Of Snow and Light: Book One: Elemental

By Lauren Maier

Immortality wasn't anything unusual, not since the skrita took control of the world during the Switch. Unfortunately, immortality wasn't unfamiliar to Luka either, despite his (somewhat dubious) status as human. For him, it was a curse, one given to him by the same monster that murdered his family and left him floundering and lost.

More than two hundred years later, Luka meets Kricket, the apparently not-so-mythical elemental of ice and wind. Even more unlikely, she seems to have answers to questions he'd long since stopped asking.

Kricket introduces him to a potentially world-ending war that he hadn't even known was happening, reveals that his family's murderer is a part of it, and then gives him the opportunity to do something about it.

Luka joins the fight.

His fellow soldiers are about as soldier-y as he is. There's Ryker, a bubbly human with abhorrent nick-naming abilities. Kōan, a crow shifter that is a little too willing to use her sword. Atlas, a cat demon who writes textbooks for fun, and finally their healer, Tsuna, the woman who graciously welcomed him into her home and only threatened bodily harm occasionally.

Joining a war was always going to change things, that was the point, but he never could have imagined exactly where it would lead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350939385

Lauren Maier

Lauren Maier can usually be found reading or jumping from one art form to another be it photography, painting, knitting, or writing. "Of Snow and Light" has been a labor of love for more than ten years, starting as a high school-era idea and snowballing into the novel it is today. Lauren was born in a small town in Wisconsin. She has since lived in many corners of the country and the globe and currently resides in Washington with her dog, Cricket.

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Of Snow and Light

Book One: Elemental

Copyright © [2023] by [Lauren Maier]

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact [[e-mail]].

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious.

No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings,

and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by [Lauren Maier]

1st edition [2023]

ISBN 979-8-35093-937-8

ISBN eBook 979-8-35093-938-5

Contents

Prologue

1. Of Legends and Fairy Tales

2. Hell is a Dinner Party with Strangers

3. The Quiet War

4. Torture and Training Are Not Mutually-Exclusive

5. Live and Learn

6. Guilt, Rest, and Recovery

7. Ruthless Caretaking and Unnoticed Roots

8. There’s Nothing Like Christmas at a Bounty Hunter’s Bar

9. Lessons Learned and Unlearned

10. Routine

11. No Such Thing as a Victimless War

12. Gambles Won and Gambles Lost

13. Paint Me A Picture

14. A Jinx at the Door

15. Over the Crux

16. The Kids

17. To a Place Unknown

18. The Jungle Is no Place for Sane People

19. A Death in the Family

20. The Beginning of the End

21. The Hunting Party

22. Revelations and Reservations

23. No Place to Die

24. Seeing Red

25. Hurry Up and Wait

26. Reap

27. An Impossible Surprise

28. Carpe Diem

29. Turning Tables

30. The Unwanted Truth

31. Snow

Of Snow and Light

Prologue

A wolf was watching him.

The familiar tug of congealing blood was what woke him. That and the thought that he’d have to buy another new shirt put him in a bad mood, but it was the sight of the wolf that struck even his concussed brain as odd, forcing him to backtrack.

It was definitely a human who had stabbed him, not a shifter. Besides, he only knew one wolf, and the one in front of him was far too weird to be him. Its silky black fur shimmered in the filtered light as the animal stared at him with mismatched eyes. They were both blue but on opposite ends of the spectrum. The left one was glacier pale, and the right one was deep and dark like an arctic sea.

If any part of his mind considered the animal real, that notion dissolved when he noticed the enchanting blue crystal hanging on a worn cord around its neck, almost glowing against the creature’s dark fur. Wolves didn’t wear jewelry.

A wave of fatigue washed out the pain, and he closed his eyes to shut out the wolf’s sharp, grinning teeth. He hoped the animal was only a figment of his addled mind because if it wasn’t, he would make for an easy meal. Not even he could come back from being eaten—at least as far as he knew.

Sometime later he regained awareness and found himself in the same wooded clearing in which he had collapsed, the wolf no longer in sight. Whether the wolf had been real or imaginary, its absence was oddly disappointing. Swallowing the irrational sentiment, he struggled to sit up, but the throbbing pain in his head and the stinging pain in his side vetoed that idea, and he allowed himself to fall back into blissful senselessness.

