When Lysander woke the next morning, the first thing he noticed was the persistent ache pounding away in his lower back from sleeping on the ground. His neck also creaked ominously when he rolled the kinks out. The second thing was the blanket wrapped around him. He recognized the striped pattern of it immediately as one of Lexi’s. She must have draped it over him sometime in the night.

Blearily, he looked around the cluster and saw that he was the last to wake up, the others spoke in low voices while packing up the few things they had taken out the night before.

“Sorry for oversleeping, I guess,” Lysander interrupted, slinging back the blanket and sitting up.

“We thought you could use the rest, but we should probably get moving now that you’re up,” Tessa replied. Circles had formed under her eyes, the skin puffy and bruised.

As much as he wanted to slump back and pass back out, his body crying out for more sleep, he saw that forcing Tessa to remain their shield much longer would be both cruel and dangerous. “Yeah, of course, let’s head out,” he said. Passing the borrowed blanket to Lexi, he mumbled a quick thanks.

“No problem. You started to look a bit pathetic shivering there,” she responded, but she didn’t seem fully willing to make eye contact with him.

Affection warmed his chest for all of a minute until he remembered the reality of their relationship, which quashed that for now. As hard as he fought it, he continued to fall back into their old rhythms, making him feel almost destined to simply relive the same loop of affection and realization until he died. “Do you want me to change those wraps?” he asked, motioning toward her hands.

“Nah, it’s just bruises. No sense in wasting more bandages on it.” As she said it, she undid the end of one and tightened it back around her wrist. “There, it’s all snug again.”

Noah watched all this tensely and impatiently, his jaw clenched so tightly that Lysander could see the muscle twitching in his cheek.

Now that the sun had risen, Lysander realized the field they had crossed the night before had actually once been a stretch of connected back yards. The nearest house was a two story white farmhouse with a dilapidated deck jutting off its back. It had fallen into severe disrepair to the point that it more resembled rotted wooden teeth than something a person could have once walked across. Between them and the house stood a lone birdhouse that had been clearly handcrafted, the painted red wood clumsily built and the pitched roof unevenly situated. A few birds–normal sized this time–pecked around the base of it and flapped up to rest on the cylindrical peg. In juxtaposition, the house in the background looked sad and abandoned, the owners either having died or moved on to a camp or the city before the Spread.

The crunch of pine needles alerted Lysander they had begun to move, so he dragged his attention away from the little house and stuck close to Tessa. To their right, the river dug into the earth, creating an embankment that Lysander was glad not to have slid into in the dark last night.

“By the way, what are you gonna do about that promise you made to that guard, Skittles?” Lexi asked, her swagger as carefree as always. She batted a stray branch out of her way, thwacking Noah in the head in the process. In retribution, he elbowed her softly with a muttered “you suck”.

“Ah man, I don’t know. I didn’t know what else to say to get him off our backs. I guess I’ll just ask these farmers if they know anything about any secret med stashes out here,” Ramon replied, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, “Don’t have much hope of that working out, though, to be honest.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t put all your eggs in that basket, bud,” Lexi added.

“We’ll figure it out,” Noah mumbled, his eyes glued back on his compass.

“That’s…surprisingly helpful of you, man,” Ramon offered.

“Why do all of you expect me to be heartless?” Noah scoffed.

“Could be because you always act like an ass.”

Glaring back at Ramon, Noah continued, “Plus it’ll make our lives easier if we can get back through that way. I wouldn’t lose sleep about leaving you all out here, but Lexi’s too invested for that now.”

“And there it is,” Ramon responded.

Rolling his eyes, Noah turned away and focused back on navigating. “Hey! I never did ask why you go by Skittles,” Lexi chimed in, the non sequitur clearly designed to diffuse the tension.

“There’s no great reason or anything. My friends used to give me a lot of shit for eating so many Skittles as a kid, so it kinda stuck as a nickname,” Ramon began with a shrug, “Why do you go by the Red Morn?”

Bizarrely, the question caused her neck to visibly flush and Noah let out a teasing snicker. “Yeah, Red, why don’t you tell them?” he japed.

“It’s a stupid reason,” Lexi complained.

“Oh, I know this one!” Tessa said excitedly, “I can fill them in, if you want?” Her expression mirrored her twin’s so closely in that moment that Lysander fully grasped their resemblance at last. It was the first time since they set out that he could actually picture them growing up together, this disparate trio of people.

“Fuck you both,” Lexi responded, “Fine, I’ll tell you. So, you know that old sailors’ saying ‘red skies at night, sailors delight; red skies in the morn, sailors warn’? Yeah, it’s from that.”

Lysander couldn’t help it. He laughed. “That’s it?” he choked out between guffaws. He had no idea why it was so funny. It was like peering behind the screen and realizing the wizard was just some guy all along.

