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Tasha makes it all the way to Puzzle City when her baby nephew wakes up on her back.
Alver would protest at being called a baby, but he has barely made it past his first decade and suffered yet another poisoning last week, so he’s Tasha’s baby whether he likes it or not.
Three years of being the only useful parental figure in his life gives Tasha the good sense to not say this out loud.
Instead, as Alver goes from being a child-shaped log to completely alert in half a second, Tasha gently knocks her head against his. “Have a good nap?” she asks, voice gentler than it would be with anyone else, except maybe Mary.
Alver grumbles at her while burying his face in her neck, so Tasha takes it as a good sign. He doesn’t bother to grumble unless he feels safe or particularly well-rested.
Tasha’s arms tighten under Alver’s legs for a moment before she regains control of herself. Coming back from the City of Life, trying to get some dead mana for her nephew, and finding a nearly dead nephew isn’t exactly her idea of a relaxing errand.
She had snapped and kidnapped Alver in his sleep from the palace, since there’s nobody worth staying there for anyway. His mother is dead and his father is a useless piece of shit who lets his ten-year-old son deal with assassins on his own.
If Tasha had been on her own, she would have been halfway through Mogoru by now, but, well, she’s with the baby. Tasha goes a bit crazy when she’s afraid angry, but not crazy enough to take her kid through the Land of Purification and Death to Darkness. So, they had ended up in Puzzle City, her elemental pushing its limits to whisk Tasha along, just as eager to get Alver out of that damned palace.
Tasha had justified the whole thing to herself pretty easily; she has wanted to take Alver to the City of Life for years now, but the little punk is so stubborn about staying in Huiss. Almost everyone in the palace (including Tasha’s current alias, to avoid suspicion) had been fired anyway after the poisoning attempt. It was easy to pack their bags and chart an escape route: Puzzle City to the Whipper Kingdom to the Jungle to Caro to the Land of Death.
Alver would deny it because he’s stubborn to the end, but he likes exploring. He’d enjoy the trip.
The problem is, Tasha, in the rush of emotions (coming back with trinkets, coming back with dead mana, coming back to Alver coughing blood up on the floor and staring up at Tasha with fear until he realizes who she is, never knowing when the next bloodhound lunges for his neck), hadn’t quite figured out how to justify it to Alver.
Neither has her elemental, from the way it ruffles Alver’s hair in greeting and then abruptly tries to make itself scarce. Traitor.
Rubbing his face in her neck one more time, Alver digs his chin into Tasha’s collarbone as he looks up.
“Auntie…” he says as warningly as a ten-year-old can muster. “This isn’t Huiss…”
Tasha proceeds to make shit up very, very fast. This, she has learned, is another essential to parenting.
“This isn’t a kidnapping,” she says with a ridiculous amount of false confidence. “It’s training.”
Tasha’s cheek proceeds to cave in from the force of Alver’s withering gaze.
She turns her head to get a better look at him, even though it means the side-eye turns into a direct stink-eye. Tasha has no idea who he got that from.
“It’s true!” she insists. “A leader has to know how his people are living, right?” she coaxes.
Alver’s gaze turns thoughtful. More importantly, it turns less likely to pout at Tasha for weeks on end for a failed kidnapping attempt.
“That is true,” Alver allows, with the tone of voice that he thinks makes him sound regal and princely. Tasha just thinks it’s cute. “A ruler should know his people.”
Tasha bounces Alver up, hiking him up higher and startling out the smallest laugh before he puts his princely facade back on. She can’t help the grin that stretches across her face. “It’s important to know what they celebrate too. So, I’ve brought you here to Puzzle City.”
“...Okay,” Alver finally says, double-checking the colour of his hands (undisguised; it’s easier to kidnap the first prince when no one knows what he really looks like) and then making himself comfortable in the piggyback. “We have to go back to the palace after we’re done learning though.”
