Yuriko ensconced herself in her room with her heart still racing. She’d nearly run from Aneurin’s Asmund Hall to the Golden Willow. Heron and the twins weren’t the only ones who tried asking her to the cotillion. Nearly a dozen boys and an odd girl met her by the entrance. She excused herself and pushed past them before they could more than open their mouths. It was a bit rude, she felt, and she mentally apologised for her actions but that didn’t stop her from hurrying away.

She’d changed out of her uniform and into more casual wear when someone knocked on her door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Krys.”

“Oh, come in.” Yuriko opened the door and let her childhood friend inside. Krystal had a solemn expression on her face but from the twinkle in her eye, Yuriko knew that the other girl was desperately stopping herself from laughing uproariously.

“Well, that could have gone better.” Krystal let out a small chuckle. “Who are you picking?”

“I don’t know.” Yuriko shook her head. “Is a partner even required to begin with?”

“Hmm, come to think of it, I don’t think Master Nuada mentioned that.”

“Then, that’s that,” Yuriko shrugged.

Krystal shrugged and walked up to the cupboard in the kitchenette.

“Shall I make tea?” Krystal held out a small brown paper bag.

“Sure.” Yuriko sighed, “I’m not sure what to do with myself just now.”

“You’ve a lot on your mind.”

“Don’t you?”

“I try not to think about it.” Krystal shrugged. “I’m done worrying, especially since there’s nothing I could do about it other than pray to the Ancestors.” She filled a pot with water from the tap and set it on the induction stove, turning on the heat by depositing a bit of Animus into the jade stud.

She plopped herself on the sofa afterwards, leaned back and moaned. “Oh you have so much space.”

“Yeah, I don’t have a roomie yet.” Yuriko perked up. “Want to move in?”

“I can’t afford the fees for the suite,” Krystal grunted. “Mum wrote me to say that dad’s stipend would be barely enough for the deluxe room and the tuition fees. If I want more, I need to earn my own coin.”

“Any ideas? I could stand to have a bit more in my budget, too.”

Krystal snorted. “You just want more sweets.”

“Well, yes.”

“There’s a job board down at the lounge. Maybe we can look it up and see if there’s someplace that’s hiring or something.”

“I haven’t been to the lounge much.” Yuriko shrugged.

“Huh.”

The teapot started whistling with boiling water. Krystal put out the stove and let the pot rest for a minute before she put the leaves through a metal wire strainer and steeped it in. A couple of minutes later, she removed the leaves and poured tea for both of them.

“Myaa!”

“What the-?”

The tabby cat had let himself through the open window and announced his presence.

“Oh, hello again.” Yuriko said absently. The kitty skirted around Krystal then rubbed his cheeks and sides on Yuriko’s leg.

Krystal gave her an odd look.

“He let himself in yesterday.”

“Right.” Krystal handed her the cup. “Anyway, did you receive a response from Armsmaster Byrne?”

“Oh, not yet. The crane hasn’t returned yet so maybe it’s still looking.”

“Or it ran out of Animus.”

“I hope not.”

The two of them sipped the hot tea, quite pleasant in the cool air. Once they were done, the two of them left for dinner at the cafeteria, where they parted ways afterwards. Yuriko settled down to meditate in her room, once again determined to progress with her Facet. She needed to advance to Journeyman as soon as possible, if she wanted to venture into the Tidelands.

So after her evening ablutions, she assumed a seated meditation pose atop her bed. Just before she closed her eyes, the cat slinked into her room, settled at the foot of her bed and started grooming himself.

“You’re really doing that here?”

Kitty gave her a lidded look before he proceeded to lick his paws and swiped at his face. With a muted sigh, Yuriko reached over, grabbed the hapless cat and squeezed him against her bosom, eliciting a surprised squeak and a mad scramble to get loose.

“Hie hie!” Yuriko chuckled, having spent her cuteness aggression on the remarkably cuddly short-haired cat.

Afterwards, she ignored him and settled into a meditative state, envisioning her Anima and the bonfire that was her Animus core. It’s come a long way from the candle flame that it was just before her Atavism Ritual. The colour had shifted hues, too, from a yellow-orange flame to burnished gold. Well, objectively, both colours were gold, but now it was a deeper and darker gold.

