Two weeks passed at a gruelingly slow pace in the Felswore mansion after the return of Elizabeth and Lucina. There was always a tension in the air that everyone had to watch out for if they wanted the days to remain peaceful. None of the servants dared to show Lucina disrespect, not out of a sense of loyalty to the Felswore name but out of fear of her wrath. Despite being only five years old, Lucina's magic was dangerously potent and her temper made her quick to anger to the point Charles' closest aides were voicing their concerns. During one of the first days of summer, Charles silently watched Elizabeth and Lucina leave in a carriage bound for Wortrest to attend the first social gathering held by Duchess Alice when another voice added itself to the choir. The head butler, an elderly man with grey hair, stood behind Charles as he spoke, "My Lord-"

"Are you also going to tell me to lock up my daughter, Henry?" Charles somberly asked without turning around. His expression was stoic and his eyes didn't leave the carriage until it disappeared beyond the horizon.

"No, my Lord, I believe Baron York was a bit extreme in his words because his second daughter is a maid in our mansion," Henry answered. "But, his worries are very much real: Lady Lucina's magic is abnormal. She not only commands an unusually strong affinity for gravity magic but she's also displayed rudimentary proficiency in all elemental magics, showing she's favored by both the Hearth Mother and the Storm Father. While this should be celebrated, Lady Lucina's temper is short, which has caused a few incidents already. We are lucky none of the servants have been injured, but if things continue like this, then it is only a matter of time before something happens."

"She's still never asked me for anything aside from learning to read and write," Charles sounded lost in thought. "Elizabeth is at least starting to talk to me again, but Lucina's..."

"My Lord!" Henry pleaded and stepped toward Charles, "You must-"

"What must I do?!" Charles sharply turned to Henry and held a face mixed with anger and sorrow. "Should I lock my daughter away mere days after attempting to right my wrongs of the past five years!? Should I force her to stop studying what she wants and tell Lucus to delve into magical theory when Lucina doesn't even know how to read a children's book!?"

"...I apologize, my Lord."

"Don't," Charles held up his hand and gave a disparaged sigh, "I've known you long enough to realize you mean well, Henry. It's just... I don't want to admit that it's too late to fix my daughter's heart and that I might still find a place in it."

"Please leave my sister to me, Father." Adam appeared in the doorway with a recently received letter in his hands.

"Adam?" Charles, for better or worse, was blessed with two talented children; Lucina excelled in magic, while Adam held a mind sharper than any of his peers. He knew Adam was sending and receiving letters from Wortrest over the past two weeks, and he looked confident as he stood before the Count. "I'm assuming you have a plan, then?"

"Yes," Adam reassured his father as he held his latest correspondence from Olivia, "I will make sure nothing bad happens, so please focus on fixing your bad habits."

"...I'm even receiving life advice from my son now?" Charles scoffed at himself for how pathetic he was. He turned back to the horizon before finishing, "I'll leave it to you, Adam."

"Thank you, Father," Adam said while giving a respectful bow. He knew Lucina's mood was worsening because she was surrounded by hypocrisy when all she wanted was to get away. Lucina needed to get away from the mansion to destress, which meant it was Olivia's time to shine.

***

"What is all this?" When my mother and I arrived at Wortrest, Olivia had immediately taken me out to a gazebo in the garden that was behind the keep. Since this was the first gathering of the season, none of the ladies brought their children which left Olivia and I to ourselves. The gazebo was built into a small water feature with a wooden bridge leading to it from the path. Waiting for us in the gazebo was a table filled with various strings, yarns, scissors, buttons, and different colors of cloth. Olivia seemed oddly excited.

"Summer activities!" she proudly declared and helped me into one of the chairs around the table. "The weather's beautiful, so we should enjoy the outdoors, but I also wanted to try doll-making with you, so I had the maids help me set this up for us."

"Doll making?" Olivia knew how to make dolls?

