At first she thought it was annoying that everyone came to invade her s.p.a.ce but then, the atmosphere turned into something similar to what she experienced in big tournaments in the past.

Of course, there weren't as many people watching this as there were in the capital and the events weren't as exciting but overall, it still felt the same.

In the capital, there would have been perhaps a joust, a melee, some duels between big names, an archery contest, a magic contest and so on. Here, in comparison, everything was simple. The first event was just a simple endurance race and the many exercises that came next were all of a similar caliber from jumps to sword swinging and more.

None of those should have been interesting at all but the old man Muracier pushed everything he asked of the students to some impossible level. Looking at this, it was no wonder that knights that trained in Highsteel always ranked so high in tournaments, the training was simply insane. If she had tried it herself, she would have made at most two laps of the school before collapsing out of breath but he asked fifty out of the students!

Every ordinary little thing he asked them to do would swell to ridiculous proportions and that was why everyone gathered here. They couldn't resist coming out here under the scorching heat to cheer on the boys they knew or clap and fawn over those who did particularly well.

Since Emp was performing so well, it was natural indeed that her mood improved drastically. He outmatched everyone else by miles in the race alone, everyone else looked like children compared to him so she couldn't help but laugh.

She felt really invested in that tournament-like training, more than for any of the tournament she saw in the capital. There, she would sit on a prominent seat with many high n.o.bles and royalty, witnessing the prowess of renowned knights wanting to impress those around her for glory and money. She always felt bored then, those guys were all impressive and she did enjoy seeing all the action, often talking about it for weeks after she saw it but... She just didn't care about them, she knew no one, she'd have rather stayed indoors with Aglaya and some cakes.

She could understand better now why everyone enjoyed tournaments so much back home, she had a renewed understanding of the atmosphere. Everyone was there not for themselves but for those competing, they hoped to see those they knew succeed and sometimes witnessed a new talented face they'd like to meet. It was the same here, she felt really happy, proud even, whenever Brenia, Nessa or Emp impressed the rest of the school. She'd yell and cheer from the sidelines like the rest, something she had never done back in Thronewoods.

Last time something like that happened she was nervous because she was the center of attention, everything was her fault and everyone was against Emp. This time was much more fun, all she had to do was trust in her friends and watch them defeat everyone. Plus, she soon found herself surrounded by almost all of her group of students, they had good food, fresh juice and fruit wine. There was no way she wouldn't enjoy herself even if she felt her hair become heavier and heavier as time went on because of the heat and sweat.

Her best friend Aglaya was sat on her right and seemed to enjoy the fact that she had fun more than the challenging training itself. They knew each other for so long, she must have been amused by her unusual reaction to this sort of thing. At least she should give some encouragement to their friends, or maybe she thought that she didn't need to because they were so great. Yes, that must have been it, Mable convinced herself.

Aglaya had laughed too when she did her best to battle the old man and have him train Emp seriously. She always did that whenever Mable put her nose into something she had nothing to do with. It was her that had inspired her this time though, she said Emp would need the help of the old man and she was right.

Even though she distrusted the Muraciers, it was true that they were at the very top of the army and if Mable wanted Emp to succeed and impress her father, he'd need the respect of that old man too. In that case, she needed that old man to truly notice how awesome Emp really was. She understood that he wasn't the best yet but that was exactly why he trained so hard and why he'd benefit from having one of those old monsters train him.

Emp had mentioned that the old man had taken a look at his file in the office of the duke but that wasn't enough to satisfy her, she needed him to see with his eyes. Emp would beat everyone in everything and he'd have no choice but to acknowledge him. He'd even beat that knight girl he brought with him! That would show him!

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Convincing the old man to do this felt like a great victory to her. Aside from that, there wasn't much she could do to help Emp. It wasn't like she could just ask for her father's support or even understand how the knights and warriors got so freakishly strong. All she could usually do was cheer but this time, she had truly helped and it felt great.