The next time he opened his eyes, an unfamiliar wooden ceiling sheltered him instead. He fiddled with his sister’s bracelet, an unconscious movement brought on by repetition. After finding his most prized possession still in its rightful place, he took in the small room. Despite being unfamiliar, it had a certain warmth to it, like a well-loved home. The timeworn bed he occupied cradled him like a baby.

Sitting up and moving aside the thick comforter, he found that the various wounds on his body had been cleaned and bandaged, and the fog that clouded his mind was gone, taking with it the pain that had haunted him since the attack. He turned to get out of bed when the door opened, revealing a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties.

"Don’t you dare even think about getting up, blondie, she said as she entered the room. I didn’t spend hours healing your wounds just for you to go and open them up again! Don’t think I won’t leave you to bleed out if you do."

Her golden eyes betrayed that she was some species of skrita, probably a healer, a good one too if the absence of his pain was any indicator.

Well? How about a ‘thanks,’ blondie? I used a lot of chiya mending that body of yours. You were pretty torn up, not to mention that nasty concussion. You’re either terribly unlucky, or whoever attacked you really had it out for you. The healer’s voice was full of amusement. After a moment of silence, she sighed, realizing she wouldn’t get a response out of him.

Fine. Then can I at least know the name of the person I saved out of the goodness of my heart?

His only response was a wary silence.

She sighed again. My name is Tsuna. I’m a healer. I’m around seven hundred and twenty years old, and I’ve lived here in Quinby for about eighty years.

He cocked an eyebrow.

An eye for an eye, right? she said. I told you about myself, so the least you can do is give me your name. Tsuna grinned and waited like she had all the time in the world.

He sighed, and then he spoke.

Luka.

Chapter One

Of Legends and Fairy Tales

Tsuna, as it turned out, was also a talker. Luka was not, but this did not deter her in the slightest.

She was also the scariest healer he’d ever met. During the first two days, Tsuna had threatened, with a guileless smile on her face, to reopen all of his wounds and add some fresh ones for good measure if he so much as thought about getting out of bed for any reason other than to use the bathroom or practice carefully monitored physical therapy. Healers weren’t supposed to be like that, but he knew how to pick his battles.

Even after his injuries had healed enough for him to leave, she kept him house-bound, quoting medical jargon that he had no hope of understanding, let alone refuting.

By the end of the first week, he must have developed some twisted form of prisoner-derived attachment because he had started to enjoy Tsuna’s company and didn’t even daydream about storming out more than once or twice each day.

None of that stopped his encroaching restlessness, though. Fortunately, Tsuna approached him before it could devolve into something more deleterious than fidgeting.

Alright, blondie, it’s your lucky day, Tsuna said as she entered the room. I need a restock from town, and I don’t feel like going, so you get to be my errand boy.

No? Luka didn’t mean it to sound like a question, but then again, he didn’t mean to say it at all.

Yes, Tsuna shot back. It’s your fault I’m running low in the first place. Consider it your payment.

Healers are compensated by their towns, he replied. He wasn’t opposed to helping her, but he took offense to the title errand boy and felt like he owed it to his dignity to fight back at least a little.

The town that you are not part of and, therefore, don’t contribute to, she replied. You’re a stray, so you have to earn your worth.

Hurtful but true.

You should be happy I’m letting you out at all, she added as if she had any real authority beyond intimidation to keep him inside. Then she handed him a slip of paper. Head downtown, and find a shop called Ol’ Milly’s—you can’t miss it—and pick up everything on that list. Tell Milly it’s for me, and you won’t be charged.

What’s to stop me from just leaving? Luka asked, more out of curiosity than intent.

Tsuna laughed a deep belly laugh and shook her head, but she didn’t answer the question, which was about what he expected.

He let out a controlled breath. How do I get to town?

Turn left at the end of the drive. You’re an adult; you can figure the rest out from there. She didn’t wait for any more questions, leaving him alone.

Luka decided to ignore Tsuna’s snarky comment and stood up before she could rescind the offer. His injured ribs twinged in protest as he donned his jacket. Then, without further ado, he slipped out of the house.

He turned left as instructed and soon found himself in the middle of a bustling, picturesque town. Nestled in a lush forest and framed by the towering mountains of western Canada, Luka had to admit that Quinby was rather beautiful, but he’d seen plenty of beautiful places. What gave him pause were the people.

Demons, healers, humans, and shapeshifters alike were mingling along the streets. Many of them waved and greeted him as he passed, welcoming him to the town with easy smiles. It seemed they didn’t get many visitors, which was not unusual, but the way they welcomed him so freely certainly was. And Luka couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen humans and skrita living so close together.

