this is the product of all our summations

Step right up folks.

So they've left the dingy little house in Lasaria's bootleg. Right. That's something. For all the rancor of what exactly it was that they left, it's borderline everything. But now they don't have a house. They don't have clothes, or food, or shelter. How on earth is little Lora going to grow up now?

Well, what does a child Lora's age need to learn? That is, what could Jin possibly even teach her? He knows about mineralogy, and cooking, and weather patterns, and how to disassemble an enemy's nervous, respiratory and circulatory systems all at swiftest once, starting from the jugular vein and deboning around to the spinal column--

Well. Lora certainly doesn't need to learn that.

She peers interestedly over his elbow when they're in the market, oohing and aahing at the bell peppers and the fresh-baked bread and the blood-glisten-shiny Ardun filets which of course they can't afford, and though she'd positively salivate over the latter she'd never really deign to munch on the former, and the one in the middle is just a staple that perhaps she'll learn to make herself, one day, and then Jin thinks, ah. Here's something.

He hands her their pouch full of gold - well, full is an overstatement, but he'd been scrounging around. "Lora, here. Count out the coins we need to pay for our purchase."

And Jin turns back to the grocer and pays no mind. None, that is, until the grocer herself gives a pointed look to some lower region on his body, and he turns to see Lora pinching a coin between stubby, grimy ten-year-old fingers and holding it so close to her eye that it's practically made the contact of a contact.

Sure, Alektos the First's icon is probably fairly scintillating, all things considered, and it's bright out, so the circular things do sparkle, but...

"What's the matter? Doesn't she know how to count?" The grocer is polite, encouraging, jovial, even as she makes her dig, because there's no one in line behind them and it would help her business none to discourage the poor saps from emptying their pockets in service of her wares.

Jin smiles tightly. "We're all learning every day, aren't we?" And so he snatches the pouch back and hurriedly parcels out the requisite money before rounding up the packages in the crook of one arm's elbow and taking hold of Lora's hand with the other. Whether or not the shopkeeper's thoughts linger long on this anti-rare childhood spectacle, they'll never know. They'll probably never be back.

They stop in a forest grove just outside the town. Jin busies himself organizing the food in their ratty rucksack (flattest things near the bottom to cover up the hole) and Lora fidgets with the furry hem of her coat. Eventually, his hands are empty, and the wallet is tossed unceremoniously on the ground.

He's not angry. He's not. He's just...very anxious. She's ten. That's some sort of a fifth grade, right?

"Lora, didn't you take up sums at school?"

Lora shakes her head. "Mm-mm."

"You just...didn't have math?"

"Wasn't there," is the none-clarifying reply.

"So you didn't go to school."

"Mm-mm."

"Is that a yes 'mm-mm' or a no 'mm-mm'?" He hasn't been with her long enough to tell by intuition, yet.

Lora bites her lip, squinches the both of them together in a forward-focused fish-face, bobbles her head back and forth. "Mm-mm."

"Lora..." So now Jin's getting a little angry. Lora looks up at him, eyes wide; she seems to feel it, too.

Okay. Well. You can do the math on this, can't you Jin?

"You were in school, but you didn't go very often, because of your...father."

Lora nods, pensive. Then she bites her lip again and gives a half-giggle. "Wasn't always because of him."

Ah. Jin leans back on his haunches, arms crossed. "You cut class, huh? Rascal."

Clapping her hands on her cheeks, Lora giggles more. "Yeah...!"

He's not really prepared to teach her math, after all - he doesn't know how he knows it, he just...knows it, like his knowledge of minerals, only not half as comprehensive - and if she really hated whatever octagonal one-room schoolhouse so much as to skip out on the basis of her regular excuse and thus risk being caught out by the very same horrid man...well. Jin can take care of the sixpence sums for a while.

