“You have to restrain her.”, Hlaya continued. “Especially you, Curel. I put you in charge of her actions so you stop her from blowing herself up, not to provide her the materials she needs to do that!”

“I'm sorry...” Curel responded quietly. “I guess I screwed up.”

“Yes you did!” Hlaya confirmed and sighed then, like a judge considering the verdict for a last time. “You all get shopping duty for this week. The ENTIRE shopping duty. And I will have to think up an appropriate punishment for Kyu. And later, there will be a personal talk with each of you. Now go back to your rooms and think about what happened today.”

With these words and another angry glare at the group, she stood up and walked towards the exit of the room. Everyone waited until she was gone, then Curel stood up to get her clothes, while Laniel left out an annoyed sigh: “Shopping duty.”

“The entire shopping duty.” Inu added.

“Kyu is definitely going to pay for it this time”, Titania said, clearly mad on her little sister for dragging her into this.

Everyone stood up, except for Sage who felt like this got way too personal way too quick for him, especially as an outsider. He was now legitimately involved in this clan’s family business... and all of this because he wanted to steal some eggs?

Slowly he dragged his body back into a standing position and turned his head after the group, that was already leaving the room. Slowly he followed them, but was interrupted by a certain Riverelf who was currently getting dressed on her bed.

“Hey uhm...”, she spoke up to stop Sage from leaving. When he turned to he rshe left out a careful smile and said: “Thanks for... today, I guess.”

Sage wasn't sure what she meant by that and he was too tired of the intense drama to investigate it.

“No problem.”, he just responded and threw her a quick, nice smile before actually heading out.

Way too much happened in a way too short time.

Inu belonged to a supposedly extinct species that for some reason looked familiar to him.

Kyu was... well... being herself. And atop of that there was now this whole Clan family business that he was getting involved in.

With a numb feeling in his stomach he went back into his room and sat down on the edge of the bed. For a while he just let his thoughts circle and ultimately decided that it was best to take a rest from the chaos and exhaustion that his body had to endure this morning. A tired sigh escaped his mouth as he laid back on the blanket and closed his eyes while the summer sun was slowly purging the morning cold from his room. He didn't really fall asleep but rather entered a murky state between dream and reality in which he was exploring the endless abyss in his mind for clues of just might have once been there. The sun was already setting behind the mountain-ranges that surrounded the city, when a knocking against the door of his room ripped him from his tranquility.

Blinking a few times in confusion he stood up from his bed and opened the door. It was the first time someone visited him in this room.

“Hello, stranger without memories...” Kyus grandmother greeted in a quiet tone. Her voice sounded weak and exhausted as if he had shouted too much today for her old vocal chords “Would you mind a little chat with an old, worried woman?”

“N-not at all...” Sage reassured her and stepped aside so she could enter his domain. “C-come in.”

Hlaya nodded thankfully and headed straight for the only chair in the small chamber, an old office chair by the tiny table next to the window. She sat down and gazed through the room, from left to right, inspecting his inventory.

“Hmm...” she finally said. “They really did only give you the bare basics, didn't they? I hope your time here is not uncomfortable.”

“N-no, not at all...” Sage reassured with a slight déjà vu feeling crawling up the back of his mind. “It's just... a wild ride, honestly. Having no memories makes everything a bit... overwhelming.”

Hlaya nodded: “I understand that and I am truly sorry for the inconvenience my granddaughter has put you through.”

Sage made an off-putting gesture: “It's nothing I can't deal with. Though, I admit I have a lot of questions.”

“I expected that.” Hlaya said in a polite tone, which may be stemmed from her trying to go easy on her now strained voice. “That's part of the reason why I'm here. To answer your questions... but also to make a request for you.”

“Alright...” Sage said. “What do you want me to do?”

Hlaya shook her head: “I'll answer your questions first. My request will only make sense with some context.”

“Understood.” Sage replied and sighed before speaking up again: “Tell me about Kyu... What is the deal with her mother and these radical actions? Why did she completely tilt when you mentioned her?”

