When Kara woke up, she realized that Gareth had woken up before her and quickly feared for the awkward air of silence that would hang between them for the remainder of the trip. Fortunately for her, it turned out she had forgotten something.

Though Gareth might still be frightened of her after her outburst against Vraith, he was also a healthy six-year-old boy. Soulblade or not, there was a universal truth that seemed to affect all six-year-olds.

More than anything, the thing they feared most was boredom.

Sitting in absolute darkness, with nothing to do except eat or talk, Gareth was actually the first to say something, even if it was something as mundane as simply telling her that he was bored.

Seeing the complaint as a peace offering, even if it was a temporary measure to fight the greater evil that was boredom, Kara jumped at the opportunity to paint herself in a better light.

Regardless of whether he was still scared of her, with Kara as his only company, he was quick to accept her as his playmate for the moment.

It helped that Kara had already established herself as a competent storyteller. Kara had practiced prior to the mission, specifically reading and memorizing children’s stories to tell to Gareth and had accidentally left the story on a cliffhanger during their initial transport from the Armoury to the outer walls. It was an easy place to pick up from, and even though Gareth did not speak much during her storytelling, Kara very much appreciated the small gasps and cheers that he gave off during the highs and lows of her story.

They played games too, though Kara admittedly didn't know too many of those. She usually went on missions with Soulblades who were older than her, and whenever they were stuck in the carriages, they would talk and gossip about random topics.

Gareth knew a lot of games to play in the dark, having done his own preparation prior to the mission, but was always open to new suggestions. When Kara suggested 'I spy', he rolled off his seat with a cackle, saying that they couldn't play that when it was so dark. When Kara insisted that they could, saying that she spied something black, Gareth cackled again, saying that everything in the carriage looked black in the darkness.

After that point, Kara's fears of an awkward transport back home were dispelled by Gareth's happy laughter.

With their escorts riding without sleep, stopping only once to switch to fresh horses, Kara and Gareth spent one more day and night cooped up together in their shared carriage.

On the final morning, Kara woke up to Gareth shaking her awake.

"Wake up, Kara," he said, not quite shouting, but certainly not being considerate of how close his mouth was to her still half-asleep ear.

"Gareth, please," she mumbled, her arm flailing weakly, trying to push him away. "You’re too loud."

"But you gotta. I think the escort guys are grumpy since you're not getting up."

Kara struggled to figure out a reason why. "Huh?" she said.

Gareth gently patted her face, clearly deciding that his voice wasn't enough. "We're home, Kara," he said. "Get up."

Though the pull of sleep still forced a groan out of her, Kara pushed herself up and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them, she realized that, for the first time in a while, she could see Gareth's face.

"Good morning," she said sleepily.

"Good morning," a rough voice said, one she only barely recognized. "Hope you had a good sleep. Now get out of my carriage."

Kara nodded, pushing herself up into a semi-squat, with the carriage being too short to stand up fully. Gareth hopped out of the door and she followed shortly after.

It was only after she stepped out, onto the cobblestones, that she realized she forgot to take her bags out of the carriage.

As she turned around to look for them, she saw a brief flash of white something impacted hard against her ribs and lifted her off her feet.

Kara grunted as her spine bent at an awkward angle, but the woman who had assaulted her was strong enough that she couldn’t adjust herself within her grip.

"Kara!" the woman squealed. "And Gareth! How are you two? Did you have a good mission?"

Gareth giggled, and from how close his voice sounded, Kara could only assume that he was also being pressed into a tight hug, in the woman’s other arm. Kara grunted as she tried to twist herself into a position where it felt less like her body would snap in half.

"Eili," Kara wheezed, when it became clear that she wouldn't escape. "My back."

"Oh, sorry." Eili released her and Kara stumbled as her feet touched the ground, but only for a split second before Eili swooped in for another hug.

"How are you, Kara?" the older woman asked, quietly into her ear.

Without her back being bent at an unnatural angle, and her arms not pinned to her sides, Kara was able to hug her back.

"It was alright," she said. "But can I talk to you later about something?"

