It all changed after that night.

I remembered how clear it had all seemed. How obvious it was that a flint knife could become an Un-forged Blade and how a queen’s circlet of too intricately woven silver could become a Band of Weak Metal.

How The Wand of a Witch That Never Was was really just a pale stick and how a roughly fashioned whistle became a Musical Pipe of Wind and Wood.

Now… I looked and my eyes felt dull.

My flint knife was just stone and there were chips in the blade no matter how I looked at it. And that circlet — I gasped in wonder just thinking about it.

But… I remembered seeing More and Something and Other.

I remembered thinking around the actual and giving from myself meaning beyond the mundane.

It just all felt so dreamlike now that we were safe back in Landsend in the light of day—

So I bought the cloth in the market during the day, but then waited until hours after night fall to measure the cuts and stitch the seams….

— Leinan of Landsend (An accounting)

* * *

Leinan was summoned out of her bed by a frantic knocking at the door of her families cottage.

Well, she had no business still being abed anyway, she thought gloomily as she dragged herself to the door, not by the cacophony the birds were making outside and not by the gold light breaking through the cracks of her window besides.

Also because her father had already left — Leinan could tell that by the feeling of the cottage — and so too had her brother Theilan — Leinan could tell that by the unwashed bowl he’d left by the hearth.

Of course.

So she really had no business still being in bed.

But it would have been nice to stay in bed a little bit longer, she thought sullenly.

She hadn’t slept more than blinks and when she had, her dreams had been filled with icy cold white, a blood red grin and eyes filled with moonlight and which were not kind.

“Good morning!” She hissed waspishly as she swung open the door and squinted into the suns rays.

Then she lowered her gaze slightly. “Cal.” Leinan said shortly and lowered her eyebrows at him.

Calithuan Naviti’dalison — or just Cal to those who knew him — was her junior by about five winters, and was also widely known from one side of Landsend to the other as a trouble maker of township wide proportions.

He was also rather fast, Leinan knew, because of… well, the troublemaking, so he was also often used as a sort of indentured messenger by many who did not realize why this was a bad idea.

Now he stood blowing his cheeks out and panting on the door step and he was also blinking at her with wide eyes.

Leinan looked blearily down at herself and at the shift she was still wearing, then back at Cal, and rolled her own eyes.

Really now, she thought. Like he hasn’t seen someone wearing a shift before! What did he expect banging on the door at first — Leinan, did suppose the sun was rather high in the sky at that… but that only made her more waspish. “What, Cal?”

“M-mistress Heatherly wants you!”

Ah. So it was like that then. She was being summoned. Of course.

Leinan snagged his shirt before he could run off and wiped at her eyes with her other hand. Blearily, she tried to think about all the things she needed to explain but didn’t have any for, and —

Cal looked back affronted.

“Why?” She demanded.

He shrugged, but then he grinned. “Its your friend.” Cal said. “He escaped again!”

Leinan muttered something unkind under her breath to Cal’s immense enjoyment. “Why? How? Did he make Master Huin cry again?”

“He made Master Huin cry? Ah — No, he uh — he just left the inn. No one saw him leave. Hey — how’s he doing that?”

‘Shadows! Not again’. Leinan cursed as she slammed the door in his face. Then she opened it again and glared at Cal standing innocently on the stoop.

Leinan could think of several ways The Wizard could be doing that, each one less comforting than the last, and starting with climbing down from the second floor window and ending with — well — making the burly, no-nonesense innkeeper, Master Huin cry.

“Not an inkling.” Leinan hissed. “Wait here.” Then she closed the door more gently this time and dashed off to dress.

* * *

“C’mon,” Cal said when Leinan emerged again looking only slightly more presentable than she had before. “Mistress Heatherly said that if we weren’t back when next she checked she’d switch both our bottoms.” And then he took off at a sprint.

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Which was how Leinan found herself running after Cal wondering at exactly the kind of world it was where she could face down The Forerunner of all The Fae one night, and then be caught running across the green to escape a switching like — well, like a boy like Calithuan.

* * *

Cal led her down the green from her father’s cottage, through the winding, hard-packed dirt corridors of the Outer Quarters with wood and fired brick on either side. Then down the even more winding roads of the Old District with twists and turns and odd switchbacks which had always seemed perfectly normal to Leinan but which she’d heard travelers and merchants complain must have been built by drunk architects playing dice.

‘And’ Leinan thought for the first time while clutching a stitch in her side, ‘Maybe they had a point.’

They hit the main road at full tilt, turned left and finally had a straight away to dash down, with only the odd passerby and cursing, cart and driver to dodge around.

But when they reached the door of the inn that The Mayor was boarding the Wizard at, Cal ran right past it and then took a right at the next bend and Leinan had to speed back up again to catch up because she had slowed at the door.

‘The Healers quarters?!’ Leinan thought as she started to recognize the path Cal was cutting. ‘Why would…’. Then she really did speed up.

* * *

When they finally made it to the Healer’s Quarters — which made sense to Leinan only insofar as Mistress Heatherly was, before anything else, the head Healer in Landsend — they were met by Bethelean, a plump girl with freckles on her nose and of age with Leinan.

Beth was usually a friendly, happy-go-lucky sort of girl, but right now, she was looking more harried than Leinan had ever seen her. Even her hair seemed mussed and all it had ever seemed before was brown and sleek all the way down her back no matter what.

Beth was checking herbs and supplies in a cupboard against notations on a flat piece of wood and looked up in surprise when they barged in.

“Oh — Leia….” Beth said after a moment of blinking at them.

