The party was back in front of the farmhouse fireplace, once again warming up. Promising to return after he had ensured the eradication of the Enthralled, Professor Nidus had left the students to recover from the assault. There had been no other tunnels leading to the farmhouse, so he had felt confident in their safety. They would await his return.

Aeric sat on the floor wearing just his pants. He was pressing the bloodied pillow against the wound on his thigh, trying to stop the bleeding as much as he could. Elsie sat behind him, holding a sharp kitchen knife to his bare back.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“No, but do it anyway,” he replied. Amos watched with morbid curiosity as Elsie gently dug the knife into the wound in her brother’s back, beneath his right shoulder blade. Her own shoulder flinched at the pain her twinborn brother’s body was feeling.

Elsie finished her work, and the broken spearhead clunked onto the floor with a spattering of blood. Aeric clenched his teeth with a hiss and arched his back reflexively, which made him hurt even worse. With the object causing the majority of his pain out of his back, Aeric breathed heavily and tried to calm himself down. Elsie pulled out the Sylvan wand.

“Don’t give me a drug trip,” Aeric said, glancing at Lyric sleeping by the fire.

“I’ll try my best,” Elsie said. She channeled astra into the wand, focusing on the healing aspect of Sylvan magic. Concentrating, she built up the energy slowly. Once she thought she had enough she reduced the flow of astra into the wand. She could feel it thrumming with power, but couldn’t figure out how to activate her spell. She tried pushing the tip of the wand gently against Aeric’s back.

“Ow!” Aeric said.

“That didn’t work,” Elsie said. “How do I do this?” She looked over at Amos.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I have no wand mastery skills.”

“I don’t want to keep pushing astra into it like I did with Lyric,” she said. “But I can’t figure out how to use what I’ve already put into it. It seems like the only way to make it come out is to build it up and have it release all at once.”

“That’s not how Lyric used it when she healed my leg earlier,” Amos said, gesturing at the torn fabric on his pants. “She channeled it out slowly.”

The astra dissipated from the wand, unused. Elsie growled in frustration.

“It’s fine,” Aeric said. He grabbed his wet shirt and balled it up. “Can you press this onto my back to stop the bleeding? I don’t think it’s a life threatening wound. We’ll have Lyric see what she can do when she wakes up.”

Elsie accepted the shirt and pressed it into his back. The white shirt slowly turned pink with blood. “This doesn’t seem sanitary,” she said.

“Sylvan healing cleans infections as well,” Amos said. “If you catch it in time at least. If an infection spreads too far you need additional treatments before it clears up.”

The party conversation died down, and the group simply enjoyed the warmth of the fire for now. A highly skilled Firefin professor was currently tearing his way through the rest of the Enthralled minorats with ease, and there was nothing left to do but wait, rest, and recover.

Aeric? What happened with you and Lyric?.

Aeric realized he was staring at Lyric while she slept, watching her slight movements as she breathed in and out. Elsie must have noticed where his attention lay as well.

Are you saying you don’t already know?

I don't know. I could feel an exchange of astra taking place. I could even feel how you reacted to it. It was a weird experience for me though, because at the same time my own astral channels didn’t feel out of the ordinary.

Why didn’t we feel this way when we took Lucian’s astra?

It’s possible that we did feel something like this, but that whole time feels fuzzy in my memories. Also I split his astra into both of our bodies. Not equally, since your core needed more repairs, but it wasn’t a situation where one of our bodies was cycling astra while the other was not.

Or maybe there’s more to it, like some people are just made for each other, you know?

Aeric… don’t tell me you’re thinking of Lyric as some kind of soulmate just because you found out what she’s like on the inside.

Please don’t ever describe it in those terms again.

Seems like an apt way of describing it to me.

You know I can tell you’re smirking even if my back is turned to you. But no I’m not saying she’s my soulmate. I’m just positing a theory. Lucian’s astra didn’t resonate with either of ours. Lyric’s astra did match harmoniously with mine for whatever reason. It could be as simple as that.

