“So are you absolutely sure you don’t want anything special for when you get back?” said Edna.

“Nah, I’m good with whatever.” said Billy.

Edna frowned a little, actually it was more of a pout, a childish holdover from younger days.

“Super sure?”

“Super sure.” laughed Billy.

Edna sighed, because that meant that she’d have to make the decision of what to make herself. After years of not having that option she was slightly rusty, the moment of indecision filling her with with what she felt was an absurd amount of anxiety.

Especially for a decision as small as what to eat for lunch. She kind of wished he stayed then. They took turns with the cooking and he was more than decent at it.  Most importantly she wouldn’t have to fret as much as she was.

“Well...in that case, have a good run, I guess.”

“I will.” said Billy. Smiling as he began to jog away from the lodge and down the road. Giving her a little wave before he really began to put some effort in.

Then he was gone, no blur, no crack of air, or sonic boom. He just leaned forwards, took a step and was simply gone.

She’d once asked him how far he ran. He said, he usually stopped and turned around before he hit Gwenael.

The Great Kingdom to the West of Meallan that lay on the other side of the immense stretch of land that was the Argus Continent.

This was followed up with her asking him if that meant he was a speed-Augmented. He’d just laughed. She hadn’t been joking so she wasn’t sure why he’d laughed. It had kind of annoyed her because a part of her thought he’d been laughing at her.

Edna stood, leaning against the doorframe, looking down the road that went by the lodge. If she turned her head to the right she’d be able to see Garland and it’s high walls.

If she turned her head to the left she’d see the wilderness. All of this was seen through the tall warded wrought-iron fence that surrounded the lodge. Sometimes she worried the fence wouldn’t hold.

However that had abated a bit when Billy had her help him when he added more walls. Explaining the process and the sigil work. Having her help with retouching some of the old wards.

Eventually enough time passed for her to realize that she probably should go in now. She wasn’t sure why she should go in, but she was pretty sure standing around mooning about like some abandoned hound was undignified and childish.

“Okay Edna-Rae, what are we going to do today?” she said, speaking aloud to herself. A habit that had been growing of late.

She looked around and decided that she head to the library that they’d set up in the basement. The walls there were covered floral print papering, the light was made by catching sun rays in spelled glass.

The room was bigger than she remembered it being when she was younger. Normally things should shrink as one grows, but Billy did something to the room. He’d done the same for most of the house.

Now while for the rest of the world it still looked like a lodge, if you came inside it was quite obviously a manse. A palatial abode with long halls. Massive bedrooms. Walk in closets.

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Baths the size of swimming pools and a garden to die for. She’d asked him how he’d done it and again he just laughed.

She warned him, telling him the next time he chuckled at her would earn him quite the pinch. This got yet another laugh, but she made good on her threat.

Now there was still of question of what to do. Back when she was a maid this was never an issue, the days were spent doing everything head maid asked and trying to avoid her Uncle and his wives.

The wives were crazy, and this wasn’t in the metaphorical sense, she Edna genuinely suspected them to be psychologically imbalance, in more ways than one. As for avoiding her Uncle it was just that he was a bore and leech.

All the maids tried to avoid him and the ones that didn’t either ended up pregnant and on their rear or they ended up on the head maid’s bad side. Stuck in barn with the ponies. Mucking out stalls with the field hands.

Now though there was no Uncle, there were no wives, there was no head maid. There was just her and all this time that she didn’t know what to do with. It was in moments like this that she wished she had friends.

The other maids had mostly just bullied her. She’d never had enough spare time to get familiar with the folk in town.

As for the people she thought were friends when she was young, almost all of them abandoned her shortly after coming to give her condolences. Most of it wasn’t even malicious either.

They’d all still had futures to work towards. Schools to attend. Apprenticeships to fulfill. Edna-Rae had just been Edna-Rae, an orphan and then a maid and now a nothing-in-particular.

A part of her wanted to head into town and see if there was anything that was needed or anything that looked nice. She shut that line of thought down because she knew that their funds weren’t unlimited.

This wasn’t the greatest of economies. Three hundred thousand dollars and what they had in loot and valuables was just enough for them to be comfortable and only for a limited amount of time at that. The average family went through a minimum of ten thousand if they weren’t going to live in squalor.

She and Billy hadn’t exactly been conservative in their spending. She found herself wondering what they’d do when the money was all used up, but somehow she couldn’t get herself to ask.

After all it was impolite to talk about money right?

Plus, what would happen if there wasn’t a plan and she was expected to help. She’d already give it her best, at the very least they owned the lodge so there was no landlord to worry about and as of last week they’d stopped paying for utilities.

Billy somehow managing to find them an alternative source for their heat, electricity and water, other than the Kingdom’s facilities. The worst case scenario would be she and William having to get jobs.

She’d already been a maid, she didn’t think being a waitress or working as a custodian would be all that different. As for what Billy did, well she somehow just trusted that he’d find something.

Maybe that was just wishful thinking though, the William in her memories was kind of a flake. Reliable and unreliable in equal portion.

*****

“Mhm?...Oh, right!” said Edna. Still aimlessly wandering the house looking for something, anything for her to do.

There on one of the new tables was a stack of notebooks. She’d come down to the library and somehow ended up dusting.

Then finally when she remembered that what she’d come down there to do was to look for something to read, she saw the stack of notebooks. On the notebooks there was familiar doodle of a familiar character. A character that was basically her when she was six.

She opened the notebooks and then she recalled Billy telling her that he’d left her something in the library, it was on the day after the day that she left the chateau with him.

Ecstatic to see the cousin that everyone had assumed either dead or worse, alive and okay and alive. Ecstatic to have him remember her, asking her if she wanted to leave with him. It was only three weeks ago and somehow it had taken on the sparkling aura of a dream.

It’d had been like so many of the things that she’d used to daydream about. Except this wasn’t a prince charming or some handsome knight, it was Billy, her Billy.

The goofy, quiet kid, who used to be scared of his own shadow but  was even more afraid of the bigger meaner children of house Maddoc. Still remaining “piss-himself” scared even as he picked fights with them for Edna and the other one’s sake.

Three weeks ago he’d walked in, somehow managed to get the Uncle who hated him to give him the lodge, and he’d whisked her away. Now three weeks later, she was slightly less breathless, and while she didn’t regret her decision to leave at all, she wasn’t actually sure where things went from there.

Edna opened the notebook and she saw a chart and a list of philosophical sayings and a mathematical diagram filled with numbers and thaumaturgical sigils.

A complex mixture of math and numbers that she recognized as a instructions for aether cultivation. She recognized it as such because once upon a time she’d been more than a mere maid and had parents and prospects.

Besides the main family, Billy’s folks, House Maddoc was made up of over one hundred and thirty-three families with varying levels of direct relation.

Like everything else in world, the leaders of the house were decided by strength. Each family building their strength by earnestly trying to develop a  young talented practitioner.

Edna stared at the notebook flipping through it, her brow furrowed, half in curiosity, half in uncertainty. She looked through the other notebooks and found that those were filled with more cultivation tips and tips for aether accumulation.

There were even some simple spells and enchantments and a few in depth guides to martial styles. Illustrated with the kind of articulated stick figures that were used by people who were actually good at and only drawing simply because they didn’t feel like putting in any extra effort. The words were simple. The directions reasonably understandable.

Edna leafed through the notebooks a last time before taking them all and carrying them to her room. Billy had apparently written them all for her, she didn’t see any reason not to use them.