window, warm yellow against the early evening blue.

She stopped at the gate.

Looked at Liora. "Don't practice the fire forms inside tonight."

"I wasn't going to—"

"Last Tuesday."

Liora pressed her lips together. "That was contained."

"The ceiling—"

"Was fine. Eventually."

Sable held her gaze one patient moment, then turned to Hayato.

She looked at him the way she had on and off all day, that quiet attentive look that didn't push but didn't quite let go either. Like someone holding a question she hadn't decided whether to ask yet.

"It was good today," she said finally. Simply.

"It was," Hayato agreed.

Something in her expression settled a little. Just filing something away.

"Goodnight, Quinn."

"Goodnight, Sable."

She went inside. The gate clicked softly behind her.

                              • • •

Liora walked with him to the turn in the road where their paths split, talking the whole way about the hero mark, about a new form she wanted to try, about whether Ren would ever admit the mushroom story was partly his own fault.

At the turn she stopped.

Looked at him with bright eyes in the evening light, red hair catching the last of the sun.

"You were quiet today," she said. "Quieter than usual, even."

"Was I?"

"Yeah." She tilted her head. "You okay?"

[No,] he thought. [I'm a sixteen-year-old boy from a completely different world living in your friend's body, trying to figure out how to be a person I never met. I bent a promise I made to a dead girl because I can't stop helping strangers. A mage told me my soul is hollow. I smiled for the first time today because of a mushroom story and I don't know what to do with that.]

"Just tired," he said. "Good tired."

Liora looked at him a moment with something older than her usual expression. Then she grinned, broad and easy, all the weight gone from it.

"Get some sleep, Quinn. Tomorrow I'm getting that thread to three seconds."

"I believe you," Hayato said.

She turned and walked off, already moving with that forward-leaning energy, already planning tomorrow.

Hayato watched her go.

[She believes in her future so completely,] he thought again, the same thought he'd had in the meadow. [Every single part of her is pointed toward it.]

He turned toward home.

                              • • •

The Hale house had smoke rising from the chimney and warm light in the windows.

Hayato stood at the gate a moment before opening it.

[One day,] he thought. [That's all it was. One day.]

It felt much longer than that.

He opened the gate and went inside.

                              • • •

The smell hit him first. Something rich and slow-cooked, bread warming near the fire, the particular combination that Quinn's memory already knew meant his mother had been cooking since mid-afternoon.

Mara appeared in the kitchen doorway with a wooden spoon and the look of someone who'd been listening for the gate.

"There you are. I was starting to wonder." She looked him over in that quick maternal way, checking for damage. "How was the meadow? How was Master Orin?"

"Good," Hayato said, pulling off Quinn's boots by the door. "He gave us a lesson."

"Did he." Mara leaned against the doorframe, pleased. "And Liora? Still determined to burn something down?"

"She got wet instead."

Mara laughed, a real one, warm and sudden. "That girl. Come sit, it's almost ready."

                              • • •

Dinner was vegetable stew and thick bread and the quiet overlapping rhythm of Mara talking and Edric listening and the fire doing its patient work in the hearth.

Mara wanted to know everything: Orin's lesson, Sable's lift, whether Liora had singed anything. Hayato answered carefully, pulling from the day's real events, finding that telling it back wasn't as hard as he'd feared. The mushroom story came out somewhere between the bread and the second bowl of stew and made Mara laugh again, which made Edric's mouth move in that small private way of his.

[This is what dinner was,] Hayato thought, watching them. [Every night. Quinn sat here and the fire was warm and her mother asked about everything and her father said less but meant more. Just an ordinary Tuesday for her.]

He looked down at his bowl.

[She didn't know how lucky she was.]

He caught himself.

[That's not fair. You don't know what she knew.]

                              • • •

After dinner Edric sat by the fire with a pipe and Mara washed the bowls, and Hayato sat at the table a while doing nothing in particular, listening to the house settle around him.

"You did well today," Mara said, from the basin, not turning around.

Hayato looked up. "With what?"

"I don't know exactly." She set a bowl on the rack. "You just seem steady. Edric said the same thing this morning." A pause. "Quinn's always been steady, but today felt different somehow."

[Careful,] Hayato thought.

"Good different or bad different?" he asked.

Mara considered this honestly, the way she considered most things. "Just different," she said finally. "Older, maybe." She turned and looked at him, warm-eyed. "Don't grow up too fast."

[Too late,] Hayato thought.

"I won't," he said.

                              • • •

Quinn's room was dark and quiet, the wooden beam ceiling just visible in the pale light coming through the thin curtains.

Hayato lay on his back and looked at it.

The day moved through him in pieces: Edric's hand on his head, Orin's fingers at his temple, the cart wheel coming free, Liora's water lift collapsing after two seconds, Sable's quiet *it was good today,* the genuine smile that had surprised him outside his own control.

[Large hollow soul,] he thought.

Then, the same as he had at the stone wall:

[I don't feel hollow. I feel too many things.]

He turned onto his side and looked at the window, the dark outline of the trees just visible past the glass.

[I bent the promise today,] he thought. [First day and I already bent it.]

He waited for the guilt to follow.

It came. Quieter than expected.

Underneath it, quieter still, that ember warmth. The cart wheel. The child's knee. The old man's exhale.

[I'll do better tomorrow,] he told himself.

He almost believed it.

The fire downstairs crackled once and went quiet. Outside, the trees moved in some small wind.

Hayato closed his eyes in a body that wasn't his, in a house that wasn't his, at the end of a day that had belonged to someone else.

And slept.