The Phantom Nesni, a thief with a strange array of gifts, and a stranger outlook on life, saved King Kalin from an assassination attempt by Forsaken forces. Single-handedly thwarting a massive covert infiltration of the king's match-making ball.

-Day the Heroes by Erol Vondermin

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Kole woke to the repeated ringing of a bell. A rare but familiar sound from his home, indicating a fire and calling all nearby wizards and sorcerers to aid in the fighting of the flames. It was ironic that, while surrounded by water, fires remained a huge threat. The nature of the dome was such that no water could pass through it in either direction unless certain preparations were made. This meant that the city was very dry, and very prone to fires. Fortunately, any trained wizard could make short work of a mundane fire, and Illandrios was full of those.

Fire! Kole thought, jumping out of bed.

He ran to his desk, grabbed his spellbook, and ran through the door out into the common area of Zale’s home.

“Fi—” he shouted as he saw Zale ringing a large handbell.

“Land ho!” she shouted.

“Yer,” Kole finished weakly, stopping his mad dash.

“Bah!” Rakin shouted, walking in. “It's too early for that!”

“It’s seven!” Zale said, pointing to a clock. “I know you get up before now.”

“I do,” Rakin said. “And I spend the morning meditating so I don’t burn ye all to death when ye get on my nerves doing stupid shite like ringing giant bells inside the house!”

Zale’s righteous posture melted a bit at Rakin’s legitimate excuse.

“Oh, sorry, but... now that you’re down it's fine, right?”

Rakin looked like he was going to say something, but then chose against it, saying instead.

“I think I can manage not killing ye all for a day, but don’t make a habit of this or I’m moving back into my monk’s cell.”

Kole had seen Rakin’s room in the martial college residences for students of monastic orders, and to call him an ascetic was generous. All the rooms around his at least had sleeping pads, but Rakin had discarded his, preferring instead to sleep on the bare stone.

Though Kole did admit, that was probably more comfortable for the Earth primal than any flimsy sleeping pad would be. He’d seen Rakin lie on the ground, only to stand up to reveal a depression contoured to his back.

All that was to say, that the threat to leave really showed how much the dwarf valued his alone time if he was willing to leave the comparative luxury of Zale’s home, complete with indoor plumbing and magic lights for a barren stone room with a chamber pot.

“Great!” Zale said, inflated once more on holiday spirit. “First, we’ll do gifts, then breakfast, and then a nature walk, followed by an early dinner...”

Kole zoned out as Zale described all the things she had in store for them, and looked back longingly at his room. But, the words caught up to him.

“Presents?!” He asked interrupting. “I didn't get anyone anything. Was I supposed to?”

“No, it’s fine,” Zale assured him. “I didn’t expect that you’d know. I bought something for everyone and then a little something for myself.”

Relief spread through him, but that was quickly followed by guilt as Zale came out with some boxes and cloth pouches.

“Rakin first!” Zale said, handing him a wooden box.

“Yay,” Rakin said in the tone unfitting the word, taking the box,

He opened it up to reveal a straight razor.

“It’s for your head,” she said quickly, “not your beard.”

Rakin’s beard was trimmed short, and neatly trimmed, something Kole had never seen on another dwarf.. His hair was also trimmed very short, kept so by some sort of sheers.

The dwarf relaxed slightly at that.

“You always trim it, but I thought you’d want to give shaving it a chance again, ” Zale explained.

Rakin looked thoughtfully from the gift and back to Zale before saying, “Thanks" in what Kole thought was sincerity.

“Why is your beard short?” Amara asked with no tact. “I’ve been meaning to ask, but was told it would be rude, but since Zale just brought it up it's okay right?”

Kole cringed inwardly and hoped Rakin had been mostly joking about the murder thing.

Instead of blowing up, Rakin sighed.

“It is rude to ask,” he said. ”But I’ll tell ye anyway since I know ye don’t mean to be rude. The short beard is a concession. Me order requires their members shave their head and beard, and well, everywhere else. I can’t shave me beard, and I refused to do any of it. But, I found there was a reason to their requirements. Hair made channeling one’s Ki difficult for deeply technical reasons I won’t get into. After a few years of failure, I relented and trimmed my beard down to a length I could manage. If ye haven't noticed, I’m not exactly popular around dwarves on campus. This is part of it.”

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“Why didn’t you shave your head before?” Amara asked.

“I did actually...” he began.

“He cut himself horribly and then gave up,” Zale said, grinning at his displeasure.

“Aye, I did” he admitted. “But now I can make my skin a bit tougher, so it's worth another shot.”

“Now that we’ve delved into the depths of the strange dwarven body hair customs, let’s move on,” Zale said, passing out gifts to the others.

Doug went next, opening a radish. It was a big radish, but still a radish which Kole thought odd. What was stranger was the excitement Doug had for it.

“This is great!” he said.

Kole looked to Zale for some sort of reasoning.

She shrugged.

