When Susan and Ed returned to the caves the Ash Makers called home, Beth took them aside into a nook along the entrance. She got to her knees, looking up at them. Susan had admired the cloud haired woman, and watched the Skyborn fly about the caves with glee. Like her ability, it seemed like she lived on air, carefree and happy all the time. When she spoke about the outside world, her past and the Order’s present and future, it was with such an optimistic smile on her face. Now, Susan knew it was fake and put on. When the mask slipped and Beth devolved into a shouting and bitter woman in the city, Susan began to lose respect for her. Ed didn’t have to say anything for her to know he felt that way too. He was in love with Chiru, who was openly cold and hostile, but at least she was honest. Ed thought she was just stoic.

“Look, Ike doesn’t want you to spread any misinformation about what happened, okay?” Beth said, trying to maintain a smile.

The twins glanced at each other. With a twitch of their mouths and eyes, they promised to each other to be quiet, for now at least.

They nodded to Beth.

That wasn’t enough for the Skyborn.

“Promise you’ll be quiet,” Beth said low and harsh, taking hold of one of their wrists each. “The Order needs unity or we can’t function. That princess is lying and so is her boyfriend. All she had were false promises, they can’t protect you like we can. They worked for the Heroes, you know how bad they can be, right?”

The towheaded teens held hands, the ones not being gripped by the glaring Beth. Eddy whimpered at the hold trying to tug his arm free, but Beth wouldn’t release.

Susan stared daggers at the woman for harming her brother. “We fucking get it, let him go!” Susan snapped loudly.

Beth glanced down the dark tunnel, releasing them both. There was a bulkhead blocking out the mists and a few hundred feet away were people dwelling in the dimly lit camp. Ever since the mists had hit, they had been on Azure fuel rations. Everything was rationed, Susan’s belly wanted to eat her fill again. Her and Ed were still growing, they needed more than the minimum. Especially Ed, he was still shorter than his sister, and she needed to change that. Even with the older Ash Makers giving them an extra stale bread roll, it wasn’t enough.

The young woman licked her cracked lips. “How about I let you two play on my Courier? I don’t have rationed time like you two, I can play games as much as I want,” she offered, returning to the fake smile.

A wrinkle of Ed’s nose told Susan he was thinking the same as her, Bribery.

The two had spent most of their lives in orphanages. They knew every possible method of punishment and apology. They also knew how to exploit it. Susan tapped Ed’s hand with a code that meant, More.

Mouth closed, Ed mimicked the sound of a growling stomach.

“Ed needs more food too, not just games,” Susan said. “I’m really hungry too…”

Chatter came from out of the cave, from a distance they had heard Ike talking to Genji, now he had entered the rest of the camp, it didn’t sound good.

Beth’s mouth drew into a line. She bolted up and moved behind them, not so subtly pushing them forward by the shoulders. “You’ll get your games, you’ll get your food and sweets, but you won’t tell the camp, okay? We’ll be leaving soon anyway,” she said in a whisper.

“We won’t,” Ed promised.

“Nope, we’re good,” Susan added.

Exhaling a long breath, a wary look in her glancing eyes, Beth nodded.

“Can we stay together tonight?” Susan asked.

They entered the dimly lit camp, which was full of people crowding around Ike, asking questions he wasn’t answering. The panic in the room, spawned from Ike's burnt coat and missing weapon, was palpable. The sounds of it echoing throughout the cave. The twins knew enough in this world to know their silence was extremely valuable.

Beth nodded again.

The day after the event in the city, Susan and Ed woke up next to each other, surprised they weren’t awoken by someone else. The twins sat up in the darkened room and started playing on Beth’s Courier again. They quickly got bored by the green screen and its pixel games. When they first saw it, the device had captivated them. A handheld phone that could call and send text to others. Their metal rectangles had become boring after three months of fiddling with the things. There were only so many times you could play digital ping pong or make a snake eat a little cube.

They had liked their last orphanage, yet they had left it for this? There was far more work to do than rewards and not enough food, real or sweets. They had saved the candy bribe amongst themselves and decided to have them for breakfast now.

“Shouldn’t we check on the others, Su?” Ed asked, looking at the bulkhead to the barracks.

The Courier beeped, Beth had another message. “No, we’re fine,” she mumbled, shaking the device to charge its back light. “Ooh, this one is from Tommy, what do we say to him?”

“What did we say last time?” Ed wondered.

“Um, let’s see… ‘I love flowers too, you should totally get me a rainbow bouquet,’” Susan said, snickering.

“Do you think he’d actually go out in the mists?” Ed asked with a frown.

“I don’t know, we sent three other fucking dudes out last night,” she said with a grin. “I wonder if they asked each other why they were freezing their nuts off.”

Ed frowned at that. “What’d he say now?”

