All the rest of that day, Abrial was in a stormy mood.

After lunch, Finley had to go and fulfill a task at the camp garden, so Abrial took to wandering the surrounding hills for some fresh, outside-of-the-stuffy-camp air. She went to see Dal in the stables. He was very happy to see her, nickering and snorting delightedly.

As she nuzzled the soft, jet black fur of his neck, she murmured,

“Dal, what do you think?” her voice was grim. “Do you think I’m spiritually dumb, or whatever? I’ve wanted to do real magic for so long…Do you think I’m just…useless? Maybe I can’t do natural magic at all?”

Dal clicked loudly and stamped his hooves as if to say, You’re not useless at all!

Abrial smiled into his fur, her eyes anxious.

----------------------------------------

At dinner, Finley noticed Abrial’s mood. Abrial was sitting absently on her cushion, swirling her dumplings around her bowl with her chopsticks with a dejected look on her face.

“Abrial?”

“Mm?” Abrial hummed absently, still stirring her dumplings.

Finley reached across the table and barred Abrial’s chopsticks with her own. Abrial blinked, as if returning to consciousness, and looked down with a frown.

“Why’d you do that?”

“What are you thinking about? You look depressed.”

Normally, Abrial would have grinned and brushed that off. But…this time, she sighed slightly, hunching her shoulders. Finley frowned in return.

“I’m useless!” Abrial moaned, stabbing one of her dumplings listlessly with a chopstick. “All I can do is fight with blades! I can’t do magic. I can heal cuts, whatever, but I can’t do anything else! I might as well be a rock for all I’m worth if I can’t summon a wind or move water or some shit!”

Finley sighed. At the house, it hadn’t been all that uncommon for Abrial to get in a dramatic mood as well, moaning over small things like rain that prevented her from running around outside, or not being able to draw a star chart in a single night.

Finley grasped a soft white dumpling in her chopsticks and stuffed it promptly into Abrial’s mouth.

“Eat,” she ordered. “You have hardly eaten today. Talk about it again after you have a full stomach.”

Abrial sat motionlessly for a moment, her cheeks bulging with the dumpling and her expression utterly confused. Then she slowly relented reluctantly, and began to chew at the rate of a snail. Even her chewing was kind of dramatic, slow enough that it seemed to be mournful.

“Hey!”

Someone slammed down two bowls on the empty swath of table to Abrial’s right. Abrial glanced over, bewildered. They were stacked to the brims with dumplings, and the bowls themselves were larger than the normal serving bowls. There must be at least thirty or forty dumplings each inside of those!

She craned her head up to see a grinning, tan face staring down at her. It was Lyra Obi, her knit hat sitting with a sag on her curly, shoulder-length dark hair. Her warm brown eyes shone warmly down at Abrial, as did her pearly white teeth.

“Hey!” Lyra repeated brightly, drawing the brief attention of a few diners nearby. She waved a patched, glove-clad hand down at Abrial, then pointed to the empty cushion next to her. “Can I sit here?”

Abrial frowned.

“Um…Sure?”

“Great!” Lyra plopped down next to Abrial and pulled a pair of chopsticks from one of the many pockets in her unusual, patched and knit assortments of clothing pieces. She slammed it down onto the table, drawing the attention of surrounding diners again. Lyra didn’t seem to notice at all, still grinning friendlily.

Her bright white grin slowly faded away as she looked at Abrial. She tilted her head down slightly, as though ashamed.

“Abrial,” she said very seriously. Her voice was just like Abrial remembered, bright and jumping between high notes. Now, her voice was low and guilty. “I’m really sorry for the first day we met…you know, how I knocked you out and things. I gave you a really bad welcome.”

`“Oh…heh, heh…” Abrial laughed awkwardly. She wasn’t used to people apologizing to her. It was okay when B Gho forced Bi Chanjuan to say sorry, since all of the pressure had been on Bi Chanjuan. But she didn't like this kind of situation. She wasn’t even angry with Lyra! Was there something polite she was supposed to say back? “Ah, heh…It’s okay. It’s not a big deal, seriously!”

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“No, shh! I’m not done.” Lyra said firmly. Abrial jumped back a little. The ferocity in Lyra’s voice had alarmed her. Lyra’s eyes were gleamed intensely—why were they gleaming so intensely?! “I’m very sorry, and what happened was my fault. I really shouldn’t have knocked you out just because I find it more fun to do things that way. I should have just brought you in to have your memories examined peacefully and without giving you a bad first experience with the Wei camp. I’ll do better in the future!”

Lyra was staring at Abrial with so much earnesty and sincerity gleaming in her eyes that Abrial began squirming on her cushion. What the heck was she supposed to say to a grand apology like that?! Maybe she could say thank you and that she had to go to the bathroom, and leave without having to deal with this any more…

But Lyra wasn’t finished. With her index fingers, she pointed to the enormous bowls of dumplings steaming in front of her, a determined look on her face.

