“I’ve gotta give it to you, it’s a good stew,” Adrien said after taking a spoonful.

  “Thank you,” Agatha smiled at the old coachman. “There’s more in the cauldron, so you can go for seconds, or we can leave it for the night.”

  “Are you used to cooking for a lot of people?” He asked as he took a look inside the cauldron.

  “I can’t say I am, I’ve only cooked for me and my mother, but during my travel to the academy, I did stay with a caravan for a while and ended up cooking for several families.”

  “It shows,” the man chuckled. “There’s this feeling of just wanting to have food in the belly, but also trying to make it as good as possible.”

  “That’s an inquisitive belly like no other,” the petite girl chuckled herself after directing a look at the man’s stomach.

  “I take pride in it,” he said with a grin. “But we are better off leaving the leftovers for the night. We can heat it up while we are on the move, which reduces the time we are stopped even further. And I think we all three want that.”

  “Hoh!” Fran?ois howled.

  “All four, sorry!” Adrien broke into a fit of laughter.

  Agatha turned her head to face Christie, who was silently eating from her bowl. She had known her for almost a year now, shared a room for nine months, and had been dating her for a week, and sometimes the redhead was still a mystery to her. Out of nowhere, she would have these… fits of aggressiveness where she wasn’t the bunny Agatha was used to, but a… predator. No, that’s not quite right, but she couldn’t put her tongue on the right term.

  The agate-eyed girl smiled at her coyly, and Agatha did her best to hide her blush. I hope it isn’t noticeable with the stew… But that didn’t stop her from looking at her mercurial and playful girlfriend. I wish I knew which is the real you, but truth is, I love them both.

  The dirty-blond girl would also love to tell that to her face, but the actual truth was that she was too shy to do so. Agatha of Malachite wasn’t a brave person. She was irascible and stupid, two things that might get confused with bravery. If she hadn’t had that moronic outburst on that bench with Christie, she shouldn’t have been here at this moment. She would be at the academy, not even feeling a hundredth of her current happiness, if not outright feeling miserable.

  She was such a massive coward that she couldn’t remember telling Christie that she loved her. She had probably done so when she had confessed to her, but there was no instance of that during the whole week. It was always caresses and kisses, but never an ‘I love you’.

  It was hard to say why she didn’t say so. It wasn’t a lie but the empirical truth, but every time she got close to it, her body would lock down.

  Petrify.

  Agatha wanted to say every waking moment to Christie that she loved her. Agatha wanted that every breath she took and then exhaled was but to profess her love, and yet she didn’t do it.

  Since when did I become so… shy? She was too cowardly to call herself a coward, but that term wasn’t wrong either. Every time I’m with her, I can’t stop blushing… I’m such a moron.

  Soon, the carriage started moving again. Between the carriage top and rear compartment and the cart behind, the sheer volume of storage was enough for them to leave the cauldron shimmering with the stew still inside, plus an agate.

  “That’s going to be the best dinner I've had in a while,” Adrien chuckled once Agatha mentioned it. “Control Heat, couldn’t’ve thought of it meself!”

  Whether it was for her backlogged exhaustion or the cooking plus driving, Agatha fell asleep once the carriage had settled at a decent speed as the horses led. She didn’t even wake up when the carriage had stopped to change mounts, only when the two other human members of the convoy decided it was time for dinner.

  “Short stop. The moment we are down with the bowls, we are on the move again,” Adrien said.

  “Got it,” Agatha yawned.

  “Incredible how you got two naps in you today and you are still sleepy.”

  “I’m recovering from almost dying,” the petite girl blurted out, her spoon circling inside the bowl.

  “How come?” The coachman squinted at her.

  “You have not told him?” Agatha turned to face Christie, instantly switching to a more formal tone.

  It was almost instinctual.

  Even though she wasn’t at the academy and didn’t need to speak formally, that was what she felt she had to do. That was what Christie deserved. Not formality out of societal pressure, but sheer admiration. Her sophisticated and towering girlfriend was the only person who deserved her formality.

  “I…” Agatha smiled when she saw Christie switch to bunny mode. How can she be this cute? “I cannot say the occasion arose to talk about it. This is the first day of the trip still, and we have a couple of weeks before us.”

  “Huh,” the seamstress-in-training mused, not understanding, but surprised. “Two weeks only?”

  “If we are lucky with the climate, then yes. Maybe even shorter with the horses, but only by a day or two at most. I’ve severely overestimated the carrying capacity of these ladies.”

  “They are girls?” Agatha squinted. “I couldn’t tell they are so… muscular.”