Luka found his way to Ol’ Milly’s, a small well-kept shop in the middle of town. A large window out front displayed many odd-looking novelties and knick-knacks. A soft, welcoming chime sounded as he entered the store.

Milly is out to lunch and errands, an oddly accented voice droned. She should be back soon enough. You can wait for her here or come back later. Either way, she forgot to give me the keys to the cash register, so I can’t help you.

Turning toward the voice, Luka saw what he assumed to be a demon girl who, though young looking, was likely much older than even his two hundred odd years. He could never tell with unfamiliar skrita. Pointed black ears topped her head, and she had a matching shaggy, dog-like tail at her rear. Slumped against the counter with her head pillowed in her arms and eyes closed, her entire posture screamed boredom.

She was also scarred, immensely so. Jagged and clean, deep and shallow, thick and thin, the variety and number of them was staggering and offered the only visible hint of her actual age.

I’ll stay, he replied. I have nothing better to do. He walked farther into the store. Checking Tsuna’s list, he started searching for medical supplies, thinking it would take him a while to find everything.

You’re human, aren’t you? the girl called out. Luka turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved.

Yeah, he replied, already weary of the coming conversation.

You have interesting eyes. For a human.

That’s what they say. He sighed and closed those eyes. Over two hundred years, he’d managed to come up with a new bullshit excuse each time someone asked. Most of them sounded more plausible than the truth anyway.

You were cursed, weren’t you? she asked, curiosity evident in her voice.

His bright purple eyes snapped open to regard the girl. Most people didn’t understand the curse when he explained it to them, and no one had ever guessed correctly before. It wasn’t a common thing, to be cursed. In fact, the ability to cast a curse was almost unheard of. The potential only popped up sporadically in various skrita species throughout time. As far as Luka was aware, there was no rhyme or reason regarding why someone developed the capacity. It had just been his rotten luck to meet one of those uncommon people.

Most beings probably wouldn’t consider his curse to be bad. However, they didn’t understand that for a human, it couldn’t be worse.

Immortality? she asked.

He flinched. He didn‘t know how, but she was correct again.

Humans were the only advanced species with a limited lifespan, the length determined by something as simple as the passage of time. Skrita were designed for an indefinite life, all the way down to the chemical makeup of their brains and bodies. They could handle the things that a perpetual life brought. Humans could not. And yet there he was, just past his two hundred and fifty-fifth year, his body held intact by the unwanted curse and his mind held together with some haphazardly placed staples and glue.

Wow, that’s a rough one for a human. How do you do it?

A surge of anger burned through his surprise. He wasn’t particularly shy about his curse, but he didn’t like her tone. That’s none of your business, he snapped. Luka turned to leave; Tsuna’s supplies be damned.

You’re right. I’m sorry, she said. You just have to admit it’s a curious situation. I meant no offense.

His anger had always been a geyser, quick to erupt but just as quick to wane. He sagged and took a deep breath through his nose. He wasn’t in the business of making friends, but he wasn’t dumb enough to purposefully make enemies either.

I just have to keep busy. It doesn’t do anyone any good to dwell on things that can’t be changed, he replied, eyeing her without turning around. When people couldn’t be turned away with rudeness, bluntness usually did the trick.

She opened her pale blue eye and quirked an eyebrow. That’s pretty smart. It must have been hell for you to sit around all week, doing nothing. Her eyes closed as she smiled impishly.

Yeah, it was, he replied. Wait, how did you know I was—

The girl opened both eyes, the left one misty blue and the right one an icy cobalt.

You, he exclaimed, bewildered.

Hi again. She grinned up at him, her sharp white teeth fully exposed.

***

He blinked twice, disoriented. He took in her appearance in more detail now that he knew she was the not-hallucination. Even though she probably wasn’t much shorter than him, she was lean, all long slender limbs and narrow body. Her features were broad but sharp, spattered with freckles that were barely visible against her deeply tanned skin. The long, dark hair that fell raggedly to her ribs was the same color as the fur on her tail and ears.

Even though her coloring was all wrong, and the girl had none of the physical softness typical of youth, his traitorous mind always saw his sister in people her general age and size. And as soon as his terribly traitorous mind made the connection, he couldn’t stop it from forming her image, forever frozen at seventeen.

