For the next couple of weeks, Archie retreated within himself, his emotions too large for expression. He got quiet. Passive. He seemed to only have half-conversations with his friends—he was eager to be alone, and they were unsure how to handle the news of his heritage, particularly given the incident in Pomona’s kitchen. He spent his days in Pomona’s class and his nights in the great hall where the older students ate and left him alone.

“Nori, do you have a second?” he asked.

“She’s busy,” Blanche answered for her, putting herself between Archie and Nori.

A day passed. Archie dreamt of the glade and the voice again. But this time, the voice spoke to him from the perspective of his grandfather.

“Archie, I found a couple of studies I wanted to show you,” Sutton said. “You know, I thought you might have some questions…”

“Not now, Sutton. I can’t do it right now.”

Another day. A cold wind came in from the sea, forcing the students to wear sweaters beneath their jackets.

“Is she ready to talk?” Archie asked.

“She’s still upset,” Blanche answered. “I think she woke up crying.”

Another day. Everyone went to their sponsors. Everyone but Archie and Nori. They spent the day avoiding each other.

Another day. The cold stayed. Archie wrote a letter to his parents telling them not to come to the city for Winter’s Blossom. Part of him hated them. It took all afternoon to edit that part out.

Another day. The days seemed both infinitely long and infinitesimally short, taking forever in the moment but forming no distinct memories by the time of their end. Archie went to sleep early and woke up late. He had the nightmare again and again, and then had other nightmares. Nori leaving. Nori hating him.

“You okay?” Barley asked. “You don’t look too good.”

“I’m fine.”

Another day. Archie was running out of new partners in Pomona’s class. He shared the stove with Mindy.

“He’s not, like, that mad anymore. Julienne. I mean, he’s still pretty mad. But…”

Another day. Archie was forced to partner up with Julienne to spend a day in awkward silence.

“...”

“...”

Another day. Archie’s last possible partner. Yarrow. They spent the day in aggressive silence.

“...!”

“...”

Another day. Now that everyone had partnered with everyone, they were free to start over with whoever they chose. Nori did not partner with Archie, nor did she say a word in response to him when he asked.

“We’re the undesirables,” Oliver joked as he slapped Archie’s back. “Look at Cress over there with Julienne. Trying to make me jealous. But let me tell you, he can’t make her laugh like me.”

On the other side of the kitchen, Cress burst into laughter at something Julienne said.

“Shit.”

Another day. Maybe it was two. Maybe it was three. They all seemed to blur together. It hadn’t snowed—Aubergine said that his flowers told him that it wouldn’t—but the morning dew froze onto the grass. One morning, the breaking dawn woke Archie, and he walked down to the lake. He almost smiled at the crunching of the grass beneath his feet.

“Hey, Archie!” Aubergine shouted. He jogged in place to warm up even though he was about to jog for another five miles. “Joining me for my run?”

“Not today.”

“Not today means someday!”

Another day. Then another. And just like that, Pomona’s class was over. Archie had just gone through the motions the last few weeks, having done nothing to distinguish himself and failing to apply himself to any studies. He received a letter from his parents and read just enough of it to make sure they weren’t coming.

And then it was Winter’s Blossom. The day of Ambrosia’s birth. A day of celebration that was second only to the Festival of Ambrosia. And while his roommates got dressed up, Archie just sat in bed with the covers pulled up to his shoulders.

“You coming, Arch?” Benedict asked.

“Yeah, get up!” Oliver added. They had learned to just power through his mopeyness.

But it didn’t work today.

“I, uh, I don’t think so,” Archie said. “Not feeling great. I think it’s the cold.”

Oliver and Benedict exchanged a look and a sigh before leaving. Barley remained behind.

“Will you go with me?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Bar…” Archie shifted around in his bed, wishing Barley would just leave.

But instead, Barley sat on his bed. In a rare moment, the quiet giant started the conversation.

“Back in Khala…back home…when the ambrosials bloomed, my mom would make pa. It’s this ball of tsampa and chocolate and dates and walnuts. It’s all covered in cinnamon.”

Barley rarely spoke so much, so the beginning of his story had already pierced Archie’s apathetic veil. “What’s tsampa?” he asked as he sat up.

“Roasted barley. It’s the most popular food where I’m from.” Barley smiled, but there was a soft sadness to his expression. “Pa is rare, because we don’t get much chocolate. But anyway, you roll it in these little balls.”

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Barley looked out the window of their bedroom out to the north, and his words grew wistful and full of memory. It was like he could see home from a thousand miles away.

“So my mom would make the pa, and then the ambrosials would bloom, and she’d wrap those big flower petals around the pa and then fry them. It never tasted so good. Everyone wanted them. And I mean, there were nine of us, so they went fast.”

“Wait, nine?” Archie laughed and thought about what that was like—as much as an only child could. “That means you have what, six brothers and sisters? Plus your parents?”

“Actually, I wasn’t even counting my parents. With them it’s eleven. And it was always my dad that stole the pa. He’d hide it up on the roof until I got tall enough to get up there myself. Then he’d find new places to hide it. We’d think we had gotten away with a feast, having eaten two each. Turns out my dad would be hiding half a batch wrapped up in cloth and hidden in a haystack.”

Barley shook his head and laughed. “So my mom came up with a game to get my dad away from the kitchen. Put us all against him. Hit pa and get a pa, she’d say. It snows most months up there, so we were all pretty deadly with a snowball. My dad stopped hiding the pa and started hiding himself. We’d search for a mile each way looking for him. If we got him with a snowball, we got pa. If he got us first, we had to go back home and start again.”

Barley rubbed his thumb along the cupped palm of his other hand, imagining either the snowball or the fried pa—Archie couldn’t be sure which. But whatever Barley was thinking of, it brought a smile to his face. A real smile. One that warmed even Archie’s cold heart.