  “These are a tough breed. Used to be warhorses when Agatecraft wasn’t a thing, now they are just very good beasts of burden. But apparently a carriage and a stoneshell is a bit too much for only two.”

  “You could try letting Fran?ois walk on his own,” Christie suggested.

  “Christie, you ought to know better,” Adrien chuckled. “Strong as a mountain he is, but also slow as one. We would lose sight of him in the hour!”

  “I see…” Her lovable and turtle-fanatic girlfriend uttered mutely, not dejectedly, but deep in thought.

  “What is that beautiful mind of yours concocting?” Agatha whispered in her ear, struggling severely not to pinch it between her teeth to taste that warmth and softness.

  The dirty-blond girl expected to see her leporine and shy girlfriend, yet she was met with a paragon of etiquette and a smug smile. How is she this good at teasing me, yet I’m not? Agatha half-pouted. Well, at least I’ve got a victory here. Leporine, huh? These books are really messing with my head. How do I even know how to apply that word?

  “I am having a vague idea of how to expedite our journey, but it is still brewing,” the redhead said with a meaty smile that only drew Agatha in. You are lucky Adrien is here, or those lips of yours wouldn’t be so smug after I’m done with you, Agatha thought, even if it was a well-established fact that Christie could out-smooch her.

  “That’s good and all,” Adrien interjected, “but what was that about the ‘almost dying’ thing?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot,” Agatha scratched her brow and giggled softly. “During our final exam, Christie and I found ourselves facing a behemoth.”

  “Sure,” the coachman chuckled. Agatha didn’t chuckle back. “Oh, fuck. You’re serious.”

  Christie coughed, choking on her stew. “Hey, are you fine?” The petite girl asked her as she patted her big – and surprisingly robust – back.

  “Yes,” her towering and dorky girlfriend chuckled as she still softly coughed. “I just did not expect him to use that language.”

  “Uhh… Sorry, milady,” Adrien awkwardly apologized, and even blushed, which took a chuckle out of Agatha.

  “No issues here, Adrien. I am not going to hound you like my dearest father, and you cannot say I am a girl any longer.”

  “Ah, that I cannot do. You will always be little Christie in my eyes,” Christie groaned and rolled her eyes, but she seemed to know better than to confront the coachman. Agatha could see it in her eyes, that ‘Even when I am taller than you?’ that the redhead was holding back. “Going back to the issue at hand. Behemoth?”

  “Yep,” Agatha shrugged. “To be fair, it was a spawn.”

  Christie coughed again. “That fractured mountain was a spawn?”

  “I did not tell you?” The seamstress-in-training squinted in perplexity.

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  “No?” Her confused and distressed girlfriend elongated the sound of the ‘o’.

  “Huh,” Agatha smacked her lips. “So that is that.”

  “No, that is in fact, not that,” Christie put the bowl down and crossed her arms. “What do you mean that colossal was a spawn?”

  “I am only repeating what Teacher Dago told me. Apparently, it was a juvenile as behemoths are supposed to be way bigger.”

  “Yes, grown behemoths can get really big,” Adrien added.

  “And how might you know that?” It was Agatha’s turn to squint.

  The coachman shrugged and put his bowl aside. “I’m done here. I’ll put Fran?ois his harness and we’re gone. You should think about how to tell that to your father, though.”

  Agatha maintained her squint. There’s something about him. Something… familiar, but I can’t quite put my tongue on it.

  “Huh,” Christie hummed beside her. “I did not think about it.”

  “About what?”

  “About telling my dearest father about the behemoth.”

  “Thinking about how much you should boast?”

  “Quite the opposite, I am afraid,” the redhead sighed, then chuckled. “Yes, afraid. That is what I am.”

  “Is everything fine, Christie?” Agatha put a hand on top of her soft and thin girlfriend’s, but the girl swatted it away politely as if whispering ‘not here’.

  “I… do not know. My dearest father is protective, Agatha. Very protective. And it scares me to think what he might do if I mention the behemoth encounter.”

  Is it really only that thing that scares you? The dirty-blond girl didn’t voice out her thoughts. She knew better than that. Instead, she smacked her lip and talked softly.

  “What can he do?”

  “I… he is capable of taking me out of the academy…”

  Agatha almost puked right there in the spot. It truly felt as if someone had sucker-punched her in the gut. Struggling this long in the academy only for not being me the one who is out… That made her… furious. Vivid. The azure-eyed girl might not be able to grab the agate-eyed girl’s hands, but that didn’t stop her own from curling up into a fist.

  “I will not allow that to happen,” Agatha said with lithic cadence and weight.

  Christie’s reaction? She chuckled.

  All that rage instantly vaporized from Agatha’s body as that laughter healed her from all her ails. Ah, I love you. Why can’t I say it as easily?