Ramon was also laughing, but he consoled, “Aw, that’s about as lame as my reason. It’s all good.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled with a wave of her hand, “This is what happens when you ask a twelve year old to come up with an alias.”

As sad and sobering as that statement was, it only made Lysander laugh harder. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Lexi complained, but he could see the edge of a smile when she turned her head to the side to glare at him.

Wiping tears from his eyes, he slowly allowed the giggles to fade. His stomach cramped from how hard he had laughed, but it felt good to have the levity between all of them rather than the soured atmosphere.

By this time, they had found what used to be a proper walking trail. The trail itself had started to become overgrown with both normal looking weeds and grasses and some things that Lysander didn’t recognize–cartoonishly large mushrooms that looked straight from a fairy forest and moss that glowed luminescent even in the sunshine. The few benches and trash cans they passed had vines snaking around them, the fibrous green ropes removing any uncanniness that might have lingered from how out of place they seemed. The ground sloped downhill, leading them to an open expanse of land, clear only because of the shards of sunlight breaking through the trees below. Walking downhill relieved the muscles on his thighs, but his body felt the effects of walking nonstop for a day and a half with little food. Every joint he had ached, even his elbows, and his fingers swelled. If he made it home after all this, he vowed privately to get more exercise.

When they exited the forest, a stretch of wildflowers greeted them, the blooms waving merrily in the wind. Lysander’s first reaction after pure childish wonderment was that it had to be unnatural. The colors popped too vibrantly and the season was still too young for such a diverse selection, but nonetheless it was beautiful. At the far end, he could see a cluster of low buildings and the first signs of people since the camps. Beyond that, on gently rolling hills, ran rows of carefully tended produce. From this distance, it was difficult to make out what each row was, but Lysander could see the distinct forms of cornstalks and grape vineyards and fruit trees. He could also see the tiny forms of people weaving between all of it.

“Looks like we found it,” Noah stated, snapping closed his compass.

“Awesome, it was real!” Lexi excitedly declared.

A moment passed. “Wait, you dragged us out here without knowing if this was real or not?” Ramon questioned.

Lysander awkwardly cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, that was me. They told me it was only a rumor.”

“Yeah, cool. Remember all that stuff I said about this being a good idea? I take that back,” Ramon grumbled.

Lysander offered a lame apology, but he was too busy feeling overwhelming relief that the farm existed to really dwell on his guilt.

As they crossed the field of flowers, it became increasingly clear that a crowd was forming on the edge of the farmland to meet them. There had to be at least twenty people huddled together, their ages all over the spectrum. One man near the back even held an infant, though the people nearest him kept trying to push him away for some reason. At the front stood a couple, their hands clasped together. The man looked to be in his thirties, his dark skin weathered but smoothed over ropy muscles, which were visible under the dirty and beaten t-shirt he wore. His eyes swept over their group as they approached, and his posture remained guarded and protective as a hush fell over the community behind him. His partner appeared to be around the same age, but Lysander got the distinct impression that she could rip his head from his shoulders barehanded. She could have been cast from granite from how little she gave away.

“Hey there, folks. What brings you out our way?” the man asked, raising his voice to be heard. His tone was both cautious and welcoming. Lexi waved Lysander forward, but he had forgotten how to speak suddenly, all the words he had been prepping on the long walk over fleeing his mind.

“Dude,” Ramon muttered under his breath insistently.

Seeing Lysander’s hesitation, Lexi blurted out, “We’re here to make a deal,” because she only knew how to communicate in deals.

The words seemed to surprise the man, and the crowd behind him shifted around as they whispered to each other. The woman shot a look over her shoulder at all of them that effectively shushed them once more. “What kinda deal we talking?” the man responded.

As much as Lysander would have loved to answer, a drone of white noise buzzed through his brain making it impossible to do so.

“You’re all useless,” Noah began, his voice pitched just for them before continuing at a normal volume, “We want to talk about setting up a potential trade route. Any chance we could chat somewhere more comfortable?”

A look passed between the couple. “Possibly,” the man started, “But first we wanna know what’s going on with that bubble of yours.”

“That? It’s her Shifted ability. It’s just for protection,” Noah answered, jerking his thumb at Tessa.

“We won’t hurt any of you if you don’t hurt us. You can let it down,” the man insisted, understandably distrusting the show of magic.

Sighing, Noah ran a hand through his hair, “As much as we want to, we can’t. If we could talk privately, I could explain more.”

Another look between the couple. “Fine, fine. We can get some privacy.” Rather than leading them further in, however, the man simply shooed away the rest of the onlookers, who shuffled off reluctantly. Lysander could see them returning to whatever work they had been doing before the excitement began, though most of them were clearly only going through the motions. “Unfortunately, no one gets in until we trust y’all a little better. Hope you understand.”

With a shrug, Noah replied, “Fair’s fair.”

“Now explain what it is you’re hoping to find out here.”