Spring was around the corner, and though the sun was warmer, the cool wind blowing in from Skadi kept people away from the rooftop restaurants in the Capital. Noah was an exception. He preferred to do his reading away from the crowds, the hot spring rays almost tangible, slowly branding his face, the chill keeping his mind sharp. He turned a page and switched his crossed legs.

He had been researching husbandry and farming in the Capital’s library for the past three months on request from Raija. The task had come with a studio apartment on the western edge of the city, only three floors down from the roof. But he didn’t agree for the apartment. Working alongside Raija always felt rewarding; her group had a sense of camaraderie and purpose that was hard to find in the Garden. He glanced at the opened invitation on the table next to him, sure Akira got a similar one. He looked forward to seeing her.

The loud crunch of an apple startled him. An unfamiliar man pulled a chair at his table and sat down with no apparent intention of acknowledging him. Noah quietly turned his eyes back to the book, and didn’t look up even when the man tossed the blue apple core in his plate, next to his half-eaten sandwich.   

“Noah, say something!”

Noah swung around to look at the speaker.

“Why would you put up with this?” The woman had a hand on one hip and a curved black saber on the other. The robe, the weapons, the tie that held her many thin braids together, everything was black, except the tassel that hung from her hilt. It was purple. She grinned.

“Fia…” He didn’t think it possible.

She grinned. “Noah!” 

He saw in her eyes the sparkle that had survived along with her, and rose from his seat. “It’s really you!” 

“It’s really me! And how I’ve missed you.” 

Noah held her by the shoulders. “You’re back.”

“Don’t tell me you thought I was dead?” Fia retorted. 

Noah grimaced. 

“You thought I was dead?” 

“Six years, Fia! What did you expect?” 

She shrugged. “A funeral?” 

He didn’t laugh. 

“You held a funeral?!” 

“No, no, we only planned it. It’s still months away.”

“Noah!”

“Everyone was busy till summer,” he said, defensively, and they both laughed. 

They caught up on the basics first. Akira had been in the Arrival halls in Wolf’s Ridge for the past six months. She and Noah took up several jobs with Raija ever since the incident. The incident was what Noah called Mikael’s death, or Fia’s departure, or possibly both. Before Noah could ask about Fia, the man on his table cleared his throat. 

“Oh yes!” said Fia. “Noah, this is Andrik.” 

Noah turned to Andrik. “I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Andrik spat. 

Noah weakly smiled and turned back to Fia. “So, where have you been?” 

“Well,” said Fia. “I stayed around Five Pillars for some time, then I went to Skadi. I took up a job on a farm, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.” 

“So, Andrik worked around the farm with you?” 

“I’m not a farmer,” Andrik snapped. 

“No, no. He’s not a farmer,” said Fia. “I met him in Five Sisters, but then he moved to Skadi and worked in the same village.” 

Noah just smiled. Fia chuckled, knowing well what he was thinking and glad he didn’t voice those thoughts to Andrik.

By nightfall, they were at Noah’s apartment. It was bigger than their apartment for four and even had a window that didn’t open in a street or someone else’s house. It was still a Capital’s window, made from canvas that you could pull aside and yet only two-by-two feet square when it could’ve just been the entire five metre wall. Noah said something about structural strength and wind that made some sense. 

Fia had booked rooms in an inn already so they couldn’t spend the night—something she reminded Noah multiple times. They could have dinner though and it turned out to be the most enjoyable one she’d had in years—six years to be exact. 

“We must leave after this,” she said as she rinsed the last plate. 

Noah took the plate from her and wiped it. “Stay for tea.” 

“I wish I could but—” They both turned around at the sound of soft snoring. Andrik was fast asleep in Noah’s bed on the other end of the apartment. Noah snickered. “Tea it is,” she said. 

“So what’s his story?” he asked lighting the oil stove while she filled the kettle with water from an earthen pot. She missed these pots—the ones in Skadi were all wooden. She took a mouthful of water and made an effort not to gag. It was more foul than the swampy air; she didn’t know how she’d managed to live here for all those years. She wiped her mouth on the inside of her wrist. “He’s a good kid, just a bit rough around the edges.” 

“Just a bit?” 

“Oh, don’t be mean, Noah. You’re better than that.”

He winced. “I’m sorry; you’re right.” 

“So you’re living alone. I thought there’d be a someone special.”