Or it could just be what I was saying about Lucian’s astra being split between both of us. Or it could be that Lyric is a summon and Lucian is not. Or it could be any number of things we don’t even know about yet that caused such a difference to take place.

None of that changes the fact that I felt a connection with her. Maybe you could call it a spiritual connection or maybe just an astral connection is fine. I don’t know how it works. But it made me feel… closer to her.

It was more than just a simple exchange of astra though, wasn’t it? There was something going on in your thoughts. Something that I couldn’t see.

Yes.

What happened?

I saw events taking place. Some things that happened earlier today. And some things that haven’t happened yet.

What things?

Things with Lyric. Possibilities, I think. Just spending time together with her. Holding her hand. Dancing with her. Things we haven’t done yet.

I think that makes sense, in a way.

How so?

She’s a Diviner. She uses astra to see the future. When you incorporated part of her internal astra into your core, maybe some knowledge of those future possibilities came with it.

I think I understand her a little bit better now. How must she have been feeling all these months seeing visions of what her life was about to be like. I have at least the tiniest glimpse of what she’s been going through now.

Hmm.

Elsie?

Just thinking. Why are we turning out so separate from one another? We are technically just the subdivided compartmentalization of the same mind, so why are we becoming so different? Why did you see and feel these visions while all I felt was the pleasure of the astral flow itself?

I think it has to do with having two different physical brains like you said before.

Maybe. When we were still on Earth a hot topic in neural science was trying to discover the so-called “seat of consciousness”.

I think see where you’re going with this.

What if each of our twinborn bodies holds a different “seat of consciousness”? That would explain why we each feel a particular sense of ownership over one of the bodies.

Yeah. And it also explains why I saw glimpses of a future with Lyric while you didn’t see them at all. I think we need to accept this fact: our thoughts are different from one another.

Is this future with Lyric something you want, little bro?

Why are you calling me little bro? I’m older than you.

Not really: we saved the Elsie body preset before we saved Aeric’s.

That’s one way of looking at it, but Aeric performed his class selection trial first so I think he’s older.

Doesn’t count. I’m older. Anyway you should put some thought into whether or not a relationship with Lyric is something you actually want to pursue. Is she someone you would have wanted to date if you hadn’t shared this experience with her? Or are you just hoping she’ll want to seek this thrill with you again if you agree to date her? The last thing we need right now is for you to make things complicated by using this girl just to feel her astra again.

I’ll have to think about that.

That’s all I ask.

---

Professor Nidus came back less than an hour later. He came through the tunnel in the bedroom and entered the main room of the farmhouse. Aeric, Elsie, and Amos looked up as he entered. He gave another smile, showing his razor sharp teeth, then stepped away from the warm fire, prefering to avoid its heat.

“I think I got them all,” he said. His words were cut off slightly shorter than how a human would say them. “Sadly, they did not have so much fight. It was playing childrens’ hide-and-tag game. But they cannot hide their corrupted astra from me.”

“Thank you for the help, Professor,” Amos said. “But why are you here?”

“Alvin sent me to find you,” the Firefin said. “You sign contract to be home last night. He checked in this morning: found no sign of you. Sends me up the river to find watermill. He knows I’m fastest way of reaching you.”

“We’d be dead without you,” Amos said.

“Little fish should not fight such dangerous predators,” Nidus said. “One move wrong and they bite.”

“We know,” Amos said. “It was supposed to be a green hunt. The order was just to remove a minorat nest, not take on a full force of Enthralled.”

“Why stay here then? You feel the urge to prove yourselfs? You must kill Enthralled on your own?”

“No,” Amos said. “Actually I suggested we go back last night. But I was outvoted.”

“We thought it would be safe here,” Aeric said.

“We’re so sorry for the trouble we caused you,” Elsie said.

“Why is your friend still to sleep? She is hurt?”

“I… accidentally used too much Sylvan healing magic on her,” Elsie admitted.

Professor Nidus put his hands on his hips, leaned back and laughed. It was a watery sound, like his lungs were sloshing water around as he laughed.