Eili pulled away from the hug, but still held on to Kara's shoulder as her single white eye stared directly at her.

Kara gave her a smile as the older woman searched her face. "It's not an emergency," she said.

Eili smiled back. "What's stopping you from talking about it now?" she asked.

Kara glanced down at Gareth, who for some reason, Eili was now carrying under her arm like a sack of potatoes, holding him aloft against her hip. The boy looked halfway between embarrassed and delighted.

"Let's just talk later?" Kara suggested, not knowing a way to let Eili know why without Gareth realizing she wanted to talk about him.

Eili nodded. Kara wasn't sure whether she had figured out why, or if she simply accepted that Kara didn't want to talk for the moment, but either way, she drew Kara into another one-armed hug. Gareth's shoulder bumped into her waist, but neither of them complained.

"Well, I'm sure you both are just dying to do something other than sitting around doing nothing all day," Eili said, releasing Kara for the moment. "Gareth, the players have been complaining ever since you left the Armoury, saying that they need you for one of your games. Why you kids don't just learn a game that only needs three players, I will never understand."

"Kids?" Gareth asked from his position under her arm. "Newlyn isn't a kid."

"Yes he is," Eili said, laughing at the scandalized gasp the comment drew from Gareth. "Don't worry, Gareth. You can tell him I said that if you want."

"Oh. I wasn't going to," Gareth lied.

"Run along now," Eili said, swinging Gareth up so he landed on his feet. "Actually, now that I take a proper look at you, isn't your hair getting a bit long? You might want to take a visit to the outfitters to get it cleaned and cut."

Before Eili could reach out and grab him again, Gareth jumped back and ran off. "Later," he called behind him.

Eili sighed and casually slung her arm around Kara's shoulder. "Any bets to see if 'later' means that he's going to hide from anybody who tries to take him to the outfitters?"

Kara smiled. "That's a fool's bet," she said.

"Yeah, obviously. It's going to be sad to see him hiding from me for the next few days. Do you think you could maybe wrangle him up later?"

Kara grimaced, knowing that Gareth potentially had much more reason to hide from her than to simply avoid a haircut. "Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Something happened on the mission-"

"Ah," Eili said, silencing Kara with a finger pressed against her mouth. "We'll talk about that later. Right now, I don't want to talk about missions. I'm going on one next week, and I really don't need any reminders."

Kara mumbled past the finger that pressed against her lips. "But it's important."

"Everything is," Eili said while pushing her finger more firmly against Kara's lips. "But not another word out of you. You are relaxing, and that's an order. Soulblades are to be pampered and spoiled. Says so right in the treaty."

Kara blushed as Eili so casually exploited her weakness. "Actually, clause fifteen states that Soulblades are to be provided with an environment that promotes their physical and mental health. The exact methods-"

Kara's words were cut off immediately as Eili pinched her lips between her thumb and forefinger.

"Exactly," Eili said. "You can't claim that your mental health is fine if you're halfway to being driven crazy."

Kara gently peeled Eili's thumb away from her lips. "I'm not being driven crazy," she said.

"I meant me, dummy. Come on and let's do something fun. I've been lonely."

It was a bold faced lie, with both of them knowing that Eili could never be lonely with an overly friendly personality like hers, but Kara accepted the invitation with a smile.

"Alright. What do you want to do?"

---

In hindsight, giving Eili full reign of what they would be doing was an obvious mistake that she never would have made on a regular day. She blamed her sloppiness on the fact that she had still been somewhat sleepy, and she hadn't believed in herself to have the mental capacity to make a decision.

But now, it was too late for her to realize that literally anything else would have been better than what Eili had in mind.

"Alright, Kara. Take this, this, and this. I had a couple orders sent to the tailors and while you were gone, a silk merchant travelled through the town. I bought a few gowns and a hat for you to use. It's pretty hardy, so I think you could even use it on missions if you wanted. Like a cute little adventurer’s outfit. Go on, get changing."

Kara made a face as a small pile of clothes was shoved into her arms. Now that she was standing in Eili's house, she regretted not realizing what would happen as soon as she walked in. Already, she missed the piles of books that littered her own home, waiting to be opened and read.

