"It's not so bad," Topaz said. She was riding on his shoulder, tucked just between his backpack strap and his body where she wouldn't be easily seen. "It only feels like you're starting from nothing. You have chosen my element. If I can teach anything, it's the basics of using the air. We will practice, you and I, after your dinner every day. And I will teach you a spell for the shifting of burdens. It's called [Locomotion]."

  "Thank you," he said, and he meant it. But it didn't obviate everything he had already said.

  The walk around the Best farm, instead, wasn't as peaceful as the walk around the Rather homestead. The angle to the Imperial Reservoir was different, oblique and partially hidden by the trees. He could barely manage the long consideration that had been the hallmark of his walks: to think, to introspect, to plan for the future. And there was no cheerful activity from next door, no Verity clan, no possibility of walking over and saying ‘hi’ to Earnest. Just the Bests and their household, with rhythms and rules he didn't know yet, save for those that were universal to cattle husbandry.

  They'd been generous with supper, but it wasn't what he was accustomed to. No cornbread, just a heaping pile of green beans cooked through with bacon and a chunky red stew.

  Dalliance had been hungry, and it did taste good.

  But not of home.

  He wondered how Whimsy was getting on.

  Whether they'd be able to redefine 'homey' in the city. Perhaps in an apartment.

  He wondered where he'd get the money.

  The future yawned like a hungering void.

  Eventually, Topaz left him, a last benediction on her lips: it would be alright, he’d see.

  Above, the shard with the Moon on it was passing, its great crescent completely blocking the sky, its underside now silvered by the distant starlight. He stared at the great symbol engraved upon the underside of the floating island. Heaven, he was told, for one of the many gods who had created this world, meant for their followers in particular. Now . . . up for grabs by imperial colonists, if they were ready to fort up and repel the endless waves of aggression from the deep woods on that shard.

  Sometimes he wondered what it meant, that the world below was abandoned to the monsters. That everywhere they went, man was besieged. If humanity was losing and would soon be ground away.

  Maudlin thoughts for a cold, homeless boy.

  He stopped by the stream, 'the rill' as Mister Best had called it, a streamlet. He listened to the water, alone in the dark.

  When he glanced back toward the main house, he saw a pale little face with dark eyes, framed in a second-story window, watching him.

  A few minutes later, a figure emerged from the shadows of the porch, moving with a quiet confidence that was unnervingly adult. It was unmistakably Morality Best.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  He walked back to the schoolhouse. By the time he reached it, she was already inside.

  “This isn’t appropriate,” he tried.

  “I wanted to ask you something. Shan’t take long,” she told him flippantly.

  He sat in the windowsill where Missus Best’s shoes had been, what felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Ask, then?”

  "Why did you get kicked out of your house?"

  Dalliance froze, his mind fumbling for some version of the truth that wouldn't sound pathetic. But she cut him off before he could even begin.

  "Was it because you stole your mother's shoes?"

  The question hung in the air, stunning Dalliance into silence.

  She grinned a Cheshire-cat grin at him. "Don't worry," she told him matter-of-factly, "I found the ones of mine that you stole. The same day you took them." She took a step towards the window, then leaned against the wall, her dark eyes fixed on his, the whites of her eyes and her teeth glowing in the near dark. "I hated cleaning up after them on the days you were sick. I understood why you did it. So I buried them in the garden."

  He couldn’t help it. All the stress of the day, and then the shock of the revelation: he burst out laughing.

  Since he was still weak, he also fell out the window.

  She was by his side before he could sit up, giggling quietly but grabbing his shoulders with surprising strength and shoving him into a seated position on the lawn. He was grateful for the darkness, for its hiding his mortified expression, and scrambled the rest of the way up, holding the door for her as they re-entered the schoolhouse.

  His embarrassment soon worsened: “Do you like like Charity?” she asked him.

  A hot flush crept up Dalliance's neck. He stammered a frantic denial, insisting there was nothing there, that they were just friends, that it wasn't like that at all.

  Morality listened to him in silence, but didn’t believe him. "I don't know if she's noticed," she said calmly when he was done. "But I've noticed. You pay too much attention to what she says."

  "What does that even mean?" Dalliance asked, starting to feel patronized as well as embarrassed.

  "It means," she said, her tone clinical, "that if you're going to talk to people, you really need to learn to understand them. And that's all I'm going to say about that."

  “Morality? What do you want?” He was tired of playing this game.

  Finally, she got to her true purpose. "I’ve seen your little group. Your study sessions with Charity and Earnest, and Effluvia." She had noticed. Of course, she had. "Are you all very religious?"

  The question was so harmless, so disarming after everything else, that Dalliance didn't even think to lie. "I'm very unsure at this point," he said feeling strange at thinking it through, "But I think it might be a good idea to be."

  She gave a decisive nod. She had her answer. "I’d quite like to join you next time." It wasn't a request; it was a statement of fact. “Would you mind very much?”

  He admitted that he didn’t think he would.

  "I will rely on you, then," she said. "I would very much like a conversation a little more refined than to spend all of class chattering about boys. Zenith is nearly as bad as Prudence was."

  She quickly made the sign of Firth, the gesture a flutter of motion in the shadows. "Peace to the dead," she whispered, acknowledging the classmate they’d lost.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  And then she was gone, melting back into the darkness as silently as she had come.