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OW: ASA - CH 102.5 - Interlude 6 - To Cross a Wintery Divide
🕑 Added 2025-03-12 22:52:00 +0000 UTCInterlude 6
To Cross A Wintery Divide
Fall of Autumn, Week 4, Day 7
Down the rough roads to Ugar, there were no horses tromping, no armors clanking. All the movement that existed was the gentle falling of snow, slowly accumulating atop the pressed dirt and piling on the leafless branches.
In the village center, there were two boys running toward each other —wooden swords aimed and ready to hit. Off to the side was a girl, watching the boys but not cheering for either of them. Instead, she was quietly keeping track of how many times they fell by engraving it in the snow.
“That’s another one for Clay,” she said to herself as she marked another tally on the right side.
“Clara, stop doing that!” One of the boys, the one who looked strikingly like the blonde girl, shouted from where he’d fallen to the ground. He was gripping the hilt of his wooden sword so tight, his knuckles had gone white.
“It’s not my fault you’re losing, Clarence.” Clara huffed, then added, “Spectacularly.”
“Phil!” Clay complained to the other boy, “She’s distracting me.”
“Good, then when a real distraction comes through you’ll be prepared,” Phil laughed, his toothy grin lighting up his face.
Clay frowned so dramatically that his face contorted and Clara broke out into mean laughter.
“What an ugly face!” She said through her cackles.
“Shut up, you—!” Clay rushed towards his sister, dropping his practice sword.
Clara kicked up and then the two of them were wrestling, fighting for dominance. Fortunately, neither had a particularly powerful [Class], nor were they particularly leveled for their age, so it was mostly a series of pushes.
Rolling his eyes, Phil watched his two best friends in amusement. Next to him, a woman materialized out of the aether, causing Phil to jolt.
Beside him was a woman dressed in purple leathers. Phil immediately recognized the outfit as what the knights that had been with Nora wore when strolling around within the gates. A Dusk Knight.
Phil fought back his awe, just enough to nod and say, “Dame.”
“Philip Ugar?” She said in a clipped voice, and Phil realized he couldn’t tell what the woman looked like. He, of course, was looking at her and her visage simply… wasn’t identifiable. From the color of her hair, to the shape of her jaw, Phil couldn’t tell what any of it was. Except for the leather armor.
“That’s…” He stumbled over his words, losing himself along the way. “That’s me.”
“They are Clara and Clarence of Ugar?”
Phil nodded belatedly. As he did so, the woman tilted her palm and three pitch black sacks appeared. They varied in size, the smallest barely the size of Phil’s palm and the largest nearly as big as his head. The third sack was somewhere in the middle. Each one had a letter attached, sealed with a purple wax stamp with an artful ‘EKD’.
To his credit, Phil took the small bag the unknown Dame offered to him, and he did remember his manners.
“Thank you.”
“It is as she willed. No thanks are necessary,” was the only response he received before the woman approached the two fighting children. She did not interrupt them, simply leaving the bags in the snow –one closer to where Clara had been sitting and the other near Clay’s fallen sword. She turned to Phil, and he could see her mouth moving, but no words reached him. Not until the Dame was gone.
“I’ll be back in the morning to grab your responses.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond, so he simply nodded at the empty village square –the Dame had not even left tracks behind. She was simply gone.
Phil turned his letter over, treating the thick envelope and soft cloth bag as if it were an invaluable treasure. To him, it was. He knew who it was from. If the Dusk Knight wasn’t a blaring magelight, then it was the EKD emblazoned across the wax weal —Eunora Killian Dawn. Phil’s grandfather had told him her full name, trying to discourage him from saying ‘Nora.’ It had almost worked.
He ran a nail across the artful address on the front of the envelope —his name, spelled out fully in a fanciful calligraphy. Philip Ugar, Grandson of the Village Head of Ugar. He felt pride swell within his chest. No one in Ugar cared much about titles or etiquette, but knowing that a Dawn would call him by his name and title filled him with appreciation for the lessons his grandfather had given him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have understood. He wouldn’t have even known to be grateful. To feel acknowledged.
That was when realization struck him, and he took off running, grabbing both bags from the snow and taking off for his grandfather’s house.
Nora! You used a Dusk Knight and sealed your initials into the envelope! Even those two dunces are going to figure it out! Phil was screaming in his head, pushing his legs to their max as he rushed to his home away from home. Briefly, he considered that maybe that was the point. That she wanted the twins to know. And then he kept running, because that was so unlike the gentle, shy girl he knew.
If she wanted the twins to know, she’d better say it in the letters, because Phil was taking the envelopes and stuffing them in the village safe. That was the only place away from prying eyes —and even then, Phil’s grandfather was nosy as all get out.
Pushing his way through the unlocked door, Phil ran straight into his grandfather’s office.
“Pa! Help!” Phil rushed out, with no explanation. He had to catch his breath, his whole body was on fire from running through half the village.
“Phil?” His grandfather stood abruptly, rushing to the red-faced boy, “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”
Taking a steadying breath, he dropped the three black bags onto the desk in front of him.
