After dinner went about the same as the night before, Kurgm woke up groggy. He was hardly in the mood to do anything, but he dragged himself out of bed anyway. For the first time in many years, he contemplated not going to temple.

No matter what happens, the temple is how we stay grounded. Olmgra reminds us that every day can be bright and shining. All we have to do is try.

The thought of his mother made him smile, even if only for a moment. A scream echoed around his head, but faded away as he started moving through his morning routine. Wash. Dress. Gear. Bag. He made sure he had everything in case Master Ekla decided to ambush him again.

He liked the Sun Welcoming Ceremony. True to his mother’s words, it always made him feel like anything could happen. Even if everything always went wrong after that, he never gave up hoping. Maybe today would be different.

After they welcomed the sun, someone called to him.

“Apprentice Kurgm.”

Oshal made his way over to Kurgm, greeting several people on the way.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Better, thank you.” Kurgm was a little surprised to realize that he meant it. “You?”

“I’m alright. Is it alright if I join you for breakfast?”

“Of course.”

They walked to the great hall together. Oshal tapped his way through the corridors. Apprentices were converging on the great hall.

“Is it hard to get around in crowds?” Kurgm asked, watching the steady stream of people entering the great hall ahead of them.

“Not really. I can sense where everyone is, so it’s actually easier.”

“Hi, Oshal,” a girl said.

“Hello, Apprentice Minem. Are you still going to the forest today?”

“I am. I’m pretty excited.”

“Have fun.”

“Thanks!”

Kurgm leaned down to Oshal. “Who was that?”

“Apprentice Minem. She’s an apprentice druid a little younger than my sister. Today’s the first day she gets to explore the forest.”

“Hey, Oshal!”

Oshal turned and raised his hand, and another boy slapped his palm as he walked past.

“Hello, Apprentice Parom. How are things at the Temple of the Known Shadow?”

“Settling down after the Ceremony of Approaching Dark, thanks for asking. Have a good one!”

“You too.”

“Apprentice priest?” Kurgm asked.

“In the Temple of the Known Shadow. I like it there. I never feel like I’m missing anything.”

They sat down together with the others.

“Good morning, everyone,” Oshal said. “How is everyone this morning?”

“It’s too early!” Cremwa whined. “How am I supposed to get my beauty sleep if they make me wake up this early?”

“Can you not complain for five minutes?” Demndun asked. “Or is that too much to ask for the Great Cremwa?”

Kurgm pressed his lips together to hold back a laugh.

“How was the ceremony?” Zifor asked them after the officers arrived and breakfast started.

“It was nice,” Oshal said. “You should come back some time. I think you’d like it.”

“Sounds like fun,” Cremwa said. “Waking up before the sun comes up every day.”

“No one asked you, Cremwa,” Demndun said.

“I might go back,” Zifor said.

“Don’t your parents still go there?” Muwen asked. “They’ll probably hug you and get all mushy.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “‘Oh Zifor, our little pumpkin wumpkin, we missed you so much! Mwah! Mwah!’”

Zifor punched him amidst a chorus of giggles. Kurgm smiled, trying to get along, but he didn’t think it was that funny. Maybe it was because he didn’t have parents? But Oshal was smiling, so maybe it was just Kurgm.

Maybe he didn’t fit in with them.

He glanced over at Roshil and Aonva. The former was chatting away to the latter, who had her head buried in a book.

Must have an exam coming up.

Knowing Aonva, she’d already read the same book three times, and only then because she hadn’t had the time to read it a fourth. Why was it so much easier to talk to her than his new friends? Even Roshil and Sirshi were easier to talk to. At least he understood them well enough, apart from Roshil’s blatant disregard for the rules.

Oshal nudged him.

“Stop staring,” he said so no one else could hear.

Kurgm didn’t know how Oshal knew he’d been staring, but he tried to focus on the conversation around him. He barely followed any of it; they were talking about something from before they had all become apprentices.