She didn't care about what the boys from the other groups thought about her even though Aglaya kept telling her she should. All she wanted was to celebrate her small victory with a dance and roll into the gra.s.s. She didn't do it though because it would have been embarra.s.sing and everyone she knew would have scolded her. She instead burnt her excess energy into making her hair ornament glow and cheering on Emp every time he did something good.

Her schoolmates weren't surprised by her behavior. they had all heard about were that hair ornament came from by now and whispered of its significance between each other. It was obvious for everyone that Mable was all in on Emp and most reacted well and expressed their support which she found amazing. Sure when they first heard of what she had Emp do, they were all shocked still but after a bit of reflection, they mostly concluded that it was bound to happen sooner or later and expressed how impressed they were by the craftsmans.h.i.+p of the gift.

Thanks to that, she could show her support for him as loudly and as vividly as she pleased. Whatever she did, she only got warm smiles, except for Heida and Gervaise of course but they didn't matter.

She'd get on her feet and lean over her garden table with an arm or two raised up high in the air. Because of the heat today, her dress was very light and every time she did that, her cleavage became dangerously exposed so her two servants had to jump in to pull her dress up closer to her neck. They were worried that someone might see something they shouldn't but she couldn't help herself, she was just having too much fun.

That must be why others tended to look down on her. People called her a childish airhead, she knew. Rica told her once that she heard it said a few times. And then, there was this rumor about her leeching off from Aglaya's family, as if such a thing could be true! She felt offended by it, Josseline might be an actual airhead with how clueless she looked most of the time but how come people thought she was one too?

She had complained about it to her friends and was told that it might be because of how she took nothing seriously and just let things drift in front of her without care. They also mentioned her habit of turning any conflict out of proportion and then into an occasion to get some cake. That was totally unfair though, she needed those cakes for her self magic, that and they really were tasty.

In the end, she decided that whoever made fun of her for being happy didn't understand how to enjoy life.

None of this had to do with her being childish or an airhead, she just didn't care, she just felt free, alive. She was enjoying herself here because she had so much more freedom than back home. She didn't understand why the rest didn't feel the same as her.

Staying elegant and refined all the time needed so much hard work, it was so tiring and bothersome. Back home, everyone she knew always hid their feelings in an attempt to look perfect, hiding behind a made up character. She might not be good at that and might not look all that smart but she could feel it when someone was disingenuous. Mable worked on feelings alone and that was something the n.o.bles kept to themselves along with their agendas. She disliked it.

There were so many rules too, She kept being dragged into Blackbull's office under the accusation that she forgot the rules again but that was wrong, she just ignored them. She knew them well enough, she knew them more deeply than she knew her own father. In front of Blackbull, she'd pretend that she didn't know better in order to keep enjoying herself. Sure, there were sometimes things she really didn't know, mostly about courts.h.i.+p or things about more ceremonious occasions but in general, she just pretended and did as she pleased.

Back home, she'd be stared at and shamed if she did anything wrong but here, n.o.body knew who she was! When she first arrived, the duke had proposed this to her and a.s.sured her that she'd enjoy herself much more this way so she had accepted to hide her name. She had not expected it to be so effective! It didn't take long for her to understand that she could breathe on her own.

Usually, she was strictly monitored, her life planned and scheduled for her in advance. She'd get up and make sure she had a pretty face, she was the last girl in the house so she was required to be the absolute cutest at all times. She couldn't do anything by herself and always had to wait for someone else to do things for her. Then she had to be here or there, listen to boring stuff and tolerate all the fake faces parading in front of her and her father. Not only did she not care but she knew that it had nothing to do with her, she wouldn't inherit anything of it, she was just there to be pretty and keep her mouth shut.

Sure, at first, she didn't want to leave home for that faraway school, she wanted to stay and be left alone. She didn't feel like she needed any sort of knowledge and didn't want to be asked to do more boring things still. What was even the point after all? Wasn't it better to gather as much free time as possible and exile herself in her room with Aglaya to play and chat?