“That’s why I brought you these dumplings!” she exclaimed. “You seem like the competitive type, and I also saw you eating food really fast, so you must like food. Let’s have a dumpling-eating contest!”

The corners of Abrial’s lips turned up as eyes twinkled with both sudden excitement and confusion at the same time. She leaned forward with interest.

“A dumpling-eating contest? Cool! That sounds fun! But—why?! I don’t get it.”

Lyra looked embarrassed suddenly. One of her hands went to rub the back of her neck. She averted her eyes from Abrial’s face to the dumplings, as though suddenly unsure of her idea.

“Um…well…even though we didn’t get off to a great start, you seem really cool, and I still want to be friends. So I thought we could have a friendly competition with something you like? If you don’t want to, that’s okay, I’ll go bring these back! It’s no big deal…I just…”

“Let’s do it!”

“Really?”

On the other side of the table, Finley sighed a silent breath of relief. It was rare for Abrial to not grin for more than five minutes, unless she was furious about something, and Abrial had hardly grinned all day since Bi Gho’s lesson, moping around everywhere like a completely different person.

Abrial’s hands had eagerly curled into fists, which she placed firmly on the table. “Yeah! Let’s do it now! What are the rules? Is there a prize?”

Lyra laughed nervously, rubbing the back of her long, tanned neck again.

“Um…for rules, I was thinking whoever eats the most in one third of a candlestick’s time wins. But I didn’t think as far as a prize…The winner can have bragging rights?”

“That’s no fun! If there isn’t a real prize, why would you compete?” Abrial said, the volume of her voice swelling by the sentence with excitement. People nearby had begun grumbling and shooting her sideways looks. Finley simply chewed her dumplings calmly, listening to Abrial and Lyra’s conversation and looking down at her bowl.

Abrial scrunched up her nose in thought. Her eyes flashed with an idea, and she raised a finger.

“I know! The winner has to give the other person something. If you win, I’ll teach you a lesson on how to fight with a blade!”

Lyra’s eyes lit up with stars. “Awesome!” she exclaimed. “And if I win, I’ll knit you a hat!”

Abrial glanced at the sagging wool cap on Lyra’s head. It looked like a piece of patchy fabric that had been pummeled and washed so many times that it was no longer clear what color it was.

“Eh…I’m good, heh. Can the prize be something else?”

“Um…” Lyra put a hand to her chin, eyes darting around for ideas. “Hey, how about I make you shoes? I just figured out how to sew them! Look, I made these ones I’m wearing — they’re good, right? And yours look kind of old…”

Lyra held up her foot, which was clad in a sewn, pointed shoe wrapped in a blindingly green patterned fabric. Abrial raised her eyebrows. It actually did look quite nice and stylish. Her own shoes, which stuck out from beneath the red and black folds of her own robes, however, looked utterly dilapidated and mud-stained from all of her treks across the countryside over the past weeks. She’d never been all that great at personal hygiene.

“Deal!” she nodded. She and Lyra shook on it, and it was official.

“Now we just need a referee…” Abrial’s dark, shining eyes scanned around for anyone who was not busy in conversation. Her eyes fell on Finley, who was already setting down her chopsticks with delicate pale fingers.

“I will referee,” Finley announced calmly before Abrial could say anything. She reached behind herself, plucked up a few strands of grass peeking up through the bamboo floor mats, and twisted them together.

“What’re you doing?” Abrial leaned over the table curiously, trying to get a glimpse of Finley’s dexterous slender fingers twirling the green strands. “Just playing with grass? Is that a referee thing?”

Finley closed her palms over the braided strands, then opened them. Like a pearl resting in the chest of an oyster, sitting nonchalantly between her palms now was a short white candle one third of a standard candle’s length, with a little green wick.

Abrial’s mouth fell open. If it had fallen open any faster, her jaw would have clattered to the table.

“H-how?” she stammered, staring. The candle’s wax had green streaks the color of the grass, but it was clearly a candle, not a braided cylinder of grassy strands.

Finley looked unphased, as though this feat of magic was no big deal. She placed the candle upright in her empty bowl and gestured for Abrial and Lyra to ready themselves.

Swallowing back her shock, Abrial pulled one of the large bowls of dumplings in front of herself and curled her fingers around her wooden chopsticks. The dumplings were still steaming, white and soft, piled impossibly on top of one another like a stack of round, warm clouds. She’d hardly eaten since morning. Her stomach growled impatiently.

“Ready?” Finley asked, raising an eyebrow.

Abrial and Lyra nodded, both facing their piled bowls with equal determination.

Nearby diners had begun to take interest. The closest ones along the table turned their heads to watch inconspicuously.

“Then, begin.” Finley waved her hand over the candle. The wick burst into flame.