Her father left her with Francis and his cadets. The two trainers had only stopped to talk because the classes were taking a break, but they got right back into it.

Francis’ class was in their second year of guard training, and had four people. She still didn’t know the other trainer's name or his class, but he was unimportant. They trained somewhere else on the grounds. For now, it was her job to impress Francis.

The training alternated between multiple topics. Sparring with each other, sparring with Francis, and doing physical exercises. The cadets ignored Omia, but she could see they were curious. Francis didn’t acknowledge her though, so they didn’t either.

The four boys were much, much larger than Omia, but she didn’t let herself get intimidated. When they trained with swords, she watched intently. When they started working out, she copied them. The session took place atop a clearing of flattened grass. She felt the Death Eater grass was still very much alive from the way it tingled her skin, but the avid training in the area as they made their rounds of the circle continued to pack it down. Several times she was asked to go sit in the tall fields of grass in order to be out of the way of their exercises.

When she did, she still watched them intently. She ignored the bugs crawling on her, and focused. She couldn’t risk letting something important pass her by.

When it was time for lunch and dinner, they went to a large mess tent with a long table. She sat on the far end of it, watching Francis and his class as they ate. She, too, got something. By the looks of it, the cooks had made her something higher quality than Francis and the others, going as far as to carved her boiled potatoes into smiley faces and cut her steak up into little bites.

Francis raised his eyebrow at her meal, but didn’t say anything. After the meal, they got right back into training, and Omia still tried to follow along as best she could. She couldn’t finish any of the exercises, but she wasn’t down for long when she collapsed, the Death Eater grass infusing her with strength.

When the day was done, Francis and his class got together with the other trainer, and they marched back to town. Omia had to sprint to keep up, and she barely avoided falling behind. When they reached town, she took a seat on the Death Eater grass, letting the odd feeling rejuvenate her. She noticed that it really did make her feel better. The shallow aching in her legs went away quickly if she pulled the grass over them.

“That’s not going to help much” she heard a deep gravelly voice say, and whipped up. Francis stood above her. “Death Eater grass helps slowly. Most of its energy passes right through the body, only rarely catching on wounds. Unless you’re going to sit there for the next thirty minutes, it won't be worth it.”

She avoided reacting. She couldn’t let him know that she absorbed it easily, and just hadn’t realized it was an abnormal thing.

She nodded but said nothing. He looked at her quizzically.

“That's a dulled blade you got on your hip, yea?”

She glanced at it, hidden away in the hip sheath that was tied around her waist. She was wearing a brown dress with no belt loops, so the sheath was tied to her using a fabric belt, a knot on her other hip.

Looking back at him, she nodded.

“Why do you carry that around?”

She shrugged her shoulders. It was just a random urge. Not to mention, she felt like it was related to Jane’s memories, and he was the last person she was going to tell.

“Alright, well, we’re getting up early tomorrow. I want to see you at the gates before sunrise if you still think you want to train with us. Eat a hearty breakfast as well, energy is important for building muscles,” he said, then walked away.

‘Why was he so much nicer then? He openly said that he thought less of me because I’m a girl this morning!’

Irritated but feeling better physically, she got up, walked through the gates, and went home.

* * *

Weeks, then months passed. Every day she could, she was up before the sun and running alongside Francis’ cadets, training when they did, and watching their practice. Eventually, she realized that she was only wasting time by watching their swordplay without understanding anything, so instead she ran through the different types of workouts in the meantime. Francis ended up pulling her aside one day during one of the class breaks, which made her nervous at first.

Rather than chastise her for anything though, he gave her better exercises. He said that his class used much more intensive and explosive movements than she needed to do. She had to start somewhere small, with smaller and slower movements, because she should focus on building her endurance for now.

He taught her the “easier” equivalents of the various exercises, then sent her on her way. When she started copying their movements again, it was much easier, and she noticed she improved much quicker in the following weeks.

Sometimes Francis would take the second years on trips into Wiltwood, and she was told to go stand with the first year cadets and copy their training. When she was here, she found that the first-years had a much larger class, of around thirty. She guessed that most of them would likely give up before their second year, but wondered why.

