The armor did absolutely nothing. Orenda didn’t want to tell Falsie that it didn’t work at all, after all the time and energy he had put into it, after he had cast outside his element in an attempt to protect her- so she had lied to him. She had worked with him, cutting and sewing, and she had said that she could feel it already, eating away at the sickness. She had put it on, and she had told him that she was perfectly fine, that it was like being on land again.

Part of her regretted this, because she knew that she would not be able to keep up the charade, and because it was, despite their best efforts, rather ugly. She retreated upon the instance that she had work to do, with the book, chronicling the history of the fire elves, and if one were to stretch that as far as they could, it would not necessarily be a lie.

What she was actually doing was sitting in Gareth’s study with more paper and charcoal, sketching out the facsimile of his face. She was trying to work out what he would look like without the scar, because if she did that, if she could imagine his face as it had been, before it had been altered by the Emerald Knight, she would have a clear image of her father. It would be nice to have a clear visual image to match the mental image, the image she had gathered of his personality.

She couldn’t be sure of anything; her parents were still nebulous concepts that she could only hear second-hand, that she would have to piece together. If Sokomaur was her mother, she wasn’t sure she believed Gareth when he said that he was her only living relative. All he could really tell her was that her aunty and uncle had gone into the frozen north and never returned. That didn’t mean they were dead. It turned out that people were much more difficult to kill than Orenda had imagined as a child, and Tolith had proven how easy it was to make people believe you were dead when you were not.

She amended her sketch on the belief that Gareth’s nose would have looked differently when it was whole, that it had probably been broken in the attack and had not healed properly. Orenda had always liked to draw because it forced her to see the world as it really was- that’s what art actually was. She had often thought she knew what something looked like until she tried to draw it. She thought that she would like to have some paint, that maybe after the war was over and she could retire to the countryside of the fire continent, perhaps in the rebuilt city that housed the temple- she would have a room dedicated to painting. She would, perhaps sell them, if she needed the money, but part of her thought that her status as “The Chosen One” should bring wealth to her, somehow, once she dethroned the empress. She could probably just loot the castle while she was there and come away with enough to live on for the rest of her life.

She was alone in this fantasy, and when she came out of it she felt a pang of guilt about that fact. Part of her wished that she wanted Tolith there. The last thing he had said to her, the last time he had seen her was “I love you”. Honestly, though, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to put up with him for a lifetime. If she had to choose a companion, she thought it would likely be someone like Anilla, who would come and go with the pressure of her quest, or Bubbider, who would have more pressing matters to attend to, or even Ali who seemed as if he had closed himself off even more than he had in his youth. Orenda liked people who were not constant, who did not depend on her. If she was being honest, that sort of dependence, the kind one finds in a lover who wants their partner to validate them, to live an entire life with them- frightened her. She was uninterested in it, and if she ever fell into it she thought she wouldn’t much like it.

She pulled a soft chunk from the bread she had brought for that purpose and kneaded it, working it to a flat edge, and began to clean up the guide lines on her sketch. When she was satisfied she looked down at the face that may have belonged to her father- Nochdifache’s broad cheekbones weren’t as visible with full cheeks, without flesh pulled taunt around a wound, and the extra bulk gave him a strong jawline. His nose, now a prominent feature, reminded her of her own. His eyes weren’t as sunken into his face, and stared out at her- she kneaded the bread again to a point in order to put highlights in them, to make them sparkle. She got her full lips from her father, she thought, because Nochdifache still had them, the kind of lips that the Urillians tried to imitate by overdrawing with pigment- but she doubted he enjoyed any of his facial features. He was right, the scar was obvious, it did mar him, and if her drawing was correct, he had been beautiful once. That alone would be enough to drive one to wear the mask, but Orenda knew that wasn’t his reason- he may have been vain, she didn’t know, but he wanted to look into a mirror and pretend he was talking to his brother.

Orenda felt the darkness falling over her and tucked her charcoal back into her bag so it wouldn’t scatter with the lurch that came a few minutes later. She braced herself on the table this time, as she was getting more used to it, and did not go flying across the room. She fought back the illness and waited until she was reasonably sure she could pretend she didn’t feel it at all, picked up her drawing, and went walking toward the deck.

She heard what could, conceivably, pass for bickering as she entered the kitchen.

“But I love to cook,” Anilla was saying, “and you work so hard, all the time! You need to rest.”

“I have a system!” Mr Bilge screamed as if Anilla had done something horrible, “Don’t touch- no! Not for cooking! Eating sticks! Long sticks for cooking! Get out of my kitchen!”

“But you let Impy cook,” Anilla said, sounding as if she were hurt.

“Draco knows my system!” Mr Bilge screamed.

Orenda entered the room to see Mr Bilge holding a pair of chopsticks in the air out of Anilla’s reach, and immediately felt that he had no right to treat her so poorly. She allowed the initial reaction to pass, and her sorrow for him overpowered his obvious overreaction.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I could eat,” She said instead, because it was true, but more than that, because it was neutral.

