Minewin smiled, glancing up the stone stairs the lead out of the very back of the yard.

"Locca, do you have any students right now?"

Locca shook her head, the slight motion knocking loose a couple strands of her violet hair. She reached up to brush them back and a pair of her bracelets jingled against one another.

"Are you looking to come back to us, Lord Minewin?"

"No," Minewin replied. "I was just thinking about my time here, and my time in the little cottage at the top of the stairs."

"You mastered those spells quickly, stuck up there with nothing else to do," Locca said, turning just before a breeze blew down from the mountains. Her hair stayed perfectly in place this time, and she let her wings relax so they didn't catch the air either.

"So do you have a student?"

"Yes," Locca replied. "Though he has not yet been sentenced to the cottage. He is still in the main house. However soon I fear he'll be sent up. He is tripped up be certain patterns and spells relying on them."

"Normal," Minewin said softly. He knew there was always one element, at least, to the magic arts that would overwhelm even the most adept student.

"And why did you not bring Ethan to us?" Locca asked a moment later. "You know that Eruatna and I would have welcomed you both for as long as necessary."

"By that time..." Minewin trailed off. Perhaps if he had taken Ethan to the sorceresses, things would have turned out completely different.

"Do not be so sad," Locca said abruptly. "Do not question the will of whomever picked that path. Now go, walk up the stairs and feel free to stay up there until you can accept that what is done is in the past."

Minewin nodded, and began to climb the stairs.

"Locca," he said, pausing on the fourth step. The look Locca gave him told him he didn't need to bother speaking.

"Worry not, Minewin," Locca said. "I'm sure she already knows you are here."

"And Ethan?"

Locca thrust out her arm, pointing up the mountain. "Climb."

It wouldn't help in the long run, but the walk up the stone stairs was already clearing his mind. So Minewin walked. And he sat at the top until the sun grew low on the horizon, just thinking to himself.

Someone had a warped sense of humor, he decided, to give him something that became everything he wanted, only to take it away and give him... what he always thought he wanted.