“Getting straight to the point, eh?” Hlaya sighed again and the one eye that was not covered by her mourning-cut seemed to glitter sadly in the evening-sun “It's not easy to talk about this for me, especially not to a human. But Kyu has a keen interest in you and it is necessary that you know what is going on with her... so you can keep her from harm or at least save yourself from damage. Our family is a bit... complicated. Titania, Laniel and Kyu refer to each other as sisters, even though this is only half true. While Laniel and Titania share the same father and mother, Kyu has a different mother, stemming from her father’s second marriage with my daughter.”

So that's where the different looks come from, Sage thought to himself, but didn't dare to interrupt Hlaya, who continued after short pause.

“I... never really liked her father, Tuhar. He was a political radical who almost threw this Clan into chaos with his idealism. He was part of a communist movement that took a part of the Elves in this country by storm about fifty years ago, when we fought for recognition by the UN. They thought they could unite the Clans under a single banner and cause a revolution that would end the Human rule over this country. Laniel’s and Titania’s mother divorced him over his idea of a bloody civil war, but Nadya... My sweet little Nadya became completely absorbed by these ideas.”

It obviously got progressively harder for her to talk about the subject. No wonder Kyu and her Grandmother couldn't agree on this, when such a great amount of emotions was involved.

“She was only fifteen when she started attending the communist rallies and 17 when she became Tuhar’s left hand in the Clan. I don't know how old she was when they started dating though... well she was definitely too young to be with a man in his mid-fifties. I accepted it back then, because I thought it was just a phase, but it wasn't. They gathered followers and began to openly question the leadership of this clan. This went on for months, until they staged an uprising and tried to take over this building by force. Luckily no one was killed, as they couldn't quite bring themselves to kill their own families over an ideology. The Clan’s leader banished Tuhar and everyone who supported him from the Clan. They accepted their punishment, but Tuhar made one request... that his pregnant wife would be allowed to stay until her child was born. He said they were going to move into a combat zone and that it was not the right place for a woman that was expecting a child. Though the wife he mentioned was not the wife that the clans leader had married him to nearly twenty-five years ago but it was my poor, misguided daughter, who stood next to him with a bulge in her belly and a loaded shotgun in her damn hands.”

It was pretty clear that Hlaya was fighting back the tears now, and Sage realized that this was the edge. He sat up and tried to calm her: “Alright, I get the message. You don't need to tell the whole story.”

Hlaya sobbed once, twice, then swallowed and shook her head again: “No... This is necessary for you to know, if you want to fulfil my request. I'm almost done anyway.”

She took a deep breath and continued: “She spent four more months ostracised with the clan, gave birth to Kyu in her room and then packed up her shotgun, her fucking communist flag and her military jacket and just left. No one has ever seen or heard of her again. That's twenty-one years ago now.”

Sage swallowed heavily as the entire story was finished and looked into Hlaya’s grieving eyes: “And now you're scared she will follow her mother’s path?”

“Scared?” Kyus Grandmother asked with a hysterical sub-tone in her voice. “I'm terrified of her making the same mistakes as her mother. She lacks the shining, commie-figurehead that Nadya latched onto to radicalise, but she is radicalising by imagining her mother as this role-model. She is going down a path that she believes her mother has laid out to her. I did everything I could to stop this from ever happening, but ever since I told her the true story of her mother when she turned fifteeen, she was hell-bent on finding her and... Do something to bring about this dammed dream-castle of a revolution. I can't watch this anymore.”

Sage nodded, slowly and carefully.

“And what do you want me to do?” he asked.

Hlaya looked up again, pleading.

“She seems to look up to you. I know right now it seems like she is just dragging you from adventure to adventure, but I've seen this kind of behaviour before, in her mother.” she said with slight desperation in her voice. “I want you to stay close to her. And I want you to do what Curel and her sisters are failing at. Please... try to moderate her.”