“Of course the problem is Sylvan. You need Firefin magic to cast good spells. Here. I will show you.” He walked over to Lyric and knelt down. He was so tall that even kneeling down he still towered above the girl.

He leaned forward, placed one hand on each shoulder and pressed his and Lyric’s forheeads together. He closed his eyes and bared his pointy teeth. He made a hissing sound, growing louder over the next few seconds as he breathed air through his teeth. Lyric’s eyes opened.

“Oh!” Lyric screamed in surprise. She tried to push Professor Nidus off of her reactively. He laughed and stood up. Lyric rose to a sitting position and scooted away from him.

“See! She is fine with my magic. Sylvan is no good. Makes head all fuzzy in the cloud.”

“Professor Nidus?” Lyric asked in surprise. She held her hand to her head and groaned. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong with my head?”

Is your heart beating faster?

I’m just glad she’s okay.

“It is me! To rescue you small fry,” Professor Nidus said, spreading his arms wide and smiling at her with his friendly-yet-menacing grin.

“Relax,” Amos said. “You’ve been unconscious for a little over an hour. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I finished my watch and traded places with Elsie. I fell asleep and then…” Lyric looked over at Aeric and caught his eyes. She was silent for a few seconds; her cheeks slowly flushing to a deeper shade of red than Aeric or Elsie had ever seen on her. “Aeric and I… We were…”

“We were attacked,” Aeric interrupted. “You were stabbed. Elsie tried to heal you with Sylvan magic, but gave you too much. Do you remember that?”

“It’s all a blur. But you and I… I think I had this dream that…”

“Lyric! You should make sure you don’t have any more damage that we missed,” Elsie said. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“She is fine,” Professor Nidus said. “I restore her body with Firefin energy. Good as new. Cannot be better. Sylvans not even close.”

“Of course, professor,” Elsie said.

“Now. Come little fish. We must get back to academy. Nothing left to hunt, nothing left to be done.”

“I might need help,” Aeric said. “My shoulder still feels all kinds of messed up, and I doubt I’ll be able to walk very far on this leg.”

“You have injury? Why not tell Nidus right away?! Is no problem to fix human flesh. Far less complex than superior Firefin bodies.”

“Oh, umm yeah if you could heal me that would be great.”

Professor Nidus walked over to him and performed the same hissing hug that he had done for Lyric. Aeric felt the professor’s astra flow over him. It felt different than the connection he had felt with Lyric: the professor’s astra did not actually enter his core or internal channels, though it did flow through his body. His skin itched as it knit itself back together. Aeric’s eyes watched his leg heal while Elsie’s eyes watched as the wound under his right shoulder closed up.

The professor stood back up. “Is all better?” Aeric reached back to feel the skin, then nodded. He stood up and stretched his back muscles. Lyric tried and failed not to stare at his toned muscles. Elsie was the only one who noticed her roommate bite her lip though, which meant by extension that Aeric also saw it.

Did you do that on purpose, Aeric?

I was honestly just stretching my back to test out the healing. I’m not worried though. I literally customized this to be the perfect body anyway, so why wouldn’t I want to show it off?

As if. You made yourself too skinny to be considered perfect.

And this is yet another thing we seem to be disagreeing on.

“You are healthy as human can be! Now we go back,” Professor Nidus said, unaware of the twins’ thoughts. “Can still get breakfast if we swim fast.”

“Swim?” Elsie asked.

“Down the river! It is fastest way back to academy,” he said with a smile. “Ahhh, I see your faces. Do not worry! Professor Nidus will show you more of famous Firefin magic. You will learn new meaning of word to swim.”

“We should collect the minorat cores first,” Amos said. “Especially the shaman’s core.”

“That is done. I was happy to tear them out,” the professor replied. “I put in umbrella I find by river.”

“Cores?” Aeric asked. “Like… astra cores?”

“Anything that can use astra has a core,” Amos said.

“I think Headmaster Frederick mentioned this to us,” Elsie said. “He told us most people consider it taboo to talk about.”

“Yeah, I’ve never fully understood why,” Amos said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything private about them, really.” Lyric and Aeric briefly glanced at each other, then looked away, each having a slight blush. “But nobody treats monster cores as something intimate. We just harvest them and sell them for money.”