Now though, her opinion was the complete reverse, she never wanted the school to end! She wanted to stay here forever. No one to bother her or glare at her if she jumped and danced around, no one to control her like a doll or give her empty smiles. No one knew who she was! She had made many friends and could enjoy herself a much as she wanted. She could just be herself, the cla.s.ses were barely a hindrance at all.

For example, she could grab a pear on the table, cut it in pieces on her own and offer a part to Celtine on her left. The girl thanked her with a voiceless smile and bit down on the fruit at the same time as her. If she had done the same back home, everyone would have panicked. Don't wield the knife on your own, let a servant prepare the food for you, don't offer some to a slave its unsightly, don't move around so much on your chair and so on.

She could wear whatever she felt like instead of all the priceless clothes made to show off and the weighty jewelry. Sure she liked to show off, everyone liked to feel superior she was sure but, doing as she pleased was so much better. If she had a hurricane of words stuck in her throat, she could just let it out and it wouldn't matter at all, if she wanted to go run after a b.u.t.terfly barefoot in the flower garden at the back, she could. Who cared if she put some dirt on her dress after all?

More than that, she liked the people here, she was so glad she came just because of how thankful she was to have met the boys and girls of group C. Most of them became good friends of her, friends she would never have made in the capital. She had never noticed how lonely she was until she met everyone here.

She didn't get along with everyone but they were still there and brought life to everything. It was like she had lived in a painting before but she had now peeked outside of the frame and felt actual reality for the first time.

She wanted to stay in this school with them forever. She felt like Lissani from the story, she had found a magical glade where almost everything felt perfect.

She didn't have to worry about her safety either because Emp was here. Sure, she did get attacked once in her room and it made for a really scary experience but Emp arrived right away to save her. He'd always show up right away she knew, thanks to that precious ring and the fact that he was himself.

He was way more powerful than ordinary guards too. Faster, stronger, he was learning magic too and had some amazing equipment that even what most knights had couldn't compare with. She was not blind though, she knew he wasn't as good as an imperial knight yet and even less a high n.o.ble from an old house. She knew he came from a high n.o.ble house himself but he never showed any techniques inherited from them so either he didn't have any and his house was young or he hid them. Either was possible but hopefully the old man Muracier would fix this.

The Muraciers didn't show their family tricks to everyone but they did collect a fair amount of techniques over their long history and often shared them with younger generations with high potential. They just loved to see martial arts bloom and expend, they wanted to strengthen the whole empire with what they shared.

She disliked and distrusted them for what happened to her mothers and sisters as well as how they got her dad angry but she did appreciate some of the things they did. She loved how they shared their martial knowledge instead of h.o.a.rding them all like other houses would do and she liked their honesty and how they were in the only few people she knew who didn't wear masks in front of other n.o.bles.

She didn't believe they always said the truth however, even though they said they'd do this and that, everything she heard always led her to believe they weren't doing anything. The north wasn't going well, the west was starving, the rivers were unsafe and the great general was nowhere to be seen. What were they even doing at this point? The empire might be better without them. If she was the Empress, she'd appoint Emp as the great general, she was pretty sure he'd do a better job than the current one, that Graube guy or the heir she hadn't met.

She was also pretty sure that Aglaya and mostly everyone else would complain that she only did it because she liked Emp instead of thinking rationally about it but it didn't matter. It's not like she would ever sit on the throne anyway, she was just a painting.

Since she was just a piece of art, might as well waste some more time here in the school, it wouldn't be better used back home. The maximum amount of time one could stay in that school was ten years but of course, there was no way she'd be able to do that. Remaining more than five meant you failed to reach a satisfactory level and had to stay for another cycle. Her family wouldn't allow it and even if they did, her friends would have all left by then. She doubted any of them would even remain the full five years.