A happier kid would say that they have to get back home soon. Maybe, a happier Alver wouldn’t worry about it at all.
These are the thoughts that drive Tasha crazy but she thinks about them, nevertheless. “Okay,” she breathes out. “Whatever you say.”
There’s an extra tight hug around her neck, like Alver can sense her fear and worry, even though she’s trying to hide it. “I say put me down,” he tells her imperiously. Trying to sound all grown-up.
Tasha laughs, a bit wild. “Very well,” she says, and obeys her future king.
For all of Alver’s maturity, he hasn’t yet decided that he’s too old to hold her hand; his small hand slips easily into Tasha’s calloused one, trusting in a way that Alver isn’t with anyone else any more.
“Why are we in Puzzle City?” Alver asks, looking up at her. In the clothes Tasha and her elemental had dressed him in, he looks like any other boy, albeit one from the Jungle.
Tasha squeezes his small hand. Sometimes, she wonders how the years pass by. On the day Alver was born, one little fist couldn’t even wrap around Tasha’s fingertip. In just another decade, his hand might end up bigger than hers.
“Puzzle City is a city of survivors,” Tasha says, instead of as the hub of trade in the northeast region, I figured it’d be the easiest place to hitch a ride to another country. “Today’s the winter solstice. When they celebrate the winter solstice here, they celebrate that they survived. I wanted to show you what that’s like.”
It’s true enough. Now that they’re here, Tasha does want to show him. She just… had other reasons for coming here at the beginning.
Alver tugs on Tasha’s hand. Tasha leans in, obliging.
“My name is Bob while we’re here,” he whispers with such gravity that Tasha can’t help her bark of laughter.
Alver shoots her a dirty look in reply, but Tasha can’t help it. It’s just too cute. How did he even decide on Bob, of all names?
“Do I get a name?” Tasha teases, feeling a crooked smile on her lips.
Alver stares at her blankly. “I call you Auntie,” he says, with a distinct air of you should know this already.
Tasha laughs again as her nephew stares at her like she’s crazy, and starts to drag him down Puzzle City’s lit up streets.
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
The longest night of the year turns out to be the brightest. Your average Elf would probably scoff something disdainful about humans, stuck in their little havens around the World Tree’s branches; Tasha looks at her nephew’s face filled with wonder and thinks that this is a part of living too.
In honour of the winter solstice, or maybe to ward off its darkness, lanterns are strung all over the city. They hang in rock towers, dangle from the walls, and Tasha even spies one valiantly brightening a laundry line. Their radiance doesn’t quite match the light of day, but it’s a spirited attempt.
Alver stares at the lanterns curiously as they walk through Puzzle City’s crowded streets. “It’s so bright,” he marvels. “Do they like the Sun God here?”
Tasha squeezes his hand as she pulls him over to a street food vendor. “Puzzle City is disowned by the gods,” she explains as she tastes their purchases and hands them over to Alver afterwards. It’s a habit that makes him feel safe about eating. Tasha indulgently watches Alver wolf down a few sausages before he realizes how fast he’s going and slows down in embarrassment.
The vendor laughs. “I’m glad you like my goods!” they boom, and hand Alver a few more skewers on the house.
Alver ducks his head and mumbles a thank you, ears gaining a rosy hue. He still offers the first bite of each to Tasha, which she accepts with relish.
“Thank you!” she chirps at the vendor, and whisks her nephew off to explore more of the city.
A few minutes later, far from anyone who may have heard the first bit of their conversation, Alver tentatively tugs Tasha’s hand. She leans in so he can whisper in her ear again.
“The city’s like us?” Alver asks quietly. There’s a mix of emotions that Tasha can’t identify in his eyes.
She gives into the urge to hoist him up, even as he yelps about how he’s too dignified for this auntie, put him down!
“Strength training!” Tasha says cheerfully, as nearby passersby laugh at her antics. “You wouldn’t stop your auntie from working out, would you?”
