Winter was a bit of a different time for everyone. Most sat inside, spending time with their family’s. Even her father had far more time off than usual, because of the nature of the guards winter training program.

It wasn’t only the cadets that sat in the forest for a season. There were also many of the more grizzled Guards that spent the time with them, for both protection and practical purposes. Because Wiltwood became stronger during wintertime, there had to be a perpetual contingent of patrols cutting down undead and burning their bodies. The unlucky ones chosen for this wintertime job had double the work, while the rest of the guard finally caught a break as the walls were less manned than usual.

Omia found out, over time, that there were normally attacks on the walls almost every single week. It was just that the undead were cut down so quickly that the citizens inside never even heard about it. With the winter guard force camping out at the edge though, the attacks had all but ceased completely. Despite Wiltwood becoming more active, this was a time for relaxation among those not chosen to take on the seasonal burden.

For Omia though… a new issue presented itself.

She could sit inside and do nothing, but she found that her mind would wander back to Wiltwood if she did that, and memories of Jane would appear if she thought about Wiltwood Forest or death in general for too long. No, she had to stay active. More than that, she had to focus on life.

It was an odd defense, but the experience of life drastically reduced the weight of Omia’s visions. She discovered it when she was out playing in the snow with Jack, who’d been following her around since he found out she was training to become a guard and copying what she did. She laid on the grass to make a snow angel, when the muffling nature of snow cut off the sound around her. She felt herself slipping into the unfocused state, where another flash would appear, when Jack's hand hit her side as he made his snow angel. It hurt a lot, but pain caused the trance to recede and, for once, the vision didn’t come.

It wasn’t the pain itself that pushed it away, but the way it grounded her. She was forced to recognize what Jack was doing. He was playing, making a snow angel. He was doing something fun, and enjoying the world around them, even if he looked super serious while doing it.

When her attention was brought back to that, she realized she had a powerful tool for staving off her horrible visions.

Sitting in front of the hearth, she almost felt herself look too deeply into the flames, seeing the burning bodies piled up, but she squeezed her mothers hand, understanding that there was nothing here other than her mother and the warm fire that kept them comfortable. Still, the trance state didn’t fully recede, so she told her mom about the snowball fight her and her friends had, all the funny times when she hit someone and the not-so-funny time when she was hit in the face, getting a nose full of ice.

Despite being irritated at the time, Omia found that she looked back fondly at the memory. The person apologized later and the other kids got a good laugh about it. Nothing bad had happened, just a new experience.

A new memory as Omia.

By the time she was done, Jane’s memory had been suppressed.

Omia wasn’t always successful though. Sometimes, the flashes ruined the joy of whatever she did, but she was just glad she didn’t need to suffer every single one. It was like the memories had been storing themselves in the time Omia was in the Death Eater fields, hiding away and waiting for the right moment to attack her when she couldn’t do anything to stop them.

They were wrong though. Omia would always fight back against them. The control she now had over the memories helped her cope with the pain now, and she found she was becoming more confident, not as antisocial. She still didn’t talk a lot, but the battle and growth was internal, which is all that mattered.

She didn’t give up on training either. With her dad around more, he could train her in the forms far more frequently than before, and she started to make leaps and bounds on how to hold a sword, how to swing it, and so on. She learned to parry, to block with her shield, and even how to transfer from one stance to another in order to better hold her weight. She was still far too amateur to do anything fancy or quickly, but the thought was there.

She wanted to keep herself in top shape physically, but it was just so boring and intensive without the crutch of Francis’ yelling as a distraction and the Death Eater grass to help rejuvenate her muscles.

Her dad suggested something else instead, getting her friends involved. They played tag in the park frequently, why not extend the radius of the town? After all, they usually had to stay in the park to avoid running into people because of the crowded streets, but with it being wintertime, there weren’t many people walking around. If tag was extended to the entire town… wouldn’t that be like running laps?

Or perhaps she could practice parrying on the boys around town. They had vastly superior strength, and would easily wrench the sword from her hands if she didn’t have a firm enough grasp. That would help to train the grip strength on her blade, which he insisted was a very important aspect of sword training.

Omia thought about it more, and found that she liked the idea. The next day, she got Jack and a few of her other friends to tell everyone they could about the game of tag across a large portion of the town. It wasn’t the entire town, as that was way too big, but it was a large area. They needed more people for that though, or the game would last forever.

To help speed up the game, they also decided that if you tagged someone else, you were still ‘it,’ until everyone was ‘it,’ then the game would end. Otherwise, the singular person who was tagged would have a hard time getting anyone else.

The results were… rather fun, and painful.

She was a lot more in shape than any of the other girls, but still had a bit less raw speed than the boys. She out-enduranced them all though, but she got a bit carried away during the game.