“They’re useful for all kinds of things, so they sell very well,” Lyric said. “It’s like the only reason to even go monster hunting.”

Amos frowned.

“What about the mess we made here?” Elsie asked. “Shouldn’t we try to clean it up before we leave?”

“I don’t think anyone will be back here anytime soon,” Amos said.

“Not to mention we wouldn’t even be able to start with repairing the giant hole in the bedroom anyway,” Aeric said.

“Point taken,” Elsie said.

The group gathered up their clothes, weapons, and backpacks then bade farewell to the little farmhouse by the river.

---

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

They stood at the edge of the water watching the river’s swift current. Aeric dipped a toe in the water: it was colder than he would have liked. He had decided to stuff as much as he could into his backpack: school uniform and boots. The magically enhanced bag was just barely large enough to fit his sword inside. He tied his shield to the outside.

Amos was likewise standing in his undershorts next to Aeric with his shoes tied to his backpack. His bow was back in his bag, and he had long since dismissed his summoned throwing axes. He had also found the umbrella filled with several dozen monster cores. They looked like dark, smoky crystals around the size of golf balls. One of them was larger and had a red tinge to it: likely from the shaman. Amos placed them all in his bag along with the folded up umbrella.

On the other side of the nearby watermill, Lyric was tracing her Sylvan wand across the shallow cuts from the minorat’s claws during battle. Elsie watched with fascination as her skin sealed itself up.

“How are you able to make the wand channel healing slowly like that instead of bursting out all at once?”

“You’ll learn it in the Sylvan Studies course if you take it. I’m definitely not skilled enough to be able to teach you,” Lyric said. She finished up with the wand, then used the sleeve of her robe to brush some of the dried blood away, revealing only light scratches left on Elsie’s skin.

“Hm. I wonder if they’re serving jello at breakfast today.”

“What?” Elsie asked.

“Nevermind. Anyway, we should get ready to swim. You should put your jacket on.”

“What? Why put more clothes on to swim? We’ve got two piece swimsuits ready to go,” Elsie said.

“It’s really not the same,” Lyric said. “Trust me on this.”

“The boys are down to their undershorts. Aren’t they basically swimming trunks?”

“See this is why you need me to teach you how to be a woman. So you don’t make dumb mistakes like this.”

“Not this again. I don’t need instructions on being female. I’m figuring it out on my own.”

“And yet you think our underclothes are at all related to swimsuits.”

“Yet you have no complaints about the boys using their undershorts as swimsuits? Sort of a double standard, don’t you think?” Elsie said.

“The boys can wear whatever they like, and honestly so can you. Go for a genuine Firefin dip for all I care. Some people actually do. But do you really want to swim up to the academy like that? Your personal flotation devices will already attract enough attention without you showing them off even more.”

“Aeric was right. What was the point in choosing this body if I’m constantly going to be told to be ashamed of it?” Elsie grumbled mostly to herself.

“Hey, that’s all on you,” Lyric said. “Like I said, it’s your choice. But believe me: underclothes and bikinis are entirely different things. Believe me, I wish I had proper swim attire too. My robes are too heavy to swim in so it’s just the sundress for me.”

How long are you two going to spend talking about clothes? Literally no one cares what you’re wearing.

Easy enough for you to say. Nobody made so much as a comment about your swim clothes of choice.

Wear whatever you want. Let’s just go.

“Fine,” Elsie said, putting the jacket on. The girls walked back around the watermill and rejoined the group. Lyric noticed the other cat umbrella caught in the bushes and quickly put it in her bag.

“Students please come,” Professor Nidus said. “Give all the bags. I will take them for us.”

“What should I do with this?” Elsie asked, holding up her rented spear.

“I can carry as well, no problems,” Professor Nidus said. He took the spear and looped all of the students bags around it, tying them together like a very misshapen flag on a flagpole. “We dive in. I will cast spell in water for you. Then we swim fast.” He crouched, then catapulted himself six feet into the air, pivoted, and dove face-first into the water with the spear in one hand, the backpacks flailing along behind.