She also discovered that Francis’ class was larger than four people. There were a total of six, but cadets were allowed two days off out of the week, on top of Tuesdays, which was Francis’ day off.

Once a week she would train with her father in swordplay, but that was much slower going. He walked her through the movements, corrected her form when he could, and told her to practice it in between working out during her time in the fields. She couldn’t exactly bring the sword forms to life with her current muscle mass, but he insisted that the practice would help long-term. If they started early, she would be able to outclass most of the trainees.

She wanted to work out every day, but with both trainers taking Tuesdays off, she had one day a week where nothing was scheduled.

At first, she was tempted to train on the free day too, but her mother scolded her after she’d tried once. “You’re nine,” her mom had said. “Go play with your friends! You shouldn’t even be doing this stuff at your age anyway. Don't waste what little time you have to yourself working on forms.”

“Yes maam…” she’d said, a little embarrassed, before going to see her friends.

They hadn’t even commented on her disappearance for an entire week, and she didn’t bring it up, so it was fun to run around and play pretend once more with them, imagining big raids on the town where bandits attacked and they had to fight them off.

After four months, around the middle of summer, one of her oblivious friends had finally asked “hey Omia, where do you go the rest of the week? You never really told us.”

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Omia shrugged, “You never asked. I go to guard training.”

Her statement was met with loud exclamations of “What?!” “Really?!” and, in one very enthusiastic case, “You can do that?!”

Before the rest had said anything, the last boy to exclaim asked quickly “Can I come? Can anyone join?”

Jack was nine as well, but a bit taller with thicker arms to match. He had brown hair and brown eyes, with a heavily freckled face and tan complexion. All the kids were at least slightly tan from their time outside, except for Omia and her unnaturally pale skin, but Jack in particular spent a little too long under the sun. His dad also worked as a guard, and Jack wanted to follow in his fathers footsteps.

“I don’t know. I just told my dad I wanted to be a guard and he said he would get me into training.”

Jack grumbled “My dad never did that for me…” before whipping back up to look at her. “Do you think they’ll let me join if my dad says yes? How did your dad get you in? Aren’t you too young to start training to be a guard? My dad said apprenticeships start at eleven or twelve!”

Omia didn’t answer any of his questions, but the incessant noise was almost physical in nature with how enthusiastically he approached the topic.

She took a step back. She didn’t like talking, and she wasn’t going to start now. “Don’t know. Ask your dad.”

It wasn’t her job to explain the nuances of how she needed to start earlier because she was a girl. Although… it might help to have a point of reference if another kid her age joined, so she could see how far behind she was.

She wasn’t helping him past this though. That sounded like a lot of effort, and he was already passionate enough that she thought he wouldn’t drop the subject unless he knew for a fact that it was impossible.

The rest of the day was completely derailed as they wanted Omia to answer a hundred and one questions about training in the guard, which she answered all with a single word. After the twentieth question, she started answering in nods, shrugs, or head shakes. They did not get the hint though, and by the end of the day she was bone tired. More exhausted than she’d ever been from working out. Several times she’d tried slowly inching away, but the group simply inched with her.

Sleeping deeply that night, she almost missed her time frame to join the trainee’s march, but luckily her mother watched out for her and woke her up on time. When Omia first started training, she found that her mom got up way earlier than she thought in order to cook her dad a fresh breakfast, then she cooked a second breakfast for Omia. Now though, her and her dad got up at the same time, so they all ate breakfast together every single day.

It was odd. She spent less time in the town than ever, but she talked to her dad more.

When they were done, she again fell back into a rhythm of marching before the sun and working out with the second year cadets.

Her monotony was broken that day though, when she saw a familiar face. Jack, walking alongside a man she assumed was his dad. A similar conversation to her own went down where Jack's dad tried convincing Francis to let Jack in, even pointing to Omia during their discussion.

Oddly enough, Francis seemed more opposed to letting Jack in than Omia, despite his words of her being a girl.

Eventually, their quiet conversation came to an end, and Jack walked over to her with a serious expression on his face. When she asked him what they talked about, Jack shared all the details.