Looking around, the cozy house looked just as she remembered it. Though the layout was identical to her own house, with a kitchen, a bedroom, and a free room that each Soulblade would choose to decorate as they wished, Eili’s house looked like an explosion had gone off in every room, with the explosions spreading colourful cloth, rather than fiery destruction. Not a single inch of Eili's house was unoccupied. The floors, walls, and every single piece of furniture seemed to be covered in a wide variety of clothes and accessories.

More than a place to live, it looked more like a fashion warehouse that happened to also contain a bed and a kitchen.

But that was wrong too. Eili wasn't actually a fan of fashion itself, at least in the sense that she didn’t seem to care much about her own appearance. None of the clothes that littered the floors and walls were intended for her.

Eili was a fan of dressing up dolls, but had long since realized that she was well-liked enough to get away with dressing up her fellow Soulblades rather than figurines made out of porcelaine.

Now that Kara had a chance to think, she realized that Eili claims of being lonely might have actually been true, with nobody dumb enough to subject themselves through the humiliation of being Eili's pet project.

Other than her of course.

"Come on," Eili whined. The noise would have looked uncharacteristic of the muscled, thirty-something year old woman, if it weren't for how well Kara knew her. "Get changing. I worked hard on this, you know."

Kara grimaced. Eili certainly wasn't shy about using guilt to get what she wanted. Usually, she toned it down, knowing that Kara was willing to spend time with her without having to resort to underhanded tactics, but perhaps with her being gone for a couple of days, and if a silk merchant had truly come through the Armoury, Eili had grown impatient.

Kara casually lifted her shirt and dropped her pants. "So, how many sets have we got today?" she asked.

"Twelve," Eili said. "You mind taking off that ugly underwear too?"

"What?! Why?" Kara shouted. While the life of a Soulblade required a lack of modesty, the request was still surprising. "You can't even see my underwear under these clothes."

"Some of them are skimpier than others," Eili said easily. "Actually, it would just be easier if you forgoed the whole underwear thing."

Kara groaned into her hand, wondering not for the first time, why she had become close friends with Eili of all people.

---

If there was anything good about being subjected to being Eili's dress up doll, it was that there was always food involved. Even after Eili explained to her multiple times, Kara didn't quite understand why it was necessary.

Since there was no way to actually capture the image of Kara's dressing up, since she eventually would have to change back into her regular clothes, Eili did her best to stimulate all of her senses to fully burn the memory of the dress-up sessions in her mind.

Her physically affectionate and talkative side easily dealt with the senses of touch and sound, but nothing was quite like Eili's method of dealing with taste and smell.

Even if Kara didn’t quite understand it, she never complained about Eili's baking.

Kara let out a low groan of satisfaction as she ate the bite-sized cake sitting on her spoon. Strawberry jam coated her tongue as she chewed. She would have liked to save it for last, but Eili had chosen to frost each of the tiny pastry in an identical white frosting, to add a surprise factor. Any complaint she had died on her lips, leaving in a deep moan of pleasure instead. After eating nothing but jerky and nuts for days, being subjected to Eili's baking was simply unfair.

From across the table, the baker tossed a cake into her mouth and swallowed with the casual indifference of an artist ripping up a masterpiece. She didn't even savour it. The heathen. "You know if you keep moaning like that, I might have to close the windows. You know, to protect the ears of the younger kids."

Maybe on a normal day, she would have blushed at that, but with how content her stomach was, she didn't want to ruin it by rising to Eili's teasing. "Yeah, like you would ever close the windows while you bake," she said, her voice muffled by the mouthful of cake that she was still savouring.

Eili grinned at her, but didn't deny the implied accusation. Other than Kara, who was the only idiot to actually offer herself in the name of friendship, it was the only way that Eili ever procured more victims who were willing to be her dress-up dolls. Eili's baking was only ever offered to those who were willing to pay with their bodies.

Kara started to cough as the unintentional double entendre crossed her mind, which earned a reproachful look from Eili.