“A six foot standing high jump while holding unbalanced extra weight as if it’s no big deal,” Amos said. “Firefins really are amazing.” He jumped into the water, landing feet first.

Aeric shrugged and jumped in with a cannonball.

“Oooh, that’s cold water,” Elsie said. “I mean it looks like cold water.”

“It mostly comes from a snow melt from the Skyrend Mountains off in the distance. I know a great spot to see them at the top of the academy. I’ll show you sometime.”

“That would be fun,” Elsie said. She jumped feet first into the water, holding her nose with one hand. Lyric did a graceful dive into the water next to her, the hem of her sundress fluttering in the air as she dove.

Amos was talking to Professor Nidus a bit down the river, having already been carried by the current. He nodded then they both went underwater. Only Professor Nidus surfaced again. He swam back to Aeric. The spear and backpacks had a golden shimmer surrounding them. The way the Firefin was pulling them looked like they weighed nothing.

“You come under for swim spell. No need for air until spell is over. Stay underwater, okay?”

“Understood.” Aeric sucked in a deep breath and went under the water. The professor swam down with him and then closed his eyes. He hissed, though the sound was muffled underwater. Air escaped from between his razor teeth. It collected and formed into a golden-rimmed bubble.

The bubble enveloped Aeric, hugging tightly to his body. Looking down he saw what looked like a shining second skin around his body. The bubble cover was emitting light, though it wasn’t bright enough to reach the bottom of the river.

Aeric waved his arms around in the water. They moved much easier than they should have physically been able to move. The water didn’t feel so cold or heavy around him. Instead he felt like he was flying through the air. Even the swift current of the water didn’t feel like it could push him unless he would allow it.

He found that he could breathe just fine in the bubble. The air didn’t feel like it was trapped in a confined space, but rather felt the same as if he was breathing above water.

This is amazing!

I can’t wait to try!

Elsie and Lyric received their warm swim bubbles and the group began their long swim home. Elsie tried to say something to Lyric. It sounded fine to her, as if she was talking on land. Lyric just pointed to her ears and shook her head, her form-fitting bubble expanding around her hair as it flowed in the water. Elsie smiled and shrugged.

Woohooooo. Aeric blasted fully out of the water and then splashed down into it again like a dolphin. He narrowly avoided Elsie as he re-entered the water. Lyric looked like she was laughing, but Aeric couldn’t hear anything from her. I love this!

It feels much better than swimming, doesn’t it?

New goal: make friends with a Firefin who can cast this spell on us whenever we go swimming.

How often do you think we’ll be going swimming here?

I don’t know. They have to have swimming pools right? Or there’s the communal baths.

There’s no way you’re supposed to actually swim in those. And I kind of doubt a medieval kingdom like this has ever considered creating swimming pools.

Well I don’t know, maybe there’s a lake or something then.

I guess we’ll just have to see.

Professor Nidus swam back to them. “Let’s go,” he said while still underwater. His voice sounded clearer than when he was on land, which surprised the twins. It had a much more refined and charming quality to it, though his grammar was still lacking. “We stay together. Amos swims faster.” He turned and swam downstream.

Oh I’ll show him who can swim faster.

I’m sure you will.

---

Aeric hadn’t even come close to being able to keep up with Amos. Professor Nidus had to keep asking the tall blond-haired boy to take breaks in order to keep the group at least relatively close to each other. They were all treading water at the surface after finishing about half of the trip back. The swim bubbles had worn off, so the professor was reapplying them.

“How are you able to speak underwater, but we can’t?” Aeric asked.

“Swim bubbles require touch to talk. You touch bubbles, you talk. Okay?”

“Then why could we hear you without having to touch you?” Lyric asked.

“Firefins are superior to swim bubbles, obviously!” The professor said with a single, watery laugh.

That doesn’t make sense, but okay.

Do you think all Firefins are this proud of their race?

With their swim bubbles reapplied, they continued for the second half of the journey.

