Renaeril looked sadly at their pot, filled with nothing but water, sitting atop a metal tripod that Nefaaya found inside the house where they spent the night before. She too was even sad at the lack of food. After she woke up from her dream about the glowing white city, she busied herself in trying to find something to eat.

Ettran survives, she thought. Then perhaps at least one of the small storages could do.

She stood before the ruins of her old house. The rising sun made the shadow of the broken walls and hers slanted on the ground. The wind picked up and carried the smell of wet ash. Yesterday when she saw her house, Nefaaya felt afraid—for she cannot accept what she sees as the truth.

She walked on the familiar trail of grasses, now burned to ashes by the catastrophe that engulfed it. Nefaaya was in a trance, trying to imagine how the house looked before it was brought down by fire.

The door creaked as she pushed it open, but this creak wasn't the same sound that she was fond of. It felt foreign and awkward, without a little familiarity from its former shape.

The door fell from its hinges and broke into pieces as soon as it hit the floor. Nefaaya covered her nose, as the wind carried the ash to her direction.

There was almost nothing left of the house aside from its walls. Above, the warm and blinding sunlight passed through from the missing roof. She turned on the corner and stepped inside of what used to be the kitchen. That time, it wasn't just the burned floorboards, or the abandoned plates and glasses she was seeing—Nefaaya had glimpsed on a distant memory. She saw Learo, her father, on the day he brought the Glistor to their home. Learo smiled at her as she saw her peeking from the corne-

Nefaaya stepped outside of the kitchen… the memory was too much for her. Remembering it alone was enough to feel hatred. She closed her eyes and headed to their small living room. It was the same room where he first saw her mother reading the grimoire. Left from here was the familiar window where she first glimpsed the world—where she spent the first few years of her life observing this world.

She looked down and saw the misshapen metal utensils. Her mind wondered how terrible the fire was that day. Nefaaya picked a spoon, and held it tightly against her chest as she smiled.

Nefaaya left her home, there's no time to dwell on things that she couldn't fix. In this condition, the dangerous thing to do other than not doing anything was to think. She was mad and depressed and these two emotions had been clouding her mind. I might burn another forest, she thought bitterly as she watched the fumes of smoke rising from the hill of trees.

As she walked away from her house, Nefaaya's hand tightened on the misshapen fork.

She found Reanaeril staring gloomily at the empty pot.

He almost looked like a child.

"Where have you been?" He asked as he looked up at her.

Nefaaya looked around, "where's Ettran?"

He shrugged, "I don't know. I thought you two had decided to go out."

Before Nefaaya could answer, Ettran arrived with two dead rabbits in his hands.

"Do you two know how to skin this?" He asked, uncomfortably.

Renaeril stood, "I'll do it. I already found a knife in this house yesterday."

Ettran handed the two rabbits to him. Renaeril accepted it and head towards the back of the house. He snatched the blade lying on the floor. Since the previous handle was destroyed, he used a new piece of wood to create a new handle

Nefaaya's eyes widened.

"You left that knife there?" she asked, unbelieving.

Renaeril blinked at her. "Why?"

"What if... someone suspicious arrived and stole it... and decided to kill us?" She exclaimed.

Ettran scoffed beside her, knowing that he was the suspicious person that she was talking to..

"I wasn't talking about you," she cleared herself.

He nodded coolly. And as she watched him, Nefaaya realized that she doesn't like this kid.

Nefaaya turned away from him and watched Renaeril skinned the rabbit. But she immediately felt her stomach rolling as she saw him do it. She wasn't sure if what he was doing was right. Why did he have to pull that skin like that!

She turned away and said, "I'm familiar with herbs mother used to put in her cooking, let me find something in the forest."

"No need," Renaeril said. "We just roast it."

He stopped and looked up, white brows knitted in thinking. "What was the word... barbecue?"

"Barbecue?" Ettran asked, the word flicking at his tongue. "What's that?"

Nefaaya's eyes widened. It has been a long time since she had heard a word that had come from her world. Of course in this world that word was still not known. What they know is grilling.

"No," she started nervously. "It's a code for roasting we used to use it..."

Why would we use it? She turned away from his suspicious gaze.

"Because mother doesn't want us playing with fire... and eating grilled things."

Ettran looked at the two of them, nodding slowly.

"You two are really..." he said. "Different."

"Different? Why?"

Ettran turned to Renaeril, "I don't know. I just heard it from the other kids... they're all wary of you. The same way that they're wary of me. But I heard once."

His voice drifted to whisper.

Nefaaya leaned closely, "you heard what?"

Ettran flushed as if rethinking if he should say it or not, "I heard once that they would rather prefer my company rather than yours."

Nefaaya blinked and straightened, "wow. They must really hate us."

Renaeril nodded and proceeded to go inside the broken house, three skinned rabbits in his hands. Nefaaya outdone Renaeril from casting a fire. The abruptness of her action made Ettran pull back. She wondered if it was her Pulling the Flow he was afraid of or the fire itself.

Even when they started grilling, the boy remained a good distance away from the fire. As if just being near the presence of it was enough to scare him off.

"What's your plan after this?"

Nefaaya and Renaeril fell silent, the two of them had no plan about what they would do next.

"We'll find a village," Nefaaya said. "And treat that wound of yours."

Ettran sneered at her. "After that?"

No one answered him aside from the crackles of fire.

Above them, the sun was already at its peak, the afternoon came at them hot and dazzling. Ettran rose from the ground. But he immediately stopped before the broken door.

"I'm planning to go to my uncle," he started. He looked down and turned at them. "He was a good man... I think he would accept the two of you."

Nefaaya and Renaeril felt silent. She didn't know what Reanaeril was thinking but for some reason she felt ashamed of herself. She looked up and saw Ettran watching the two of them.

"He was like you two," he said.

"What do you mean?" Renaeril asked.

Ettran sighed, "those things you could do. He can too. He said it was a gift... Blessed By The Flow. But he was different. When I saw those glowing Pieces around you, I was already certain you're like him... You could stay there. Or perhaps figure out what you want to do afterwards."

With it he left.

Figure out what you want to do, eh?

Now that her anger subsided, Nefaaya was uncertain on the path that she would take.