Celtine suddenly presented her with a bowl of Berries which she accepted with a "thank you" and a smile. She was just a slave but she was super cute and helpful too. She felt almost as close with her as towards her own two slaves. At first, she wanted to keep her distance with them all because of what she had been taught back home but now she didn't care as much anymore. She had taken example on how Emp treated his two slaves and paid more attention to them all. She quickly found that they became just as good friends as the n.o.bles she met in school.

She was glad she opened herself to her two slaves, Celtine and Harriett too. Celtine was quite a likable girl, even if she had a lot of problems too. Mable was glad that her and Harriett fell into the hands of Emp rather than someone else. One because it was better for them and two because she would have never met them if not for that.

On top of all that, Celtine was really useful in spotting masks right away. Mable had asked herself before if Emp made a point of carrying her on his shoulders just for that. Her theory had been proved wrong as it turned out Emp was just that kind but it was still a great detector for her.

Seeing that scene of a Cursed-blood on the shoulders of a high n.o.ble, anyone would react. Either they genuinely showed their reactions in which case she knew right away who were good and who were bad or, their mask would crack from the absurd scene. No one could resist, it was just that shocking, she could spot it right away. Those she caught in this way she'd never trust, Norval and Josseline were two examples of who she found like that. Dishonest faces, hiding secrets under a respectful smile or in Josseline's case, intentionally empty headed air. She didn't know what they hid and what they wore false faces for but she had decided she wouldn't let her guard down in front of them. She disliked that sort of behavior more than she did those openly disagreeing with her like Gervaise or Heida.

Usually however, she would let Emp and Aglaya determine who was good or bad because they were more logical and methodical than her scatterbrained self. Aglaya was even better than her at spotting those guys in fact but she felt like she had to rely on herself more often. The only difficulty was her disorganized thoughts, she usually glossed over all the details to focus on completely other things.

If anyone looked into her mind, they for sure would think she kept jumping from one subject to another. (1) Maybe they'd think instead that she only ever thought of strawberries and Emp, that would be embarra.s.sing and utterly wrong! She wanted anyone reading her mind to know that she thought of other things sometimes like her father, her brothers, her home, a way to have fun with her friends or that book she had just finished reading.

That book was really good she wanted to add to the attention of the hypothetical mind reader. It was about a death seeker woman who explored a jumble of tunnels and ended up in front of a large treasure room, filled with gold and other precious things all the way up to the ceiling. Then, a scary dragon shows up, upset about her disturbing it. It plans on killing her right away and then going out of the cave to wreck the closest town with a big whooos.h.!.+

The woman doesn't want that to happen, obviously, and after some time manages to bribe the dragon with her most treasured possession. The dragon swears to leave her and the town be and accept the trade only to find out that her most treasured possession is a small human girl.

The dragon feels tricked but he already swore so he has no choice but to take in the girl. Then the story gets really funny as the girl grows with the gigantic lizard as her only caretaker.

Towards the end of the book, the dragon walks up to town with the now grown girl on his back and ask the town's guards for the woman who visited him in the past. The whole town panic which made Mable giggle because she guessed what would happen next already.

The woman comes out and the dragon tells her that she was right, it was truly a priceless treasure she gave him and he decided that the original deal wasn't right. He dumped a whole half of his glittering h.o.a.rd at the side of the woman as payment for the treasure she placed in his care.

Mable liked that story, she had fun reading it and all the nonsense the girl pulled with the huge grumpy dragon. The author must have been inspired by "the debt". Mable wondered if anyone could reason with an actual dragon. Those were far more dangerous than even many unnameables of chaos and super rare too. The last dragon sighting had been reported generations ago, in the time of her great great grandfather.

That woman had, in a way, defeated a dragon, even though she had no great power at all. It was a bit sad because her daughter grew without her but that girl had fun and the dragon took good care of her, on top of that, she saved everyone. That was a sort of eye opener for her. That was what led her to confront the Muracier old man today.