  “Thanks for the support, but I heavily doubt you will be able to do anything if that worst case were to become reality. Alas, just as they say, it is the thought that counts. So thank you for that,” Christie turned her head at the carriage, and the moment she saw that Adrien wasn’t looking, she pecked Agatha in the forehead. “Now we really should get going.” She stood up and took her bowl with her.

  Agatha stayed there, stunned. Petrified. Kisses in Christie’s novels were normally on the cheek, yet the redhead had decided that if a kiss was not to land on Agatha’s lips, then the forehead was the second-best place. It was definitely a statement of sorts, one related to their massive difference in height that only seemed to grow even more distant as time went on, yet the villager found herself not caring. She just loved that Christie kissed her. What did it matter if it was on the forehead or the cheeks? As far as Agatha was concerned, Christie could kiss her anywhere.

  Even though Adrien and Christie had carried their bowls away, they had left the cauldron on the caravanserai, so Agatha summoned her whole agate – it was easier to rejoin it after recalling both fragments separately – and placed it underneath the cauldron. Her migraine had not fully recovered, but at least the cauldron was way lighter than two growing young adults and two massive mountaineering backpacks.

  By the moment she cleaned the caravanserai free of their stuff, Adrien had already readied the mounts and had made her enter the carriage while it was already moving. Which, namely, wasn’t much of an issue as stoneshells moved that slowly.

  “Hey, Adrien,” Agatha pressed her back against the carriage wall that hosted the driver’s seat on the other side.

  “Yes, girl?” The coachman looked at her over his shoulder, through the driver’s window.

  “Do we need to keep guard or something for the night?”

  “No, not really. I won’t sleep much myself, but when I do, you need not to worry. Fran?ois is the best watchman you can ask for.”

  “More like watchturtle,” she chuckled.

  “That’s right,” he chuckled. “The watchturtle here will not sleep as he’s having lengthy naps thanks to the ladies at the back. If something’s wrong, he will alert us. But if you are not satisfied, you could drive through the night.”

  “I… I’ll think about it. Maybe when I’m a bit fresher. My mind and body are still sore from the final exam.”

  “If the sliver of information you’ve told me is true, then y’all deserve it. Tell me when you are up for it.”

  “Will do.”

  Agatha closed the driver’s window, and there they stood, two girls – two girlfriends – in the same compartment barely a leg away. The seamstress-in-training couldn’t deny she was excited. Adrien was a thin wall away, but this was the closest they had ever slept together, as in the last week, they had been sleeping on their beds. It just felt right to sleep separately at the moment; otherwise, it would be too greedy.

  All of Christie’s romantic knowledge came from novels, but Agatha knew better. She had had word of mouth. Unadulterated words at that. Perhaps kids from a village weren’t the foremost experts on romance, but they all knew what it meant for a couple to sleep together. It didn’t help that it was normally seen poorly for a woman to sleep outside of marriage, so the first time sharing a bed was expected to be… How unfair life is, huh? Agatha’s mind went elsewhere as to stop her cheeks from losing any more color. How’s it that when a boy lies with a woman outside of marriage they are considered ‘successful’ or ‘playful’, but when a girl does it, they get stoned? Agatha knew how much getting stoned hurt. Perhaps not for that exact reason, but she knew how cruel kids were, and that made her wonder if adults were even worse.

  She stood there, on the other carriage bench, shivering. Which was stupid as summer had already started and the nights were very mild here.

  “Are you alright, Agatha?” Christie asked her with a hint of worry. She hadn’t changed into night clothing, instead choosing to remain in her travel dress – if any dress could be even considered travel-worthy – with a thin blanket atop her and a pillow to the side.

  Has she noticed? The dirty-blond girl looked at her drowsy and innocent girlfriend with impassiveness.

  “Yes,” she chuckled, throwing her worries away like a performer. Or better yet, like her agate that she was rubbing. Depths, that’s why she’s worried. I should stop doing that. “I guess I am a bit nervous, in a way, this is the first time we sleep together.”

  “I guess it is,” the redhead chuckled back. “Though I would have preferred it if it were with less clothing.”

  This time Agatha didn’t need to perform as her cheeks became as red as her sultry and teasing girlfriend.

  “Y-yes,” Agatha whispered as she lay on the bench and turned her head away from Christie and into the wall. She had unknowingly given her the best excuse to avoid her. “Uh… good n-night.”

  “Good night~” Christie uttered with a honeyed voice that made Agatha melt and her legs kick around reflexively.

