“There’s a steep price for an audience with Eternity, seeker. Are you truly so eager to pay it?”

-Hessenesh, Mistress of Storms, to Sir Braysal Galladin, Grand Master of the Wardens of the West and Lord of Sweet River.

***

Alvanue awoke just before dawn to a raging headache.

She’d managed to muddle her way through the tutoring session with Thisby and Vivienne, coming down from the effects of the mushrooms enough to actually talk intelligently with the two girls instead of stare listlessly off into nothing. Edhalan had shot her concerned looks for the rest of the evening but hadn’t pressed her any further after his initial questioning, thankfully. She’d rather he didn’t know about the mushrooms.

He’ll just make a big deal about it, she’d reasoned.

The elf rolled over in bed, her legs tangling in silk sheets, and reached blindly for the water pitcher that usually lived on her night stand. Her hand met empty air and she cracked open blood shot eyes to look around the room.

It wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

That’s when she remembered that the pitcher had been an early victim in the battle between Vivienne and Thisby the previous night, along with several ink pots and a hideous risillondi style rug she was more than happy to see go.

Grumbling, she slid out of bed and stumbled downstairs in search of the kitchens for a drink, leaving Snowball comfortably nestled in the blankets.

It was a long walk, made longer by the fact that she could only move at a snail’s pace before she felt sick to her stomach or like her head was going to crack open. Fortunately for her, most of the staff had yet to get up, leaving her to inch her way down the stairs to the basement in peace.

The kitchens were already busy with cooks preparing breakfast for Olome and his subordinates.

Several of the workers stopped and stared openly at Alvanue as she wobbled in, some with concern and others with open confusion. It wasn’t everyday they saw a half-dressed member of royalty staggering around like a drunken sailor. The elf ignored them all, too tired and too thirsty to feel any of the shame at her bedraggled appearance Sildathlene or Githanduin would expect of her. Besides, her mind was focused on other things.

Little suckers sure pack a punch, she thought, yawning. Must’ve been the dosage...Is this what a hangover feels like? Geez, can’t even remember the last time I was hungover.

She shuffled over to a human in an apron washing vegetables at the kitchens’ sole sink. She swayed on her feet, standing quietly beside him until finally he glanced to his left and noticed her.

He jumped with a shout, dropping a freshly scrubbed potato in the murky water below and splashing her night gown with vegetable muck. Gaping in surprise, the man reflexively grabbed a hand towel and started dabbing at the brown stains.

“I- I’m so sorry, my lady,” he floundered. “It was an honest accident. I didn’t even know you were there! ”

He kept at it with the towel before realizing exactly who he was wiping down and with what and dropped the towel like it was a snake. Sweating, he was turned to a colleague and mouthed something at him. The other man gestured vigorously between him and Alvanue.

He turned back to her, his shoulders set like a condemned man facing the gallows.

“Forgive me, Lady Alvanue, I didn’t realize, I did not-” he broke off, gulping. He stood there nervously, waiting for a response, but all she could manage was to stare blearily up at him and down at her dirtied nightgown.

“Water,” she mumbled.

The man looked back at his colleague, who shrugged.

“My lady?”

“Water,” she repeated. “Need...water.”

“Water? O-of course, your highness, right away.”

The poor man scrambled to find a cup and pressed a rune above the sink. The spout let loose a stream of clear water with which he filled the cup and handed it over to Alvanue. She gulped it down greedily and handed it back.

“Another,” she demanded, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

He was quick to comply.

She drained three more glasses before her thirst was fully quenched. Feeling slightly more alive, she thanked the man and left the kitchens, going back upstairs to get ready for her day.

She opened the door to her chambers to see Snowball wriggling underneath her pillow. It took a moment for her sluggish brain to register what she was seeing before she gasped and dashed over to take hold of her familiar.

“No, Snowball, no!”

She dragged Snowball out from under the pillow and looked to see if the troll had eaten any of mushrooms she’d stashed there before she’d passed out the night before.

Stupid, I should have put them somewhere safely out of the reach of tiny claws.

Snowball yowled and hissed like a cat meeting a bath for the first time, but it seemed Alvanue had got there in the nick of time. Five mushrooms lay on the sheet, smooshed flat from her laying on them all night but whole and unnibbled on by little troll fangs.

Alvanue let out a sigh of relief and released the whining pup, who scuttled off on all fours to go sulk in a corner of the room, glaring at her with angry yellow eyes.

