“I have no clue.”

“Same.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Me neither.”

“Wow, there’s not a creative bone in you bunch. I know what I’m going to do. But it’s a secret until I master it.”

“Shut up, Oliver.”

“Yeah, shut up, Oliver.”

The students of the lounge echoed the sentiment as they ate their breakfasts.

“What about you, Mindy? What are you doing for your innovation project?”

“Hm…” Mindy leaned back as far as she could in her chair, running her fingers through her dangling blonde hair. “Something with sauces. I really like sauces. They’re my favorite thing to make. I don’t know what I’m going to do, though.”

“Oh, I know,” Benedict said as he snapped his fingers. “Sauces get sticky in the pan. It’s tough to wash them out. So what if you made a sauce that cleaned the pan?”

“Benny, they already make that sauce,” Oliver chirped. “It’s called soap.”

“Oliver, be nice,” Blanche scolded. Benedict looked at her with lovesick eyes. He would let himself become the laughing stock of the world if only it meant Blanche would be at his side defending him.

Blanche pointed at the door. “Nori. Archie.”

They turned to see Rowan waiting in the open doorway. He smiled and motioned for them to join him. Archie groaned as he got up.

“I was hoping we could go for a little walk,” Rowan explained.

“Sure,” Nori said. Archie shrugged.

They made their way back up to the main building of the Academy, winding through the walkways that had been etched into the mountain.

“So, I heard you two had a catering job in Caviar Court.” Rowan looked back at them with a slight smile. But Archie could sense the hidden disapproval. “It must have paid well.”

“Ten gold,” Nori bragged. She possessed none of Rowan’s shame. “And we have another job lined up. At this rate, we won’t have to work over the summer.”

“Hm.” Rowan kept his eyes forward as they passed through the great hall. “It went well then?”

“Well, Archie almost let a kid die…”

“What?”

Archie sighed. “I was the…entertainment. Doing tricks with blueberries and noodles. The birthday boy, this…little Glutton, he…was running and stretching the noodle and fell over the edge of the building, but we managed to hold on and lower him safely. It was a whole ordeal.”

“So you’re…serving Gluttons, then?” Rowan’s voice dripped with thinly veiled disapproval.

“There were a couple, yeah.” Nori exchanged a worried frown with Archie. “But this next job…we weren’t hired by Gluttons.”

“Just…be careful.” Rowan scoffed. “Be careful,” he muttered to himself.

Upon arriving at the Children’s Square, Rowan stopped and turned.

“I’m leaving later this week,” he said. “And I don’t know if I’ll be back by the end of the semester.”

“I thought the Uroko trip wasn’t for another month?” Nori asked.

“Uh, yeah. But I’m going to…I’m going to Sain, first.” Rowan offered a sorrowful smile at Archie. “I think it’s time to face my demons. Plus, I haven’t seen little Arty in twenty years.”

Archie imagined his father and Rowan talking over a meal at Petrichor. For as much resentment as he currently harbored for them two, he wanted to be there with them.

“Now, I’m sure, given your recent success at Caviar Court, you two will be just fine. You won’t need me. But I do want to apologize for…” He took a deep breath. “For not sticking around to help. My departure is…a selfish one. I hope you’ll allow it of me.”

“Of course,” Nori said.

But it wasn’t Nori’s approval that Rowan sought. He looked at Archie.

“Yeah,” Archie nodded. “It’s fine.”

Rowan took another breath, this one relieving him of some unseen weight. “Well, since I’m leaving, I still have a regret that I’ve yet to address. I feel as though I have not done a proper job articulating what I had hoped to instill in you.”

He looked up at the statue of Ambrosia. “The spirit of giving…Doing something for others…It’s what this world was built on, even if we’ve forgotten our ways.”

He watched all the people passing by, his face full of lament.

“Do you two know the story of the four children?”

“For the most part,” Nori answered.

Rowan looked at Archie, forcing an answer.

“Vaguely. I know that they founded the four kingdoms.”

“That’s not—” Nori pressed her lips together and exhaled through her nose. Archie had touched some well-trodden nerve. Rowan chuckled. “Not Uroko.”

“Well, in my advanced age, I fear I have learned to love to talk too much,” Rowan said. “So if you’ll allow me, I’ll tell the story and what it means to me.”