Apparently, Francis said it was completely unnecessary to start training five years in advance, and would be rather boring. He said that Omia herself was allowed to do so because she was a girl, and would need extra training if she wanted to match up with the others. Jack even went into demeaning detail of all the insults Francis had said about her.

Omia was scowling deeply by the end of it, glaring at Francis, who seemed unbothered.

Jack continued on about the full conversation though, saying that Jack's father and Francis met a compromise. Jack could join the training three times a week, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

When he was done talking and it was time for Francis to get back to work, Jack took up Omia’s previous role of watching the cadets and practicing their forms, while Omia threw herself completely into her training. Surprisingly, Jack couldn’t keep up with her, even though she knew he was stronger she saw irritation in his expression at that, but he just pushed himself harder.

Over the next few days and weeks, Jack would usually join the class. At first, he was consistently there every week on every day he was allowed. Over the next few months though, he started taking days off where he could have spent them training.

He always joined them at least once a week, usually two or three, but the gaps were there.

Omia asked Francis about this on one of the breaks.

“Why don’t you chastise Jack about missing some days?” she asked.

Francis raised his eyebrow at her. “Because he’s allowed to miss as many days as he wants. You can too, for that matter, and I would never say anything about it. Everything you do here is only extra effort you’re putting in because you believe you think you need to join the guard. Truly, it is such a waste of what I see is a dedicated mind.”

With a glare and a grumble, she turned around and left to sit at the edge of the clearing again. She hated talking to Francis because he always claimed to know what was best for her, and that the best course of action was to simply give up.

‘Fuck you,’ she thought, though she would never say that for fear of getting her mouth washed out again.

More months passed, and the trees of the town slowly started turning orange. She did not break her schedule though, always up early and out despite the cold. Her parents also had to buy stronger winter clothes, as she spent much more time outside than she would have before. Despite all the sun though, she was just as pale as when she started. It didn’t bother her, but her mom was confused that she’d never gotten a sunburn.

She also noticed that the visions of Jane’s memories didn’t come to her as quickly as they had before, leaning more towards once every three days than every day.

On one of her days off though, she was walking down the road in a thick coat and scarf, when something came into view, gently falling to the ground in front of her.

Looking down it was a bright orange leaf. She stared at it for a long moment, when a vision of Jane flashed across her mind, brought on by the concept of death. Once it faded, she’d turned away from where her friends were meeting up, instead facing the gate as she felt her hand go to her hip, gripping the handle of her knife.

She tried releasing her hold on it but… struggled. Looking down, she could see her knuckles had gone white.

She gulped. That was a much stronger flash than anything she’d had before. Though it only lasted a second, like all the rest, it was clear that this flash was profoundly deeper than the others.

For a time she considered what to do, but there wasn’t anything she could do. Omia figured Death Eater fields helped to suppress whatever was happening to her, but it was her off day.

She’d just have to hold out until tomorrow, when she could go back out of the walls to train. She was content to try and strongarm the issue away by absorbing as much life energy from the grass as possible.

The next few flashes over the course of two weeks were stronger than ever before. Each drew her attention back to the gate and, by extension, Wiltwood forest.

One dreadful day, she woke up early in the morning to go training, and found snow as she took that first step out the door.

Eyes widening marginally, she knew what this meant. Francis had warned her of the guard cadets winter trip.

Every winter, the cadets would spend the season out on the edge of Wiltwood. Winter was the season when the Wiltwood was strongest, and they had to keep a contingent there from the first snow until the last melt, defined by a weeklong period without snow on the ground at all.

There would be no training today… The cadets went straight to Wiltwood. The idea of trying to join them occurred and allured her, but she shook the thought away. She wasn’t ready to face it.

Her father left at the same time as her, and saw the snow as well. “Ahh, tough luck kiddo,” he said. “It’s just for the season. Spend it with your friends, getting caught up with them and all. There’ll be a lot of time indoors, might as well use that.”

She belated hummed her assent, but her mind was elsewhere

‘How am I… going to stave off the visions?’ she thought fearfully.