Eryndor.
It was official before the day was over. Someone said it out loud, then someone else repeated it, and by the third time it had the weight of something that had always been true and just needed saying.
They decided that day was the founding day. Not the actual founding, Elder Elka's parents had done that decades ago in the cold with an axe and a pregnant woman and no plan beyond surviving the next morning. But this was the day it got its name. That counted for something.
The celebration started immediately despite the snow and the fact that nobody had planned for one.
I watched them for a moment and felt that something was missing.
Then I teleported away without saying anything.
Branklore's south district, Stunfore. The biggest trader of alcoholic beverages in Philantria. I went through it quickly and bought everything worth buying, barrel after barrel disappearing into my item box, then teleported back.
I started pulling them out one by one next to the Sequoia tree.
"Adults only." I said flatly.
Oliver and Olivia looked at the barrels and then at me with identical expressions of betrayal.
"We're sixteen." Oliver said.
"I know."
Gringo crossed his arms beside them. Fifteen and equally unimpressed.
The children were already complaining before I had finished stacking the last barrel.
I reached back into my item box and pulled out another barrel. Freshly squeezed juice, picked up from the market on the way back.
Torra took one look at it and his face fell.
"It's not even as sweet as the Glowfruits." He said.
Celina looked at Torra, then at the Glowfruit orchard at the edge of the settlement, then at me.
"Leigh." She said. "Flick your fingers and squeeze those for me."
I looked at her.
She had a pitcher in one hand and was already gesturing toward the orchard with the other, completely comfortable asking me to do things now. Like it had stopped occurring to her that there was ever a version of this where I said no.
She had sent Gringo ahead to peel the fruits. By the time we got there he was already halfway through a pile of them.
I flicked my fingers. The juice ran clean into the pitcher in seconds.
Celina nodded like that was exactly what she expected.
"Now crush some ice. Fine, like snow." She said.
I already knew where she was going with it.
The ice scramble. I had made it for myself one afternoon when the sun was sitting too heavy and the heat was unreasonable. I had given some to Celina without thinking much of it. Apparently she had been thinking about it since.
I crushed the ice the way she wanted and she filled ten glasses with it, then poured the Glowfruit juice slowly over the top. The juice caught the light as it soaked down through the ice, glowing faintly the way the fruit always did.
Rafa leaned in close and stared at his glass.
"It's sparkling." He said.
The teenagers and children crowded around and took their glasses with the focused reverence of people receiving something important.
Then I noticed Sia.
She had come out from behind Harold.
Sia was always behind Harold. Always inside, always quiet, always the one I nearly forgot was part of the settlement because she was so consistently invisible in it. But the sparkling glass had drawn her out and she was standing at the edge of the group looking at it with those careful eyes of hers, wanting it.
Harold handed her one without making a fuss about it.
She took it and drank and said nothing, but she stayed.
The grilling started after that. Meat from the cold storage, desserts pulled from my item box, the adults opening the first barrels with the particular enthusiasm of people who had not had a proper drink in a very long time. The snow was still coming down. Nobody cared.
I leaned against the Sequoia tree and watched them get loud.
It reminded me of the time the company closed a deal worth more than anything we had touched before. I had given everyone a bonus and told them to go celebrate. They had started out stiff and formal the way they always were around me, glancing at the door, waiting to see if I would leave so they could actually enjoy themselves.
I hadn't left.
By the third drink they had forgotten to be afraid of me.
They were loud by the fourth. Laughing at things that weren't that funny. Someone had called me the Cold Tyrant for years behind my back and that same person was crying with laughter at something someone had just said.
Same thing was happening now.
Favio was experimenting. He had taken the remaining Glowfruit juice and was adding rum to it, stirring it together with the expression of a man conducting serious research.
He took a sip and his eyebrows went up.
"This is good." He said, genuinely surprised. "The sweetness covers the alcohol completely but the bite is still there."