When no one protested, he continued.

“So we know where we started. Before Ambrosia, some one thousand and something years ago. We know she died 1,135 years ago, but there’s no telling how long she lived. Some say fifty years. Some say five hundred. The first written record we have of her, she was already pregnant with her first child. They said there wasn’t a father.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“The world was cruel. Not made for humans. It was a world taking, not giving. Things like licertes were as common as squirrels. And the ground was hard. Things didn’t grow. Humans were nomadic out of necessity, surviving by foraging and hunting while running from terrible creatures. There are cave paintings of trolls and banshees and giant snakes and many such monstrosities.

“Old stories described Ambrosia as a beacon of energy that could be felt from miles away. The creatures were repelled by this energy, allowing the first people to settle and create a city. In many ancient texts, it’s described simply as ‘The City.’ During Ambrosia’s life, it lacked a proper name. It was only after Ambrosia’s death that they saw it fit to name it properly.”

Rowan sighed and looked at the four statues that made up the square.

“And Ambrosia had four children. They were the first to inherit her gift. Before she passed, she assigned each of them a task. They were to go out into the world to find other groups of people and spread their gift. When Ambrosia died, they took her ashes, shed their names, and set out to create new identities in the civilizations they were to lead.”

He motioned to a statue of a woman that faced the northeast. She was the homeliest of the bunch—the craftsmanship was so superb that any ugliness must have been intentional—and dressed in a sort of parka with a hood pulled up over her head.

“The eldest child traveled to what we now know as Khala. There, she encountered two warring civilizations. One belonging to humans and one belonging to yetis. They lived in constant conflict with each other.

“The humans took her in, naming her Tamani. She used her magic to create the first stronghold. Eventually, after the yetis were beaten, they negotiated. Tamani allowed them to live, but they were to only occupy the highest peaks of the north where they would be undisturbed. But before sending them off, Tamani felt a great pity for robbing them of their homeland and gave them her last pouch of Ambrosia’s ashes so that they might spread them as they traveled.

“As peace spread across the region, the people flocked to Tamani and named her queen. She died of old age and was buried in the mountains, as was their custom.”

Rowan gestured toward a second statue, this one facing north west. She wore a leather tube top with feather-stuffed bracelets on her wrists and biceps. The sculptor had managed to capture a certain wildness that wasn’t present in the others.

“The next child went to what is now Kuutsu Nuna. She found a resilient group of nomads that named her Wasna. The people had survived the hostile lands by following a great herd of buffalo. The buffalo were so many and so fierce that they could drive back the evil creatures, leaving a safe pocket in their wake. As long as the people stayed close, they’d be safe, and they’d be fed.

“Wasna offered the strength to settle, but her ideals were rejected. The tribe saw her ways as too foreign. So, heeding her mother’s wish for them to assimilate rather than conquer, Wasna decided to live as one of them. She followed the herd for years, spreading Ambrosia’s ashes as they traveled. She became revered as Chieftess.

“But as the creatures of the old world were driven away from places like Ambrosia City, they found new places to settle. They became too many for the buffalo herd, who started to die off. The tribe feared that soon they would be overrun.

“Wasna, inspired by her mother’s sacrifice, found her own way of giving back. She walked not behind, but with the buffalo, who treated her as one of their own. As she walked, she fed herself, piece by piece, to each buffalo. Before she could no longer walk, she tied her body to the strongest of the buffalo, allowing her corpse to drag behind and be consumed by the herd.”

“That’s intense,” Archie commented.

“That’s the way the world was back then,” Rowan chuckled. “Of course, that herd is now the Kuutsu. They took on their magical form and haven’t stopped moving in a thousand years. And while people still follow the Kuutsu, others did end up settling. Kuutsu meat takes days to cook, so naturally, people had to stay in one place long enough to accommodate that cooking time.”

Rowan gestured toward a third statue, the only male of the group, this one facing southwest and dressed in royal robes and a crown.

“As for Labrusca…Before Ambrosia gave them her gift, she nearly gave them their doom. When she drove out the creatures near Ambrosia City, she drove them west, unintentionally wiping out any civilization in Labrusca.