“I eat sometimes,” Mr Bilge said as he opened a drawer and put the sticks back inside, “Don’t have to. Magic keeps going. Sometimes my tongue works.” He shrugged, “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“I’m sure Anilla would be tidy,” Orenda tried.

“I have a system!” Mr Bilge shouted.

“Stop that,” Bella said as she came marching in, “Who touched his things? We don’t touch his things. Or well… if you ask first it’s normally not an issue.”

“I was just… I was going to make dinner for everyone,” Anilla said.

“Bilge, some of us still have to eat,” Bella told him.

My Bilge slammed the drawer shut and began to mutter as he left the room for the deck.

“Sailing all day. Probably dirty. Always dirty. I do everything around here.”

“Honestly,” Bella sighed. “I do wonder… if there isn’t… it isn’t like Draco would even want that body back now.”

“Mages aren’t supposed to perform necromancy,” Orenda said, then she held out her drawing towards Bella, “Could you look at this and tell me if I’ve gotten it right? I was trying to visualize Gareth, you know, without the scar.”

Bella switched her eyepatch and took the picture. Her face instantly lit up with a smile.

“It looks more like Ronnie,” She said, “Gary’s always been a little thinner, at least since I’ve known him. His face was never this full. But it’s good enough for government work. I mean, most people couldn’t tell the difference anyway, unless you really got to know them. I never understood it. I felt as if they sort of looked like those before and after images you see on the sort of traveling carts that snake oil is sold out of. You’re a good artist, Rendy. Could you draw me next?”

“This is what my father looked like?” Orenda asked.

“Well, he had short hair the entire time I knew him, but I’m told he wore it long and dreaded it before I met him, before he began to travel with Soko.”

“It’s been bothering me…” Orenda admitted, “Did he travel with her… when he was a child? Gareth said they met when she was an adult and he was a child.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Bella said, “They met back up nearly a century later. I’m not exactly sure how, but I think Ronnie went looking for her. He heard about the resistance she was leading, after the water continent fell? I didn’t know them then, so I couldn’t really tell you. I’m sure the others would know more.”

“Right,” Orenda said.

“Are you going to give this to Gary?” Bella asked. “It would mean the world to him, Rendy. You can’t imagine how much it would mean to him.”

“I could, I suppose,” Orenda said and took the drawing back from her, “I can always make another.”

“We’re making good time,” Gareth said as he walked into the room, “We all need to get ready because this sneak… stealth? This mission is happening soon.”

“Here, Uncle Gareth,” Orenda held out the drawing, “I’ve drawn a picture for you. I tried to… well, it’s meant to be you, you see.”

“Oh,” Gareth said. He took the sketch, and his eyes widened in alarm. His face went nearly rigid and his hands began to tremble. “Oh,” he said again, and after a long pause, “Thank you.”

“You don’t like it?” Orenda asked, more than a little afraid she had hurt his feelings, done something to his already fragile psyche.

“Of course I like it,” He said as if the thought offended him, “I just… I don’t really… have any paintings or anything and… it’s been so long since I’ve seen… it doesn’t particularly look like me, anymore, does it? That isn’t a criticism, only… it… it threw me off… it looks a bit more like Ronnie.”

“You needn’t keep it if you don’t like it,” Orenda told him.

“I do like it. I’m sorry if I’m not expressing that, I just… I haven’t… I haven’t seen his face in so long. I’m left handed, you know.” He said this as if it was part of the same thought, but it took Orenda a moment to piece together what he meant. She kept forgetting that his clockwork hand was an imperfect replica of a flesh hand, and for the first time she realized something when she went over the events of that terrible night in her mind.

If you’re going to be holding something for a long time, like a baby that you’ll have to carry, you cradle it with your non-dominant hand. The hand Gareth had lost that day was the one he would have used, to write, to draw, as his primary casting hand… He had had twenty years to practice, so it was likely that he didn’t notice anymore, that he got by using his prosthetic or taught himself how to use his right hand, but she wondered if… if perhaps he used to draw.

“Isn’t it odd how one of our hands is just incapable of doing anything and we all just accept that?” He asked, “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

“I’m right-handed,” Orenda told him.

“That’s because you aren’t the evil twin,” Gareth told her, “The evil twin is left-handed. When we were in school they wanted me to use my right hand, like Ronnie, so I got reasonably good with it. It isn’t a big deal. This is for me? You’re giving this to me?”

“Yes,” Orenda felt strange and awkward and she didn’t know why. Part of her wanted to reach out and touch him, to comfort him, because he looked like he needed comfort. But there was no reason to feel that, and she may have been projecting something onto him, so she did nothing.

“Thank you,” He said, “I’d like to display it in my study. Can you draw one of Bella?”