I never intended to become Affiliated. My parents weren't, my siblings weren't, none of my relatives were. I didn't intend to all but own my own cafe either, I was content to rent, to work with my friends and make people happy.

  Now I'm not just Affiliated, I'm living in the Holding proper and hope I never leave. Well not unless she were to surprise me with a mansion of my own. The cafe? It belongs to the Holding but I, we, designed it to be exactly what we dreamt of.

  We'd been fine with just the three of us, we'd never needed help. Now we've got five new employees, two of them just to keep up with serving coffee and cleaning tables. I'd feel un-needed if we didn't still manage to have a line out the door most days.

  Dreams and intentions, two things that changed after I met her. Absolutely for the better.

  ~ * ~

  Fay looked over her notes and nodded to herself dismissing the feed. The timings weren't quite perfect but they were close enough that no one would complain about her plan. She understood why they were delaying the wedding, she approved of their reasoning but couldn't find it in herself to disagree with Sandra's frustration. They had to do something, and a celebration dinner would be perfect.

  She had less than a week to get everything organized, she already had her list of restaurants to pick from, descending order by quality of desserts of course, she knew who she was going to invite, or rather who she'd insist on have join them, not that she expected any of them to say no, even if she didn't tell them the specific reason.

  They would all get to be together, enjoy an evening, find time to relax and be a family, even if some weren't quite fully family yet. They were going to be happy and everyone would be surprised. She knew they would be.

  She'd reach out to the restaurants once she took a break, she had work to do and Valene had been quite patient of late. She hadn't expected to hear from him, she had never realized that the council could, and did, bring on external Seers to assist with work, she'd always just assumed everything was done internally.

  In retrospect it made sense, there was always more work to be done than there were researchers available, always high priority work that needed to be done yesterday and no one to get to it. There were always those pet projects that weren't officially for any one Holding or Family, and yet anyone who bothered to look past the surface would know the truth. She'd never worked on those assignments, but she'd reviewed their frequency, the information was almost shocking.

  The two reports Valene was waiting on took her maybe an hour to complete. Nothing fancy, nothing hard to find, at least not for her. She suspected he wouldn't have sent her this work back when she was his protege, she wouldn't have had time to get to it with all 'high importance' requests she often handled, but no one else was sending her this sort of work so she had time to deal with it.

  Her last two ongoing investigations were still more supposition than certainty. She suspected Velli was up to something, actually she knew they were up to something, the question was would it have any effect on her family. So far nothing indicated it would, at least not unless Anya or Seb decided to become socialites or spend their time exploring the WidePond communities rather than diving.

  The last topic was, if anything, even more problematic than keeping an eye on one of the Great Families. She didn't have any way to confirm the suspicions Valene had left her with. She might be completely wrong with her guesses and have no way of finding out. But on the off chance she was right she'd collected everything she knew, she'd made notes, annotations, lists of questions she could dig into once she knew she was on the right path. She'd find out everything she could about Anya's father the moment she had the freedom to look.

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  ~ * ~

  Seb could feel Anya's irritation at not knowing why they were going out to dinner. She was happy to go to dinner, they both were. It just would have been nice to know what the occasion was for them to have such a large group. He would have understood adding Briana to the group considering their relationship, but he wasn't sure why Sandra, Alex, Sam and Yshe were all along as well.

  From the looks of things none of them were entirely sure why, Yshe was grumbling under her breath, Alex looked uncertain, Sandra was all but bouncing on her toes and being shooed away by Briana. Sam seemed befuddled, Briana was clearly focused on simultaneously keeping Sandra away and giving Fay long glances.

  Seb was only slightly less annoyed than Anya. He wasn't sure how much of that was emotions blending over the bond, but Fay's satisfied smile and insistence that she had a plan was enough for him to be willing to not ask any more questions until they were at the table. Thankfully they were finally about to be seated.

  "I know you're all wondering why-" Fay began before Anya had to pull Sandra back into her seat so she'd be patient.

  "-I suggested we all have dinner tonight," she finished with a grin. "We all have something to celebrate. And no Sandra, it isn't a change in wedding plans."

  "But…"

  "Yshe and Sam have confirmed that the last of the Holding related work in Deep Earth will be completed in under a week. Yes Sandra, I know you helped too, but you can tell everyone what else you've managed."

  "I hit level 5 last week!" Sandra managed to say without quite shouting.

  "I hit level 9 a couple weeks ago," Sam said with the largest of grins.

  "Boy, it isn't a competition, unless you're wanting to compare how many years its taken you too?" Yshe said as she turned to glare at her nephew.

  "No Auntie," he answered. "I'm sorry Sandra."

  "I bet I'll get there faster than you," she answered before looking back at Fay. "You said everyone?"

  "We hit 13 a month ago," Seb said. "I'm guessing that's recent enough for your celebration?"

  Fay nodded before nudging Briana. "Bri?"

  "21. You know that."

  I hadn't realized she was that far ahead of us, Anya sent.

  I figured she had to be somewhere ahead of us, but yeah.

  "I made it to 24," Alex said. "I'm going to need to look for some other way to bring in work, or expand the Holding if I want to keep advancing."

  "Not much at that level up in the Shallows," Yshe said. "But I might have a few contacts that could use your help."

  "Thank you Ma'am," Alex said.

  "It's Yshe, or Engineer Yshe. But since this isn't work, it's Yshe."

  "Yes Yshe," Alex said as everyone chuckled, they'd all heard that tone pointed at them before.

  "Fay?" Anya said. "You said everyone, so that means you too, right?"

  Seb saw Fay freeze and start to sit, only for Briana to nudge her firmly.

  "You made us say, you can't keep quiet now. You've been having more trouble not saying anything than Sandra has staying still."

  "Hey!"

  "You know it's true," Anya said. "Sit down."

  "Fay?" Seb prompted. "We know you're past level 25, did you hit 26? 27?"

  "…29," Fay whispered before blushing and hiding her face in Briana's shoulder.

  Did she just say- he sent.

  29?

  "Well done," Yshe said, clearly having understood the whispered words.

  Seb watched as Briana guided Fay to look at the group with encouraging words and gestures. He saw her calm down and manage to take a deep breath before speaking up once again.

  "I hit level 29 a couple days after your last visit," she began.

  "Wow," Sandra said.

  "Congratulations Seer," Alex added.

  "I was aware of most of the other progress and thought that we might be able to all celebrate our achievements together?" she finished with a faint smile.

  "Of course," Anya said. "We didn't realize you were so-"

  Anya!

  "What she means is we're sorry we never asked about your advancement." Seb said. "That we only ever talked about our progress and never thought…"

  "I know," Fay said. "I was your Seer, I was there to ask the questions and talk to you about it. It wasn't your place to be asking."

  "But you're not just our Seer," he said.

  "We talked about it when I was acting as Seer."

  "We're sorry," Anya said.

  "I know, and don't think I'm not going to let you get away with it in the future."

  "But-" she began.

  Let her have it, he sent.

  But…

  Fine, he sent. One.

  "Fine. But that means Sandra gets to plan your birthday party this year."

  "What!?!"

  "Birthday? Is it soon?"

  Anya…

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