The blintz’s dough parts under his teeth, only to free the creamy filling. It is light and sweet and tastes of lemon and cinnamon. Nathan sits back and sighs in pleasure.

“Sarah those are delicious!”

“Of course they are, I made them. “

Nathan watches her deftly flip one of her blintz in the air then catch it with the frying pan. Sarah is a methodical cook and if the loss of her arm has affected her, the impeccable work plan as well as the steaming tower of blintz gives no clue of it. In the past two weeks they have grown closer and the most surprising thing is how open she is about the existence of magic.

He softly shakes Gwahin's shoulder. The Yol is looking at the apple filling with a strange intensity. After a while she just looks at Nathan instead, blinks, then shoves an entire blintz in her mouth.

“Mmmshoush”

“Gwahin it looks like you are attempting to communicate. You should try to swallow the food and then speak, It helps, you will see.”

Toothy is passed out on the table, victim of baklava induced food comma. The two have become drowsier as winter approaches.

“You are too arrogant human. And sassy. You are letting your minor success go to your head.”

Nathan is getting more and more convinced that Yol cannot tell the difference between training and educating their kids. Half of the training is just games, which is nice but it also feels a bit random. Those past sessions had confirmed a few things. No matter how hard he tries, Nathan cannot weave anything without a lot of efforts. As Gwahin had said, the part of him that touches the flow is atrophied and only time and practice will make it grow strong. He is reminded of that scene in The Matrix when Neo asks why his muscles hurt and Morpheus tells him it’s because he has never used them before, except instead of Lawrence Fishburn, the mentor figure is under five feet high and can also eat up to a hundred dollars of groceries in one sitting. That does not deter his mentor from training him of course. In order to prepare for the creation of an infused weapon, she had him bend wood in different shapes. He now has two funky back scratchers and a weird looking brush for Bismarck.

Besides weaving, he actually proved himself decent at dodging Gwahin’s spear, but where he shines is when playing hide and seek. Now, Gwahin is a forest spirit with a forest colored skin and a century of experience hiding from, and tracking humans. The term “unfair competition” may have crossed Nathan’s mind, and yet, if they were keeping score they would be even.

Gwahin says keeping score is a human notion and that when playing, he should only focus on the present because this is all just training for the day when hiding will be a life and death situation where his score will not matter. Nathan suspects Gwahin is full of it and just doesn’t like to lose, and, no matter how hard she tries, he can always find her. At first, it was not difficult. Following her aura was like finding the sun in the sky. Then she started to actually work on hiding herself, but Nathan would always end up tracking her location within a few feet. The hardest part was actually spotting the devious chameleon girl. The best part was pointing a finger at her face while loudly exclaiming “There you are!”. Her grumblings and grudging recognition made the trek through the woods worth it.

“So you haven’t told your friend Ambrose about Gwahin of the leaves?”

Nathan raises his head long enough to see Sarah dump a pile of fresh blintz on Gwahin’s plate. The Yol thanks her with a soft voice and a hand on her shoulder. Sarah does not express any discomfort at the contact if anything she looks happy. Nathan wonders whether Gwahin realizes how protective she is and if it relates to the fact she calls Sarah “child”. Sarah is not a weaver and so she is nearly defenseless, and yet she took Gwahin’s existence in stride, especially after Nathan had mentioned that the weapon she had provided had been, quite literally, a blast. Now she shows up on occasion and feeds both of them. Her contribution to the war effort, she says. Perhaps this, more than her age, is what appealed to Gwahin, or maybe the Yol is just lonely and has a weakness for apple cream.

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The proof that humans and other sentient beings can coexist is a very comforting thought and it is something that only Sarah could have brought. Ambrose would be a whole other problem.

“No. For several reasons but the main one is this: Ambrose is fiercely patriotic.”

“So? You don’t trust him?”

“I trust him to do what he thinks is best. That’s not necessarily the best for me, or for Gwahin.”

“I don’t get it but ok.”

Just then his other phone rings.

“Yep?”

“This is Henkel. You know, not much has been happening recently.”

Nathan takes his best Noir detective voice.

“Is this the part where you go see that informant in the murky, derelict part of town where dreams come to die?"

"Could you be serious for a second?”

Nathan deflates a bit. Obviously, Martin Henkel’s sense of humor left to get cigarettes at the store a decade ago, leaving behind the bitter detective.

“Yeah yeah,

“I kept my eyes opened for something similar to… To what we had here”

Henkel could not bring himself to voice “man-eating spawns right out of the depths of the seventh circle of hell”. No surprise here.

“I did not find anything similar for a while, which does not mean that there is nothing, a lot of people disappear every year after all. Anyway, I got a call: possible matches two days ago in Virginia and yesterday in Maryland. “

“How is that a match?”

“They have the same MO.”

“Ooooh police linguo! Does that mean I am one of you?”

“Cut it Nathan I’m not in the mood.”

“They are moving north then. You think they will come here?”

"Honestly, buddy, I don’t know. You seem to know more about… Those things, than I do but if they do, they should be here tomorrow."

Nathan thinks for a while.

Gwahin has disclosed very little information about them or what other ugly critters they may encounter; something about her being the teacher and choosing what she would teach, how decades of wisdom and experience dictated her decision and “Mortal, you are but an ignorant child, yadda yadda yadda.” Anyway. What he does know was that the first one had “smelled” him on Sarah and that the other had tried to ambush them as they were making their ways to his car. He has to assume that they have some way to find him, so logically they would follow him.

Then if he could bait them to a suitable place of his choosing, for example a minefield or a mall on black Friday, he could dispose of them.

Not by himself of course.

“We have to assume that they can track us and plan around it. We don’t really have a way to find them ourselves anyway, so here is what we will do. Today I won’t go out, tomorrow you come to my place early and we set up shop. You have the firepower you were looking for right?"

"Wait you want to fight them on your own property?"

"Why not it’s secluded and I’m no longer under strict surveillance right?"

"It’s your call."

"Do you have the firepower?"

"Oh buddy, hell yeah I do. And my brother will be here as well."

"You want your brother to fight this?"

"My bro is, well, you will see for yourself. So, tomorrow we show up at dawn, prepare the place and then what?"

"You and I will take the car and drive around, I will do something that makes me, huh, visible to them. Then we go home and we wait."

"Isn't it risky to drive around? Wouldn't they attack us on the street?"

"I don’t believe they would, at least they've never done it before. Every time they attacked there were no more than two people around. I am betting they will just follow us and then try to get the jump on us instead of risking a car chase."

"What if they find you early? What if they go after Sarah instead? What if they just ditch the place and rush to Cornell to grab your friend?"

"My house is secure."

"More of that eldritch bullshit?"

"Yes. I will tell Sarah to leave town for a while and I will warn Seren and Patience. Mhhh. Perhaps we should call those assholes of yours you know, just in case things go wrong."

"And if we do they will arrest you and send teams here, and if the monsters come they will slaughter a lot of good people before they are taken down, and if not they will go after Seren and Patience and God knows how many other people. You getting cold feet now? Listen buddy, Im asking questions because I want this operation of ours to be as clean as possible. So far we got things that shouldn't walk the earth, civilians and spears and chainmail. I’m kind of out of my confort zone here, you got me? So get your shit together. Tomorrow I come, my bro comes, we bring enough armament to blow any hellspawn horror to kingdom come and back and then we go home and have a beer. How does that sound?"

"That sounds really nice. Ok I’ll get things started and keep you in the loop. See you."

"Don’t let met down Mr Turner.”

Nathan hangs up feeling a weird mix of fear and relief. It’s finally happening. They are coming. And he would be ready.