Part Forty-Six — Learning to Be Quiet

　Eris returned that evening with an aura visibly leaking at the edges――faint, uncontrolled, the specific rawness of power nobody had ever taught her to hold in.

Still can't quite believe how fast she picked this up. Naming her shouldn't have done that. Nothing in this world's history says it should have.

　"Your aura is coming out," I told her gently, once we'd eaten. "It's going to draw attention if we don't get it under control."

　"Oh," she said, looking down at her own hands like she could see it herself if she just looked hard enough. "I didn't even notice."

　"That's normal this early. Come on. Let's fix that."

　I expected it to take her months, at minimum――control had taken me years, and I'd had a mother with centuries of practice guiding every step of it.

　Eris had me, several years less experienced at teaching than my own mother had been, and considerably less patience for the process, if I'm honest.

　She mastered basic suppression in a single week.

One week.

It took me the better part of a year to manage what she just did in seven days.

　"That's not normal," I told her, more than once, watching her hold a perfectly suppressed aura like she'd been doing it her whole life instead of a handful of days.

　"Is that a bad thing?" she asked, faint worry creeping into the question.

　"No," I said, honestly. "Just――unprecedented. Same word my own soul used the day I named you. I think you might be something the world hasn't quite figured out how to categorize yet."

　"Welcome to the club," she said dryly.

　I laughed harder than the joke probably deserved.

She's settling in.

Ace is settling in.

Whatever this new shape of a family looks like――it's actually starting to take one.

　The three of us fell into a rhythm over the following weeks.

　Eris improved by the day. Ace proved steadily more intelligent than any ordinary wolf had any business being. And the house finally started feeling less like a construction project and more like somewhere lived-in.

　It was Eris who eventually pointed out the obvious problem.

　"We're running low on funds," she said one evening, going through what remained of the coin I'd carried since my time with Doran. "This isn't going to last much longer."

Fair. Building a home doesn't pay for itself, and Doran's coin was never going to stretch forever.

　"There's a city," I said, thinking it over. "Roshan. Heard the name a few times over the years. Adventurer's guild there, if the rumors hold up. Work, coin, information――probably all in the same place."

　"You want to actually leave the Horizontal Line?" Eris asked, something careful in the question.

　"I want to actually live again," I said. "Not just rebuild and hide. There's a difference, and I think I've been putting off figuring out which one I actually wanted."

　Naming Ace had done something else too, it turned out――a new skill, quiet until that moment, surfacing alongside the ones already granted by my evolution.

　<"Skill acquired: Soul Link. Enables direct mental communication between yourself and those you have named.">

　Anti-Subconsciousness informed me once Eris had gone to prepare for the trip.

　I tested it that evening, reaching toward Ace's mind the way the skill seemed to want me to.

Ace. Can you hear me?

I can, came the reply――clear, articulate, nothing like the simple animal intelligence I'd expected.

I did not realize I would be capable of this until just now.

Neither did I, honestly. Guess we're both full of surprises.

　We left the Horizontal Line a few days later――myself, Eris, and Ace, heading toward a city none of us had actually seen, chasing coin and information in roughly equal measure.

New faces. New places. New chances to get something wrong, probably.

Still.

Better than staying still forever.

I think I'm finally ready to find out what "living again" actually looks like, out here.