Susan shook the device again. “I fucking hate this constant shaking shit,” she grumbled.

“It’s so we’re always in motion,” Ed added.

She huffed at him. “Ah, let’s see, ‘I would, but Ike won’t let me out,’” she read off. “I bet he’s still paranoid about being chased down by the big spooky Mages.”

“I don’t think that Diana would harm us…” a flush came to her brother’s face.

Susan smiled at him, jabbing him in the ribs. “Oh, do you like redheads now, not just Chiru?” she teased.

“She seemed like she meant it,” Ed defended. “I’ll never give up on Chiru…”

“Oh gods, if you could just sleep in here all the time!” she exclaimed. “She doesn’t care who sees her naked, and you’d see her naked and her hairy--”

Ed clapped his hand over Susan’s mouth, he knew the rest of her sentence.

Susan licked at his hand, dropping the Courier to pry her twin’s hand from her as he covered her eyes as well. When that was unsuccessful, she bit his fingers and he retaliated with a tug of her long braid. The two twisted about like dogs on the cot, wrestling and sending the sheets and pillows to the floor. Susan couldn’t get a good handle on him, and he had no qualms about fighting her.

They untangled as the bulkhead hissed and slid open. None other than Chiru stood at the door, fully clothed of course. The Wanshi’s eyes were onyx disks in the darkness and she walked in, leaving the door open. “You two, Ike needs you to clean the fish,” she said. Her strange accent halted and rushed through words, adding and subtracting ones almost randomly. Her general meaning was always there, but sometimes her phrasing was purely foreign.

Ed climbed over Susan, pushing on her chest as leverage, and stood straight before the much taller woman. “Yes, ma’am, right away,” he said.

Chiru regarded him like she might look at a chair. She was beautiful and exotic, Susan couldn’t deny that, but she hated how icy the woman acted. Her brother deserved better for a crush. He’d lived his whole life with his sister’s loving care and protection. How could he admire someone that never smiled at him?

“Aren’t we leaving?” Susan asked.

The placid faced Chiru narrowed her finely shaped eyes. “Genji spoke the truth,” she said. “Hm, no, Ike heard this morning, we aren’t leaving. Headquarters say we can’t, so he ordered everyone to gather food. We are waiting out cold and the princess. You two can’t leave the cave, come with me to bone fish.”

Susan groaned. She would rather enter the city again, she knew the work would be annoying. Ed turned around, pleading with her silently not to complain.

“Beth needs her Courier back,” Chiru said, holding out her hand.

Before Susan could even stand, Ed bolted to her and placed the device in Chiru’s hand. He nearly melted into a puddle from her mild thanks. The young woman waited while they changed out of their pajamas and into working clothes. If only they didn’t have to wear the same underwear for multiple days.

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Just as they had weeks before, they deboned and scaled the fish that lived in the massive lake outside the caves. They were skinny and colorful, and Eddy grimaced the whole time he did it. The eyes freaked him out, their opal-like structure made it appear as if they were looking around, even after death. Since it was necessary, Susan could stomach only for their sake. She told herself that every cut, every whiff of the metallic creatures, and every tug of bone was feeding her brother and herself. She had done a lot for his sake over the years, and she didn’t even need any words from their mother to guide her. She’d died too suddenly to give them any guidance.

After all the scales and bone were gone, all that remained could fit in Susan’s palm. There was almost no weight and the means of preserving it took out even more. She had watched them smoke, seen them shrink up to flat little sheets. Even with pepper and salt, you might as well be eating seasoned cardboard. The elves supposedly didn’t even eat them, they were scum eaters, but anything bigger, anything tastier, wouldn’t jump into the nets. They had to be speared, which Susan had seen from a great distance on the center of the lake. She had eaten the juicy meat and loved it, but there wasn’t any of that coming in now.

The twins weren’t alone into their grim and grisly work, there was Hilda watching over them, a woman of an unclear age. Her hair was grayed and stringy, but the second one wasn’t her fault, the showers were on rationed time. She kept hers down anyway, framing her weathered face. She had huge crow’s feet from her eyes, always sharpening with a smile. The lines from her nose were deep and her lips were thin and pink. Hilda had originated from Grunhir and took a liking to the twins, but ever since their mother’s death and the first few matrons, they were wary of any older women.

“Hello there,” Hilda said, holding the head of a bright red fish and manipulating the mouth with her fingernail. “Are ya having fun cutting up me brothers?” Her accent was far thicker than the twins, and it was hard to take her seriously.

Eddy looked at the puppeted fish with a frown.

“Stop it,” Susan said in their native tongue.

