The Weight of Legacy

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Franziska asked, her voice barely above a whisper. The three girls peeked out from behind a particularly unkempt bush in the gardens, from here the place where the estate’s wards met their end was visible—if barely.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Malwine assured her for what had to be the twentieth time.

“I borrowed Brother Kristoffer’s umbrella,” Adelheid—positioned between the other two—said with a faint smile. “Just in case.”

That earned her a pair of glares, each for an entirely different reason.

“When will it happen?” the mortal girl asked.

Malwine sighed. Had any of the staff been paying attention to anything at all, they would have been discovered ages ago.

They’d managed to ‘accidentally’ lock Anna Franziska out of the room. While their teacher and a random staffer whose job for the day would apparently be locksmith tried and failed to open barricaded door, Adelheid would periodically return to the room to give them updates on just how well the girls were doing.

She just conveniently left out the part where they were no longer even in the room.

When Adelheid had started talking to Malwine about the seasons—and expressed some interest in seeing the arrival of the new year—she’d sort of just assumed her little sister meant for it to be just the two of them.

The little tag-along was as noisy as she was shy—somehow—and her inclusion made everything far more difficult than it had to be.

For Malwine and Adelheid to sneak out, it would be effortless. But add a mortal with literally zero Skills into the mix, and all of a sudden, they needed days worth of planning to pull this off.

It didn’t help that Adelheid had been more than a little bit vague when asked just how, exactly, Franziska seemed to already know about Adelheid’s ability to move other people.

“Everyone probably guesses I can do it, anyway,” her little sister had insisted—her words had been equally unconvincing each time she made an attempt.

Ultimately, Malwine didn’t actually care that much. So long as her own secrets remained safe, she didn’t mind if Adelheid told the girl anything else.

Am I a hypocrite? Malwine scowled. Her expression softened a moment later. Nah, I just exercise discretion as needed. Sometimes it’s needed, other times, not so much.

“When will it happen?”

Malwine turned to shoot a glare to the side, only to realize halfway through the motion that it had been a pouting Adelheid who had asked, this time. She could only give her little sister an incredulous look, at that.

Unfortunately for all of them, Malwine’s trusty pebble wasn’t anywhere near as good at timekeeping for her to calculate the exact moment in which the seasons would switch over— and she had told them both as much, before they headed here.

“It should be soon,” Malwine could only hope the vague answer placated them for long enough for it to become accurate.

She’d noticed The Fog was a surprisingly slow time of the year whenever she strayed from the areas people stuck to. The more lived-in rooms, bustling with staff, had a way of selling that illusion of activity when in reality, most seemed to treat it as a vacation of sorts.

She hadn’t entered Veit’s hut again, but she’d called out to him enough times to conclude he wasn’t getting up anytime soon. Whenever she next managed to speak to him, she would demand answers—Malwine could only hope she could convey her concern without, well, outing herself and her snooping.

“There!” Adelheid pointed, the glee in her tone blatant.

Malwine exhaled in relief. There had indeed been little time left in the year, after all.

This time around, she found watching her companions’ reactions to be more interesting than watching The Rain itself arrive.

Adelheid’s expression was more than slightly worrying—the girl looked about as suspiciously thrilled as she had when she ‘borrowed’ those coloring pens.

She’d be looking forward to leaning just how her little sister planned to make her feel inadequate this time around. A twinge of maturity had managed to seep into Malwine’s worldview by now, enough that her knee-jerk reactions of jealousy had been toned down into amusement. Most of the time, anyway.

“The sea is crying?” Franziska, meanwhile, appeared horrified.

Wasn’t that how Bernie described it? Malwine wondered. It had been along while since Bernie first explained the seasons to her. A pang of nostalgia stabbed into her.

5803, here we come.

It hadn’t even been a full three years since she first awoke in this world. It felt simultaneously recent and distant.

So much had happened, yet… this was still barely the start of her life.