“Wooooooo!” Axal yelled with delight as the magic-propelled carriage sped along the ground.

'Mithandra was rich after all,' Kynos thought. Her doting parents spared no expense on her first birthday with friends to celebrate. Charlotte was invited, but declined due to work. She also stopped Roland from tagging along by forcefully thrusting a portion of her work on him.

His teary eyes followed the carriage carrying his prized student to beyond the horizon.

Due to the speed of the carriage that used a wind mage instead of horses, as well as one of the well maintained and protected highways leading from Incanta, they reached the nearest harbor in just three days. The wind mage powering the carriage was swapped out twice, and Kynos could only imagine what that kind of service would cost.

He still remembered the bumpy, uncomfortable ride from before, when Lucy had driven a horse-drawn wagon. Kynos hadn't left the school grounds though, so he was unaware of how people got around.

Along the way, they had eaten a packed lunch for the first day, then dinner at an inn. Before they left, they would get another packed lunch for the road. It was an uneventful journey during which Mithandra taught the two of them advanced math. Kynos had moved beyond simple decimals and fractions, and he was beginning long division. Axal's mental capacity was much more similar to that of an eight year old, and being constantly stared at by a drooling Mithandra made him uncomfortable. He mainly stayed outside on the exposed back portion of the carriage where he could feel the wind and watch the scenery.

“Well, I'm glad I took the time to make this thing, the shaking from that horse drawn carriage was ridiculous,” Mithandra mused, “a couple leagues and my ass felt like it would fall off.”

“Mith, is a league long?” Kynos wondered.

“Oh, well, yes, sort of. I'm used to using it because I came from the islands, but it's roughly three and a half miles? Something like five kilometers?”

“What's a mile and a kilometer?” “Um, do you know any length to measure by?” “I know what a foot is.” Kynos motioned a distance with his hands.

Axal, who had come back inside for some water excited chimed in.

“That's not right.” Axal grabbed Kynos and moved his hands closer together. “That's a foot, and if you do this, it's a yard.” He moved the hands out significantly further this time.

Mithandra was breathing a bit heavily while watch two boys hold hands, but snapped back and pitched in, unwilling to yield in a battle of knowledge.

“That's right, a kilometer is a little more than a thousand yards, and a mile is about 1.6 kilometers.”

Axal nodded in agreement.

“How do you know any of this, Axal?” Kynos asked with tilted head.

“We have to measure distance on dad's farms, since there are so many and they're so big,” the older boy answered, full of pride.

As Kynos was struggling to grasp the concept of distance measurement, Axal opened the back door again. Mithandra immediately perked up.

“I can smell the ocean, look.” She pointed at an angle out of the window.

Kynos saw the ocean about ten seconds before an excited Axal grabbed his arm to pull him outside for his 'first' glimpse of the ocean.

It was tough being popular.