Her hair had been a pale golden color, slightly lighter than his own. They had shared their eyes with their mother, whose whiskey-colored gaze had ensnared their father’s heart the day they met. But now none of them had them; his mother and sister dead and gone and his own permanently dyed an unnatural pigment. It was a detail Luka had always been irrationally grieved about.

Luka reined in his wayward memories before they could take over his thoughts and he forced aside the image of his dead sister when he looked back at the girl. He struggled for a topic that wouldn’t bring up any more of his mangled past.

You’re the one who took me to Tsuna.

Well, no. I’m the one who found you, but then I got somebody else to take you to Tsuna. Do I look like I could lift you? I mean, you are kinda scrawny, and I’m stronger than I look, but it was still a five-k walk. The girl sniggered.

You found me . . . Wait a minute, what are you? Luka blurted before he could stop himself. He seemed to have lost the ability to control what came out of his mouth ever since he entered that strange little town. There was probably something in the air causing it.

Fortunately, the girl didn’t seem offended in the least. She smirked in a manner that told Luka she knew what had sparked his question but was choosing to act obtuse. What do you mean?

Luka felt his eye twitch, and he entertained the idea of leaving then and there, reluctant to get pulled into her game, but his curiosity won out. It’s just . . . if you really are that wolf from the forest, you can’t be a demon, and last time I checked, shifters don’t have any animalistic features in their standard forms.

Look who paid attention in Skrita Anatomy 101! She clapped her hands in mock glee, and Luka felt himself scowl. Whatever her species, she was a dick. You’re correct on both accounts. I’m neither a demon nor a shifter, and I’m obviously not a healer, just in case you had any doubts.

Which makes you what, exactly? Luka almost didn’t want to ask, suspecting it would only lead to a headache. She was probably just messing with him.

She rolled her eyes before replying. Where’s the fun for either of us if I just tell you? I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I’ll even give you a hint. Don’t dismiss something simply because you’ve never seen it with your own two eyes.

Luka’s brow scrunched. What the hell is that supposed to mean? But even before he could finish the thought, an idea struck him, and his eyes widened. She can’t be . . .

You expect me to believe you’re an elemental, do you? he asked. No way.

She looked affronted. Well, that’s rude. Is it really so hard to believe?

Yes.

Why?

Because they’re not real. Even skrita think elementals are just myths, made up to spook humans during the Switch.

Well, then it’s a fortunate thing that I exist whether or not people believe in me. She wiped her forehead dramatically.

Luka didn’t know what to say, so he settled for a blank stare.

She smiled. Oh, come on, laughing wouldn’t kill ya. My name’s Kricket, by the way, an elemental born of ice and wind.

You’re serious?

She nodded.

How about a demonstration? he asked, unwilling to allow himself such a foolish belief without any proof, even if he already knew it was too late.

Please, I’m hardly a party trick. You’ll have to stick around long enough to witness my abilities organically.

Like a fool, for some reason he was inclined to believe her despite the ridiculous odds against it.

He hadn’t put much thought into what an elemental would look like because he’d never believed they existed. All the stories he’d ever heard painted elementals as all-powerful creatures capable of rewriting the physical world. One for each of the nine elements, they were monstrous and wild, the personified elements in corporeal form, the opposite of the seemingly ordinary girl in front of him who claimed to belong to two elements.

Two elements? he asked, more for something to say than to get any information.

Uh-huh.

I thought elementals were only supposed to have one.

Maybe I don’t play by the rules.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was a combination of the supposedly mythical creature in front of him, the utopian-like town, and the healer who threatened more bodily harm than anyone he’d ever met that made him question whether or not he wasn’t still unconscious in the woods. His life would make a lot more sense if that were true.

Luka, he said, forgoing the traditional courtesy of introducing his species alongside his name, not to be curt but because he didn’t know what to call himself anymore.

That train of thought was always enough to revive unwanted thoughts and memories. This time he didn’t even have a chance at preventing them from consuming him.

Her name was—had been—Annie, though she went through a phase when she was eleven where she only let people call her Aña, and Luka never let her forget it. They hadn’t even been two years apart, and they were close. They did everything together. They were best friends.

And then that thing came.

They’d just returned from school. Annie had rushed inside ahead of him, propelled by his teasing threats to eat the last of the brownies. Luka followed at a leisurely pace, taking his time to grab his and Annie’s backpacks from the rear seat of his car. He remembered pausing on the walkway to kick a few sticks into the grass. He made it to the front porch before he heard the scream.