As Alver glares viciously (well, he thinks it’s vicious; it’s adorable in Tasha’s eyes), she smooches his cheek and quietly answers his question. “They’re a bit like us,” she whispers back.
It mollifies her very dignified and regal nephew. Alver grumbles at her as he chomps on a skewer and rests his head on Tasha’s shoulder. He may be a dignified and regal first prince of the kingdom, but he’s still a little boy, barely a decade old. Alone in the world except for his foolish auntie and her elemental.
They’re free for today, so Tasha plants another kiss on his forehead as she continues walking through the city.
“I like that they’re like us,” Alver mumbles once he’s done with his current skewer. He offers Tasha the first bite of the next one.
Tasha swallows her mouthful. “I like it too.”
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
They follow the lantern-lit path to the city square; there, Puzzle City’s largest rock tower waits for them, watching over the festival like it’s Rowoon’s fabled stone guardian of eld.
Alver’s head cranes up to try and see the top, but it’s just not visible from where they stand at the rock tower’s base. There’s nothing lighting up its summit.
“You’ll give yourself a neck cramp like that,” Tasha says with amusement. She still leans back as best as she can with a whole child in her arms, forever weak to the moments where Alver embraces his childishness instead of smothering it.
“Auntie won’t let me,” Alver says with confidence. He doesn’t even bother to look at Tasha while saying it, eyes devouring the sight before him.
Who taught this little punk to touch Tasha’s heart so easily…!
Tasha looks around as Alver is distracted from trying to see the tower’s peak. There are neatly stacked piles of rocks around the city centre, some kids making a game of cleaning them up, while people mill around to grab rocks and place them at the base of the tower.
Some visitors to Puzzle City aren’t ordinary people; they leap up the central tower to find a higher place for their rock. Contributing to the oath of survival, she supposes. The residents don’t bat an eye as people scale the tower. Some even holler at the comparatively superpowered visitors to make sure they don’t knock anything down.
Tasha sneaks a glance at Alver, who’s now frowning at how he can’t see the top of the tower.
—We climb? asks Tasha’s elemental. Our nephew wants to climb?
Alver startles. “We don’t have to!” he says hastily. Always so reluctant to ask for things.
Tasha interrupts him with an elementally imbued leap.
Towards the little rock stacks first, of course. If they’re going to climb, they might as well do it right.
Tasha crouches down as her elemental grumbles something about silly nephews and the baby should ask for things more. “Choose a rock!” she chirps, using most of her willpower to keep herself from laughing at her elemental’s comments.
Alver shoots a dirty look at the direction of Tasha’s elemental, mumbling something himself about stupid elemental calling me a baby. It results in a rather powerful gust of wind being blown right into his ear.
Alver yelps as he clutches the victimized ear and glares even harder at Tasha’s elemental.
Tasha shakes in silent laughter as she makes sure not to drop her nephew. It’s a bit more difficult than usual, considering the silly war playing out right in front of her.
He wouldn’t actually be dropped onto anything, considering she has him perching in her lap right now, but it’s the principle of the thing.
With the deliberateness Alver has cultivated for many things, such as whether to trust the new mysterious auntie after his mother’s death, or how to perfect his polite smile, Alver wiggles out of Tasha’s arms to carefully examine each rock in the pile.
Tasha doesn’t say anything about the wiggling. It’s something else that he’ll inevitably train himself out of, determined to become the crown prince and grow up too soon. Tasha’s kid has more reason than most for the latter goal.
Still, there’s no one watching him right now except for Tasha and her elemental. His family. He can’t squirm out of Tasha’s arms in the palace (she can’t even hold him unless it’s away from prying eyes), but in Puzzle City, they’re just any other woman and child. A random auntie and nephew pair that a casual observer would assume hail from the Jungle.
To anyone who hasn’t heard Alver’s occasional words, they might even appear to be mother and son.