Aeric noticed Lyric swimming closer to him and Elsie this time. After a few minutes of swimming next to each other, he glanced over to see that she was looking his way. She gave a hesitant smile, which he returned. She slowly extended a hand through the water. He took it in his. Their swim bubbles conjoined around their hands. They kicked their legs to continue propelling themselves forward.

Remember what we talked about: don’t rush into things with her, Elsie thought, then increased her swim speed to give them a bit of space.

“Hi Aeric,” Lyric said. Her voice sounded like it was slightly modulated as if with a voice changing app on a smartphone from Earth.

“Hi Lyric,” he said.

“So this bubble spell is pretty cool, isn't it?”

“Way cooler than the sort of scuba gear people used back home, that's for sure,” Aeric said.

“Do you still think of Earth as home? I think I've grown used to this being my home now,” she said.

“Lyric I've been here for one week, and most of that was spent unconscious,” he said. “I don’t really remember most of what happened during that time, so honestly it’s like I’ve only been here for a couple of days. It’s just lucky that my sister and I were able to recover from the summoning sickness so quickly at all.”

Lyric went strangely quiet at that comment, suddenly finding some nearby fish very interesting.

“You've been here what, a year?” Aeric asked.

“Almost a year and a half actually,” she said.

“Plenty of time to get used to living a new life in a new world,” he said.

“Hardly. It's still painfully obvious how much I have to learn about living here,” she said.

Aeric noticed a fallen tree floating in the water ahead. It still had branches sticking out along its trunk, so he dove a few feet deeper, pulling her with him. The glow from their bubbles still didn’t reach the bottom of the abyss, despite swimming further away from the surface of the water. Aeric kicked down a bit to see how deep it went.

From Lyric’s perspective she could see the blue-haired boy standing out against so much darkness. “Let’s stay closer to the surface,” she said, tugging his hand gently.

When Aeric turned to look back up he saw Lyric illuminated by sunlight in the sky above the water’s surface. They swam up until they were both in the light a few feet under the surface again.

“Everyone calls me annoying,” Lyric admitted after another minute of swimming hand in hand. “I didn't fit in back where I came from, and then I got here and discovered I am not a perfect fit for this world either.”

“Why do you think that is?” Aeric asked.

“I guess it's because of how often I tell people about my predictions I have about them,” she said.

“So why do you do that, then?”

“Because it's fun! Haven't you ever introduced a friend to a movie you've seen before? It's like getting to say ‘ooh, I can't wait for this part’ all the time.”

“But don't you see that it will annoy them if you do that?”

“Sometimes I see what will happen when I tell them. It's not like I see every single thing, you know.”

“I meant it more like ‘can’t you tell’ that it will annoy them rather than referring to actually seeing them get annoyed at you in the future. But is that what happened with the hunt? It was one of those things that you didn’t see?”

“No, the hunt feels like something different. Something big must have changed in the last week since you arrived. I saw so many possibilities of what could happen during that hunt, and none of them involved the Enthralled. I wouldn't have agreed to come if it had.”

“What was supposed to happen?”

“We'd get there and find just a regular nest of minorats. Nothing too difficult. They’re much slower and less intelligent than the enthralled versions of them that we fought. You were going to get a few scratches, but I was going to heal you after. Elsie was going to try my wand, but she was going to accidentally give one of the minorats a blissful trip. Overall a somewhat amusing adventure.”

“Sounds a lot easier than what we went through.”

“There were even a few possibilities where we dried off by the fire anyway. Just usually while enjoying a nice cup of tea from the old Westman couple.”

“Sad about their deaths. You didn’t see them in any danger?”

“No, never. I would have helped them if I’d known.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a possibility that you missed seeing?” Aeric asked. “Why are you saying that something changed?”

“I can tell the relative probability that something will happen based on how often it shows up in my divinations,” she said. “The battle I described, or battles very similar to it, felt extremely likely.”

“So couldn’t this just be a rare event that you missed seeing?”

“Maybe, but it’s not just the battle that has changed, but everything. Every single thing that has happened since we encountered the enthralled has been a surprise to me. I’m completely blind until the next time I can cast a divination spell. Do you really think I would have come here without packing a swimsuit if I knew we’d be swimming home?”