"Well...sort of..." she sounded embarrassed as Mary and Julie arrived holding two human-shaped dolls that didn't have any clothing, hair, or features on their faces. "The hard part's mostly done for us, but we get to make the rest, so it still counts!" She sat in the chair opposite to me and started to stare at me intently.

"...Olivia?" I was getting nervous from her intense stare. "Did you...need something?"

"I'm trying to capture your appearance in my mind." It seemed she was already saying weird things, and I only just arrived.

"Capture my appearance?"

"Yeah, since I want to make my doll look like you."

"!?!" My face instantly turned a bright shade of red, and my chest started throbbing.

"Are you already overheating from the weather?" Olivia jumped out of her seat and rushed toward me. She got close to my face and put her cool hands on my cheeks. "I didn't think it was that hot, but if you're sensitive to the heat, that would be a problem."

"My Lady, if you say you want to make a doll resembling them to a young lady they're bound to get embarrassed, and the weather will just make it more apparent." Mary seemed to understand my situation.

"...Why are you so damned cute?" Olivia muttered as she went from holding my face with concern to mischievously squishing my cheeks which had started to fill out now that I was eating properly even after just two weeks. "This is much more how a child's cheeks should feel!"

"I-I'm not cute!" I tried to push her hands away, but my pointless struggle only made Olivia smile brighter.

"Of course you are," she teased before finally letting go of me and returning to her seat. "You're my cute, little Lucina!" A warm breeze blew through the garden, causing gentle waves to break themselves against the gazebo's support legs that extended into the water. The sun reflected off the water, sending surreal reflected light rippling across the roof above us. Olivia's hair danced in the wind and seemed to accent her smile that shined even brighter than the sun-kissed beds of flowers behind her. "Now, let's get started. This color matches your hair, so..."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"..." It felt like my breath was stolen away as I watched Olivia start to pull and cut yarn to make hair; my hair. I looked at the blank doll in my hands and imagined what it should look like to capture even a small piece of Olivia's beauty. There was some white yarn that could work for hair, one of the pieces of cloth was a deep blue that would work for a dress, as for the buttons...

***

Olivia looked up from her work and smiled as she watched Lucina's face scrunch up in deep thought. She was being extremely picky in choosing what to dress the doll up in, and she'd already tossed aside six buttons because they didn't meet her criteria for how blue Olivia's eyes should be. Seeing how relaxed Lucina was while with her was both a blessing and a somber reminder as the letters she received from Adam Felswore weighed heavily on her mind causing her fingers to fall idle. It seemed the Count was not only a scummy father, but was also completely tactless when it came to apologizing which was only hurting Lucina and causing more strife in their family. Adam was the one who suggested making dolls, and Olivia made a mental note to thank him for that idea later as she continued to watch Lucina work.

"Should I cut that for you, Lady Lucina?" Julie asked when Lucina appeared to struggle with the scissors.

"I-I can do it!" she stated and redoubled her focus on cutting the cloth for the dress. Olivia found it adorable that Lucina was trying so hard to do this without any help, and she stifled a laugh when Lucina's tongue poked out of her mouth from the sheer amount of concentration she was exerting.

"Very well," Julie giggled upon seeing the determination in the young girl's eyes and backed away. "If you need me, I'll be here." Mary and Julie stayed on the bridge as they kept an eye on the girls and eventually started chatting with each other to pass the time since it looked like Olivia and Lucina would be fine.

"..." Lucina eventually stopped working and had a troubled look on her face as she stared at her materials.

"What's wrong?" Olivia asked as she finished sewing the small green dress for her doll together.

"...I...don't know how to sew," Lucina sheepishly replied, and her eyes dejectedly looked at the pieces she had but didn't know how to start putting them together.

"Then I can teach you." Olivia hopped out of her chair with her doll, dragged the chair over to Lucina, moved all her material over to Lucina's side of the table, and sat down next to her. "I'll show you the technique on some scraps, and you can follow along, okay?"