A while turns into a longer while. Years go by, and there's never any reason for Lora to really learn how to count to more than three. (Three, two, one, and...done! Right? Very simple.) She learns the denominations of this piece of gold or that by rote, by weight, by feel, by the funny little picture that she'd tried to study that inauspicious day so many years ago. She learns to tell the time by the sun in just the same way - not by angles or degrees, but by memories.

Haze arrives. She knows about trees - she's something of an expert, in fact - but not about trigonometry. Jin handles it all, still - quite the team dad, isn't he? Mikhail, then, seems quite prodigious towards the topic, but he's too reticent to take the lead on anything that should concern it.

The deepest secret nobody knows, one might say. Because they don't tell Addam, or Mythra, or Milton, or Hugo or Brighid or Aegaeon, or Minoth, when he arrives. It quite simply just doesn't come up. Why should it?

Why indeed? Facts and figures of keeping a militia camp up and running and fed are squared away to the quartermaster, and not even Good Lady Lora should have to trifle herself with it. The mercenary band, though providing some semblance of togetherness, still kept quite "every man and woman and child for his or her or their own self" - no groups larger than three or four at any one time.

So then, to Brogyn, the very managing fellow. He's counted out the delivery of rations and determined that it'll divide across the whole of their makeshift army just splendidly - that is, until it comes to actually transporting the goods from to, in Auresco, to fro, in Aletta.

"What are we talking about, then?" Lora asks brightly. "A little pest extermination?" Surely. Surely that's all it is.

They cavort into the canyon, and there spring the Parisax, just as promised. Every wildfire snap of her whip is strong, steady, one would even say calculated - not half so calculated as Jin ever was, but nonetheless. Quite smart, indeed.

The Parisax don't die when they are killed, however. "Architect, they're multiplying like rabbits!" Addam's consternation is palpable, growing with every swing of his sword, and his feet sink fruitlessly into the sand. The impotent little prince, indeed - only, the ranks aren't half that bad.

"Lora, how many is that?" Minoth calls out. "If there's two more for every one we dispatch?"

He says it to poke at Addam, not even for tactics or situational assessment, but Lora starts waffling something awful. She doesn't know - it's fractions, isn't it? Or, or, or she doesn't even know the right term to describe it, because goodness knows she's never heard of exponentials, or logarithms, or quite literally anything that Addam may in fact know because the prince of a medium-size principality doesn't have much to do all day besides keep the accounts.

So she taps out. "Yeah, they're pretty tough." A nervous laugh. A titter, even. Oh, Lora, you smart smart lady, you, this isn't quite becoming, now is it?

Minoth gives her a quizzical look - she's always caught his jokes before, so this is a little odd, but eh. What can you do? Not everyone's into being methodical in their repartee all the time.

Now, no one else seems to have noticed, but of course Jin did, and after the Pestronella plants have been safely acquired and extracted into repellant oil and the food stores have been transported sans resistance, Lora turns to Jin and whispers, hands over heart, "Jin...I still can't count."

Jin, ever conscious of this fact even in the very back of his mind and Core, finds his lips twisted somewhere between a reassuring smile and a disgusted grimace. "Don't worry," he says. "After the war is over, we'll settle down, like you said. You can learn then. I'm sure you'll have plenty of enthusiastic classmates."

"Oh!" All the sorrow washes away from Lora's face. "You're so right! Of course! Isn't that perfect?"

It isn't. It wasn't. It won't be. Never even had the chance. And then Jin stands aboard the Monoceros and watches Malos, a literal computer, tell Mikhail, now a full-blown engineer, what time it is without a clock or stray beam of sunlight anywhere in sight, and he hates the perfection.

Sometimes he wishes he couldn't count himself, as all the years go by. Eventually, perhaps, he himself forgets how to. Malos will always know, after all. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. How the hell is he going to grow out of that wanton need for codependence now?

Once again, exploring Lora and Jin's codependence is always a favorite for me, and when you pair that with a spun-up shitpost...love peace and truth incorporated. :^)