The old mother hen frowned, that was what she reminded Susan of the most, setting down the toy. “I’m sorry little sweeties,” she replied in kind. “I’m afraid we might be eating this lot for many weeks yet, a shame, I know. One we best be getting used to though. I haven't got the belly to eat them, they twist me up. How about I give some to you sweeties? Ya’ve looked rather wane these last few days.” She pinched Eddy’s cheek.

“We don’t need it,” Susan replied.

“No, no, of course you need every last bite. I can give you my sweets as well, sugar for the sweeties,” Hilda laughed. One small wrapped candy per day was their current ration.

“Thank you, grandmother, we appreciate it,” Susan said, knowing there was no convincing the smiling woman.

The other young one across the laid out table, Genji, mumbled in annoyance. He pushed up his thick glasses, he was nearly blind as it was, cutting the fish slowly. Now he blinked in his fish bowl glasses. “What are you saying?” he whined. He whined more than Eddy, but Susan couldn’t stop herself from feeling sorry for him.

“Nothing, don’t worry,” she said, returning to the Common tongue. She didn’t like the warmth that filled her voice when she spoke to him.

He stared at her, according to him she was a golden haired blur with two blue dots. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I can’t see in this light, I can only hear.” The young Wanshi boy frowned, feeling around the fish blindly. In their trip back, he had apologized a thousand times, saying that seeing the jumbles of unfamiliar colors is what made him shoot.

Next to him was Chiru, staring at him like a disappointment. Both of them had the beige skin common with their race, whereas hers shone neat and clean, even with the intense restrictions, he was pockmarked and scabby. Both had full pink lips, hers always contained and pouting when she wasn’t scowling, his were puffy and dry with a thin black shadow of a mustache above them. His hair was a mushroom of black from his head, shining even in the dim light. Whether from grease or natural, it wasn’t clear. It couldn’t hold a candle to the long rod straight locks of Chiru, that flashed in the light and turned to ink in the shadow. Eddy called Chiru a princess, but she was nothing like Diana in the city.

Chiru spoke to Genji now in their native tongue, taking the knife from his hand. Susan couldn’t make anything from their language. The common tongue had some similar words to her own language, but the hissing S sounds and long vowels of the Wanshi made no sense to her. From her talks with Genji and Eddy’s obsession with Chiru, there were seven languages and many dialects from the Wanshi for all their different regions. Both of them had been picked up from the Banji continent. Susan was glad her and her brother spoke common so well, though the method hadn't been enjoyable.

“Oh, look at that, sweetie, you’ve nicked yerself, what a shame,” Hilda said, gently holding Genji’s narrow wrist. Her old hands and loud voice wedged into Chiru’s grip and whispered berating.

Now the Wanshi woman turned back to her fish, cutting with the deftness of a master.

“Susie girl, fetch the med kit, would ya?” Hilda said with a warm smile.

When she returned, she helped clean the slime from both his hands. Looking up at her, blinking with his enlarged dark eyes, she couldn't help but hold his free one as Hilda sprayed antiseptic into the nasty cut. He grimaced at the bubbling wound, he swallowed, trying to look tough.

Eddy coughed, smirking when his twin glanced over. The waggle of his eyebrows reminded her of what he'd told her many times before in the last few months. "You can't make fun of me, when you like him," he had said.

"At least he likes looking at me," she would retort

"He can hardly see you. I have to help him shower."

Pushing down the odd desire to help Genji, to bathe with him, Susan smiled at him. He would always stare at her face when she was around him. She was used to boy's eyes straying south, even her brother's. Eddy said it was an "automatic look." The last two years had made her body so awkward, but she refused to let her chest or swirling hormones come between her and her brother.

"There you are luvly boy," Hilda said, kissing Genji on the head.

He looked over his wrapped hand. "I can't cut up fish like this," he said softly.

"You were not cutting them well before," Chiru remarked. Since Susan had come back, the smug young Wanshi had been standing away from the table, her portion of the work in neat piles. Her arms crossed she gazed around the caves in annoyance. The walls of the cave were frightening for the twins. They had no monsters to worry about anymore, supposedly, but there were plenty of holes in the caverns that were pitch black pits.

A bulkhead opened and footsteps sounded throughout the caves. A group of green cloaked Ash Makers entered in, five with Beth amongst them. The four young men gave her and the rest of the kids a sneer as they passed. The blush of their cheeks and frost on their cloaks meant they had been outside, their empty bags meant they hadn't been successful.

Chiru beckoned to Beth, who was glaring at Susan and Eddy. The twins shrank and Susan broke from Genji with a mumbled apology to sit by her brother. One of the few people to make Chiru smile was Beth, even if it was a small one. Susan said she might be a lesbian, but Eddy didn't want to hear it.

"What did you find?" Chiru asked, her smile flattening as Beth threw the canvas bag at the edge of the table.

