The transit gates had changed everything.
Arthur had built the first one between the farm and the Oni village eighteen months ago — a stone arch, seven feet tall, enchanted with a spatial anchor on each end that connected them permanently. Step through one side and arrive at the other, regardless of the two days of forest between them. He had built three more over the following months: the fox tribe, the elven city, and a fourth that connected the farm's new eastern settlement to the network.
The network had grown because the settlements had grown. The Oni village was twice its original size now, new families having come in from the deeper forest over four years of relative security and reliable food access. The fox tribe had similarly expanded, drawing in smaller clans from the surrounding territory who had heard about the wall and the well and the regular produce deliveries. The elven city remained the same size — Aeryn had told him the elves grew slowly in every sense — but the relationship had deepened in the way that relationships deepened when they were useful to both sides and both sides were honest about it.
The farm itself was unrecognizable from what it had been.
The irrigation canal had taken four months to build — Arthur and Thomas and six earth-magic working sessions with members of the fox tribe who had turned out to have a natural affinity for water direction. It brought the river's flow to a section of the property that had been too dry for cultivation, and that section was now the most productive land on the farm, running twenty acres of grain and root crops that had not existed three years ago.
The eastern settlement sat along the river where the new land began. Arthur had built it properly — stone houses, a shared well, a small hall for the community that was a smaller version of what he had built for the Oni. Twelve fox tribe families and four Oni families lived there now, working the land in exchange for plots of their own and a share of the harvest. They had brought their children, which meant there were children running between the houses in the morning and the settlement had the sound of something that intended to stay.
Thomas and Maren's house sat on a good piece of ground just east of the main farmhouse, close enough for easy movement between them, far enough to be its own place. Thomas had built the kitchen shelving himself. Maren had chosen the window placement. Their son was two years old and had Thomas's gravity and Maren's eyes and the specific unstoppable quality of a toddler who had decided that the world was very interesting and he was going to examine all of it.
And then there was the newest addition to the household.
Eira had arrived three years ago — the pregnancy that Mira had cried about in the kitchen, the one Arthur had detected through a passive diagnostic — and she had arrived with the specific energy of someone who had been waiting a long time to get here and was making up for it. She was three now and toddling with a confidence that exceeded her coordination, which produced regular instances of Edric catching her before she reached the ground and which she treated as a feature rather than a problem. She had Mira's eyes and Edric's calm and some third quality that was entirely her own.
She had taken to Arthur with the immediate uncomplicated attachment of a toddler who had decided someone was hers. She could often be found either on his back or draped across his feet, depending on whether he was moving or sitting.
He was twelve now. She was three.
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Saya was at his door at six every morning.
This had not changed. The transit gate made it seamless — she rose in the fox tribe village, walked to the gate, stepped through, and was on the farm's east path before the household was fully awake. She and Arthur ran the morning perimeter together the way they had run it since she was seven, which was five years ago, which was a long time.
They were twelve.
Arthur had become aware, at some point in the past year, that twelve was different from seven. Not in any way he had a framework for discussing, not with the vocabulary he had available in this body, but in the specific way of someone who noticed that time was passing and was producing changes that he had not fully processed. He and Saya had been best friends for five years. They were still best friends. The ring was still on her left hand. He had stopped thinking about what she called him to her tribe.
She made him laugh more than anyone he had known in two lifetimes.
He had decided this was sufficient information for now.
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Clara had left for the academy at fifteen.
The farewell had been the kind that the family did not discuss afterward because doing so would have required everyone to admit how much they had cried, which nobody was prepared to do. Bella had been on her shoulder going out the gate and Arthur had watched her go through forty-nine spider clones he had deployed in the capital over the previous month.
He had spent six months preparing her.
The etiquette had been Lyra's contribution — Clara had spent two months in the elven city attending the same lessons Lyra attended under Aeryn's instruction, learning the specific grammar of how people who carried themselves well moved through spaces and addressed strangers and declined things without creating friction. Clara had complained every single day but had still absorbed every single lesson with the focused efficiency she brought to things she had decided were worth learning.
The spell list was Arthur's. Twelve common spells, well within the scope of what any mage of Clara's listed background would know, chosen to demonstrate solid foundational training without revealing anything about the actual depth of what she had. She had practiced them until they felt natural — the deliberate understatement of someone performing below their level was its own skill.
The force affinity was still not widely understood. Aeryn had confirmed that the classification did not exist in standard magical academia. Clara would test as fire-adjacent, which was unremarkable. The gravity spells, the force applications, the specific techniques she had developed over four years of daily practice in the basement — none of that was in any textbook anyone at the academy would have.
He had also, quietly, embedded a spider on her uniform collar before she left.
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The capital academy was, by all reports, a place of significant social complexity.
Arthur monitored it through the spider network with the passive attention of someone who had a great deal of other work to do and also could not entirely stop watching. He caught the gist of Clara's first days through the feed — the uniform, the first walk across the campus grounds, the fan club that had apparently materialized within approximately forty-five minutes of her arrival.
He had expected this. He had prepared her for it.
She was now a teenager and by all accounts, the most beautiful girl most of these boys and students have ever seen. The quality of life essence, magical energies, dragon meat and elven soaps and lotions had helped shape Clara into a perfect young woman. Her light blonde hair was thick, straight, healthy, and long, draping down her back, stopping right at her hips. Her light fair skin was flawless without a mole, freckle, or blemish. Her posture was straight yet elegant with long, thin legs, round hips, a tight waist, and a large chest. It was difficult for the young male students not to be captivated by her soft, round curves that made their way from her chest to her legs.
Her way of life up until now nourished her genes to produce the best results possible.
What he had not fully predicted was how well she would handle it.
She moved through the campus with the posture and the composure of the elven instruction and the warmth she had always had underneath the aggression, and the combination produced something that was not quite what anyone expected from a farmer's daughter at a noble academy. The boys who confessed first received a clear and kind response that left them slightly better off than before they had confessed, which was a skill very few people had and which Clara had apparently internalized completely.
The girls in the dormitory she approached directly. This was classic Clara — she did not wait for the social order to determine her position in it. She went to the girls who looked like they had already decided to dislike her and asked to be friends, specifically and without pretense, and most of them said yes because being approached that way by someone as striking as Clara was an experience that rearranged your assumptions.
Within a week she was the most talked-about person on campus. This was inevitable and Arthur had known it and had told her: visibility is not avoidable, so manage it instead.
She was managing it very well.
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