If only a handful of the small mushrooms had affected her as much as they did for an entire day, she’d hate to see what they did to a little thing like Snowball. She scooped up the pancaked fungi and locked them in a little box on her vanity.

Her head was pounding, as much from the sudden rush of adrenaline as her hangover, and she lay down on the bed to calm herself, letting her eyes flutter shut.

***

She ended up falling back asleep for another hour, only getting up once the noise of the usual morning foot traffic outside had risen to a low din. Although she felt much better than when she’d first woken up, the rolling waves of nausea assaulting her stomach lingered and she decided against joining the others in the dining hall for breakfast and waited for Edhalan to grab a bite before the two walked up to campus.

Fearing that he’d bring up her strange behavior from the night before, she racked her brain for something to talk about.

“What do you do?” she asked him as they stepped out into a throng of well-to-do Castle Hill residents and wealthy merchants on about their morning business. “You know, while I’m in class?”

He put the back of his hand to his forehead and pretended to swoon.

“I sit and pine and yearn for you, my liege.”

Alvanue tried to wack him but he managed to dodge out of the way, spinning around her with that duelist’s grace.

Damn, this mushroom hangover really has me off my game.

“Seriously. What do you do all day?”

Edhalan shrugged, his eyes going back to scanning the crowd as they always did for potential threats.

“I don’t know. It depends on my mood. Sometimes I read, or train, or take walks through the city. If I’m really bored, I’ll talk to that little brat with the flowers.”

Alvanue’s eyes widened.

“Lily? But you hate humans.”

Her body guard scoffed.

“I hate mortals, remember, not just humans. Doesn’t mean I can’t admit that they have their uses.”

Alvanue kicked at a bit of broken cobblestone and narrowed her eyes at her companion.

“And how, exactly, is Lily the Preteen Florist useful to you?”

He shrugged.

“In lots of ways. She knows the best armorers in the district, the best restaurants and bakeries...”

Edhalan let his words fade away, his face going blank. Alvanue had the distinct feeling he wanted to say more but was holding himself back. She was tempted to push, more for the novelty of him keeping things from her than anything, but hesitated to question him further. If she was allowed her secrets, he was allowed his.

Sighing, she looped an arm through one of his, careful to leave his sword hand free.

“Not to be rude, but that sounds boring as shit.”

Edhalan leaned into her and laughed derisively.

“Like what you do at that ridiculous school is any more interesting.”

“Hey! I learn plenty of cool things at that ‘ridiculous school’, and I’ve even met some cool people too,” she huffed.

He snorted.

“Right, ‘cool’ but not the slightest bit helpful. Like the history of a nation that’s younger than your sire and common plant lore are really things that’ll help you secure the throne when you’re older. Not to mention those two barbarians you had over last night. They ruined that rug, Alvanue.”

She went to slap her hand over his mouth, but remembering what he did the last time she’d done that, she settled for poking him in the chest.

“Sh! Don’t tell anyone, but I hid it under the bed,” she whispered conspiratorially, peaking over her shoulder to see if there were any elves on the street with them.

Ambassador Olome probably won’t be too happy when he finds out about that.

“Don’t worry, the ambassador won’t hear it from me,” he reassured. “So long as I never, ever, have to help teach those two elvish again.”

“Come on,” Alvanue said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

He shuddered against her.

“Never. Again.”

***

Feeling completely back to normal by the time Edhalan left her at the front gate, she arrived at Herbology right on schedule with a good fifteen minutes set aside to take on the greenhouse’s ‘twofold path’. She got to her seat well before most of her classmates and settled in to wait for her target. She eagerly watched the arbor that marked the boundary between the maze and the central clearing, waiting for Elswane of Hog’s Crossing to pop through, slumping down in her seat a little more each time a student appeared and it wasn’t the human girl.

It was when Professor Thaas called the class to order that she realized the girl probably wasn’t coming. Either that, or she was as horrendously late and Alvanue herself had been the day before.

Paying attention to the elderly dwarf’s lecture on native poisonous plants of the isle of Avalon was hard when all she could focus on were thoughts of Elswane and where she might be.

She took dutiful notes and observed the plants required of her, but the margins of her notebook were filled with doodles of toadstools and eyes.

Once they were all excused, she managed to pick her way back out of the maze and went hunting for Elswane.

It took her a while, nearly all of her break between Herbology and History, but she found Elswane eventually. The girl was up to her elbows in dirt behind a hedge with her coat sleeves pushed up nearly to her armpits. A boy around her age with golden-brown skin, curly hair pulled back in a neat bun and a plain but not unattractive face stood watching with crossed arms.