The Skyborn turned to Chiru. "Nothing, not a thing. Only Songbird and the others can enter the forest, I don't know why we even walked around the shore. It was stupid," she said, frustration dripping off her every word. "I had plenty of time to read my Courier and all the messages I've been sending when I didn't have it."

Furrowing her brow, Chiru stared at the twins, realization dawning on her face. "Oh, you are awful children. Wicked. Why did you use her Courier like that?"

Eddy snapped into tears. "Susan did it, it was all her idea!" he cried.

Susan smacked her brother on the head, swearing at him in Grunian.

"What? It was you," he replied in their language.

She grabbed him by the neck and he elbowed her in the stomach. They fell onto the ground, knocking aside the buckets they were sitting on. Hilda rose, weakly trying to stop them from wrestling. The older woman couldn't get a handle on them, jumping back before their rolling bodies could hit her. In a panic, the table bumping into him, Genji rose calling out to stop a scene he couldn't see.

"You dumb fucker!" Susan cried, trying to get out of Eddy's bear hug. He was smaller than her, but stronger as a boy. When his face turned red, she knew she couldn't beat him normally. So, she bit at his shoulder. He screamed, letting her go, but she returned to him, clawing at his short hair. There were cracks forming on the stone, Susan was actually angry, her powers seeping out of her.

Suddenly Susan was floating up from the hard ground, hands tucked under her arms. She struggled, but Beth told her tiredly to stop. She dropped her off a few feet away, gripping her arms tightly, keeping them at her sides. The light eyes and hair of the Skyborn were washed out in the dimness.

Beth sighed heavily. "I don't like you messing with the boys on my behalf, I gave you the Courier as a reward, out of trust," she said, smiling in that special way matrons perfected. A smile of disappointment. It made Susan sick to see it. "We're all here to make the world better."

"We're here to steal leaves and fucking walk through sewers," Susan grumbled turning away from the horrific look.

"It's part of the war fund. You're doing your part," Beth said, poking Susan's sternum. "You're a brave soldier, an Ash Maker. We burn down the bad so that something good rises from the ashes. The Order can't do anything without us on the ground. Blodwyn needs us to make things right."

"Blodwyn killed that princess's sister," Susan replied, staring back at the Skyborn. She had not forgotten how furious Diana had been, she didn't think she ever could.

Beth shook her head. "It was necessary that our general return. And she's going to make it right, no matter what," she insisted.

"How? The princess is dead."

"Blodwyn keeps her promises. Haven't you heard about all the great work she's done?" Her eyes were looking through her.

"Your country was pestered by mermaids," Chiru added, with no joy in her voice. "You would never know what a pineapple or anything exotic was without Blodwyn. They obstructed all of your trade routes, no ships could pass them. The airships came about because of the Order. We flew you out of your orphanage in something from Blodwyn." She came over to them, looking down her nose, she had a habit of putting her hands in her sleeves. Her voice now had passion, a deep menacing kind. "My nation, Genji's nation, it is under the control of Immortal Emperors. We cannot have our own land because of the Wanshi. We are only part of them. We cannot be free from their hold without Blodwyn." Her eyes narrowed, a fierce glare for someone not present. "No other nation cares, but Blodwyn and the Order cares." Within her sleeves came the popping of her fingers as they balled into fists.

There was a long silence and Susan shrank at the fury of the woman.

Beth stiffened and swallowed, nodding. "My nation isn't much better, we've been so isolated for so long. Not like the Wanshi, but not much better."

Chiru nodded as if she wasn't listening.

"You guys aren't as happy or as full as you should be…" Beth said to Susan, releasing her fully. She patted Susan's stomach with a frown. "Now that the war has started, you can't return to your orphanage, and you can't go to the princess, you'll only be in danger. I'll give you the rest of my sugar rations, some of my food. I don't need to eat much. I'm light for a reason. Susan, oh boy, I shouldn't have got that high off the ground with you, sweet girl."

"I offered them my sugar too," Hilda added, coming around to pinch her cheek. "These sweeties are our future, we need to keep them strong."

Two days later, Susan and Eddy were both sick of sweets and bland food. They hid from work and no one cared. Eddy loved to climb around in the confined spaces of the cave, and to escape the constant anxiety, Susan joined him. They crawled all around the area, adults said the monsters were gone, but they weren’t a hundred percent certain. That fact only added to the adventure of the spelunking.

Susan couldn’t stop thinking about the princess and her boyfriend. She wanted to know if they had nice food, and Eddy wanted to desperately see what films the man Jonah had. The twins didn’t have anything against the others, but they hated where they lived. They didn’t have some major goal, they were just kids that wanted to live their lives. They also figured maybe if they left first the others would follow them. Genji could come with them, not Chiru, to Eddy’s lament, she was far too invested in the Order of Ash. But maybe, the boy insisted, maybe one day. They would have to leave first, to show the others that it was safe.