"Why don't you just swallow the damn thing," she said, not quite realizing why Kara had coughed in the first place.

"I'm savouring it, you barbarian," Kara said, despite already having swallowed the cake in favour of not choking. Her tongue already missed its taste. "More please."

"Let me actually look at you first. You've been wearing that outfit for less time than it took to put it on," Eili said.

The silk robe that Kara wore was nothing like she'd ever seen before. When Eili had presented it proudly, saying that it was a foreign dress from Jing, Astranta's southern neighbour, it had looked blocky, with square sleeves and a rectangular body that hung down in a perfect rectangle, but once Eili wrapped it around her body, securing it with a thick sash around her waist, it somehow turned into a elegant form-fitting dress.

Kara had the decency to blush as Eili so obviously scanned her body.

Eili laughed when she noticed and Kara felt her face turn hotter, if that was possible.

"Can I just change to the next one," Kara asked, meekly. Not for the first time, Kara wondered if the combined value of cake and friendship were worth the humiliation.

"I'm savouring it, you barbarian," Eili replied, with a self-satisfied grin. "I like this one. It's new."

Kara liked it too, though not for aesthetic reasons. The silk simply felt extremely soft on her skin.

"I hate it," she lied. "Next cake, please."

Eili's grown-up response was to stick a tongue out at her.

Kara spent a few more minutes in the dress before Eili decided that she was satisfied. After Kara changed into her next outfit, a lacy black dress that seemed identical to the another one she tried on, an opinion that she voiced out loud and was immediately admonished for, she looked out the window. It was perhaps mid-afternoon and she wondered if she would be too full to eat dinner when the time came. While Eili had made the cakes tiny, to compensate for the fact that there were fifteen of them, it was still a lot more sugar that she was used to.

Not that it would stop her from tapping the table in front of her.

"Cake me."

Eili gave an exaggerated sigh as she slid a cake over on a small plate. Near Kara's place at the table, a small pile of identical plates had piled up. Five plates for five outfits.

"Sometimes I think you're just doing it for the food," Eili said, not quite able to fully hide her grin.

"Of course I am," Kara said. "Have you even eaten one of these before? Absolutely worth the psychological torture."

“Is wearing pretty clothes so bad?”

"Not when you’re constantly staring at me like some lecher."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't be so sure that one of these isn't filled with poison."

"I'm sure it would still be delicious, somehow."

"Oh, is that a compliment I hear?"

"Not for you, you narcissist. I'm obviously talking to the cakes."

"Ouch," Eili said, letting out a low chuckle.

Kara smiled as she picked up her cake with her spoon and placed it gently on her tongue. She groaned again, unable to stop herself. Orange flavour.

Eili wagged a finger at her. "Eat quietly, young lady. Think of the children. You keep moaning like that, and the others are going to start assuming I've started offering a different sort of incentive for letting me indulge in my hobby." The finger stopped suddenly, and for a second, Eili seemed to enter a moment of deep thought. "Actually. Could that work?"

"Ahem! Child here!" Kara said, waving her arms wildly in front of her before Eili started to muse about the exact way she would "reward" any volunteers for her hobby.

"You're fifteen," Eili scoffed.

"And you're thirty-something. I don't want to imagine a dusty old prune doing stuff like that."

Eili smiled as she swiped lazily at her. "Brat."

Kara ducked to avoid Eili's fist, but the older woman adjusted to match her. Her fingers landed gently on Kara's head.

"Your hair's rough," she commented.

"Been out on a mission," Kara said, shrugging. "Besides, it's not like I actually need my hair to be clothing-quality."

"Nonsense," Eili said. "Just because you don't need it for your clothes like the rest of us, doesn't mean that you shouldn't take care of it."

"I guess," Kara said, not quite agreeing, but at the memory of how Gareth's hair felt, she could see the benefit of having such soft hair for herself if only to play with it when she was idle.

As she remembered why she had been playing with Gareth's hair in the first place, she winced.

"Eili," she said. "I think I might have broken Gareth."

Eili raised an eyebrow. She still wore a smile, but it wasn't quite as wide as it usually was. "I assume this is what you wanted to talk about," she said.