She looked confused for a moment, juggling the wooden board, her surprise at seeing them, and her obvious desire to finish whatever she was doing in the cupboard… then her eyes bulged. “Leia!”

The wood dropped from her hands and before Leinan could do anything, Beth darted forward and swept Leinan up into a sudden, tight hug.

This was not at all welcome by how desperately Leinan needed to be sucking down air, and she struggled and made squeaking noises while Beth squeezed her.

“Oh Leia”! She cried. “You’re back! I — I knew — I heard about… about —” Beth gulped — “but it’s all been a bit desperate here, Leia. I didn’t — I couldn’t — I’m so sorry.” Beth said, while Leinan wheezed and struggled in her arms. “I’m so glad you’re back!”

She released her, and as Leinan stumbled away gasping, Beth said as if remembering. “Oh! You must be here for Mistress Heatherly! She’ll be so pleased. I’ll run fetch her.” And she darted off, pausing only briefly to pick the board up off the ground.

Leinan stared after Bethelean for a good, long moment. The she looked sideways at Cal.

“Cal.” Lainan said patiently. “Did Mistress Heatherly really say all that to you?”

“Nah.” He said with a smirk that was threatening to tear his face in two. “I just wanted to see you run. You’re quick!”

Then he stuck his tongue out at her and dashed off, leaving Leinan in The Healers quarters with the overwhelming urge to chase after the boy and do something that really would earn her that switching.

* * *

Flynn found his friend leaning up against a tree at the edge of the green with a piece of grass stuck between his teeth and his eyes closed as if he were sleeping.

He trudged over and sat down next to him with a grunt. Theilan wasn’t sleeping, Flynn thought. No one slept facing into the sun, no matter how they closed their eyes.

After a few moment, Theilan spoke. “Go away, Flynn,” he said. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Ah.” Flynn nodded, and of course didn’t move a muscle.

Theilan opened his eyes and fixed Flynn with a glare over his piece of grass.

“Have you spoke to Leia yet?”

“No.” Theilan grunted and closed his eyes again. “And she hasn’t spoken to me neither.”

“Ah.” Then after a moment, “Your father then?”

“My father believes in giving folk time to settle things with themselves. And I find myself quite agreeing.” Another pointed glare — which Flynn determinedly affected not to notice.

“Oh. Quiet bunch, you lot.” He responded with a chuckle. “Not like my Ma. Harangued me all night and day long until I spoke a little and then she went and got any old folk that’d listen and the Mayor and and Mistress Heatherly besides.” He chuckled again. “How’re the wrists?”

“… My wrists?”

“Yea. Mine still haven’t stopped chaffing.” Flynn rubbed at his wrists and then his ankles received some of that treatment too. “Who knew being trussed up leaves marks like that, eh?”

“Oh…. Mine are ok now, I guess.” But Theilan rubbed at his wrists too.

They settled into silence for a time, both boys mulling… well, Theilan seemed to be mulling. Flynn mostly watched the clouds pass overhead, and bees zip over the grass, and the birds flitting by.

There wasn’t much for him to mull now, he thought. It had happened. Whatever ‘it’ was. Now it was just… what happened afterwards.

“Leia. Didn’t look like Leia, Flynn.” Flynn saw Theilan glancing sideways at him. “She looked….” Theilan struggled.

“Alive.” Flynn supplied eventually. Then, realizing how that sounded. “Not like — shadows — not like not dead, you understand? Just. More…”. Flynn shifted uncomfortably, but Theilan was nodding.

“Alive.” He repeated, tasting the word. “Different. Did you see how she looked at us? When she first noticed us?”

Theilan shook his head and Flynn laughed uneasily. “Got marks from that too,” Flynn quipped. But Theilan just nodded.

“Different. I’m supposed to protect her, Flynn. But seeing Leia… playing those strange games… winning and facing down that — that thing.”

Theilan gulped and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Flynn found himself swallowing too. It was hard to describe what exactly made him uneasy about that woman Leinan had been playing by the fire. But just thinking about her made Flynn’s skin crawl.

He thought it was something like how a baby rabbit might feel when it spied a snake in the grass for the first time.

Maybe rabbits were just skittish, he thought. Maybe they just had a natural fear about anything strange appearing next to their bolt holes. But Flynn had seen how rabbits froze in front a snake’s cold gaze, and he wondered.

“— Turns out its not her that needs protecting. Turns out its me.” Theilan was saying rubbing at his face. “Go away, Flynn. I don’t want to talk.”

This time Flynn did get up.

“The wind is still strange, Flynn.” Theilan said as Flynn rose. “Did you tell them?”

“Hmm?”

“The folk your Ma got. The Mayor and Heatherly and….” Theilan waved a hand indicating all the rest. “Something’s coming Flynn. Did you tell them that?”

“A little. I don’t know.” Flynn shrugged and nodded and then shrugged again uncomfortably.

“How do you tell folk about a feeling you’ve got, Theil?” He continued after a moment. “How do you tell them what you saw with so little to show? No magic. No gold or those gems that…”. Flynn shook his head. “Just a crazy stranger and Leia all…”.

Flynn trailed off again, troubled. “How do you tell them about that thing by the fire and have them not just hear some woman and tavern games?” He muttered finally.

“Master Bordenshire’s got it all wrong, Theil. All those stories he tells — fire and magic and fighting. But I — I saw no — no magecraft. And I saw no swords or great knights or — and that’s what folks will want hear! They’ll want that story. All fights and valor all prettied up. Because that story makes sense!”

Flynn shook his head and scuffed his boot against the grass. “I saw none of that Theil. But I saw a story. But Shadows above, if I know how tell it.”