In this moment, Alver is free to act as he pleases. Tasha’s selfish wish is that he could be like this forever, eyes sparkling in the lantern light, brows furrowed in concentration for something as mundane as picking the best rock.
Tasha’s elemental ruffles her hair in comfort; with how long they’ve been together, it can read her thoughts better than anyone. Tasha takes a deep breath in the gentle breeze, her shoulders relaxing. She didn’t even realize they’d stiffened.
Alver glances at Tasha curiously.
Tasha beams back at him, determined to enjoy the moment.
It must sate whatever curiosity he’d had about her actions, since he goes back to examining the rocks.
So, fine, Tasha will probably be unable to kidnap Alver to the City of Life. He would hate her forever, or do something stupid and stubborn like claw his way back to Rowoon on his own, or both. Alver wants to become crown prince to spite the people who’ve forgotten his mother, and maybe to get his father’s attention, and definitely spite the people who’ve tried to get rid of him so he doesn’t become crown prince. He will grow up fast and grow up sharp, because that is what he has chosen even though he’s so young; that’s the life his mother chose for him when she decided to love a fratricidal king.
None of that means Tasha will give up on making Alver happy. None of that means she’ll stop her attempts to show him he can live as well as survive.
Tasha will do what she can to give Alver these small moments of happiness so he doesn’t lose himself in that palace full of monsters. Even if he thinks they’re unnecessary.
“Auntie!” Alver announces. He’s cradling three rocks in his arms, trying to make it look effortless.
Tasha doesn’t bother to hide her smile.
She can see past his tricks to notice the shaky arms he’s hiding.
“Why three rocks?” Tasha asks with unrepentant mischief. Tasha could offer to take some of those rocks from her stubborn nephew, or she could watch him determinedly pretend that he didn’t take too many heavy rocks. One option is funnier than the other.
Tasha mercilessly watches Alver huff and puff as he attempts to get his words out without showing weakness.
“One for me. One for you. One for the other auntie,” Alver explains. His sentences are clipped, probably because he’s trying not to show his effort.
Sometimes, Alver tries to make Tasha forget how thoughtful he can be, and then sometimes he does things like pick out the best stones for Tasha and her elemental.
Sometimes, Tasha’s heart swells with so much love, she doesn’t know how she doesn’t burst with it.
Maybe she does burst. With a wide grin stretched across her lips, Tasha scoops up her cute nephew and rains kisses on one cheek.
“Auntie,” Alver complains, but doesn’t wiggle much. Instead, he sinks into her embrace. It might be because of the rocks; in that case, not grabbing them was the best move Tasha could have made. “Desist! Desist at once! Your—Bob orders you to stop!”
Tasha lets the laughter bubble out of her, giggling as she double-checks how secure her hold on Alver is. “Alright, alright, I’ll stop for now.”
Alver whips his head towards her, looking at her with horrified eyes. “For now?!”
With another breathless laugh, Tasha leaps.
Her elemental lifts her up, and at the apex of the jump, they hang in the air for what always feels like forever.
Usually, Tasha likes taking in the sights around her. It feels like she’s frozen in time, the world sprawled out across her feet. Since it takes less energy, Tasha usually leaps through the air instead of flying.
This time, she doesn’t do that.
Instead, she takes in the look on Alver’s face.
His eyes are wide with awe as he drinks in the sight of the lantern-lit streets, Puzzle City’s largest rock tower watching over the two of them. For a single, spellbinding moment, Tasha thinks he might be free of his worries and fears.
Then, gravity tugs at them, and they’re falling.
Alver’s rocks dig into Tasha’s ribs along with his elbows. Tasha still squeezes Alver tight in a hug, unwilling to loosen her hold. She hears a quiet gasp as they hurtle down, the world a blur beneath their feet as it simultaneously barely slides up the horizon.
Tasha’s elemental gentles their descent when the rock tower starts to get close; when Tasha’s feet touch solid ground, it’s without a sound.