“It might be nice to see the neighborhood again,” Demndun said. “Remember Old Lady Domna? She used to leave fresh baked cookies on the window sill, and didn’t mind if a few went missing.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Muwen said. “Half the grownups would yell at me for something I didn’t do.”

“At least,” Zifor said, “something they can’t prove that you did.”

If Kurgm didn’t know Master Ekla or Aonva, he’d have thought everyone broke the rules without a second thought. Sirshi and Roshil certainly didn’t care. Oshal usually didn’t, though. At least it wasn’t just him this time.

After breakfast, Master Ekla told him to take some time off before going to class. He walked through the corridors, then through the door to the Temple of the Rising Sun. He saw Sirshi disappear into the back with Master Moudren. For a moment, he wondered if talking to Sirshi would make him feel better, but she was busy, so he walked through the door on the other side of Olmgra’s statue. He bowed on his way past, then went to the Meditation Chamber.

With his troubles shut on the other side of the door, he knelt before the smaller statue of Olmgra.

“A knight can help people. So why can’t I? I can’t fit in with anyone. I can’t make friends. I… I had friends. Well, a friend. But I don’t think she wants to talk to me anymore. I made a mistake. Now I don’t know what to do. I tried fitting in somewhere else, but it’s not working. I can’t make other friends.”

He thought of Demndun and how nice she always was to him. He wanted to talk to her, but then Cremwa kept interrupting. He didn’t want to pull Demndun away from her other friends, and he couldn’t get along with them. That left no one.

“I could never make friends before. Master Ekla worked me pretty hard, so I could never get to dinner. She stopped last year, and it was nice for a while, getting to have friends. But then everything went wrong. Roshil enchanted Aonva, but Aonva still wanted to be friends with her, and my uncle said people like that don’t change. Either of them. When Oshal introduced me to Demndun, I thought that’d be better. But now I realize I don’t fit in with them either. I’m just alone. I don’t fit in anywhere.”

Kurgm sat alone with his thoughts for a time. Class would be starting soon, so he stood up, hoping Olmgra would send him some sort of sign. As far as he could tell, she was waiting for him to figure it out.

“Thank you for listening.” After bowing again, Kurgm turned and left.

Before he left the temple, he bowed again to the statue of Olmgra.

Make today a bright day.

Kurgm wanted to, but he didn’t know how anymore.

Hurried footsteps announced Sirshi’s walk through the temple.

“Hello, Sirshi.”

“Running late, can’t talk.”

Kurgm glanced at the clock, and realized he too was running behind.

He ran to catch up to Sirshi.

“Class?” he asked.

“Yeah.” They both kept a quick pace going through the corridors, careful not to run. “You?”

“Same. Didn’t realize the time.”

They got to the north tower and went to their respective rooms. Kurgm rounded up his things, then nearly ran out the door. Sirshi left just after him.

“Sirshi, do you ever have trouble making friends?”

“No, I have trouble getting rid of friends.”

“What?”

“I have too many friends.”

Kurgm frowned. He’d only ever seen Sirshi with Roshil and Aonva.

“How many friends do you have?”

“I don’t know, three maybe?”

Their boots skidded on the floor as they turned a corner.

“How is three too many friends?”

“They keep asking me if I want to do things. Or telling me about their problems. Most of the time, I just want to be left alone.”

“Why?”

“I like being alone.”

I wish it were that easy.

They separated after going through the door to the school. Kurgm kept thinking about what Sirshi had said. It wasn’t that easy. He couldn’t stop wanting to have friends. He’d gotten so used to it over the past year.

He sat down in class and tried to concentrate on schoolwork, but the idea that he didn’t have a choice stuck. Maybe it was his only option. Maybe he just had to get used to not having friends.

#VolumeThree #FittingIn

That afternoon, Master Ekla drilled him on focusing his ki again. He didn’t mind, since it was the only part of being a knight that he could ever get right.