  Perhaps she didn’t want to face her attractive and sweet girlfriend, but the girl had raised an important point. Agatha would have preferred that they shared a bed in a different way. Not that this could be considered sharing a bed as they slept in opposite benches.

  That first night, it was easy to obviate that point. She was tired from doing so many things when she was still recovering. But the second night wasn’t as easy.

  It was an invisible pull, an urge.

  Having her so close, breathing so softly… it made her go crazy. It didn’t help at all that the night was silent and Adrien breathed more silently than a corpse. Agatha could only hear the clop of Fran?ois' feet, the mechanical and cyclical grinding of the wheels, and that warm breath of Christie.

  Mad, mad, mad.

  The third night was even worse. Perhaps because it had been three days since they had showered or had changed clothes. They had a towel and hot water, but because there weren’t any worthwhile streams nearby, they had to depend on their own reserves of water, meaning that washing was a luxury.

  That only made her go even crazier.

  Christie didn’t stink; oh, she did not. She only smelt even more Christie than ever before. And Agatha loved that. She had to tie her hands behind her back and her legs with her duplicate sapphire just so she didn’t get up close in the night and take a sniff.

  Before the fourth night came, she knew she wouldn’t be able to control herself. The stronger the yearning was turning each night she spent with her sweaty and travel-weary girlfriend.

  “Takeover?” Agatha suggested as she jumped into the driver’s seat before Adrien got the carriage moving.

  “You sure?” The coachman looked at her over the shoulder, whether smugly or dubiously she couldn’t tell.

  “Yeah,” she shrugged it off casually. Beats fighting against myself.

  “Well, I will not say no to extra hours of travel. You already know the drill, so just wake me up if something happens,” Adrien jumped out of the driver's seat. “Oh, and talking about waking me up. You can wake me up after four hours.”

  “That ain’t much.”

  “I ain’t sleeping that much either,” the old man chuckled.

  “Let’s give it at least six hours.”

  “Girl, I’m having naps thanks to you, something I hadn’t had the luck to do before. Four’s fine.”

  “Six,” Agatha fought. I need to stay away from Christie as much as I can. I don’t know what’s happening to me.

  “I… sure, why not. Just don’t fall asleep in the driver’s seat.”

  “Can’t promise anything,” she chuckled, and the man vanished into the carriage with a mighty guttural laugh.

  Once everyone was asleep, Agatha found herself comfortably alone in the chilly night. Just the right amount of frigidness. Sure, Fran?ois was there, but the stoneshell was looking forward, staying sharp, and moving the carriage. She had to give it to the mock turtle; he was disciplined.

  Paranoia overtook her.

  Agatha found herself trying a command she had never tried before.

  Watch.

  René Dago had used it at the start of the first year for some demonstration – a party trick, really – but she had also seen it in the textbook of lithorica commands that the academy gave them. While she hadn’t tried it out due to lack of time, Agatha had been interested in it enough that she had memorized its description.

  Watch: This command links the lithorist’s sense of sight to an agate, virtually making them able to see through them. This factor – being ease of use and clarity – increases with the quality of the agate. Amplify addendum: When the Watch command is amplified, it allows the lithorist to see far further away than their sight would normally allow. It must be noted that the curvature of the planet will present a problem at higher Strata, but this amplification also makes gazing far clearer, partially removing environmental occlusions like fog, rain, and air.

  It piqued Agatha’s interest because despite being a rather simple-sounding command, it also had a long description, even if most was just an Amplify command addendum.

  With her high-quality, Third Stratum, lone agate, it was easy to nail the command on the first try. But that also didn’t shock Agatha. She had a knack for doing things first try, especially lithorica-related.

  “Odd,” she said under her breath softly to not wake up anyone.

  It was like having a third eye. Which wasn’t strange at all. Sure, not looking in the same direction as her eyes was odd, but not that different from being cockeyed. The moment she closed her eyes, it became easier to manage her vision.

  Then she remembered that she was driving.

  It was instantaneous, so nothing happened. But it could’ve, and that partially scared her.

  “Oops,” the dirty-blond girl chuckled silently.

  Her lithic eye levitated in front of her with Control. Somehow, moving it around with Control made it easier to observe through Watch, as if it were an eye she was physically moving around.

  While keeping her eyes on the road, Agatha observed backward with her lithic eye. And there she saw it, Christie sleeping peacefully on the cushioned bench. The villager didn’t know why, but it felt very naughty doing so. She wasn’t inside the carriage, yet the yearning was even stronger than the previous nights.

  “I think it’s colder than I thought,” Agatha gasped as steam came from her lips, her cheeks red from the frigid breeze. Her breath was ragged too. She rubbed her legs together to warm up. “Yes, mhmm. Colder than I thought.”

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