Alver doesn’t move for a few seconds. Tasha’s about to start getting worried, when he snaps his head up and blurts out, eyes sparkling, “Can we do that again?!” Alver covers his mouth the moment he finishes, looking away from Tasha in embarrassment.
That doesn’t stop Tasha’s smile from stretching so wide it hurts her face.
“As you command, my liege!” she chirps, and jumps up high.
Her elemental whooshes them up, its delight at Alver’s glee only outmatched by Tasha’s.
They climb the rock tower in a series of flying steps, Alver’s fingers clinging to Tasha’s cloak, his hair ruffled by the wind, his tiny smile shining brighter than all of Puzzle City’s lanterns put together.
It’s not a particularly long ascent, but it’s one that Tasha will hold close to her heart.
The top of the rock tower is surprisingly flat, for something made out of a ridiculous amount of comparatively tiny and bumpy rocks. Tasha wonders if the residents organize climbs up here sometimes, or pay people to make sure that their monumental vow isn’t at risk of breaking down.
When she stomps a bit to test it, the rocks don’t even shake under her feet.
Tasha puts Alver down though she keeps an eye on him. He’s not the type of kid who would dance around the edge of the rock tower, but it’s her habit to guard him as much as she’s able. Part of that is never letting him leave her sight when she’s not forced away from his side.
Tasha watches Alver tap his toes against each rock before he takes a step. It ends up looking like a little dance, tap and skip, tap and skip, even though Alver would protest at that description of his precautions. Still hefting all three stones, he pokes and prods his way to the center.
Tasha follows after him, making a game of stepping where Alver did. It awkwardly shortens her strides but Alver notices her antics. Tasha, in turn, notices the way Alver presses his lips together; he’s been practicing holding back his laughter.
Merrily continuing her stilted steps, Tasha follows her nephew to his goal. She’s content to watch him wobble along, even as she’s ready to catch him the very moment she suspects that he can’t carry the rocks anymore. Alver’s a stubborn, sometimes irritatingly independant kid. Tasha has learned it’s best to let him do what he wants but always be ready to support him when he needs it.
When Alver sets his rocks down, it’s a bit more of a crash. His fingers only escape injury because Tasha’s elemental conjures a small whirlwind, balancing the rocks in the whirlwind’s bowl-like centre while it shoos Alver’s precious fingers out of harm’s way.
—Our nephew is too stubborn.
Tasha snorts. This isn’t the first time her elemental has voiced that complaint, and it won’t be the last.
“I’m not too stubborn,” Alver insists. “I’m as stubborn as I need to be.” With that, he scoops up one of the stones, only to hand it to Tasha. “This one’s yours,” he tells her, grabbing his own stone soon after.
Tasha’s wide grin softens into something small and gentle. “Thank you,” she says sincerely, hearing her elemental also murmur a thanks.
Tasha’s elemental is the one who puts their rock down first; it clatters onto the ground as the whirlwind slowly dies.
— He will survive, it says before fluttering away. Probably to keep watch so Tasha and Alver can know if anybody starts to get too close for comfort.
“Survive?” Alver asks.
Tasha crouches down, holding her stone in her hands. “Your lessons haven’t gotten to all the cities in Rowoon yet, right?”
Alver nods. “It’s primarily etiquette, strategy and warfare, and the history of the kingdom. I’ve started horseback riding and swordsmanship too.”
He doesn’t mention how his lessons are trailing behind those of the second and third princes. As the respective sons of the queen and the highest-ranked concubine, no one will interfere with their education like they do with the motherless first prince. Tasha’s been giving herself a crash course on the royal education plan ever since she realized no one else was going to teach Alver.
“In Puzzle City, they build their rock towers as their form of prayer. The gods won’t help them, so they make their goals into monuments. When they’ve achieved a goal, they knock down the rock tower because their wish is fulfilled.”
She sees Alver’s mind buzzing with thoughts as he tries to reconcile that information with the tower they’re standing on.