“Hey! Elswane!” Alvanue called out from a gap in the hedge.

The girl looked up and wiped sweat off her forehead. The action accomplished little more than smearing a streak of dirt across her olive skin.

“Hey, Alvanue right? We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

Alvanue found an opening big enough for her to fit through and squeezed past the dense branches. Safely on the other side, she surreptitiously dusted herself off and looked at Elswane

“Then stop turning up in bushes,” she admonished.

The human girl grinned and clapped her hands together to knock loose the biggest clumps of soil covering them. She reached one up towards the boy.

“Help a lady up, would ya, Grif?”

The boy, Grif, looked loathe to touch her filthy hand but did anyway, hoisting her up onto her feet. She gave him an appreciative clap on the shoulder, leaving a perfect brown hand print on his otherwise pristine uniform.

“Alvanue, this is Grif. Grif, Alvanue,” Elswane gestured between the two. “He’s in the Knight Program, but don’t hold that against him.”

Grif tipped forward into a respectful bow and gave Elswane a sideways glance.

“Griflet, you mean. Formerly of Galladin’s Rest and Hog’s Crossing, presently of Avalon.”

Remembering a bit of the manners Uruigith had tried helplessly to hammer into her, Alvanue lifted her skirts in a curtsey and only wobbled once.

“Alvanue of, uh, Endrillond. Nice to meet you, Griflet.”

He scratched the back of his head and looked vaguely uncomfortable.

“We’ve, um, actually met before. I sit behind you in History with Ravenser, if you remember? We talked briefly on the first day. You forgot a quill and I gave you one of mine...” he trailed off.

Alvanue froze.

“O-oh!” she stuttered. “Right, Griflet! I totally remember you. Sorry, it’s just you look so different, uh, outside. Hang on, I think I still have that quill.”

Frantically patting her bag for a quill she didn’t remember borrowing, she smiled awkwardly at the two humans. She had absolutely no memory of ever having met a Griflet of Galladin, Hog’s Crossing or Avalon before in her entire life. If the looks on their faces were anything to go off, Alvanue’s poor acting wasn’t convincing anyone. Elswane snickered while the boy’s cheeks reddened.

Oops.

Griflet ducked his head.

‘’No, no. It’s okay, you can keep the quill,” he said lamely.

Deciding to throw the floundering elf a lifeline, Elswane spoke with a grin in her voice.

“So why exactly did you interrupt me while I was transplanting these scabrocellas?” she asked, indicating the delicate white flowers in pots Alvanue had failed to notice behind the mounds of dirt the human girl had dug up.

Alvanue toed the dirt.

“You weren’t in class today. I was going to ask you before the lecture but I didn’t see you.”

The human’s mandrake familiar poked its head out of her coat pocket and stared at Alvanue with beady eyes. Elswane shoved it back down.

“Not now, Navet, I'll catch some bugs for you later. I forgot to do that paper on aconite he assigned. Professor Thaas said there’s no late policy, so if I didn’t do the work I might as well just skip. ”

“And...you decided to plant flowers instead?” Alvanue asked skeptically.

Elswane lifted her shoulders in a casual shrug.

“What’s a better use of my time than planting scabrocellas? They clean the air, provide food for a bunch of different bugs and animals and they even smell nice. Much better than the stupid monoculture the gardeners here seem to like.”

Doesn’t sound like fun to me at all.

“If you say so. But that’s not why I’m here. I actually wanted to talk to you about something related to that. It’s, um, about Herbology.”

“Cool, what about it? ”

Eyes darting towards Griflet who was still standing there awkwardly, Alvanue leaned toward the girl.

“Could we talk somewhere a little more private?” she whispered.

Elswane looked between Alvanue and Griflet and let out a guffaw.

“If you’re worried about Grif here, don’t be. He’s no snitch. I’ve done things in front of him that could get me run out of St. Gildrin’s a hundred times over and he hasn’t tattled before. Besides, Grif’s a knight, and a knight never betrays a lady’s trust, isn’t that right?”

Griflet stuck out his jaw but nodded slowly.

“The Knight’s Code prevents me from sharing any information I might learn in confidence, unless it poses a direct threat to the crown or the safe being of those I am sworn to protect.”

Elswane raised her eyebrows and jerked a thumb in his direction as if to say, get a load of him. He didn’t look enthused. Exasperated and wanting to get to the point, Alvanue threw her hands in the air.

