I stood before the true body of Ylena. Veins of opal swam up her black trunk from the roots into her purple and gold canopy. My knees sunk into the fertile loamy earth as I knelt before her and looked down at my hands.

  I had the soft, undamaged hands of a child again. Gone were the calluses and scars. Gone was the slight divot between the second and third knuckle on my little finger where the skin never grew back right, the damage accepted by my soul before it could be healed.

  I stared, transfixed by the softness of my hands rather than the divinity of the goddess before me. How long had it been since I’d first developed callouses? How long has it been since I got my first scar?

  Around me, the noise of the forest dimmed and ceased all together. Spring birds silenced their gentle songs, the chirp of bugs, and rustle of small and large game as they raced through the underbrush. All went still.

  I knew I should scan the surroundings for predators or enemies of the faith. The animals of the forest were often the first to know when danger was near, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from my hands even if I’d wanted to.

  I flexed them again and marveled at how smooth it all felt. Gone was the constant ache in my left thumb. The circular thorn scar on the meat of my palm that plagued me since I was ten vanished.

  Ever so slowly, I took my eyes off my hands and felt around my face. Unable to lift my gaze from the lush grass and wildflowers around Ylena’s sacred tree. There was no stubble or scarring. With nervous care, I ran my fingers over my head. Soft hair and smooth skin graced my touch. The thin scar that traced the entirety of my hairline wasn’t there. A scar formed from hundreds of healings, and hundreds of painful lessons was gone.

  “You were always so adorable as a child, Bran.” Ylena said.

  She spoke in the High Chant, the language she’d designed to be as musical and graceful as possible. Not the mixture with the Trade Tongue that emerged over the decades that followed.

  My eyes darted up from the wildflowers to Ylena, seated in the lotus position at the base of her trunk. Her grandmotherly eyes held nothing but warmth for me, and despite all that happened, I knew I had no reason to fear that gaze. With all the haste I could manage, I stood and entered a proper bow towards her, my hands crossed over my chest in an ‘x’.

  “Apologies Grace Mother. I hadn’t noticed you were present.”

  Ylena said nothing to me, and I remained in my bow. Waiting for her to release me. In the deep, unnatural silence of the clearing, the animals stirred as Ylena stood. Their sudden tension shuffled leaves and revealed them, but I would not act on it.

  A small, porcelain white hand lifted my chin, and I gazed up into the face of Ylena. My eyes focused on her long black hair and uniform rather than purple and golden eyes.

  “Rise child. I believe I’ve already told you there is nothing to be forgiven.”

  I did as commanded and rose from my bow. The top of my head only reaching her hip.

  The relationship between a chosen and their Divinity was different for every deity, but growing up, Ylena had always been like a stern grandmother to me. Her daughters like my sisters and aunts. Part of that was the sheer time my mom spent with them and the familiarity they treated each other with.

  I’d grown up with all five of them being extensions of the family rather than divinities. Another part of the almost familial relationship I had with Ylena and her daughters was how they each reacted after I was returned.

  Somehow reverted into the body of my childhood. Staring up at the goddess who’d always been like my grandmother; her kind, regretful eyes staring down at me. I couldn’t help it. I sobbed. The tears running in rivers down my face.

  Ylena dropped to a knee, the earth automatically moving to cushion the abrupt drop, and brought me into a hug. Images and memories flashed past me in her embrace, impressions more than anything. I couldn’t have been more relieved they weren’t full memories and didn’t bring with them the usual pain. Ylena let me cry in her arms for a long while. My head rested in the crook of her shoulder while she stroked my hair. By the time I calmed down, my tears had soaked through the shoulder of her silken robes. Ylena shifted slightly to grab both of my shoulders and held me out at arm’s length.

  “Listen to me, my son. Your pain is not shameful. You have brought no disgrace to anyone with your actions. Even in the short time you’ve been gone, you have done nothing but make me proud.”

  I hung my head, unable to believe her.

  “I failed.” I said in a half-cry. My voice high pitched in this child’s body. “She gave me a simple test, one I should have beaten. But I’m a -a, a coward.” I forced myself to say the last word. To finally admit to the woman who blessed and helped raise me, I was a coward.

  “All I had to do was look into her eyes. All I had to do was endure. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t because I’m – “

  “Enough.”

  The Grace Mother looked at me with so much sadness and remorse that I felt my failure even larger. Did she regret my blessing so much?