She’d intentionally let multiple people see where she ran to chase her, so she could run further than them and show off. It’d worked, for a time, but she hadn’t considered that the road might be slippery in places. When she tried turning down an alleyway, only to slip and fall on her back, getting the wind knocked out of her.

Then the two boys who’d been chasing her slipped as well, and one kicked her in the shoulder on the way down.

‘Don’t cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.’

Holding in her tears as she got back up, the boy who kicked her apologized profusely, but she insisted it was okay. She must’ve had red eyes though, because a few other people asked her if she was alright when she got to the main group that sat in the park who were waiting for the game to end, uninterested in chasing people around in the cold.

They played one more time, before everyone was way too tired to continue. Even Omia was winded beyond belief, and began the long walk home.

Luckily, when she got back, her mother had assumed she would be tired, and filled the bath tub for her, setting it near the fireplace to warm up so she could immediately get clean.

Over the course of winter, she continued to work on her muscles and how to wield a sword. She was even suffering from fewer visions than before. Not because they weren’t happening, but because she learned to recognize them and fight back. She would always zone out on something relating to death for a few seconds, then the memory would appear. The only way to stop it from happening was to focus on her life and the joy of living.

She found that she really enjoyed the twist in her daily life, and was actually sad when it stopped snowing, and the last melt was upon them.

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Omia was now ten years old. Right as the town started becoming active again, the guards went back to their posts, and stores began staying open for longer, Omia’s mother had one more announcement to make before Omia and her dad went away to spend time with the guard.

She was pregnant

Her father was ecstatic, but Omia didn’t really know how to feel, so she was just happy because her parents were happy.

Finally, her father told her that the winter guard had returned. In two weeks, after his short vacation, Francis would start training a new year of students.

* * *

“All of you are here to become guards, but few of you will. Around two thirds of you are going to fail in some way, either by finding out you can’t stomach the sight of undead, or because you don't like how intensive it will be on your body. Most of you, though, will fail at the end of the year. During the winter, all trainees go into the Wiltwood with the winter guard and spend the season there, using the sword training and survival skills taught here to assist in cutting down swaths of undead. For an entire season you will be in Wiltwood, and once you’re there, there’s nothing you can do to make it back to town until the first melt. If you don’t think you can handle that, feel free to leave now, or simply never show back up to another class. Any questions?” Francis gave his speech to the new trainee’s

“Uhh yeah,” one kid said, “What the hell are they doing here?” he pointed at Omia and Jack.

“Omia and Jack have received special permission to watch the guard training early. They are not part of your class, and will not go on the winter trip. They will, however, stay out of the way when you are training, and not talk or interact with any of you unless I tell them to. Yes?” He directed the last part at the two of them. Both of them nodded silently, Jack looking deathly serious as he did so, in his typical manner

“Very good,” Francis said.

A few of the prospective trainees gave them the stink eye for some reason, but Omia ignored them, focusing only on Francis. Jack turned a little red at their looks, but said nothing.

“Alright. There’s no time to waste, so let's get right into it. Much of this year will be focused on getting you into top shape, with only a small amount of time in the fall to teach you how to hold your sword. Skill in wielding swords is important, but it means absolutely nothing if the undead can overpower you. The opposite is also true, that if you can just cut straight through an undead then you won’t need to use many tactics at all. Let's go through some basic exercises.”

The workouts were much easier than what the second years did, to the point that Omia could even- just barely- follow along. Jack tried as well, and succeeded for a time, but had to tap out after hardly an hour. He didn’t stop working out, he just had to take more breaks and use some of the easier alternatives they’d been taught last year.

Omia pushed herself hard to keep up. Even though she still had around two years to meet the bare minimum requirements for getting in, it was more of a pride thing.

When the sun started to dip more, she had to ease off because the grass's properties were being outpaced by how hard she was pushing herself, and she wanted to have enough energy for the walk home. It wouldn’t mean anything if she could keep up in their exercises, then got left behind during the march.

She also found that, when she slowed down, much of the class slowed down too.

‘Were they… trying to outdo me?’ she thought skeptically. They were two years older than her, of course they would be able to do more workouts than her. She hadn’t even thought they’d been watching her past the first few minutes when attention was brought to Omia and Jack, but it seemed she was wrong.

Perhaps it was only one or two that watched her and tried to be faster or more explosive in their exercises, causing the rest to speed up their pace, but the effect was there nonetheless.

Omia had a slight unfair advantage though, in the form of Death Eater grass; its unique effect on her let her rejuvenate faster from her workouts than it did for other people, so the official cadets had to pace themselves a lot more than she did.

She fought back the urge to grin mischievously.

