She arrived four days later.

Eben is standing guard today, it seems…

Ran thought as he saw the figure of the lean young man appear into view, running full sprint towards the house. He waved at him as Eben ran through the stone entrance, straight towards his father who was finishing his fight.

“Sir Alden, your guest has arrived… I think,”

“How does she look?”

“She’s still a few minutes away, but it’s a woman riding a horse. She has white hair and carries a sword”

Alden, who was still combating Lucius, decided to end the practice by disarming him, a flashy move followed, the wooden sword flew off the elven boy’s hand and into the ground. Lucius dumbfounded and pissed off, picked it up

“I think this might be it, good job, kid,"

“Thank you, sir!” He saluted, turned around, and took off running back to his post. “I’ll tell her to wait for you, sir!”

She’s here, she IS finally here!

Alarms were running on young Ran’s mind, the workers inside his head dropping themselves headfirst from a cliff, others were downright spontaneously combusting all over the place. Pandemonium was running rampant on his young mind.

It was time to meet a legend in the flesh. Someone she knew from some stories, now on the flesh.

Originally the plan was for Alden and Lucius to pick her off at the village entrance where they would then take her to the house to meet the rest of the family… but given just how excited Ran was Alden decided to take him too, Lan appeared out of nowhere and joined them without saying anything. Her usual expression at the ready.

“Where are we going?” She asked.

“Father’s friend, the wolfkin just got here!”

“That so?” She didn’t say anything else.

It’s a straight walk from the house to the entrance of the village. They strolled through the dirt road covered in the shadow of lined-up Hackberry trees.

As they get closer to the entrance, Ran is able to spot the woman in question, calmly talking with Eb while still on top of the horse

A big woman, not as tall as her father, but probably only half a head shorter, her hair was kept short, at neck length, and was of pure white color.

Like in the books! She has white hair but looks young.

She only looked a bit older than Freesia herself, so Raanan figured out this had to be due to her ancestry.

She had sharp pale-yellow eyes and beautiful factions, a scar on her left cheek that almost reached her eye and another pretty noticeable one on her neck that ran horizontally from the right side as if someone had half decapitated her at one point, none of these scars were able to mar her feminine beauty.

She wore leather clothes like the one’s the adventurers he is used to seeing in town. She gives off an imposing aura, nonetheless not an aggressive one. She commands respect with her mere presence somehow.

Cool! That sword must be it!

Ran was looking at her waist, whereupon a black leather sheet rested a heavily decorated sword with a pommel in the form of a wolf head.

Merrow’s Blood!

He knew the name of the sword thanks to his father’s stories.

Neither of them knew the story behind it since, as his father told him, she often refuses to tell the tale.

but Raanan knows only the coolest of swords have names.

Once they were in earshot distance Alden spoke, strained and nervous as if he waited for something bad to happen, but he still tried to be friendly.

“Yo! How are ya, mutt? Never thought we would see each other again”

The woman known as Joanne of Wald turned around to look at them.

“Hello Alden, indeed, can’t say I’m glad to see you” Her tone stern and her voice cold, a seriously bad expression on her face… she couldn’t hold it for long and her facade broke into a sly grin “But it is a nice change of pace”

She looked at the children and, as if Alden could read her mind, he explained before she could say anything.

“These are my children, the tall pretty boy is Lucius Rowan, the one looking at the birds is my daughter Sofia Lantana, and the short one that looks like me is Edwin Raanan,"

“Hello, I’ll be helping you with work on Alden’s orders,” said Lucius

Lan only responded with a short dry “Hy” and looked somewhere else.

This is my chance!

“Nice to meet you, MS Joanne, I’ve heard a lot about you from father, you can call me Ran like everyone else” Edwin bowed as he did when meeting someone important with Grandfather Amos.

“Same, call me Ann or Jo, whatever’s fine,” she replied

“Your seed must be pretty strong to counteract elven blood. How’s Free?”

“She’s fine, waiting for us at home, well we can talk about it later,”

“Indeed,”

Now with the introductions finished, they all said goodbye to Eben who stayed guarding, though it was unlikely for anything else interesting to happen today.