Kara nodded. "Do you want to talk about it later?"

"Nah. If you're gonna start, might as well finish it. So. Why do you think you broke Gareth? He seemed fine when you two got home."

"Well," Kara started, hesitating to find the right way to retell the story. "The mission started and ended just fine. We met our First Soldier at the site. Silver Winds, from the stories?"

To Kara's surprise, Eili just nodded. "Oh, Vraith? He's still alive?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm. You'd think a guy who lives alone in the Dead Zone would die sooner rather than later, but I don't want to go on a tangent. Continue."

"Yeah. Well anyways, the mission went fine. Vraith was really skilled with his magic, better than the stories say even. He created some sort of ball of air and swept the entire mountain-side to get to the Umbra colony. On the way he created a smooth path for Gareth to run down. Made it really convenient."

Kara took a deep breath before she continued.

"The problem is, after the mission was complete, Vraith offered to use his magic again, to create a path back home so it would be easier for us to walk."

"And you freaked out," Eili said. The tone of her voice was neutral, along with her face, no longer smiling, but it wasn't judgemental either.

"And I freaked out," Kara confirmed, her face flushing in embarrassment.

"So what does this have to do with Gareth?" Eili asked. "Though I think your level of zealotry for the treaty isn't exactly the greatest, it's not necessarily the worst example you could give to him."

"Well, I did threaten to kill Vraith, while Gareth was standing right beside him."

"And you think Gareth will hold it against you?" Eili asked.

Kara shrugged. "It was his first mission. And he's six. I made him think he was going to die. I'm surprised he even talked to me on the carriage ride back."

"I’m not. It's impossible to do nothing during a two day transport. You’d die of boredom. Did he talk to you before that?"

"A little bit."

"Then he's fine."

Kara didn't quite understand the casual confidence. "He only responded with one word answers. You know how chatty he is, normally."

"Well, you had just almost killed him at that point."

"How are you so sure he'll be fine?"

Eili shrugged. "Maybe he won't be, but it's normal to clam up after a near death experience. Regardless, whether he's 'broken' or not," she said, using her fingers to indicate air quotes around the word 'broken'. "That's not up to you. If he's chosen this life, he's gonna see a lot worse than someone threatening to kill him."

"None of us chose to be Soulblades, Eili."

The older woman shrugged. "Debatable."

It wasn't, but Kara could still see where the woman was coming from. "So you're saying we should just let Gareth be?" Kara asked.

"No, not really. But if someone's going to talk to him about what it means to be a Soulblade, it shouldn't be you. Or me. I'll talk to Sian. She's the adult he's closest with."

Kara raised an eyebrow. Though Gareth was certainly close with Sian, she was only twelve. "What about Newlyn?" she asked.

Eili's face contorted. "You want me to go to Newlyn for something serious? The man's more childish than Gareth."

Kara laughed. "Fair enough."

There was a moment of silence as no further words passed between them. Eili's head was angled to the side, as if she were inspecting something on the wall behind her, but Kara guessed that the older woman was scanning her face for any reason to worry.

Kara smiled, trying to disperse any concern the older woman might feel for her.

"Thanks, Eili," she said. "You're a lifesaver."

"It's what I do," Eili said as she stood up from her chair and walked around the table. Kara made an attempt to stand, but the tight fabric of her dress was unfamiliar and she didn't want to accidentally ruin it by moving too quickly. Eili had no problem with hugging Kara while she was still seated, gently grabbing her head and pressing it against her chest. "We may have taken the Guardian's oath, but nobody holds it against us. Everybody in the Armoury loves you."

Kara tried to mumble a response, but found her voice too muffled to form any words. Instead she let herself sink into the older woman's embrace.

Eili held the embrace for a few more seconds before suddenly pushing Kara away and narrowing her eyes. It was hard to tell exactly where she was glaring, but Kara had to assume it was either at her own guilty expression or the hand that had been sneakily reaching for the now unguarded cakes.

"Did you just try to take advantage of a sentimental moment?"

Kara forged as innocent of a smile as she could.

"No?"