“Welcome back to what the rest of us feel like, I guess,” he said.

“Thanks. So what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t know about any of this. I didn’t foresee the enthralled battle. Or getting stabbed. Or… anything else that may have happened last night.” Her legs picked up speed slightly as she talked, causing her to swim slightly ahead of him.

Aeric pushed himself harder to catch up. He didn’t say anything for a moment, suddenly finding the occasional fish very interesting. “So, about that,” he finally said.

“About that,” she said too quickly, looking back at the boy she was holding hands with.

“I honestly don’t know how that happened,” Aeric said. “I guess I don’t even know what it was that happened either.”

Elsie was quiet. “I thought it might have just been a dream,” she said after a moment.

“That’s what I thought at first too,” Aeric said. “Then I thought I was cycling astra with my sister again.” He stopped abruptly, realizing how weird that sounded. “Er, we sort of subconsciously figured out how to use that to heal ourselves when we were first summoned. It wasn’t, like, weird or anything. Just so you know.”

Lyric laughed. “Wow I had no idea you had that kind of relationship going on,” she said.

“We don’t! I promise we’re just your average ordinary fraternal twins with nothing weird going on between us.”

“I know, I’m just teasing you,” she said. “You’ve held my attention for months, Aeric. I guess you could say I became a little fixated on finding out more about you. In some of the future possibilities you told me about how you and Elsie figured out how to share astra to repair your damaged core. I know it wasn’t anything… intimate like we shared.”

How much does she actually know about us?

I guess I could just ask.

“How much do you actually know about us?”

“The farthest I’ve ever managed to see was about four months. That’s if I push myself to my limits on a day when the meadow is aligned just right with the moons. It really wrecks my astral channels though, so I have to limit myself.” She looked over at the boy with blue hair again. “But I couldn’t help it once I caught sight of my future with you. I might have pushed my limits a bit more than usual to see you more.”

She thought you were talking about you and her, didn’t she?

Yeah. I was just trying to find out if she knew that you and I were Twinborn.

You need to be careful with her. I don’t like how attached she was to you before we even arrived here.

I know. She’s not going to make it easy to be careful though. What am I supposed to do with a girlfriend who can see the future?

Girlfriend? Aeric, we just talked about this…

She changed how she was swimming in the water so that instead of swimming side by side, she was deeper in the water than he was, looking up at him. She reached out her free hand in invitation.

He took it, and they continued swimming together in parallel, holding both of each others’ hands between them. As they did, the particular flow of the current caused them to slowly spiral forward through the water.

“The relationship we’ll form over the next few months. I’ve lived it so many times… through my divinations I mean. I don’t know everything that will happen, even if I do know some things that happen so often as to be practically inevitable. I can’t wait to live through it again. Or actually live it in the first place, I mean. It’s a complicated feeling when you relive something that you’ve seen yourself experience before.”

Aeric found himself underneath Lyric due to their rotation in the water, though from a certain perspective it could have seemed like they were standing in front of each other, holding hands. He admired the way the light shone through her emerald hair. The swim bubble gave it a faint golden highlight in addition to the sunlight. Lyric smiled and pulled her arms in a bit, bringing them slightly closer together as they swam.

“But it doesn’t always happen, right?” Aeric said. “I mean, just because you’ve seen something doesn’t guarantee it will happen right? Not to mention you haven’t even seen this flow of events, so who knows if we’ll even end up together after all?”

“You don’t want to be together?” She asked. A look of surprise crossed her face. His arms happened to be slightly extended, pushing them farther apart than before. “I thought after what we experienced last night that things working out between us was all but guaranteed.”

“But you claimed everything changed, didn’t you? What if this is one of those things too.”

“My predictions don’t remove our agency. We still have the ability to choose whatever we want. I… I guess I just assumed after sharing something like that it meant we were choosing each other.” Their spiral motion had placed Lyric below, looking up towards his shining silhouette against the surface. She tried to pull herself up closer to him, but he was too focused on swimming to realize what she was doing.