“Fine! I trust him, okay?”

“Okay,” Elswane said easily. “So, what did you want to talk to me about? Need help cheating on the test next week or did you want me to do your homework for you? ‘Cuz that’s gonna cost you in either case.”

Alvanue balked.

“What? No, This is about the mimic mushrooms. I need more of them,” she said.

Elswane looked perplexed.

“But I gave you eleven the other day. That should be more than enough to last you for a while. Besides, if you want more, you can always take some for youself.”

“Yeah, but I ate half of them, remember? And you know how to steal them better than I do,” Alvanue tried.

She could have probably nabbed some herself from the greenhouse but the fear of getting caught had stayed her hand. The kind of letter that would get sent home to her sire after an event such as that was not something she liked to think about.

Elswane tapped her chin.

“Oh, yeah. Good to see you survived. And I didn’t steal anything. Still, though, as a newbie you should probably take it easy.”

Alvanue winced, the memory of the headache and nausea that had plagued most of her early morning still fresh in her mind.

“Yeah, the come-down was brutal.”

“What do you mean?” Elswane asked, confused.

“The come-down? The hangover, whatever you want to call it. My head and stomach were killing me when I woke up. Felt like I’d drank a whole keg of Vinland pale the night before.”

Elswane frowned.

“That doesn’t sound normal. Are you sure you just ate a few of them?”

Alvanue nodded.

“Yeah, pretty sure. I ate six, why?”

The human girl bit her lip.

“It’s just, there shouldn’t be any side effects to mimic mushrooms, no matter how many you take. That’s why I like them so much. They’re pretty mild, even if the trip lasts a little too long. Once it’s done, though, you’re completely back to normal. That’s why I wasn’t really worried about you, just kind of concerned that the experience might’ve been a bit intense for your first time. Are you sure you didn’t drink or something along with the mushrooms?”

Alvanue shook her head. There was a hole in Alvanue’s memories so she couldn’t have been certain, but she thought it was improbable that she’d had alcohol when she was blacked out. Ale was something she liked to enjoy with others, not solely by herself.

“Hmm,” Elswane pursed her mouth pensively. “That’s troubling. All the more reason for me to tell you to take it easy. No more mushrooms for you.”

“What! No, come on, but I need them to channel!” Alvanue said.

The human girl looked regretful but stood firm.

“Sorry. If you’re having that bad of a reaction, I’d say dump whatever you have left and steer clear of them in the future. You could be allergic or something.”

Alvanue panicked, visions of being stuck in Taizin’s class again next quarter flashing through her mind.

“But, but-” and then, inspiration. “What if I traded you for the mushrooms?”

Elswane blinked slowly at Alvanue.

“And what,” she said. “Would you have to trade?”

“Whatever you need. Whatever it is, I can get it for you.”

The girl copied her friend and crossed her arms. She observed Alvanue appraisingly for a moment before responding.

“Alright. I got banned from the library for the rest of the quarter for bringing Navet in with me. You check out books for me and pay the fines if they get damaged or lost, and I’ll get mimic mushrooms for you. Agreed?”

“Agreed!” Alvanue said eagerly.

Griflet stepped forward, concerned.

“Alvanue, I don’t think that’s a very good-”

“Shush,” Elswane interrupted sharply. “It’s already done.”

Alvanue held up a hand.

“One condition. For every book I bring you, you give me...hmm, let’s say five mushrooms? Yeah, five.”

Elswane tilted her head, considering, before she let a small smile slip across her face.

“Alright, fair enough. One book for five mushrooms. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

***

After leaving Elswane to her flowers, Griflet and Alvanue headed off for their next class. She wasn’t sure if it was chivalry or just simple practicality that had prompted him to offer to accompany her, but she’d accepted nonetheless. They were going in the same direction anyways.

As they approached the hall’s main entrance, Griflet held the door open for her. She flashed him a grateful smile and ducked in first. Griflet followed her indoors, and they stopped to admire the hall’s namesake.

History may have been her only ‘normal’ class but, barring Herbology, was hosted by the most interesting building: Dragonbone Hall. The foyer transitioned into a great central space set up as a display for the massive dragon skeleton that hung there. Painstakingly excavated and shipped from the distant coast of Westernesse and reassembled by graduate students there, it was a sight to behold. The skeleton was posed to appear as if it was in the midst of some great battle, wings open, claws extended, its many brittle bones suspended by a hundred different charms and enchantments. They paused in the shadow it cast and stared up at its gaping maw, a thousand crystalline teeth reflecting their faces back at them. A placard underneath read: Hessenesh, the Storm Dragon.