‘I wonder if I can push myself hard enough to become faster than some of them?’

That would be for next time though, or maybe just as much as she could over the course of the year.

They ended up stopping early so the cadets could sit on the grass and absorb its energy for an hour before it was time to go back to Darien. Omia tsked, because she realized she could have pushed herself harder and still spent the hour resting, which would’ve been more than enough for her

Francis taught them to march in sync on the way back, and Omia was happy to note that many of the cadets were still horribly sore and out of breath. She liked to think it was because they pushed themselves too hard trying to keep up with her.

Over the next few days, she fell back into the usual rhythm of training, but this time she was able to keep up with the main group for most of the day, but had to slow down at times as her muscles stopped responding. Still, she was rapidly catching up. Two weeks later, she was met with a most unusual sight during one of her training sessions.

Walking into the mess tent, she was going to her usual spot right around the end of the table, where her and Jack tended to sit, when she saw there was someone in her spot.

“Mom?” she said, surprised but still excited.

Her mother smiled brightly at her. “Hello sweetie!”

Not wasting any more time, she quickly walked over and gave her mom a hug. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Ahh, I found out that sometimes, pregnant women come sit out in the fields among the Life Grass because people think the baby might be born with a Glimpse if you do. I don't know if it’s true, but I thought it would be a good excuse to come see you!”

Her and her mom talked happily for a minute or so, before Omia had to go get her food and come back. She didn’t have much time to eat, so she had to stuff her face while her mom talked about her day instead of both talking to each other.

Omia found out that her mom was not allowed near the cadets, for fear of distracting them. She didn’t know how that was different from her watching, but she shrugged and forgot about it. Instead, Omia would only see her mom during lunch, because her mom said that she still had to go back and prepare dinner for her father before he got home. Omia nodded and had to return to watch the class shortly thereafter.

Through short conversations with her mom, Omia began to learn more about the non-guard side of the camp. Apparently, there was a whole community of people out here.

Five pregnant women, twelve alchemists that made potions and played around with the recipe’s, and even random people that appeared for one or two days, just curious about the grass and wanting to spend the day out there. There were also a few who worked out, like the guard did, but not for undead-fighting reasons, just because they wanted to. Her mom told her that there was a way to pay a small fee to join an escort of guards at certain times in the day that would walk people back and forth between the town and the camp.

Omia thought it was absurd how many safety features and protocols for protection were put into place for citizens leaving Darien and walking a short distance away. Not once had she ever heard of an undead attack on the travelers, and she figured the people would just be able to run away if they were attacked. After all, the grass would eventually devour the undead anyway, you just needed to buy time.

That aside, Omia still paid close attention to Francis’ class while she worked out, and saw that first years had a much different curriculum than second years.

They sparred a lot less with each other, and Francis described various monsters in the Wiltwood they may run into, as well as their weaknesses. On top of that, he taught them survival tactics, even with visual aids such as dried plants to show them things. There weren’t any visual aids for the undead, but Francis said he was sure they’d learn it eventually.

She learned that most of the plants in Wiltwood were permeated with undeath energy, and not at all safe for human consumption. There were animals that lived in the Wiltwood, feeding off these plants, which were barely safe to eat. Most of the undead were rarely humans, instead tending towards these animals that lived in the Wiltwood and fed off its energy. When a living animal became oversaturated with Undeath energy, it could turn into a monster. Not all monsters in Wiltwood were undead, but a lot of them were.

Someone asked if humans could become oversaturated with undeath energy and become monsters, but Francis said that was a “long studied subject” before changing the topic without answering it. Like Omia, many of them read between the lines to know the answer was “Yes but don’t ask.”

It was clear that there was a distinction between “Human oversaturated with mana” and “Human with a Glimpse,” which actually went against something she’d assumed earlier. After hearing Torei’s story, she thought Glimpses just happened when someone was filled with a lot of a particular energy, but apparently that was untrue.

It was interesting learning about how the world works, but she could tell that some of the cadets weren’t listening as they focused on working out their muscles. It was, after all, quite hard to get a listen to Francis’ lectures while doing hundreds of pushups. For that reason, she noticed that Francis tended to repeat himself multiple times over the course of a few weeks. Each lesson was taught three or four times, perhaps to really drill in what he was saying.

The new schedule of working out while listening to Francis, talking to her mom, and trying (but failing) to outpace some in the class was broken around two months in, when the class was not marched to the typical circle of grass where they trained.

She became hyper-aware when she saw that they were standing in front of a large circular tent, and heard hissing and growling from inside.

“Cadets,” Francis said in his usual stern voice. “We will not be focusing on your muscles today. Instead, we have a bit of a unique lesson before us.”