Da once said that the colour of a person’s Animus would shift whenever that person’s mindset changed. What that meant for her, she didn’t really know. Though maybe it was that hidden voice affecting it, too.

Shaking her head, she focused her mind's eye into her Heritage pattern, located in the middle of her head. The active pattern of her Facet glowed a welcome light when she focused on it, though her attention was drawn to the incomplete pattern in the middle of the sun pattern’s circle.

Perhaps a hair span of the pattern had been inlaid beyond the pommel, a product of her dedicated efforts the past couple of weeks. She began sending strands of Animus into the Facet pattern. Each strand contained a few lumens worth of Animus and she tried to keep each strand as even as possible. She could comfortably control a tenth of her total reserve, maybe as far as a fifteenth, but any less than that and her accuracy was shot. So she kept her strands at a fifteenth, or around seven lumens worth.

The strand entered the pattern’s terminus point at the pommel. It was the only one for the sword pattern, which meant she couldn’t really shove more than one strand per try. This one seemed more a matter of perseverance than control anyway.

The strand hit the end of the lit portion and it was as if it had hit a wall. She battered at it again and again, the strand losing its integrity with every strike, and after seven blows, the strand unravelled and dissipated. The pattern lit up briefly, unchanged from when she began.

‘You will break through!’ she thought furiously and drove another strand into the pattern and saw it unravel as before without any progress. She readied a third before a memory of last night’s dreamscape surfaced.

“Well, let’s try that.” she muttered. She’d braided several strands of Animus before, notably during Sharom’s Elite trials. The facet lines were too narrow for braided strands though, so she’d never tried it during her inlay process.

Taking three strands in her mental hands, Yuriko spun and entangled them together, much like how the Golden Silhouette used it. For some reason, the threads wouldn’t touch. They sprang apart as soon as she stopped focusing on them.

“What’s wrong now?” she muttered. “Ah!”

Of course, the strands had differing Intents! She forgot about that little detail during the day. On her normal inlaying efforts, she imparted the Intent to create, to trace, and to make real the intangible. It was a complex Intent, though it was one she was well versed in. She used the same Intent to guide her strands when she first inlaid her Facet after all.

The middle strand was to be the glue that held the other two strands together. She didn’t think heat and cold would be suitable Intents to use on inlaying her Facet, so she filled the other two strands with the simple need to grow stronger. Thankfully, it worked somewhat. Now she held a fat thread that was made of three strands and which, to her annoyance, didn’t fit in the tracing.

With a tired sigh, Yuriko released her Animus from her grasp. It dissipated in her Anima and into the air around her. Having already imparted an Intent into her Animus, it wouldn’t return to her core. It was as if the flames had turned to ice or maybe wood after she took control of it. She could return it to the bonfire that was her core but it would either melt or be consumed. Either way, it consumed more of her reserves rather than replenishing them. What did the Golden Silhouette use the braided strands for anyway?

She activated her Facet instead of trying to remember. As soon as the pattern lit up, she was drawn to the dreamscape and the Golden Silhouette was there. She demonstrated the sword dances and then the modified meditation pattern right afterwards.

It was then that she realised the silhouette was using the braided strands even as she went through the sword dances. Yuriko’s eyes widened in wonder. The braided strands contained the first and the second dance’s Intent but the circulation pattern was that of the first dance. She shifted between the first and second dance in the blink of an eye, sometimes even in mid-swing!

Yuriko’s hands twitched with the need to start practising. The silhouette seemed to laugh as she paused in her dance. She gestured and the next moment, Yuriko had swords made of tangible light in her hands. Then the silhouette danced. She spun her blades and in the next moment, struck at Yuriko.

“Ah!”

Quickly circulating the second dance pattern, Yuriko barely managed to parry the strike. She spent the next minutes desperately defending until her invested Animus ran out and the dreamscape faded away into normal dreams.