After returning home, Madi and Gabrielle were waiting at the entrance. Alden introduced them.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Joanne. Alden often tells stories about you. I’m Gabrielle Donn,”

Joanne seemed surprised at hearing about the second wife but didn’t say much about it and was polite.

“I’m Madina the housemaid at your service Ms.” Madi gracefully bowed in her practiced to perfection manner.

“Guess you do have noble blood in you after all,” Anne said to Alden. She also discreetly punched him on the sides and made him tremble in pain.

So cool! She’s even stronger than dad!

Lucius smirked and Edwin’s eyes shone a light at her.

Guess there’s a new alpha on the house, Alden pondered at seeing his children’s reactions.

Freesia was saying her goodbyes to a patient and closing down the clinic for the day. She turned her head and saw that Joanne had arrived. She ran towards her and hugged her hard, almost making them both lose balance.

“Annie, you’re here!” It wasn’t normal for her to lose her cool composure, everyone but Alden seemed surprised. He knew the two of them were close.

Joanne let out a satisfied happy huff. “Yes, it makes me really happy seeing you are well Free,”

Everyone split-off after that, Lucius went training, Lan disappeared to who knows where Gabrielle went with Maddy to the center of the village to shop for groceries, Alden and Freesia went with Joanne on a tour of the house, the two women chatting happily, Alden looked in silence with a satisfied smile.

Edwin decided it was time to practice his magic before he went for history lessons.

After the incident with the Lehwen Ed told his teacher about the successful magic incantation, both Lan and Taft seemed shocked at the news but rapidly congratulated him.

“It may have been because of the situation under a stressful condition, panic can make you use much more magic than the one you intended to, it’s normal for mages in a battle to use truly unnecessarily strong spells due to this, you were probably able to cast it remotely because by putting all of your magic into it, keep practicing with the bucket of water until you can cast the spell perfectly,"

“When are we going to learn how to cast chantless magic?”

Taft laughed “That’s some really highest-level stuff, keep practicing until you can do it in your sleep and maybe you will be able to drop the incantation maybe once we finish all the elemental training parts I’ll teach you a trick,"

“Yeah!”

When Ran tried to cast the spell again it resulted in the usual. He could create the water ball with the bucket, but couldn’t send it flying like before. It took him four more days of intense practice for him to reliably do it. But in the end.

Edwin Raanan Donn, Magic apprentice, could now cast [Water Ball] in its natural version.

Night had settled over the village of Hillside. As such, the Donn family, like all the other ones in the village, prepared for dinner.

But this night wasn’t like the rest, it was a special occurrence for not only were they celebrating the arrival of their long-awaited guest, but they were also bidding goodbyes to the man of the house, who would in the morning, set out on a journey that would take several months to complete.

The dining area where everyone but Madina stood was a 6 by 7 meters room with a stylish, noble-looking, heavily decorated ceiling lamp made of iron that was holding 7 candles and illuminated the room, the Donn residence was probably the only house in Hillside that had such a lamp, apart from the Aynor residence of course, since it was grandfather Amos who gifted Alden that lamp in the first place, as one of the several wedding bribes he had bestowed upon them.

The floor is made of big reddish stone tiles that mesh well with the wooden walls.

Maddy was in charge of the food as almost always and stayed in the small next-door kitchen area, accompanied by Gabrielle who insisted on helping her out as part of her “womanly training”, Freesia was still talking with Joanne the two were seated at the dining table discussing their lives up to that point, Alden is taking a bath and Lucius was waiting for his turn after finishing what was to be their last sparring session in a long time.

Lan is, well. Lan is actually nowhere to be seen, but as everyone knows, she is probably plotting something. Whenever she is quiet, a storm is sure to follow. Everybody knows this and is mentally prepared for whatever happens.

Edwin is reading a book he got from his grandfather’s library. Several stories the writer swore were true. Among them, tales like the egg warrior, who was told to be a soldier that defeated a general, using a raw egg to blind and kill his enemy in a last-ditch effort after a fight to the death.