Out of every gruesome, vivid detail of that afternoon, it was her scream that he would never forget. It had echoed in his head nearly every night since.

His nightmare played out like reality, the same every time. Luka would open the door and stand frozen at the sight. His parents would be on the couch, seated together as they would be any other night if not for the identical cuts in their necks.

His gaze would sweep across the room before locking on a sight even more incomprehensible than the first. His sister. His kind, sarcastic, lovable little sister sliding down the wall, an impossible amount of dark blood marking her path. Her normally bright, lively eyes had turned dull in death.

Both in the dream and in real life, Luka could only watch the blade that had taken his sister’s life slide out of her broken body. His eyes would travel up the sword and land on a hooded figure dressed in black.

Even in the nightmare, Luka could never follow what happened next. Everything seemed to happen at once in a frantic blur. The figure would face him, and he’d suddenly be pinned to the doorframe, a thin, cold hand at his throat and the creature’s face a few centimeters in front of his. The foul breath that leaked from the hooded being’s mouth had stained his senses for years while its rotten teeth reinforced the grotesque image.

It would lean in close to his ear and whisper in a gravelly voice. Where is it?

Luka’s brain, too busy trying to take in the scene in front of him, hadn’t been able to process the question, let alone answer it.

The cloaked figure tightened its grip on his throat and repeated the words with a roar. "Where is it?"

The last thing Luka remembered before a bright purple flash and crippling pain enveloped him were burning crimson eyes glaring at him from beneath the hood.

He snapped back to reality with a flinch and blinked rapidly, rehydrating his dry eyes. His body tended to forget to blink when he had an episode.

Welcome back, Kricket said, her brow furrowed in concern. You okay?

Yeah, sorry, Luka mumbled, his fingers playing with the beads of his bracelet. It wasn’t the first time he’d experienced an episode in public, though it had been at least a decade since one had been so vivid outside of his dreams.

You know, Kricket said, all traces of her former mischief gone, memories, both good and bad, make us who we are, but they can cause us pain unless we accept them. The easiest way I’ve found to accept them is to acknowledge them out loud, preferably with an audience. They’ll never go away, but by sharing them, the pain they bring will ebb.

Luka couldn’t decide whether he should be surprised by her acute intuition or offended by it. He had shared his past before, and it had always been a mistake. No one knew how to respond to other people’s trauma. They always seemed to say the wrong thing. Perhaps it was the nature of sentient beings to try to make poetry out of tragedy, but the fact of the matter remained: tragedy was not beautiful, no matter how hard people tried to commit it to memory as such.

He had nothing to gain from his many losses. Sure, he hadn’t confided in anyone about the incident in over a century, but it wasn’t because of some misguided understanding of how emotions worked; it was a conscious decision on his part. He didn’t want to share the memories because they were his to bear. Besides, he’d made it through the past two centuries with the majority of his sanity intact, all without anyone else’s help.

Was she actually expecting him to spill a lifetime’s worth of suppressed memories and self-hatred to a stranger? Not gonna happen, he thought.

Kricket, I’m back! a singsong voice said, saving him from having to reply.

Like the flip of a switch, the elemental’s unnerving gaze moved into a playful eye roll, and her attention turned toward the voice. You forgot to give me the key to the register, you old bat!

A woman, clearly a healer, walked into sight. She was short and soft with a friendly but no-nonsense face. Her head of frizzy brown hair was halfway to gray, and her muddy golden eyes sparkled with youthful mischief. Wound around her shoulders was a small red dragon, a favored pet among skrita for their similarly lengthy lifespans.

Don’t call me that, brat. Don’t forget who employs you! the woman shouted back without missing a beat.

"No one does! I don’t work for you, Milly. I walked in this morning to get some paint, and you threw your house keys at me, then proceeded to run out telling me to watch the shop for an hour. May I remind you that you’ve been gone for nearly three hours? Oh yeah, and I don’t work for you! You’re lucky I didn’t leave or give anything away, Kricket said in a disgruntled tone. I’m not paying for the paint, by the way."

Whatever. Milly dismissed her with a wave of her hand as her sharp eyes turned toward Luka. He gulped.

You must be the young man Tsuna is looking after! Luka, right? She told me all about you yesterday. I had forgotten she mentioned that you might be coming by my shop sometime this week.

