He is running. He doesn't remember deciding to. The forest he knows — walked through a hundred times, thought he understood — has become something that wants to close around him. The smoke makes it impossible to tell which direction the city is. His arm is gone from the elbow down, he holds what remains against his chest and keeps moving because stopping is the only option worse than this...

He tries a spell. The incantation requires both hands. There is nothing there to move. The magic fizzles and he stands in the burning forest with his friend's screaming still in his ears, and then going quiet, and the silence after is so much worse than the screaming was.

Help me please!

He breaks down. Shouts until the smoke takes his voice. Sobs until the heat presses the tears dry. The fire is getting closer from every direction.

Then one tree stops burning.

A shape stands in front of it. Barely visible through the smoke. Feminine, faintly green, something crystalline about it, flowers drifting in air that shouldn't support them. He doesn't think about whether this is unusual. He doesn't have the capacity for that right now. He just moves toward it.

"Don't give up yet, little fox..."

"Just a little further..."

When he reaches the tree the shape is already at the next one, further along, pulling him forward one impossible step at a time. The pain in his arm goes quiet when he walks. A third tree. A fourth. A fifth... The light of Eureka's Gem appears through the smoke ahead.

"The tree remembers. And you must remember too. Now go..."

The light fills him. His eyes open and then close and when they open again he is on the ground and his teacher is running toward him through the smoke and then he is being carried and then somewhere else entirely.

He still doesn't know how his professor found him. He has never been able to explain it. He wakes the way he always does. Heart loud. His friend's screaming already fading and the forgetting is somehow worse than the remembering.

...
...
...

A year has passed.

His room shows the evidence. Books on prosthetics, set aside. Books on biological regeneration — theory mostly, dressed in academic language. Books on single-handed casting. Books on everything except whatever would actually help. His prosthetic arm is crude and occasionally responsive. When he tries to pick up a cup it sometimes listens and sometimes doesn't. The scholars say his brain is still developing. He has stopped finding this reassuring.

He barely leaves his room. His mother leaves a tray outside his door every morning — juice, fruit, bread, just in case the stairs are too much. She has been doing this for months without making it a conversation.

Tonight she knocks.

Dinner...

But this time... he says yes.

The fireplace cracks once and she's across the room before the sound finishes, pressing the glass panel shut. The performance of managing around him is sometimes harder to watch than the fire would have been.

He eats. It tastes like nothing in particular. His mother mentions going back to the academy. He sits with the question for a while. The word school produces something in him that isn't fear exactly and isn't hope exactly. More like a blank square.

I don't know, he says.

She doesn't push.

He stays longer than usual this time.

Reinald asks about the apple orchard, the season, the harvest. Says maybe they could visit his grandmother tomorrow. She exhales in the way of someone who has heard maybe tomorrow enough times to know what it usually means.

The ice cream arrives without much discussion. He works through the bowl slowly. His mother doesn't touch hers — it melts into a small puddle while she watches him simply be in the room, and she doesn't mind at all.

Maybe tomorrow...

There's always tomorrow...

He gets up. Takes an apple from the hallway tray on the way back to his room. Finds a book his father left weeks ago sitting untouched on the desk... Robin Hood— green cover, a story about a nobleman pushed out of his house into the forest who decides to make something of it. He reads until his eyes close, the book still on his chest...

...
...
...

Tomorrow...

They arrive at dawn. Both of them. Loudly.

Hey champ! There's my favorite nephew. No, he's mine. Uncle Marco, fresh from Concordia with desert sand still working out of his fur, crouching to his level with his arms already open. Aunt Victoria behind him in full armor with the expression of someone who has learned to manage Marco's energy as a professional skill.

Reinald goes in for the hug.

Breakfast is set — Concordian dishes, things he hasn't tasted in years. Marco and Victoria try to lighten Reinald's mood by telling about their travel. Marco talks about a shop in Howl's Edge that makes chocolate waffles in the shapes of animals. Victoria mentions chocolate dragon eggs with surprises inside during spring season. Marco says he's too old for the toys but not the chocolate!

Reinald eats, yet says almost nothing... But feels something warming up that has been cold for a long time. There is something under Marco's traveling clothes. A shape, square, glinting green through the fabric.

Marco asks Reinald that they'll be doing today, but Reinald deflects the question what they want to do... And Marco has an answer...

Marco wants flowers. From outside the city. He says it plainly, and then he's already moving, with Victoria following after him, and Reinald is left standing in the dining hall. Reinald still wearing his pyjamas, first goes to his room. Closes the door. Stands with his back against it.

"I don't want to do this.... I don't want..... I.... I should do this...."

Somewhere underneath the panic, very quiet...

"Just a little further..."

He splashes water on his face.

Finds clothes, and goes back.

When he steps back into the hallway, the relief on his Aunt and Uncle's faces is visible, yet neither of them says anything. Marco holds out his hand. Victoria holds out hers. Reinald reaches for Victoria first, then turns his focus to the mechanical arm...

"Better work, you stupid thing!"

It... It does! Marco's hand closes around it, Reinald notices something under his shirt gleams green for just a moment. They walk out of the mansion together, through the city. Reinald keeps his eyes forward...

Just to the gate. Just the next step.

Outside the gate his feet slow. There is a forest edge visible from here... He stops. Breathes. Closes his eyes. Opens them.

"Where did you want to pick the flowers, Uncle Marco?

The hill is full of them. Spring flowers, wind moving through them, sun on his fur. He has felt wind from his window... But he hasn't felt this — the smell of it, the open air...

Reinald sits down and doesn't do much else for a while. It's enough to be here.

Marco talks about the books of the Uniter Siegfried— there are more volumes than Reinald has read... Marco speaks of whole cities that revere the knight, places with names like Draketongue and Stormglen. Reinald says "Wait! No spoilers!" — and the three of them laugh. It's the first time he has laughed in a long time and it surprises him too when it happens.

"For all those adventures..." Marco says... "We have to be outside."

Reinald says he thinks he'll manage Spellwhisk's thick walls for now. Then, quietly, looking at the valley rather than either of them — that his mother asked about going back to school. That he thinks he wouldn't mind seeing Eureka's Gem again.

One step at a time.

Marco produces glasses from somewhere and picks up the book from under his shirt — it is a green-gemmed thing, leather that looks ancient and somehow also new at once... Marco begins to reenact the librarian of Eureka's Academy with total commitment. Victoria watches with the expression of someone used to this. And Reinald plays along. It turns out he's good at the librarian voice. The mechanical arm moves through the scene without him thinking about it. He hands the book back and realizes what just happened only after the fact.

That's what you want, isn't it? Victoria says, quietly. Not a question really.

"I'd like to go study again..." Reinald says.

Marco gives him the book. Every page is blank. It is, he explains, a journal — and he will tell Reinald everything about where it came from once every page is filled. But only with things that happened outside his room!

Reinald looks at the blank pages for a moment. Looks at his uncle. Looks at the valley.

"Okay... I'll try."

Sometimes... You need the right person to tell you to take it... One step at a time.
And that's all right. Tomorrow is something you'll figure out when it gets here.