Another one far stranger was that of the “monster plower” who, as one should first think, wasn’t a farmer that killed monsters, but a depraved adventurer that was said to have enjoyed several trysts with quite a few dozens of the world’s most exotic and strange creatures.

It sure wasn’t a bedtime story for children and Ran felt quite disgusted at the thought, even though he didn’t really understand what the man was doing and he neither understood what the author meant with words like plowing, piping, sealing the deal, shagging, humping, screwing, dicking, pounding

But felt it probably wasn’t very good and just skipped to another part of the book that had a better story.

“So, I was close by in a village near a river. I hoped to get here sooner but some things came up and it took me a while to get here,"

“Problems,"

“The usual bandit group scaring away adventurers and shaking up villagers for beast protection money, took care of that, they gifted me the horse”

“Seen you haven’t changed much then; you find your way to trouble,"

“It’s a fucking curse I swear, everywhere I go something always comes up, sometimes is easy, and another’s more complex, always a pain in the ass, I’m sure that as soon as Alden is gone there will be a dragon attack or something or other that’s just my luck,"

“Fortunately, there are no dragons around, I think you will find it pretty calm in here, Al always finds the old pack of wolves or maybe a squid attack, nothing serious, adventurers do come from time to time but they tend to skip town pretty fast,”

“So, it’s a boring place? Never thought you would settle somewhere quiet,”

“I’d say it has its perks. I run the only clinic in town so it can get rather fun,”

“Still have trouble curing colds?”

“Fat chance. Once I had to take care of children, I got good, lots of practice. Lan was a sickly child, but now she plays with bugs and water and dirt all day every day,”

“Come to think of it, where is she?”

“Probably plotting your demise,”

Joanne threw her an inquisitive look as she leaned on the chair.

“Sorry, won’t spoil the fun, you’ll get used to it, call it a failure of parenting if you want but I give up on that one, she won’t quit, I like that about her though, she’s persistent,” Freesia smiled, taunting Anne

“Well, as long as she-”

“Shh," Free cut her before she could say anything “Don’t go telling your weaknesses around in here, she will hear you”

Joanne could have sworn that for a second, less than the blink of an eye, she saw in the corner of her vision a flash of dark blue hair hiding in the entrance hallway. But she wasn’t sure of it.

A while later Maddy and Gabrielle announced it was time for dinner, everyone gathered to set up the table and once everything was ready, the food and wine were put on the table and as soon as everyone had taken a seat Alden stood up.

“Well, as the head of the house, I guess I have to give a speech. So, yeah, I never heard my father when he did those I would rather do something else, so all I can say is that I’m happy to be reunited whit a long-lost friend, even if just for a short while, she’s one of the few people I have enough trust in to leave her in charge of caring for my family in my absence” He looked at his elven wife, she returned the look “Not that they can’t take care of themselves of course” He nervously laughed “I will be leaving tomorrow, and won’t be here for some time, how much is not something I know, but worst case 6 months, in that time Luc will help Joanne with anything she may need while taking over of my job, that’s about it so now please enjoy the dinner”

“That was quite the speech honey, your eloquence always astounds me,” said Freesia jokingly

“I think it was quite good for someone who learned recently how to speak,” chimed in Gabrielle.

“To hell with you, both of you, always ganging up on me,”

The tree of them laughed

Dinner ended with no problems and everyone went to sleep.

But something happened, the sound of splashing water, a scream, and a crash.

Those were the sounds of Edwin’s water bucket falling on Joanne’s head once she tried to enter the guest room, a trap prepared by Lan.

Once she finished drying herself, Anne went to sleep. She felt something crawling on her feet. Upon further inspection of the sheets, it resulted on being a bunch of bugs strategically placed on the end of the bed. That’s when Joanne screamed, the crashing sound was the wood breaking when she struck the bed with her sword.

Lan’s new double trap.

Anne heard the snickering coming from the main bedroom.

That’s Free’s laugh.

“Welcome,” she heard a monotone voice from the bedroom door.