When she was satisfied that he could recover his senses well enough, she stopped them for the day.

“Something on your mind?” she asked. “You’ve been more down than usual.”

Kurgm remembered that Master Ekla, while primarily a master knight, was also a master weaver. And master druid, so she could probably smell misery on him or something.

“Did… did you have trouble making friends?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Kurgm should’ve expected that answer. Master Ekla was good with people. She was good with everyone. Every problem they had to solve, she not only knew the answer, but how to phrase it so people would listen. When he was younger, Kurgm remembered seeing her with Lord Velal mostly, but there must’ve been plenty of times when she was out with the hundreds of friends she must’ve had.

“I didn’t try. I used to have a friend, but when I was accepted as an apprentice and he wasn’t, we grew apart. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend with him, and my father drove me to work harder than everyone else. Even when I spent time with the other apprentices, we never connected. So I didn’t worry about it.”

That sounded more like him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to understand Demndun’s friends. If it weren’t for Oshal, he didn’t think he’d get along with any of them.

“Don’t do what I did,” Master Ekla said. “You have friends.”

“I guess.”

“Skipping over whatever happened between you and Apprentice Aonva, who I’m sure wouldn’t mind seeing you again, what about Apprentice Demndun? She seems nice.”

“When we’re alone, it’s fine. I can sort of talk to her, but when we’re with her friends, it’s impossible. I can’t understand them. They’ve been friends since they were children, and I can’t fit in with them.”

He didn’t want to mention the potential breaking of rules. They hadn’t said they did, but they had implied it. It wasn’t right to blame someone without evidence, and he didn’t have any.

Master Ekla motioned for him to sit down on the ground. She did the same after he had.

“I knew a girl once who grew up without any friends. She had people who loved her, but she couldn’t fit in with anyone her own age. Then she met another girl who also had trouble fitting in. Now the two are best friends, practically inseparable.”

“But I don’t have anyone like that.”

“You’re right. You don’t.”

“Great pep talk.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep trying. If this group of people isn’t right for you, then maybe you need to find another one. Or, if you really like Apprentice Demndun, then ask her to spend more time with you. I can ask Master Silbrom to let her have time off with you, but you have to ask Apprentice Demndun first.”

“We sometimes go out to the gardens,” Kurgm said. “We go to one of the moonlit gardens sometimes and just talk for a while.”

It wasn’t always easy to find something about which they could talk. It’d been easier with Aonva. Almost any topic, especially academics, would get Aonva talking. She was a wealth of information about the court, dragons, history, the temples. Almost anything.

“Do that, then.” Master Ekla stood up. “Like I said, don’t be like me. Go out, make friends, and have a life. I didn’t have any of that, but you can.”

Kurgm stood up and gathered his things. “Thank you.”

Master Ekla nodded. “You’re welcome.” She waved him away. “Now go away.”

Kurgm smiled to himself as he left the practice room and headed to dinner. When he arrived, he was lucky enough to find Demndun already there, without the others.

“Hello,” he said as he sat down.

“Hi.” She averted her eyes for a moment, then looked back at him. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Me too. What’s yours?”

“Would you like to go to the gardens tonight?” she asked. “I know it’s cold, but you asked yesterday, so I thought you’d like to go again?”

Kurgm smiled and nodded. “That’s what I was going to ask.”

Demndun lit up. “Great! Right after dinner, before it gets too dark?”

“Yeah.”

Even with the others there, dinner flew by. Kurgm walked with Demndun to the north tower to grab heavier clothes. Kurgm waited for Demndun to come out. When she did, she had on a matching scarf, hat, and mittens.

“Don’t laugh,” she said. “Old Lady Domna made them for me. They’re really warm, and I get cold easily.”

“She sounds nice,” he said as they started walking.

“She is. She used to look after all of us when our parents were away.” They stepped through the door to the gardens into the cold. “What about you? You never talk about what it was like growing up in the castle.”