And then his smile faded.

“I miss them. I came to the Academy because…” Barley clicked his tongue and sighed. “Anyway, this is my first time away from home. My first Winter’s Blossom without them. And on days like this, I…I feel pretty lonely.”

Archie tried to offer comfort in the form of a smile.

“And I can tell that you’re lonely, too,” Barley said.

Archie looked down into his lap, saddened by the truth of the statement.

Barley stood from his bed. “Everyone’s going down to the Children’s Square. Let’s go be lonely together there.”

Archie chuckled. “Okay, Barley. Let me get my shoes.”

It seemed like everyone from the Crown had congregated in the Children’s Square. Giant arches of woven willow branches and vines spanned across the plaza, rising to nearly half the height of the four statues of Ambrosia’s four children. The statues were the namesake of the plaza, set up in a square with each looking to a different kingdom.

And at the end of the plaza, as there was in nearly all plazas of Ambrosia City, a statue of Ambrosia herself looked down upon her people. The size and details of her statue paled in comparison to her children’s—it was their square, after all—but on this day, it got all of the attention.

On a makeshift wooden platform at Ambrosia’s feet, a mass of preachers took turns sermonizing, the Chancellor of Culinary Arts nodding along behind them.

Barley carved a way through the crowd, Archie easily following in his massive wake. As they approached, Archie could hear the preachers.

“And so after those centuries of darkness—of horrible creatures and plagues and famines and eclipses that spanned years—we were delivered. Some believe that the earth took all those centuries trying to gather whatever specks of good existed within it.

“And then…deliverance in the form of a human. A gift from the earth. Perhaps the earth itself. Ambrosia. And on this day, the day of her birth, we celebrate that gift. And the earth celebrates with us.”

Archie spotted Nori in the crowd. Blanche and Cress—her bodyguards for the past few weeks—stood guard next to her. He just wanted to talk to her again. To laugh with her again. He had hardly spent a day without her since arriving in Ambrosia City so many months ago. To have spent weeks without hardly a word from her had made the city seem more gray than the winter clouds ever could.

Perhaps through some old, archaic magic, his feelings of longing manifested themselves and reached out to Nori, because at that moment, she turned to face him and locked eyes with him.

The priest looked up at the clocktower. Moments away from noon.

“On this Winter’s Blossom, I want you all to be thankful. Let go of your accumulating anger and greed and bitterness. Be rid of your cynicism, your jadedness, your fear. Leave no residuals.”

Buds formed on the vines above them.

“Let the pure white of the bloom serve as your inspiration to wipe your slate clean. Set out on this new year with ambition and hope and clarity of purpose. Understand the truth—despite our individual hardships, our lives are good. And it is Ambrosia that has let it be that way.”

The clock struck noon. As the bell of the clocktower rang, the flowers bloomed on every plant in the courtyard—the vines on the archways, the weeds sprouting between the cobblestone, the trees lining the buildings.

The white of the flower had no equal in purity. Fresh fallen snow seemed drab in comparison. This white seemed to predate color itself. It covered the city—it covered the continent. From the deserts of Kuutsu Nuna to the lush valleys of Labrusca to the harsh plateau of Khala to the farthest reaching eastern islands of Uroko, if something could grow, it grew flowers on this day. And when the sun set, the flowers would return to nothing, not to be seen again for another year.

They named the flower after the birthday girl—ambrosials.

The crowd cheered and clapped as beauty erupted around them. Archie had never experienced such a bloom. In the essence-starved lands of Sain, the flowers were small things, curled and quaint. But these flowers threw off petals as quickly as they could grow them. White petals fell from the arches like snow, the people below scooping them up. Many people ate the petals. Others took them home to cook with. And some just wanted to experience the joy of holding them.

While everyone celebrated, Archie’s and Nori’s eyes stayed locked together. The falling petals seem to slow and hover around her face, giving her a divine beauty. The sound of the crowd faded away, replaced by some internal humming. He felt something open up inside his body and extend, connecting the two. Was it essence?

And then she walked toward him.

The crowd seemed to part naturally before her, allowing her to walk unimpeded up to Archie. White petals slid off her sleek, black hair, covering the ground in a soft blanket that swished as she moved through it.

She was crying.

But she didn’t say a word until her head was buried in Archie’s chest and her arms wrapped around his body.

He had forgotten how small she was. She didn’t even come up to the top of his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her and her body shook.

“You idiot,” she sobbed. “They would make me go home. You could lose me forever.”

The thought split Archie’s heart in two.

“I’m sorry, Nori. We’ll figure out how to raise the gold.”

She pulled back and punched his shoulder.

“I already figured it out. I’m just finalizing some details.”

Archie rubbed the spot with one hand, the other hand still wrapped around Nori’s back. He didn’t want to let her go.

“Well I can help—”

“No.” Nori pulled away completely, leaving Archie’s hand to fall by his side. A defiant stoicism formed in her teary eyes. “From now on, I make all of the decisions. And you just do what I tell you to do.”

“Okay.”

She sniffled. Then she looked away, her face puffing up in a pout.

“Happy Winter’s Blossom, Archie,” she muttered.

“Happy Winter’s Blossom, Nori.”

Nori retreated to her bodyguards, but that was okay. Everything was okay. Archie stuck around for a while, absorbing the happiness of the crowd.

Everything was okay.

Archie went back to the Academy early, walking alone through streets covered in white petals. He made his way down to the lounge, and on its great balcony, he could see for miles and miles. Flowers had bloomed for as far as the eye could see, painting the world in white.

A fresh start.

Everything was okay.

Somewhere far to the north, barely visible to Archie at all, where the blueberries grew without essence, a brown patch of dead wood stuck out in all that white.