  “I have failed in myriad ways since my ascension.” Ylena said, her voice like a spring thaw, and wiped a tear from my cheek. “But no failure haunts me like my failure with you, Bran. You are a child; a child I swore to your mother I’d protect. A child, I swore to my eldest daughter I would see returned safely. I failed in those duties and you paid the price for that. Nothing I can do will change that. Nothing I can do will change the past, but I need you to know that the work you put in to recover was noticed, and that all of us are beyond proud of you.

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  “Bran. You are not a coward. Look at me Bran.” I did so, and raised my gaze from the wild tulip it’d settled on, careful to avoid looking in her eyes. “A coward would have died in that cabin. A coward would have Stagnated. You did neither.

  “I cannot keep you here much longer, but know this Bran. I could not have wished for a better chosen. There is not a day that goes by that I am not proud of you; and I cannot wait to see the man you grow to become.”

  Her piece said, Ylena kissed me on the forehead and pulled me back into the hug.

  “I’m sorry.” She whispered, and the wood paneling of my room at the inn replaced the Grove.

  I laid in bed in the early morning silence for a long while. I doubted I’d be able to go back to sleep after that dream. Ylena had brought me into a shared dream with her several times over my life. Every single time she’d done so, my body was a different age but never older than my physical self was.

  I took me ten minutes to muster the will to leave bed. With only my small clothes on, I went through my usual stretches and saw a bronze light illuminate the floor in slivers. I heaved open the heavy wooden shutters that blocked out the green light of the walls at night and saw that it was midmorning already. Later than I’d wanted to rise, but I would settle for a later wake up time over being blasted with green light all night. The windows weren’t runed, so some green still slipped in, but the shutters blocked out most of it.

  I took my time dressing, not eager to face Maggie after our conversation yesterday. I was the last to arrive in the common room. Everyone already settled into a table next to a painting of a great bear. When I got to the table, I noticed a still steaming plate of food was in front of the only available seat. I took my spot next to Nora and Maggie and thanked them for ordering.

  Mika and Ellen were bickering with one another. Mika teased her about someone named Brent while Ellen did the same to him over an Anna. Studiously, I ignored their bickering and the look Maggie gave me to eat. Nora was uncharacteristically quiet as well. Giving only one- or two-word answers when Mika or Ellen tried to draw her into their play fight.

  Beneath the table, Nora tapped her leg nonstop and imprinting the sawdust on the floor with the tread of her shoe. I wasn’t sure she was aware of it, but the entire time we ate, she never stopped fidgeting with her fork. No one seemed concerned, so I let it lie and simply leaned over to bump her shoulder with my own. I tried to smile as well to let her know I was here without shaming her. It was something an older trainer had done for me to let me know she was there without speaking.

  “Was it discussed how we’d begin today?” I figured they would have at least decided how to begin without me since I was late.

  “We decided to ask Mrs. Farfield herself. Since she wants them dead so bad she probably knows a good chunk about them.” Ellen answered. Mika winced when she casually mentioned wanting them dead, but otherwise didn’t react.

  We spent the next hour in idle conversation. Mostly, the topic centered on how annoying the wall light was. Those thick wooden shutters guarded all our rooms, but the bright green glow that snuck through the small crack in the center was still an irritant.

  After we left the inn, it took us two and a half hours to even reach the grain district. Since we’d received the quest, Maggie claimed that her role as steward over for the time being and she was now purely our [Bard]. Originally, we’d looked to Ellen for directions, but her experience was limited to the main road and the palace. We wandered the maze of a city endlessly for what felt like an eternity before Nora finally had enough and asked for directions.

  Still, that wasn’t enough, and it took a dozen more people giving directions for us to reach the grain district. Like with all the others, there was no sign naming the district we were about to step into. The architecture, while distinct from neighborhoods further away, was like its surroundings. The only thing that told us we were entering the grain district was a small wooden sign nailed to a house that bordered one of the city’s gates that read ‘Farfield and Son’s Bakery’ in red letters with an arrow pointed past the gate.

  It took another fifteen minutes of asking people how to get to the Fairfield Manor for us to finally set an actual course. Like the rest of Dustreach, this district was a mess of distinct architectural and art styles. Here, however, buildings clustered far tighter, the vast majority touched or even rested upon nearby buildings.