They trudged through fresh snow on their way to the closest of the moonlit gardens. Druids walked passed them on their way to the druid’s sleeping area, which sat next to the moonlit garden. They walked through the gap in the evergreen trees to find it deserted.

“My parents died when I was little,” he said. Something flickered around in his head for a moment, but vanished before he could find it. “I was raised by Our Lord True Knight.”

“I’m sorry. You never said.”

“I don’t like to talk about it. I do like hearing about all the adventures you had.”

So long as they don’t involve breaking rules, although I think they all do.

They sat down on a bench. Demndun slid closer to him.

“It’s still cold,” she said.

He started to protest that it wasn’t, but Demndun wrapped her arm around his, and his mind stopped.

“That’s better,” she said.

She rested her head on his shoulder. Slowly, he rested his head on hers. Maybe he didn’t fit in with her friends, but that didn’t matter. He fit in just fine with her.

#VolumeThree #FittingIn

Ekla walked through the court. Even though she’d been a master druid for several months, she still wasn’t used to not needing a cloak to keep her warm.

You can draw heat from the earth. She has plenty to spare.

She passed the gardens and wondered about Kurgm. She wasn’t sure about his new friends, but if he was happy for now, she’d keep a good thought.

Following the river, Ekla arrived at the cemetery and pushed the gate open. She nodded to the groundskeeper on her way past, making her way through the tombstones. In other cities, more prominent members of society got bigger, more elaborate tombstones. But in the court, everyone was equal, so officers and common folk alike where treated the same.

There’s nothing common about them, Apprentice Ekla. Everyone is extraordinary in their own way.

She found her way to one grave in particular.

Lady Enrakal Mother, Wife, Sister, Friend Protecting Olmgra’s Kingdom as she protected ours

“My Lady.” Ekla bowed respectfully, then knelt down in front of the grave. “I know I haven’t been by to visit in a while. I’ve been busy.”

That’s because you’ve always worked too hard.

“Kurgm is doing well. He’s struggling to make friends. I wish I could say he was talking with Apprentice Aonva again, but I don’t know where they stand, or what happened. He won’t talk about it. Sometimes I see him looking at her like he wants to talk to her again, but something’s stopping him. He’s getting friendly with Apprentice Demndun, though. Lady Emgard says she’s sweet, and I think that will be good for him. I still wish he’d get back with Apprentice Aonva, but that’s because she reminds me a lot of myself at her age. I don’t think they were ever a couple, but I could see it starting. Then your brother happened and…”

Ekla stopped herself before she got too far. She couldn’t prove that Amnadm had had anything to do with Kurgm not talking to Aonva anymore, but the timing couldn’t have been a coincidence. Amnadm was like a tornado; he swept in and wrecked everything in his path, especially where Kurgm was involved.

“He really wants to make you proud. I did too, when I was his age. I know I say it every time I visit, but thank you for believing in me. For seeing past what my father wanted from me.”

Her mind drifted away for a moment, back to another time. She didn’t let it linger there long.

“He’ll make a good knight one day. He’d never believe it now, but I know he will. Lord Velal did a good job raising him. He still checks in on Kurgm sometimes. Better than—” She stopped herself before making another remark about Amnadm.

Kurgm’s only living relative, and he can’t be bothered to write to him. Fine. It’s fine. It’s probably for the best.

She took several deep breaths to calm herself down.

“They’re both doing great.”

And how are you doing, Master Ekla?

“I’m working on my priest apprenticeship. Lady Runslo says I’m almost finished, but she’s been saying that for months, so I think she just says that. I’ve learned a lot about the different religions. I’m still not going to join a temple, but I’ve learned they do a lot more than I realized.”