When she woke up the next morning, Yuriko did her morning training regimen under the pouring rain. All the while, she thought about the Golden Silhouette’s modified sword dances and what it meant for her techniques. After her run and strength training, she tried to simulate what the shadow had done, but it was…well, harder than she expected. For one thing, it took her several times longer to braid both sword dance Intents into a singular strand.

The movement of the clumsier, too, with her body and the movement of her Animus distinctly out of sync. She had to start over several times and even up until the end, she hadn’t managed a complete set.

Grunting in frustration, she marched back to her room to bathe and change into her uniform to get ready for class. She only had one class today: in the morning, Geography. It would be held in Sharom, though it would be in the common classroom for the entire first-year student body rather than segregated.

She ate breakfast with the girls who were chattering about the cotillion. Maryn was blushing while the other three, except for Danika, were giggling. When Yuriko sat on her seat, Maryn blurted out, “Well, at least I only had one, Yuriko here had three people ask her.”

“Huh?” Yuriko blinked, wondering why she was suddenly under fire.

“Oh, like that’s so unusual,” Ishika sniffed.

“It is since everybody back home was too afraid to ask!” Maryn insisted.

“Hohoho, but you accepted, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, can we talk about something else, please?”

“What happened?” Yuriko asked.

“Zeyn asked Maryn to the cotillion,” Krystal smirked, “and she accepted.”

“Oooh! Good for you!”

“Thanks!” Maryn tucked her fringe behind her ears and spooned porridge into her mouth. Yuriko dug into her breakfast while the others continued.

“Anyone ask you?” Ishika asked Millie.

“Nope! And that’s fine, I don’t know anyone around here well enough and the other two boys from Faron’s Crossing aren’t interested in me.” Millie shrugged. “There’s this boy in my class who looks interesting though, so I might ask him to escort me.”

“You’d do the asking?” Ishika goggled.

“Why not? It’s not as if waiting will do anyone any good.” Millie glanced at Yuriko and smirked. “Besides, as long as our princess here hasn’t decided, most of the boys won’t commit to anyone else.”

“Heeey!” Yuriko protested. “I’m not even sure I want to go with anyone.”

“Why not Heron? You went with him to the Dance of the Sun and Moon,” Ishika pointed out.

“I only said yes since he was the only one who asked. Besides, Heron and the twins asked at the same time, so who would I pick? If I pick Heron, it would be unfair to the other two.”

“You’re so silly.” Millie giggled. “Why don’t you go with the one you like the most?”

“Huh, but I don’t like any one of them more than the others.”

“Then go with all three of them!” Maryn grumped.

“Eeeh? I’m not even sure if that’s allowed.”

“Oh, shut up!” Ishika, Millie, and Maryn yelped at the same time. Krystal giggled into her cup while Danika blinked at them in confusion.

Geography class followed the same pattern as the previous classes: mostly introductions, a recap of what she’d learn in prep school, and a presentation of the upcoming syllabus. The class would also tackle geopolitical relationships between the Empire and its neighbours, not just in Rumiga, but also of the varied foreign powers that bordered the Imperial Planes. The lecturer, an elderly man with his silver hair in a long braid, gave tantalizing hints, well, he tried to anyway. Yuriko was pretty sure that she wasn’t the only one fighting back yawns.

Orrin sat beside her for this class and half the time he spent staring at her face. She felt a bit awkward around him now but she was grateful that he didn't bring up the invitation when they chatted.

At the end of the long and boring class, Yuriko made her way back to the Willow, intending to continue her practice. However, when she came into her room, she found the cat with a paper crane in his mouth, looking quite proud of his catch.

He pranced up to her and dropped the crane, which had punctures on its wings and was slightly damp. It fluttered and attempted to fly but one wing was too sodden to give it much lift. Yuriko picked it up and placed it on the table, tapping its head to unfold it.

It was from Armsmaster Byrne, sure enough. He agreed to meet with her on the 6th Day of Air, tomorrow, three hours after noon, for tea at their Inn. Yuriko penned a quick acknowledgement, though she had to do it with another messenger crane since this one was dead.

That done, she rounded on the tomcat and growled.

“So! If you’re going to live here, we have to set a few rules.”

“Meow!”