“From Nora,” Phil rushed out before he lost his nerve.
The man in front of Phil shifted his posture immediately, and Phil understood. This was no longer his grandfather. This was the Village Head of Ugar.
“Give it here,” he commanded, holding out his hand expectantly. Phil, with only a slight hesitation, handed them over.
“We need to change the envelopes —Nora doesn’t want them to know who she is.”
Immediately, Phil’s grandfather pulled out three simple envelopes, slightly larger than the cream ones that Nora had sent and severely less sturdy. Grabbing the letter opener, his grandfather slid the blade carefully underneath the wax seal —breaking it cleanly off the envelope. He did it twice more, with the other two envelopes. Deftly, he swapped the letters and poured some Quick Seal wax onto the twins’ letters in a neat, but un-monogrammed, circle. He paused when he got to Phil’s.
“I’m assuming you want to open them all together, yes?”
At Phil’s vigorous nod, his grandfather sealed the final envelope. Then, peering at the fabric, Phil assumed his grandfather had fired off an [Inspect] because he immediately heaved a weary sigh.
“There’s nothing I can do about the fabric —unless you want to deprive the twins of another part of the gift.”
Phil shook his head, he hadn’t checked the bags with his own Skill, but it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. He only had it at Level 3. It was so difficult to get the experience for it when you already knew all the information about what was made in the village.
“No, I don’t. This will have to do.”
His grandfather handed him the bags back, “Then here you go. And Phil?”
Mid-turn, Phil looked back at his grandfather. “Yeah?”
“You’ll show me what she wrote?”
His voice was eager, and Phil couldn’t stop himself from agreeing. It was his grandfather. The man who taught him everything he knew.
“Yeah, of course, Pa.”
The man smiled, and Phil knew, then, he would never regret sharing this part of himself with his grandfather.
“Then, off with you! Go show the twins what she’s sent!”
Phil did just that, only this time he didn’t run back to his friends. He leisurely walked, trying to let the cold outdoors dry his sweat. It only partially worked, as, by the time he got back to the village square, he had a thin sheen to his skin caused by the ice that had formed.
Shaking himself to get rid of some of the ice, he called out to the twins, “Clara! Clay! Someone came by Pa’s and brought us something!”
The twins, who at some point had stopped trying to murder each other and started casually throwing stones at a nearby tree stump, looked over to Phil.
“Where’d you go to?” Clara accused, “You just left us!”
“I saw Pa, and he waved me over.” Phil grinned and held up the bags in his hands, “A Dusk Knight had dropped by —and brought us these.”
Clara immediately gasped, “You think they’re from her? Do you think she remembers us?”
Clay, however, was having a tougher time piecing the context clues together. “What? What am I missing?”
Leaving Clay behind, Clara rushed toward Phil, “Nora, you idiot! They have to be from her! Look at the fabric.”
Reaching for the bags, Phil handed her the largest bag —the one with the envelope that had been addressed to Clara of Ugar but now had a blank envelope. As Clay approached, Phil also handed him the medium-sized bag, the one that had read Clarence of Ugar. It still made Clara and Phil laugh that he’d insisted upon being called by his full name in front of Nora.
Clara dug her fingers under the wax seal and opened her letter, squealing, “It is!! It’s from Nora!”
Clay, however, looked at the letter in his hands for a long moment before carefully tugging off the wag seal and pocketing it whole. When he began reading the letter, a wide grin formed on his face. “She’s right, it’s from Nora.”
Relieved that they hadn’t asked how he knew which bag was for who, he went about opening his own letter —exceptionally grateful that his grandfather had carefully stored the wax seal with Nora’s initials in his office.
He devoured her words greedily, as did the twins. They each read their letters several times over before Clay gave in and was the first to open his present.
Pulling out a knit spider, so dark blue it was hardly anything other than black, he grinned, “It matches Arachno!”
Clara watched her brother enviously before opening up her own bag to reveal a shining iridescent fabric that let off fractals in the light of day. It was gorgeous.
“Woah,” the boys said as they stared at Clara’s gift. Clara, however, was in shock, running her fingers along the fabric, taking in its softness.
“It’s amazing…” she whispered.
Phil found himself beyond excited when he went to open his own present. However, when he opened it, his heart skipped a beat and he snapped the bag closed.
“Hey, you guys?” Phil said, his voice strangled.
The twins looked at each other for a brief moment before nodding as one. It was Clara who spoke next, gently putting her gift back in its bag.
“I think that, until we are safely within the walls of an Academy, we should pretend we never got such precious things.”
Both boys agreed, and before they went their separate ways, they all agreed to meet up back in the village square with their responses.
When the twins went off to their shared home, Phil clutched the mana pearl to his chest and whispered more to the world at large than himself, “I’m already proud to know you, Nora.”
Comments
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter! Yay for friends!!!
Allora Lee
Right?! Look at me!! Getting it together!!!
TooOldForThisShit
What's this? A chapter release, NOT in the dying hours of the night? Witchcraft!