"...Okay." Lucina's cheeks were red from embarrassment again, and she was pouting, which made her look like a sulking puppy. Olivia held herself back as she knew Lucina was trying her best with their doll and she wanted to do everything she could to help. Slowly, Olivia and Lucina practiced sewing on some cloth scraps before moving on to the small blue dress for the doll.

"See," Olivia said when the dress was finished, and Lucina put it on the doll, "I knew you could do it."

"..." Lucina didn't respond as she looked at the doll in her hands. It was a simple doll with a plain blue dress, white yarn for hair, and two blue buttons for eyes, but the knowledge that she had made it with her own hands, even if it was just the decorations, made it feel that much more special. The fact it was meant to be Olivia also didn't help calm Lucina's fast-beating heart as she held the doll in her hands and gave it a hug.

"Now, we're matching!" Olivia said and sat her finished doll on the table in front of them. She didn't want Lucina to feel bad, so she deliberately kept her doll of Lucina to the same simplicity as the one Lucina made of her. Lucina placed her doll next to Olivia's, and the throbbing in her chest tightened upon seeing the dolls sitting next to and leaning on each other's shoulders.

"You're...really good at things," Lucina spoke with reverence but also held a hint of sadness that Olivia picked up on. Lucina looked down at her hands, which had multiple needle pricks. "You're already an Aurister, you're really brave, you can sew... And all I can do is make trouble."

"That's not true!" Olivia tried to refute her friend, "I may be an Aurister, but you've already got what it takes to be an amazing Magister." She brought Lucina in for a hug from her chair and she scooted closer. "You can do plenty of things I can't."

"But you're already so smart and mature, so why do you hang out with a crybaby like me?" Lucina didn't know why she was opening up like this to Olivia. She didn't want to show this ugly side to her friend who was the light that gave her a better life, but after the two weeks she'd been through the words came out anyway.

"...Because I'm not as smart or mature as you think." A somberness entered Olivia's voice as she leaned against Lucina.

"Oli-?"

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" Olivia's words felt like they held weight beyond what Lucina would understand.

"What's reincarnation?" But Lucina wanted to know how to help Olivia hold that weight.

"It means being reborn into a different life after you die," Olivia explained. She figured Lucina wouldn't be able to understand what she was about to say, but Olivia needed to get it off her chest as her secret had been gnawing at her, so burying it in a memory shared between five-year-olds sounded nice. The two sat in a drawn out silence, leaning on each other and watching the wind blow over the flower beds. Lucina was giving Olivia as much time as she needed since Olivia was both willing and reluctant to share the meaning of her words. Olivia's eyes glazed over as she stared at the flowers in the distance. Would this change things? Would things derail beyond her control if she revealed her secret? Was this just another way to her death sentence? These thoughts clouded her mind and held her tongue in place, but nothing would change if she sat idly on the sidelines and let fate flow as it wanted. "I...remember my past life."

"..." Lucina's silence was unreadable, and Olivia couldn't see her face since they were both staring at the flowers.

"I remember sewing clothes back together with my mother since we didn't have enough money to buy me new ones." Olivia quietly continued her story while Lucina listened intently. "The reason I appear so mature is because I am, technically, older than you."

"But you were born three months after me," Lucina muttered.

"I'm older if we count my past life," Olivia chuckled and softly rubbed Lucina's head. "I remember eating with my friends and laughing the days away while we worked our way through school. I used to be captain of the track team, you know?"

"What's a track team?" Lucina's voice was quiet as she did her best to listen rather than speak.

"It's...sort of like a group of people that work out together. Kids get together in teams and work out with each other before going to compete in competitions against other teams to prove who worked out better." Olivia did her best to explain it to someone who had no concept of what a modern high school environment was. "I was chosen as the leader of my team, but I never got to lead them to a competition..." Olivia's words trailed off and she stopped rubbing Lucina's head.