“...This is their monument to survival?” Alver says eventually. He had learned early on how to imbue his every word and action with confidence. Tasha considers herself honoured that he lets the act slip enough for her to hear the question in his voice.
“Yes,” Tasha says softly. “This is their wish to survive. This is what they celebrate every winter solstice. They’ve survived.”
Tasha places her stone down.
Let him survive, she thinks. As a dark elf, Tasha doesn’t tend to pray for things much. It comes with the territory of being disowned by the Sun God and having her people hunted to the edge of extinction. However, she likes the idea of building her own path and dreams, bit by bit. Right now, she and Alver stand on the fervent desire of thousands, built year by year until it has culminated into a towering monument. It feels like there’s something there that might listen, even though there’s no spell or magic item built into the tower.
She’ll take what she can get; more than anything, Tasha wants Alver to grow up and live. She’ll help him survive until he can do more than just survive. Then, she’ll help him with whatever comes after.
Tasha’s little prince looks the part as he solemnly places his rock next to hers.
“Auntie,” Alver says. It’s moments like these where Tasha can see the king he could become. “I’m going to survive no matter what.”
Tasha loops an arm around his shoulders to tuck him into her side. “I know,” she says. It feels a bit lame to say on its own, but she knows. Alver survived on his own during those long days after his mother died but before the City of Life learned about the unfortunate passing of 'Zed Crossman’s first concubine'. Before Tasha heard the news and tore her way to Rowoon, heart caught in her throat because what if the news hadn’t travelled about the first prince, and he was dead too?
Alver is a survivor before anything else. He had to be, to become anything else.
“I know,” Tasha says again. There’s not much else she can say.
Alver sinks into her side. He claims he doesn’t need her casual affection, but he always leans into it almost desperately. “What do they do for the solstice in the City?”
Tasha waits a moment. When her elemental tells her that no one else is climbing this high, she answers. “Mm, we also light lanterns. Everyone in the city gets to light their own lantern, if they’re old enough. Infants and people with shaky hands have their lanterns lit up by loved ones.” An old memory comes to mind, bittersweet with nostalgia. “I lit a lantern for you and your mom, the year you were born. Before that, she used to come back to make her own. She liked helping make heaps of lanterns every year.”
Tasha doesn’t make two extra lanterns anymore. She hasn’t even been in the City of Life long enough to light them. Her days are spent taking care of Alver, trying to do whatever she can to help him survive, and reassuring him he’s not alone. She mostly leaves the palace to try and go after people who would murder her kid in cold blood.
Sometimes, she grabs little trinkets when she has to do errands for the palace. Part of keeping up her disguise is, unfortunately, doing the job she snuck in with.
A few years ago, she had gone back to see if Obante had seen sense when it came to helping his great-grandson, but that had ended in disappointment. At least Tasha had been able to help Shawn save Mary. Sometimes Tasha checks in on Mary, during the rare moments where Tasha thinks Alver will be okay long enough for Tasha to ask anyone to come help.
Her attempts have only resulted in people unwilling to meet her eyes. Tasha supposes there’s also stress relief from the time she trashed Obante’s office, but that was a long, long time ago.
“...Do you want to make lanterns next year?” Alver asks quietly. Tasha can hear another question behind it. Are you sure you want to stay?
Tasha squeezes her little punk. Alver’s always afraid that she’ll walk out one day and never look back. It doesn’t help that his father basically did just that.
“Who needs lanterns when I have you?” she asks with deliberate casualness. Alver’s shoulders, coiled with tension, relax under Tasha’s arm. Sometimes it’s easier for him to hear things when Tasha isn’t putting the full force of her sincerity and love behind it.
“We can still make one at the palace,” Alver mumbles.
Tasha strokes his hair. “Okay,” she says softly. “Sounds like a plan.”
Tasha hopes that one day, Alver will feel safe enough to call somewhere home.