“The only people that survived were the ones that made it out to the southern island of Lampuki. Ambrosia recognized her mistake and ordered the majority of her ashes be spread across Labrusca. It is believed that is why that land is the most fertile in the continent.

“And so the third child went to Lampuki where he was named Nectarus. There, he first established trade with Ambrosia City, bringing enough strength to his new people that they could reclaim their home on the mainland.

“Nectarus ruled as king for many decades and had many children, all profoundly talented Chefs. They prospered, but something still weighed heavily on Nectarus’s mind. He felt that they had stolen away the best of Ambrosia’s gift, and so he decided to send his most talented son, Julienne, back to Ambrosia City.

“Upon Nectarus’s death, they returned his body to Lampuki and buried him in a temple. I’ve been lucky enough to visit it. It’s…when you are there, you can feel Ambrosia’s presence.”

Rowan gestured toward the fourth and final statue, a young teenage girl with the prettiest face of the bunch facing east, her hands clasped together near her chest in a posture of humility.

“And now we have the fourth child. And this one’s story is quite different from the others. You see, the other three all became the leaders of their civilizations. It’s only natural. Early stages of civilization always lead toward crowning one person as a leader. It’s just a matter of when that leader has enough power and influence to gather an entire nation of people.

“But the fourth child set out to Uroko and didn’t find a nomadic tribe or fleeing refugees or little camps of people. She found a nation fully formed. Before Ambrosia City, there was the nation of Uroko.

“The reason we know when Ambrosia died is due to the extensive written history of Uroko, which predated Ambrosia’s death by nearly three hundred years. Their history documented the arrival of the fourth child well.

“At first, the Urokans rejected her. They did not need her strength. They had driven the creatures out of their islands, giving them the ability to gather enough strength to create strongholds on the mainland that could grow crops for the rest of the nation.

“The child lived in the forests of the mainland. She spread some of Ambrosia’s ashes in solitude. Eventually, kinder creatures inhabited the forest. Amongst these new creatures, the child befriended a great white stag.

“After many years, the child rode the stag into one of Uroko’s coastal cities. The people saw her on that great white stag and took her in with wonder. She used her gift to bring prosperity to the town. The people called her Shinsen and began to worship her. The ruler of Uroko traveled to the mainland and upon seeing her, fell in love. They married and their line still rules to this day.”

“But, as with Ambrosia and as with all of her other children, Shinsen had a moment when she felt that she needed to do more. Across the narrow sea, a great winter took Khala, lasting three years. Tamani had given some of Ambrosia’s gift to the yetis, so the lands of Khala were not as fertile as the other lands. Many died of starvation.

“Shinsen saw the prosperity of her nation and could not sit idly by while another suffered. And so she took her great white stag, the mythical creature that it was, the symbol of nobility, across the sea and butchered it for the people of Khala. It was said that a single bite of the deer could keep someone nourished for a month.”

Rowan looked around and sighed. “You see, the true spirit of Ambrosia, the reason we call her magic a gift…it’s all about giving back more. Doing more. If you have secured comfort in your life, it is your duty to give to those with less. We have an obligation as a society to raise up those who struggle the most. Failing to do that, we become no better than the monsters that ruled the earth before us.”

He looked down and pulled at the hair of his eyebrow. “It’s a lesson that, at times, I had forgotten.”

Archie put a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. He felt no resentment. “I understand.”

“Me too,” Nori added. “But it’s not always so black and white, is it?”

The question perplexed Archie and Rowan.

“You had a detail wrong,” Nori explained. “At least, partially wrong. When you said Shinsen’s line still rules Uroko. When Shinsen returned to Uroko after feeding her stag to Khala, the king was outraged. He turned the nation against her.

“At the time, they had one son together, and she was pregnant with twins. He took the son from her, and yes, his line is the royal line. But the king disowned the twins before they were born and exiled his wife. So she gave them a last name of her own choosing. Harper.

“And then when she died, they didn’t bury her in a temple. They just threw her body out to sea. Her children saw her generosity as her doom and vowed not to make the same mistake again. Something they instilled in their children and their children’s children.”

“Well…” Rowan looked long and hard at Nori, searching her soul. “I hope you’re the one to break that cycle, then.”