Even though she had no great power, magical, physical or otherwise, she wanted more out of her own life. She had understood the purpose of all these seemingly pointless cla.s.ses from the actions of the woman in the book. If she could harness them, maybe she could make a difference later after she went back home, she could help too! She wanted to!

She would do her best, learn it all and do what she could to support all her friends into their own endeavors. She might not inherit any territory but she didn't intend to just sit down and look pretty. Even if the only tools she had at her disposition were her head, her att.i.tude and her name, she was determined to show her father that she could do things on her own.

She'd start by beating the old dragon Muracier then force her father to let her be with Emp and then she'd help the others one at a time. Then, everyone would praise her and offer her cakes as thanks.

She laughed to herself at the thought, feeling impatient to get the desired result. In all seriousness though, she didn't have any grand dream like Nessa who wanted to take her father's fief or Emp who wanted to be the strongest, she just wanted the fun times to go on forever with her friends.

The rest might call her childish as much as they wanted but really, any and all goals from the most lofty ones to the simplest one could all be boiled down to the same thing. Everyone just wanted happiness, for them and those they knew. It was pointless to set up a long set of complicated objectives if she had already reached the end point. She just needed to maintain it somehow.

Her friends would help her with all the complicated stuff anyway. So this meant that for now, the only thing she had to do was encourage Emp to win against everyone else, hard. She kept her eyes focused on the many challenges the whole time the Muracier tested them and kept cheering with energy.

"I'm sure Emp can jump higher than all of them combined so throw that target higher old man! He's gonna go up like fwoos.h.!.+ you'll see!"

Every time Emp won, everyone got closer to their goals and a fun time that would last forever. Like Lissani, her home was with her friends in the end, she'd use all her limited might to have it go on even if the rest thought she was crazy. Everyone always thought it was a warning and a sad tale but Mable believed the opposite, it was quite a happy story instead.

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Many mysteries and wonders hide at every corner of our woods and often make the children dream of secret lands of wonder. Would it not be nice to escape the laundry and instead discover ancient marvels and fairy lands?

To fulfill this foolish quest for a dreamland free of responsibility, the young will often wander the woods around their homes looking for an escape. More often than not, they find it in cl.u.s.ters of b.u.t.terflies or secret flower gardens made by nature itself. The peace they find lasts for an evening and they return home to their parents and their ch.o.r.es.

One small girl Lissani however once found more than her small hands should have handled. Crossing the woods in a carefree saunter, she happened upon a hollow tree. Tall and ma.s.sive ancient of crumbling bark, animated of thick vivid leaves. The ancestor grew far above his neighbors, dominating the surroundings with its sleeping presence.

Curious, the small Lissani peeked into the wooden body of the ancestor, scanning the darkness for maybe a strange beetle or a scary spider. Her small hand gripped the swelled borders of the hole and she put her head inside. What she found was a glade, stretching for miles inside the tree. Instead of the darkness she had expected, only gra.s.s and flowers could be seen as far as the eye could see, a cloudless sky stretched over it presenting a most perfect day to this magical place.

A mystical land ruled by fairies, even the small intruder could tell, b.u.t.terflies by thousands flew in large flocks around creatures playfully chasing each other around. Tiny elves the size of a palm wearing dragonfly wings, cat sized ones with ears like corkscrews and noses like beaks and a big one tall like her father sprawled in the flowers with a hooked tail holding a cup, tall fluffy ears like a fox and horns like a ram. They wore garments of gra.s.s and petals, or in some cases, none at all, but those free spirited creatures didn't mind the indecency and lived as freely and lightly as the air.

Lissani crawled into the hole, interested in the marvels on the other side. The fairies accepted her presence readily and entertained her with games and countless pretty sights. They let her play along with them and all the small animals and insects populating this secret land.

She played for long and the more she did, the less she felt like doing what her mom asked of her. She pleaded with the lord of the glade who accepted to let her stay for longer, brandis.h.i.+ng his cup with a kind smile.

"Watch yourself, there is no night here, do not lose track of who you are."