Luka had no idea what to do with such an exuberant person, let alone one who displayed that exuberance for no apparent reason.

Anyway, it’s a pleasure to meet you, young man! I’m Milly, a healer and the owner of this lovely little establishment. And this little one here is Poppy. Say hello, Poppy.

Poppy licked her eye and then sneezed. Charming.

Luka, he volunteered out of courtesy, casting a wary eye at the small dragon. His neighbor had owned one when he was a kid, and it had set his bike on fire. He wasn’t overly fond of the scaly creatures.

Kricket! Milly shouted, rounding on the elemental. Why haven’t you rung up his order?

Because, you old, loony bat, you didn’t leave the keys for the register before you left, and I don’t work for you!

Well, you didn’t ask for them! Milly replied..

Kricket rolled her mismatched eyes again. If Luka had to guess, he would bet she was a practiced pro at that. I would think it’s common sense to leave behind the keys, you know, the one thing I would actually need to run the store while you’re gone. You wouldn’t have to bamboozle me into running the store if you would just hire an employee already, ya cheap old woman.

Don’t sass me, Milly warned. I’ll fire you.

Milly ignored the elemental’s aggravated mumbles as she moved behind the counter and deposited the dragon into Kricket’s arms before shooing them toward the back.

Make sure she has water! Milly called out as she began ringing up Luka’s items, making cheerful small talk throughout.

It took almost everything he had to keep from hightailing it out of the weird dreamlike world of Quinby right then and there. People were not that nice in real life.

Luka was halfway out the door when he was stopped by a gentle tug on his wrist.

If you ever feel the need to talk, I’m happy to listen, Kricket said, slipping a piece of paper into his free hand. Despite the evidence Luka had been presented with in the past hour, he still found himself surprised when she dropped down to four legs, her black fur gleaming as she took off down the road, dodging passing citizens.

A glance at the paper revealed an address and a crudely drawn map. He crumpled it in his hand. Despite his confidence that he would never take her up on the offer, Luka still found himself pocketing the note.

Chapter Two

Hell is a Dinner Party

with Strangers

As Luka made his way back to Tsuna’s house, he marveled at how strange the people of that tiny idyllic town were. It wasn’t that the rest of the world was hostile exactly. It was just . . . tense for humans. It had been that way ever since the Switch when the human and skrita societies were forced together.

Previously content to leave the spotlight to the humans, skrita had stayed hidden for the most part, but by the end of the twenty-third century, humans had devastated the environment and waged enough bloodshed among each other to warrant skrita intervention. Though the war was only such in name, it resulted in a shift of power and left a rift between the species that persisted even four hundred years later.

Skrita didn’t trust the humans’ unpredictable nature, and humans weren’t used to not topping the food chain. The mistrust led to petty acts of violence and crime that normally left large populations rather vigilant. Yet Quinby seemed to be unaware of that particular cultural norm. Members of all the species—even elementals, which were apparently real—interacted freely among one another without a hint of caution shadowing their movements.

Luka had been traveling to every corner of the globe for more than two hundred years, and not once in all that time had he seen a town as openly integrated and friendly as Quinby seemed to be.

It was giving him a headache.

In another life he might have been saddened by how heavily weighted his skills were toward suspicion of strangers rather than conversations with them, but it was a necessary paranoia.

He had nearly been a prime example of that not even a week ago. He wrongly assumed that the seemingly deserted forest between towns would be safer than the towns themselves, and he had lowered his guard. A simple human bandit looking for quick money and with no quarrels about dirtying his hands to get it took advantage of Luka’s inattention.

The sole reason he wasn’t dead was because of his curse. A few knife wounds, a concussion, and a broken rib weren’t nearly enough to end his forced immortality. If he had been a normal human, he would have bled to death long before Kricket and Tsuna got to him. If not for their generosity, he would probably still be in the forest, his curse painfully stitching his body back together.

He felt someone approaching from behind, and he tensed, forcing himself not to lash out as a small hand grabbed his and tugged it. He looked down to find a young shapeshifter girl staring up at him.

Hey, Mister, you have really pretty eyes, she declared.

Luka was nonplussed. No one had ever called his eyes pretty before; strange and unusual, yes, but never pretty.

Despite the irrational urge to run and hide, he chose to smile and crouch to the girl’s level. He wasn’t great with people, but kids were simpler, no matter the species. Thank you.

The small shifter giggled. You’re welcome! she said, then ran off to join her