children are swimming and playing with boats

Chapter 01: Shepherd's Coronet
Chapter 02: Dawn Hydrangea
Chapter 03: Glossy Chamomile
Chapter 04: Lily of the Sunny Valley
Chapter 05: Shepherd's Purse

"I can't believe it. Only ten years old, and he's already herding Armu. Real glamorous."

Lora smiled, wistful or rueful. "I was a Driver at ten, remember? And you're hardly a year, yourself."

It wasn't that Mythra wasn't a thoughtful person. She just didn't have enough nuanced information, enough experience. Just like these kids, who knew so much, who constantly thought of new ways to get through their days while relying on the good and simple things, who hoped so big and dreamed so small because they had no idea what was even out there for them.

Lora glanced at Mythra, checking for hints of incense. But Mythra just frowned, ankle-deep.

Wading next to Joey was Teeco, his best friend. They traded (debatably, rude and/or unfair) splashes back and forth, Teeco alternating between scornful rejection and gleeful turnabout and Joey scowling or grinning in kind.

"She said she just really wants to get along with everyone. Like you, Lora."

Lora hummed her acknowledgement. How flattered she felt!

"But is that really something she should want? Don't you...lose yourself that way?"

"There's a difference between wanting to get along with everyone and wanting everyone to like you. I think, anyway."

Mythra's strategy was unfortunately quite plain: do it to them before they do it to you.

Because she wanted approval, badly.

"It's a horrible way to be - sick like that." Lora was speaking of poor, sweet Freja, of course. "I've seen so many children suffering that way, and I could never do very much to help. Just gather what supplies were requested, and hope it was enough."

"Did you notice?" Mythra asked quietly. "She was willing to do anything, to see her mother and her friends smile. She didn't even care that she was sick, anymore, or if the stuff they brought her was gonna make her sicker. She was just...used to it."

Lora nodded. "That's why I want to give these kids a future. Something real to latch onto, together."

"I guess Benny's pretty lonely, right about now."

"Benny...?" The name sounded so familiar... "Oh, from Hyber Village!"

He was growing up rather isolated, wasn't he? Surrounded by his father, a rotating assortment of old folk, and the remnants of Ornelia's legacy, it appeared. Did he have firsthand memories of when Hyber was a hub, or was that just a reassurance he'd been fed by his fading environs?

"Everything's a marvel to him," agreed Lora. "Things we take for granted. Drivers and Blades are so commonplace to me - to you too, right?"

Mythra was silent for a moment. Then, "I guess I'm more similar to Buzz's babyfaced kid than I thought."

"We can see vestiges of ourselves in all these children." Lora looked to the opposite end of the moat, where Marcus was diligently and thoroughly inspecting the seaworthiness of a variety of wooden crafts to transport handfuls of sand cargo and Munchygrub passengers. "Don't we, the mighty few, happen to personally know a couple of inventors and one very particular insect enthusiast?"

"And yet he's made himself Gideon's apprentice, and not Minoth's." Mythra rolled her eyes. "I think maybe humans are just unoriginal."

"I like many-splendored," replied Lora, content to be optimistic. "Doesn't that make you feel something so warm, knowing that our friends and their friends are just the same?"