"Why not?" Lucina was afraid of where this was going because of what Olivia asked about earlier.

"...Because I died."

"..." Olivia's words cut a wound into Lucina's heart. She fully believed everything Olivia was telling her because Olivia had no reason to lie and the pain in her words felt all too real.

"Looking back, it was a stupid death, too." Olivia sounded bitter and leaned heavily on Lucina's shoulder. "I was in love with a boy who was my...fiancé." The terms boyfriend and girlfriend didn't exist here in a world of noble arranged marriages, so she used the next best word Lucina could understand despite calling Tanaka her fiancé making her want to throw up. "While out with my friends, we saw my fiancé out with another girl. They were holding hands and even kissed each other in public... Fucking assholes... Don't remember those words," Olivia caught herself and reminded herself she was talking to a five-year-old. "Anyway, I ran to confront them but was...hit by a carriage. I blacked out only to wake up during my birth as Olivia Ordrin."

"..." Lucina was at a loss for what to say, so she grabbed Olivia's hand and gently rubbed it like her mother would do when Lucina was sad.

"...Do you remember when we first met? When I ran away from you in the entrance hall?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, in my past life, I...received five prophecies of my future in this life." Olivia didn't want to even attempt to explain what an otome game was to a medieval five-year-old. Since the gods in this world interacted with their people, she decided to weave her story in a way that would make sense for Lucina. "In four of those prophecies, I was killed."

"!?!" Lucina stopped rubbing Olivia's hands as her whole body tensed up at the thought of Olivia dying, let alone being killed by someone.

"In a few years, I'll get engaged to the crown prince in a political marriage," Olivia quietly explained. Her words were like a whisper in the wind. "But, a Saintess of Alm will be discovered and steal his heart. I'll get jealous of her and bully her relentlessly to drive her away...but that will only strengthen their love. In four of those prophecies, even in the ones where she doesn't go for my fiancé, I'll hate the Saintess for one reason or another and end up on the end of her lover's blade." Olivia's mind wandered back to her days as Ayaka and recalled the endings to the various routes. Her heart is impaled by James in his route, she's burned alive by Andrew in his, Solomon has her thrown to demons by a group of loyal priests, and Derik beheads her. She started to sweat at the thought of her going through any of those deaths.

"...What about the fifth?" Lucina cautiously asked. She had turned away from the flowers and was looking at Olivia.

"That's...where you come in."

"Me?"

"You don't show up in the other four prophecies, but in the fifth prophecy, you help the Saintess steal the hearts of all four people from the previous prophecies." A tired smile crossed Olivia's face as she remembered playing the reverse harem route. "You sell her magic items to help her, and in the end, I get enslaved by the crown prince, who then sells me to you. We then leave the school, and the prophecy ends." Olivia felt lighter after telling someone her secret, even if the person she told would probably end up forgetting it as they grew older.

"I...I would never do that!" Lucina lunged at Olivia and wrapped her arms around her dearest friend. "I don't care what you saw since I would never betray you like that! Never! You're my friend, and nothing can change that! I-I won't let that happen!" Olivia had given so much to her that Lucina always felt indebted to Olivia, but now was her chance. Now was Lucina's chance to be there for Olivia when she needed a shoulder to cry on. "I'll help you so that none of those prophecies happen!"

"Yeah, I kno-" Olivia tried to brush off Lucina's worry, but her words caught in her throat as she realized tears were flowing down her face. The feeling of Lucina desperately hugging her, affirming their friendship, and declaring her intent to help her avoid her death and enslavement eased a burden Olivia did her best to forget: her supposed unchangeable fate. Lucina was someone who now knew her secret and was willing to help her with everything she had. "...Thank you." Olivia's voice came out through her tears as she returned Lucina's hug. Mary and Julie had been too far away to hear the girl's conversation but came rushing to their sides when they saw the girls were crying. Through their tears, the two girls vowed to change their fate and to create a brighter future for each other.