The small Lissani did not mind his words and ran back to the field of countless flowers to play and marvel. There was always something to do here, something incredible to see, some friends to meet, it truly was endless pleasure in the hollow tree.

It was a pleasure she did not want to end.

She kept playing and fooling around with the small fairies, squirrels and mice bouncing around the carpets of petals and soft gra.s.s.

She smelled all the fragrant flowers and basked in their dizzying perfume. She drank the flower wine of the fairies with the dragonflies and nibbled on berries with fireflies.

She forgot an end was supposed to happen.

An eternal day of spotless sky and blissful nature. Laughing and singing always, rolling in gra.s.s softer than clouds and running after ever dancing friends of the forest.

Then, she stopped running, she felt tired, she did not find the strength in her to run after the dreams no more.

"It might be time for you to go home then." The lord of the glade said with a saddened voice.

"Every mortal needs to rest in the end."

It was indeed true that her mother and father might start to worry if she played outside for too long. She didn't want to do the laundry but she did feel like sleeping in her warm bed now.

She said goodbye to all her friends and stepped in front of the tall tree again after such a long time. She crawled into the hole the other way around, a wrinkled hand gripped the crackled old bark bordering the path through the hollow tree.

The old shaking hands of Lissani coming back from a lifelong trip in the land of the fairies.

She moved slowly, shambling forward in the unusual darkness. Stars shove through the ceiling of the old forest, feebly lighting her path out of the woods. She knew exactly where she was going, the way home was familiar even after so long. Behind her, a path of hair slowly falling off from her head, drifting to the ground quickly from the weighty years.

Her home appeared after the treeline but its inhabitants were unknown to her. She walked up to a man asking for the whereabouts of her parents. The grown man was confused, he had always lived here and didn't know her parents. He gently invited her to sit down and explain. She obliged his curiosity and told him all about herself, the hollow tree and the fun she had inside.

The fairies had not stolen her life, not robbed her of her youth, they had not made her prisoner of their glade, never detained her, they remained friendly and kind the whole time. The simple truth was that there was no evil involved in her current state but her own carelessness and free-spirited nature. It was willingly that she had spent all this time in the glade, no one was to blame.

The man was horrified none the less. Lissani, a girl not even in her teens stepped into a tree and lost countless years of her life to it.

"Would you like to stay the night?" He asked the bald old woman in sorrowful kindness.

"No I am done staying in places were I don't belong. I am tired now, I am done staying. It's time for me to leave and go home."

Just like that, Lissani left and shambled back into the woods from whence she came.

The next day, the man walked into the woods and followed a trail of fallen hair. The further he went, the more colorful the hairs got, from pure white to grey and slowly turning golden blond.

He walked up to a gigantic tree, thick bark and hollowed out. The first strand of hair came from the tree, as gold as the burning sun.

Slumped against the trunk, peacefully sat an old lady. Inanimate Lissani, a crown of splendid flowers of the rarest kind adorning her head like a rainbow she found overnight. Her body solemnly arranged and a satisfied smile floating on her face.

The man stared for long and left.

He came back with an axe and faced the hollow tree.

"I am sorry ancestors, the forest gives as the forest take. Keeping you here is unsafe for my kids."

He cut down the hollow ancestor and the path to the magical glade, nothing stopped him in his endeavor. The man buried Lissani where the tree stood and planted a new one over her corpse.

Fairies might grieve you but Time is not a G.o.d they understand or even feel. Humans have responsibilities they can't escape, all of us do. We were not meant to live forever in the fairy glade and like the responsibilities imposed upon us by life to insure our well-being and those of our closest family, it is for us alone to watch the time. Do not step in the hollow tree as a form of escapism because some things always end up finding us. The hollow tree made her parents lonely but it was irresponsibility that took Lissani.

--Responsibility, Woes and heroes of our woods.

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(1) In french we say "sauter du coq à l'âne", Jump from the rooster to the donkey, to express the two subjects are worlds apart.