Noah sighed. “The list got longer, but sadly, no one you need to meet anymore.” But people he probably still had in his address book, given his knack for parting on good terms. Love was abstract for Noah. He was simply too ancient to see it the way Fia did, too ancient to even know how ancient he was or understand the irony of being Noah from the Dry Lands. “What about you?” he asked.

Fia shrugged. “Between ‘I’m going back to Earth’ and ‘I don’t deserve happiness,’ I honestly don’t know where time went.” His eyes met hers and Fia saw someone who loved her enough to hurt for her. She adjusted the kettle on the stove. 

“I hope you no longer think you don’t deserve happiness,” he said. 

“No, no, just—had too much else going on.”

He leaned his hip against the kitchen drawers. “What changed?” 

“Hmm?” 

He crossed his arms. “You’ve been gone for almost six years, and we’ve looked. You really didn’t want to be found. What changed?” He’d grown. He was no longer the timid new arrival from Dry Lands. He was a man who knew he had what it takes, yet retained the humility of someone who didn’t have all the answers.  

Fia chewed on her lip. “You may not like my answer.” 

He patiently waited for more. 

She sighed. “I found something. Something too phenomenal to ignore and too big for me alone. I didn’t know who else to go to.”

He shifted. “What is it?”

It was exhilarating to see curiosity on par with hers—enough to quash her inhibitions. “I found two more artefacts from the soul map and more notes,” she said. “Noah, they really were a joint arrival; sisters on Earth. The locations in Skadi were tough to find. They’re not inhabited, and the small scale of the map doesn’t help. At first, I tried on my own, but I almost died and Andrik insisted that I let him come with me.”

“How do you know they were sisters?” 

“We found letters written in the Garden tongue by the primary. She just signed them as E, so I still don’t know her name. The secondary’s name was Dinah. I still call them Alpha and Beta though.” Alpha and Beta was what they called the makers of the soul map back when they lived in the Capital. Of course, now that Fia could tell them apart she’d assigned names to them individually. E was Alpha, and Dinah was Beta. “She was like me, Noah. She lost her mother tongue in the migration but she relearned it from her secondary.” Fia noticed the flash of melancholy on Noah’s face but chose not to address it. “I have her word lists. I can translate the notes.”

Noah recoiled. “You know what it is?”

“Well…” Fia sighed. “Not really. I don’t understand everything. I can show it to you.” She brought her satchel to the center table and threw the flap open. Noah moved the wicker sofa back, and pulled out floor cushions from beneath his bed. They sat on opposite sides, the cushions just thick enough to keep the tangled branches of the floor from being imprinted on their behinds. 

She paused. “I want to get it right this time, Noah. I need you for that, you and Akira, but you can say no. I would understand.”

“I’m in.”

“But I haven’t even shown—”

“I’ll go and we’ll plan it together.”

Fia bit down on a smile. “Do you think Akira would go?”

Noah chuckled. “Akira will walk into a fire as long as she doesn’t have to decide where to enter from.”

“Not always.”

“You’ve been gone for too long. Oh, she’s going to kick your ass for that.”

Fia grinned so wide that her cheeks hurt. 

By the time Fia finished briefing Noah, it was almost dawn. The wealth of knowledge they’d accumulated in the last few years made many things that had been puzzling back in the day seem simple now. Noah took notes, and despite the long night, he was ready to circle back but Fia’s mouth felt like paper from all the talking. She took a laboured sip of musty water. 

Noah pulled himself onto the wicker sofa behind him and rested his elbows on his knees. “I’ll need a week or ten days to wrap things. Let’s see how soon Akira can come.”

Fia stared at the map on the table without seeing it. “Noah… you know you don’t owe me anything, right? You don’t have to go.”

“I know.”

“Then, why are you helping me?” 

He met her gaze. “You know why.” 

She recognized the sadness in his eyes, the guilt, the need to make it worth something. The remote possibility that going back meant reversing everything, putting Mikael back with his family in Quetta, or knowing that he was already there so they could have peace. She sighed. “You think we can find the rest of them?” 

He sat up straight and Fia knew he’d already given it some thought. “We’ll need more help. The three of us—four—” he glanced at Andrik, “won’t be enough.” 

“Who would we ask?” 

Noah flashed a boyish grin; he hadn’t grown in some ways. “I have someone in mind. And he comes in a set of two.” 

“He?” 

“We’ll be running into him soon.” He dug out an envelope from under the soul notes and tossed it to her. 

She picked it up—an invitation from Raija. “Someone I know?” she asked though she already knew where he was going.

He nodded. “Someone who wears a crown.”

“Oh.”