I walked over.
"Celina." I said. "Vodka."
She made it without comment.
I took a sip.
The Glowfruit drowned out the vodka's flavor entirely. What was left was sweetness and warmth and the faint bite underneath that reminded you there was something else in the glass. Subtle enough that you kept drinking. Dangerous enough that it mattered.
We worked through the varieties. Every combination Favio could think of and a few I suggested. The children's ice scramble had started a trend and the adults were now putting crushed ice in everything.
One by one they stopped noticing how much they had drunk because nothing tasted like it should have.
One by one they found the ground.
Gringo went first, sitting down for a moment and then simply not getting back up. Oliver made it approximately four steps toward the residential zone before deciding the snow was comfortable enough. Favio was still chuckling at something when his eyes closed.
I was sitting with my back against the Sequoia tree, not drunk but close enough to it that the edges of everything had gone soft. The cold wasn't cold. The noise had gone quiet. The settlement's new lamp posts glowed through the falling snow in a way that was almost unreasonably peaceful.
Torra appeared beside me.
He sat down, took my arm, and arranged it around himself the way he wanted it. Then he leaned his head against my leg and closed his eyes.
I looked down at him.
I didn't move my arm.
The celebration of Eryndor's founding day ended with everyone asleep on the ground in the snow, warm from Chilper tea and Glowfruit vodka, their own houses a few meters away and completely unreachable.
I closed my eyes.
The tree was solid against my back.
Torra's breathing evened out.
I let it all go quiet.
The next day...
I woke up to sunlight cutting through the snow clouds and the sound of people already moving around the settlement.
No headache. No heaviness behind the eyes. No dry mouth.
I sat up and considered that for a moment.
The Glowfruit juice. The Chilper tea running through everyone's systems. Whatever the combination had done, it had apparently handled the aftermath of an entire night of drinking along with everything else.
Everyone was up. More than up. They were moving around with the kind of energy that usually took a full night's sleep and a proper breakfast to produce.
Favio was already at the fields checking on the crops. Elder Elka had her tea. Even the ones who had been face down in the snow three hours ago were on their feet and functional.
Then I looked toward the edge of the Sequoia tree.
Mikayla. Gringo. Oliver. Olivia.
All four of them were on the ground, sitting back on their heels, heads drooping, still not entirely conscious.
I walked over and stood above them.
"Get up."
They stirred. Then they saw my face and straightened immediately, which made Gringo wince.
I looked at each one of them.
"I said adults only." My voice came out exactly the way it always did. Flat. Cold. No room in it for interpretation.
"We only had a little..." Oliver started.
"You're on the ground." I said.
He closed his mouth.
"You went behind my word. All four of you." I looked at Mikayla, who had gone red. Then at Olivia, who was staring at her hands. Then back at Gringo and Oliver. "If I say something, I mean it. That's not a suggestion."
None of them said anything. The apology was in their faces, genuine and uncomfortable, the kind that comes from knowing you actually did something wrong and not just from getting caught.
"Don't do it again." I said.
"We won't." Mikayla said quietly. The others nodded.
"I started drinking when I was ten."
I turned around.
Frostina was standing at the edge of the gathering area with a barrel of rum tucked under one arm, moving toward the stairs that led up to her enclosure with the particular casualness of someone who believed they had not been noticed.
I stared at her.
She stopped.
"This is mine." She said, not very convincingly.
"Put it back."
"But..."
"Frostina."
She set the barrel down slowly, her expression cycling through several emotions before settling on something that resembled dignity.
"I am a thousand years old." She said.
"And you're still sneaking alcohol at a children's celebration. Stand there."
She stood beside the four teenagers with her arms crossed and her jaw tight.
Five of them now.
I looked at all of them for a long moment.
"Don't let it happen again." I said. Then I walked away.
Behind me, I heard Gringo whisper something to Oliver.
Then Frostina's offended hiss.
I kept walking.