“It’s a green radish, and it's funny shaped. I saw it in the market and thought he’d appreciate it.”

Kole didn’t know radishes weren’t supposed to be green and then recalled Doug’s excitement over the weird carrot he’d bought for Mouse.

Kole simply nodded, as if he understood, but didn’t expect he ever would and he was fine with that.

Next Zale got Amara a little wooden trinket with toggles on it, each labeled.

“It’s a reminder device,” she explained. “You reset all the toggles in the morning, and then flip them to done when you complete them throughout the day.”

Amara read them out loud, “Brush teeth, breakfast, lunch, dinner, bathe, sleep.”

Gus climbed up on her shoulder and looked at it intently. He seemed more excited about it than Amara did,

Amara looked at Gus, and then said with a shrug, “If you think so.”

She turned to Zale and thanked her.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’re a much better gift giver than Amintha. She always gave me things she wanted, and then ended up using them more than I did.”

The festive mood died down a bit at that. Amara had begun talking about her sister a lot more since her disappearance, never really having shared details about her beyond the fact that she was missing prior to their ‘rescue’ of her. The picture she was painting through the childhood tales was one that suggested she’d been a villain long before she’d fallen in with a swarm of Will-stealing spider monsters.

Gus moved to comfort Amara again, and Zale redirected everyone’s attention to Kole to move on.

It was Kole’s turn.

Everyone looked at him as he played with the cloth bag in his hands.

“Go on,” Zale encouraged him.

He drew the string and pulled out a leather pocket.

Zale watched him expectantly as he looked at it, holding it up and then turning his head sideways as if seeing it from a different angle would help him understand what it was.

”Do you like it?” Zale asked eagerly.

Kole really, really, wanted to say yes, but he ad no idea what it was. Idly he thought that Doug’s weird carrot would fit inside of it, and then had to hold back a laugh at the thought of “Doug’s weird carrot.”

Finally, he asked, “What is it?”

“It's a holster for your blasting rod!”

“Ohhh,” Kole said, his eyes now recognizing it for what it was. “That's why a carrot would fit.”

“Huh?”

“Yes! It’s perfect,” Kole said. “Thanks! I don’t know why we didn’t think of getting one sooner. I feel bad, none of us got you anything.”

Doug joined in the apology, and while Amara and Rakin examined their gifts.

“Don’t worry about it,” Zale said.

Kole moved to put the holster on, earning a disapproving tisk from Zale.

“It’s not a belt holster, those ruin the lines of an outfit,” she said, snatching it from his hand before he could fasten it to his belt. “And it's best to keep your weapons hidden, as my mother always says.”

She opened the front of Kole’s ship clan tunic, revealing a loop of cloth he was certain hadn’t been there before.

Well, fairly certain, he corrected.

She quickly tied the holster to the inside of the shirt and then closed it up, all before Kole’s mind could react to the potentially intimate act.

“There! Try it out,” she said, handing Kole a long spoon from the table.

Kole slotted the spoon into his shirt and then had to rotate it, handle down to fit.

“Perfect! Now, let's eat.

“Has that loop always been in my shirt?” Kole asked as they walked to the table.

“If you can’t remember then you don’t get to know,” Zale said. “Maybe this will teach you to pay more attention to your wardrobe.”

She took another look at Kole’s shirt, and then grabbed the spoon through the fabric, tweaking it slightly.

“There. Wear it like that.”

“That’s not an answer. Are you able to sneak into my room too?” Kole asked again.

Zale walked away, not answering, leaving Kole to wonder if there was anyone who couldn’t access his ‘secret’ magic room.

Zale had prepared—or gotten someone else to prepare more likely a large breakfast spread they all dug into as they talked over their meal. As she continued to outline all the tasks for the day, Kole couldn’t help but ask a question that had been brewing.

“Do you do this stuff every year? All these festivities seem a bit out of character for your mother.”

Zale’s smile grew wistful, and her voice lost some of its animation.

"We do," she said. “My grandpa made a big deal of celebrating the holiday for mom when she was little and living among the elves. She stopped celebrating it after he died but started again when I was born. It’s always been something special we did together, and she’d tell me stories about her parents as we did it all.”

She paused in reflection for a moment before adding, “She did, however, always make sure to incorporate training into the activities. I made sure to leave that out, so you don’t need to worry about the food being poisoned or the carollers pulling a knife on you as you walk through the forest.”

Kole, who had been thinking of ways to try to get out of the day's activities, suddenly felt even more guilty. Distantly he wondered if constant guilt was a normal part of celebrating holidays, or if he was just bad at all of this. He’d celebrated some holidays back home with his Uncle, but the two of them never did much for any of them, and as a kid, little was expected of him.

Uncle Jaryn! Kole remembered again. I need to write him a letter.

Kole excused himself briefly to go do just that. With all that Zale had in store for them the rest of the day, he would be lucky if he had any time at all to himself later, let alone time to write a letter.

“No studying!” Zale shouted as Kole walked into his room.