“Sooo,” Alvanue began as they got moving again, looking for a way to fill the polite but uncomfortable silence. She still felt a bit bad for not remembering that she’d met him before. “How do you know Elswane?”

They crossed the open floor, their footsteps echoing in the massive chamber, and took the southern stairway. The stairs were wide enough to fit three abreast, so they walked beside each other.

“We’re from the same town, originally. I was born in Galladin but my mother and I moved to Hog’s Crossing to live with relatives after...well, that’s not important. I guess you could consider us childhood friends without the friends part.”

Alvanue cocked her head.

“Really? You guys seemed pretty friendly.” Alvanue said.

He shook his head.

“We’re friendly, but I wouldn’t say we’re friends. Maybe... acquaintances? On good terms?”

Alvanue hummed.

“If you’re not friends then why were you hanging out together?”

Griflet idly flicked at the drying dirt marring his crisp uniform, courtesy of Elswane and gave Alvanue a measuring look. Apparently finding whatever he saw in her satisfactory, he looked forward and answered.

“It's...hard here. For commoners. As the saying goes, there’s safety in numbers.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do the noble students pick on the, you know, not-nobles? I thought kids usually grew out of that.”

He sighed.

“It’s not picking so much as...” he trailed off, struggling to find the words. “It’s- they never do anything openly harmful to me and the others. Well, not often, I should say. And nowhere it might be seen by a professor, they’re very careful about that.”

They stepped out onto the second floor, at eye level with the dragon’s hollow ribcage.

“It’s more like they know how to make us feel like we’re not welcome, like we’re intruders in their own private world. I just- sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. No offense, but I doubt you’d understand.”

His face pinched in frustration. They walked in silence for a few seconds, Alvanue considering him out of the corner of her eye.

“No, I get what it feels like to be an outsider,” she said.

Griflet looked up, surprised.

“You do?”

She gave him a sad smile.

“Yeah. I do.”

She’d spent her first life being nothing but an outsider. At school, at her shitty minimum wage job, there was no escape from just how disconnected Tim was. From what she remembered of her time as Tim, he’d never really found any meaningful human connections in his nineteen odd years on Earth, just alienation, disappointment and the sick but certain feeling that life was meaningless. Even at Silthonduen, she’d ever felt like the odd one out even before regaining her lost memories.

Alvanue stopped Griflet before the door to History.

“Hey,” she hesitated. “I know it’s way too early to consider me a friend, and I’m sure I didn’t make the best first impression with, uh, well you know. But do you think we could be acquaintances? There’s strength in numbers, right?”

The human boy looked at her warily, but also a bit...

"You want to be my friend? Just like that?"

"Well, no, like I said. Probably need, like, at least a few days till we get to that point."

He stared at her, one eyebrow raised in confusion but slowly nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think we could be acquaintances.”

***

Alvanue swung by the library after she was done with her classes. Apparently, there were fines to pay for taking Erasmus’ primer on an ‘unauthorized collection’, doubled by the fact that she had failed to return it within twenty-four hours. She begrudgingly directed the librarians to her account at the Royal Bank and started tracking down the list of books Elswane had given her.

Grimoires on magical flora and texts swollen with the minutia of local plant life, there were many, the total number of which came out to thirteen different books.

“The limit is one book per student per ticket. If you’d like to check-out additional books, there will be a fee,” the dour librarian at the front desk informed her as she stamped each of the books with a glowing runestone.

“Elders take it, of course there is,” she groaned. “Alright, how much?”

“Subtracting the aforementioned one book per student per ticket, your total amounts to...thirteen silvers.”

Alvanue choked.

“Thirteen silv- you know what, it’s fine, it’s fine.”

The librarian finished with her stamping and pushed the books toward Alvanue with a gnarled hand.

“Just as a reminder, these books are due back within the next week. Should you fail to return them by their due date, the late fee amounts to one silver per book per-”

Scowling, Alvanue scooted the book’s off the front desk, grunting under their weight.

“Thank you, I’m well aware. Just- bill my account, you have it on file now.”

She waddled out of the library with her burden, grumblnig to herself.

“Damn books...Mushrooms...Stupid humans...”

Elders, she thought to herself. I’m starting to sound like Edhalan.