“What happened was not an intentional choice, nor was it anyone’s fault,” Aeric said. “I did like the way it felt. When your astra entered my core it filled my mind with these thoughts. Visions maybe. Possibly things that you see.”

“What did you see?” Their jetstream rotation took them side by side in the water.

“I saw some sort of dance? I don’t know: I was still waking up at that point,” Aeric said.

Lyric smiled. “The Summer’s Peak Ball held by the academy. It marks the halfway point of the school year. You’ll ask me to attend that with you. I’ve gone to that dance with you as often as I could.”

“That’s just it, Lyric,” he said. “I don’t know for sure that that’s what will happen. You say things definitively as if you know I’ll do them, but that makes me feel like I’m not in control. It makes me want to push against your predictions just to prove I can. To prove I’m the one in control of my own destiny” Aeric had spiraled to the bottom again. From Lyric’s perspective she was holding onto him, danglin him over the dark abyss below.

“Then I predict that you will hate me. You will want nothing to do with me and you won’t even ask me on one single date. So you should do the opposite to prove that I’m wrong,” she said.

Aeric sighed. “I don’t think it works that way.”

“Then I’ll just have to use my divination magic again. I’ll see what else I can try.”

“And if I ask you not to?”

“You won’t,” Lyric said. She looked at his face, realizing he was serious. “You wouldn’t…” she said in a small voice.

They swam silently for another moment.

“Aeric, I have to tell you something. I want to make sure you understand what I’ve felt.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“When I felt your astra enter my core, I felt like all my fears and insecurities were washed away. I felt like it was right. I felt like it was confirmation that you were someone special to me, just like I had seen over all these months of visions leading up to finally meeting you. Visions that never included us cycling astra together, by the way. We never reached that level of intimacy in any of the possibilities I saw. At least, not within the four months I could possibly reach in my visions.”

He gazed at her large, sad eyes. Their lavender color was slightly darker due to the way the light was filtering into the water. She looked so scared at that moment. So vulnerable.

“Aeric, I’ve seen what we become with each other during the Summer. But what I felt when your magic essence became part of me was special. It was a warm feeling; hard to describe. I just knew that we were supposed to be together. Can you honestly tell me that you didn’t feel the same?” The darkness of the deep filled the space behind Lyric once again as they rotated.

Please don’t commit to being anything more than a friend. Remember what we talked about before. Do. Not. Rush. Into this.

“I’m not trying to take away what you felt,” he said slowly. “What we felt. I just can’t commit to saying what will happen next. I’m a new student in a new school in a new world. I feel like it should be understandable that I need a bit of time to better understand what’s going on around me before I dive headfirst into any sort of relationship.”

He looked at the hurt expression playing across her wide lavender eyes. She looked like she wanted to say something, but he spoke first.

“I loved the feeling I had when we shared our astra. I really did. I’d love to feel it again, but that desire alone isn’t enough for me to build a relationship out of. And your knowing, or thinking you know what happens next makes it even more difficult for me. It’s too one-sided. Maybe we’ll get together one day, or maybe not. I just know I’d rather be able to choose that myself rather than be told that I will inevitably choose that.”

“I understand,” Lyric said. She let go of one hand to wipe at her eyes, the swim bubble adjusting its form as she moved. “I’ll give you the space you need.” She let go with her other hand and their bubbles separated from one another with a small pop like a cork being removed from a bottle. She swept her arms in the water to push herself away from him, falling further down into the darkness below.

“Lyric, wait,” Aeric tried to say. She could no longer hear him, however, and then she turned away so she could no longer see him. She began swimming as fast as she could. Aeric swam after her, trying to make contact again so they could continue talking. His hand was an inch away from her foot. He stretched forward again, but just missed her.

Let her go.

I had more to say. She thinks I hate her.

She needs space, and you need time. Please don’t try to talk to her for the rest of the swim. Just think things through a little more, okay?

Aeric slowly drifted downstream, trying and failing to enjoy the feeling of the swim bubble spell that he had loved so much at first.