  As we walked, I focused on the people and couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t any beggars. When I thought about it, I hadn’t seen a single beggar since we’d arrived in Dustreach. In almost every novel I’d ever read, there’d been a scene of the [Hero] giving alms to the poor, or performing some other act of charity. It was such a staple that at thirteen I’d asked my mom why it was in almost every book. Her response was cynical, but she said it was the author illustrating to the audience how noble their protagonist is.

  It wasn’t like we’d passed no poor people either. I’d seen plenty of adults and children in the poorer districts we passed, but I hadn’t seen a single person beg for food or coin.

  “I hope this isn’t offensive.” I said, unsure how to phrase my question.

  “This ought to be good.” Ellen said into the pause.

  “Where are all the urchins? I thought all of your cities had them.”

  “I’m sorry?” Ellen asked, nonplussed. “What do you mean ‘where are the urchins?’”

  “I mean just that. Where are they? Aren’t all of your cities full of them?”

  Mika looked at me for a moment with an amused smile before he stopped walking and turned his head up in thought.

  “Y’know what? He’s right. I haven’t seen a single kid begging since we got here.”

  Maggie, who’d been writing in that journal of hers the entire walk, paused and looked up at us.

  “Probably because all the kids who get caught begging get taken to the orphanages.”

  “Orphanages?” I asked, trying to say the word exactly as Maggie had.

  I liked to think of myself as fluent in the Trade Tongue, but I’d never heard that word before. I knew the first part meant orphan, but I wasn’t sure what the suffix meant.

  “Yeah, Dustreach has an entire complex of them in the Under Tunnels.” Maggie replied casually.

  “No, I mean, what is an orphanage?”

  "You don’t know?” Nora asked. She’d been content to just listen before, but my confusion and her curiosity had drawn her in.

  “I can make a guess, but I’ve never heard the word before.”

  “How can you not know?” Ellen asked in disbelief.

  “The Trade Tongue isn’t my native language. I’ve just never heard the word before.”

  No one said anything to that but Mika and Nora but gave nods of the head like I’d just won a point in an argument.

  “So, what’s an orphanage?” I prodded.

  “Basically, it’s a place where kids without parents, or terrible parents sometimes, are taken so they can be raised by [Caretakers] and [Educators].” Nora said.

  I nodded. So it was like the Order of New Growth then.

  “What do you do if a kid’s parents die?” Nora asked.

  “Depends on the will of the original parents. Most of the time, the kids end up with other family members.”

  “What about if no one can take them in, or there’s no will?” Mika asked.

  “They’re given to the Order of New Growth as wards, specifically the Lunar branch. From there, the talented kids get sent to other orders or taken in by one of the veterans or masters.” I said.

  They already knew about my Order, not to mention that the information was available to anyone, so I had no fear of sharing it with my party.

  “An orphanage is kind of like that Order then, just a little less martial I guess.” Nora said.

  I thanked everyone for answering and we walked in silence for a time, each of us just appreciating the art on display throughout the city before Mika spoke again.

  “Bran’s home aside, do they really keep orphans in the Under Tunnels? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Oh, it’s pretty safe. The Under Tunnels are massive and the complex is as far back from what could be called the frontier as possible. Not to mention all the walls and guards between the complex and frontier.” Maggie said.

  “Even so, why put them down there? How are they even down there? I’ve never heard of a city that’s able to house every orphan that appears.” Mika continued.

  Maggie looked to Ellen to see if she’d say something, but when Ellen remained quiet, she answered.

  “When the last duke died, there wasn’t a clear heir. The Dustwardens kept it pretty quiet, but for a couple of years, there was a war of succession happening in the streets. That war created a lot of orphans, so when she ascended to the throne, the Duchess bought a bunch of land where it was cheap and defensible and settled them there.

  “A couple years later and the first kids raised there started to Awaken. The duchess realized she had a good thing on her hands and issued a bunch of new laws. Basically, any child found begging for food or coin is brought to the complex where they’ll live until they Awaken; and she had little boxes installed at every guardhouse in the city where you can drop off an unwanted child, no questions asked.

  “She hasn’t caught them all, obviously. If you go far enough into any neighborhood, you’ll find some urchins and street kids, but she got most. Not to mention parents learned really quick that if they let their kids beg, they won’t see them again until they’re sixteen.”

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Part of me agreed that giving poor kids housing, food, and education was the right thing to do. Yet the thought of the children of poor families being taken from their parents simply because of poverty felt like punishing the symptom, not addressing the cause.