She smiled for a moment, but she could feel Lady Enrakal’s stare on her, looking straight past her facade. Ekla could never lie to her.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve got to look out for three apprentices. I know Lord Grund looks out for Apprentice Roshil, but I feel responsible for her. And I want to know that my father didn’t do too much damage to Sirshi. I thought… I thought if they gave each other a chance, they’d come to some sort of understanding. I thought I could give him a chance, but he threw it in Sirshi’s face. I want to know that telling our father how she was doing won’t hurt her anymore.”

Ekla took a breath and reminded herself that neither Apprentice Aonva nor Apprentice Oshal needed her to look out for them. Neither did Sirshi or Roshil, but Ekla felt like it was her responsibility. She understood what they were all going through, and she wanted to help them through it.

Apprentice Ekla, you shouldn’t work so hard. You’ll make the rest of us look bad.

Ekla let out a quick laugh, then straightened up. Sometimes, she truly believed that Lady Enrakal was listening. Even if she wasn’t, Ekla could imagine what she’d say.

“When Lord Velal took charge of Kurgm, I could tell it was hard. He tried so hard not to let it show, but I could still see it. The more I remember about it, the more I see it. It’s hard for me too. I keep wishing I knew exactly what to say to make him happy. To see him happy, but I don’t know. He isn’t like everyone else.” She smiled at the grave. “Of course, he’s not. He’s your son.”

Ekla stood up and bowed.

“I should go. I’ve got a lot to do. I’ll keep taking care of him as best I can.”

I know you will. Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself, too.

“Of course, My Lady.”

She bowed again, then bowed to the grave next to hers.

Master Soorgom Father, Husband, Friend A mind such as his doesn’t come by often

Apart from knowing him as “The Brilliant Master Soorgom”, Ekla hadn’t known Kurgm’s father well. Nevertheless, she took time to pay her respects to both his parents.

Ekla turned and started out of the cemetery. A calming feeling came over her. She could hear the sounds of the court not far away, but a peace prevailed inside the cemetery. She walked among the greats of Skwyr Court.

Before she left, Ekla stopped at one last grave. As far as she knew, it was the one grave in the entire cemetery whose occupant had never stepped foot inside the court.

Prenowla Loving Mother and Wife Protecting the innocent to the very end

“I’ll keep your family safe,” Ekla said as she bowed. “I promise.”

#VolumeThree #FittingIn

After the last of the worshipers left the Flower Blooming Ceremony, Sirshi, along with a few other apprentice priests, cleaned up after the ceremony. Sirshi didn’t know any of their names, nor did she particularly care. While Master Moudren was the head priest of Skwyr Court’s temple, other priests served as well, trading off days for the Sun Welcoming Ceremony every morning, and performing other ceremonies, like welcoming newborns into the temple. As such, she occasionally ran into the other priests and their apprentices, but she’d never had to learn the other apprentices’ names. Sirshi considered this a point of pride.

After they were finished clearing the temple and putting everything back where it belonged, the other priests left with their apprentices. Sirshi made her way to Master Moudren’s office, where the woman herself was waiting for her.

Master Moudren smiled and stood up.

“You did a good job today with the Flower Blooming Ceremony,” she said. “When you go on your fifth-year assignment, you will be in charge of the ceremony, and I think you’re well on your way to being prepared for it.”

Sirshi bowed, feeling her face flush a little.

“Thank you, Master Moudren.”

Master Moudren returned to the seat at her desk.

“Did you get along with the other apprentices?”

Sirshi nodded, her mind still on the Flower Blooming Ceremony. She’d managed to stay calm through the entire ceremony, which she thought was an accomplishment, considering neither Roshil nor Aonva had opted to go. Roshil had been worried about the previous year, and Aonva had refused to go without Roshil.

“How are your friends?” Master Moudren asked. “I didn’t see either of them there. I hope Apprentices Roshil and Aonva know they are always welcome in Olmgra’s house.”

“We welcome them,” Sirshi muttered.

“Have other people been causing them problems?”

Sirshi had a clear memory of the previous year. Being nervous about helping w