Pidge does not properly enter her home the moment Hunk leaves. She gives her father a few minutes to process things, gives the air some time to settle, before she makes her entrance. She pretends not to know what is going on. She reacts to the news of the Chieftain's inevitable death as if it is the first, and not the third, time she is hearing it. Normally her parents would likely shield her from this sort of thing. They likely feel that they must inform her if the man is to die in their home.

It's strange, really, that everyone seems so surprised. The Chieftain is very old. But, perhaps, that's the very reason. He has gotten so old that everyone forgot he could die at all.

Pidge doesn't know the chieftain well— she's far too young for that. She can't say that she has any personal stake invested in this. Still, this much change this fast is admittedly frightening. Even for someone as hungry for change and adventure as she is.

"We shouldn't linger on this for so long," Colleen Holt suggests, half-hearted. "I'll make us some stew."

Sam Holt, simple and easy to please as is he is, perks up at that. He will never turn down his wife's potato stew.

Dinner is largely quiet, though Pidge's father does his best to liven things up with a story here and a joke there. Pidge can't seem to force a convincing laugh as she stirs her soup of vegetables with her spoon, suddenly too warm for such a hearty meal and not very hungry. Lance is always the ideal person to have around at times like this, in some strange way, but he isn't here. So Pidge leaves the table early. She can feel her mother's eyes on her back as she goes.

"I worry about her sometimes," Colleen says when she thinks Pidge is out of earshot. Sam laughs. Pidge doesn't know what he finds so funny about that.

Pidge's room is small. She doesn't mind that. And it's only fair, because she also gets the space in the attic. It's cluttered, though, because she's a bit of a pack-rat and can never seem to let things go. Her desk is topped with cool rocks and crystals and plants and things that she fully intends to study, the floor littered with leather-bound books full of the scribbled fruits of her research, and the dresser hides the bounties from her many adventures under a thin layer of clothing meant to hide it.

She crawls into bed with a sigh. The quilted blanket her grandmother stitched for her is as itchy as ever (she wouldn't use any other). Pidge had hoped to fall asleep quickly. She never does, though, and Colleen knows that. Pidge doesn't bother pretending to be asleep when she hears her door creak open, when the light from the hallway bleeds in as a cut through the dark.

"Hey, hun," Colleen greets as she sits on the edge of Pidge's mattress. Pidge, slight as a bird, slides in her direction from the added weight, but doesn't sit up or turn to face her.

"Hey."

"I know things have been... hard lately." That's an understatement. "And I know it probably doesn't help that the house feels lonely these days."

Pidge winces. That is, somehow, the worst thing her mother could have said. The house doesn't have to be empty without Matt in it, does it? She feels a flare of hot jealousy in her blood as she wonders if they'd say the same thing if it was switched. If Matt was home and Pidge was not. But, no, that would never happen in the first place, would it? Matt is allowed to explore, to spread his metaphorical wings, and Pidge isn't. That's that.

Matt leads his own adventurer's guild. That much is known even to her parents. But she constantly has to hide her own membership in Lance's guild, has to make up stories about where she's going even when she isn't going all that far. When her parents do occasionally manage to find out the truth, she is scolded, and sometimes even punished. Is it really just because she's younger? Because they want to protect her? She doesn't know.

Since she doesn't know how to voice her frustrations, and never manages to do it without saying something needlessly cruel that she doesn't really mean, she changes the subject.

"Why is Plaht the way that it is?"

Colleen just sighs at first. She's tired of answering that question. Pidge is tired of asking it, somehow hoping that she'll get an answer that makes sense in her head.

"We've had this discussion. You already know."

"About the founding legend? Sure, I know the story, but I don't see why that should still matter so much." Pidge wrinkles her nose. Every year as a child she had to attend that silly youth festival in an embarrassing, brightly-colored costume and hear the ancient legend of Plaht's founding all over again. Even if it was a little different every time depending on who told it.

It was said that many years ago, long before the arrival of the warlocks on the hill, the tiny cluster of land and homes and people that would eventually become Plaht was blessed by a forest fairy. Selfish hunters had stolen her treasures and desecrated her home one too many times. But the virtuous founder of Plaht drove those who would harm her away and swore to protect her forest, and in response she offered her blessing so long as his word is upheld. The old stone fountain in the village square— the one that always flows with clean water, somehow, even in these times of extreme drought— bears a plaque with esoteric runes said to mark the occasion and enshrine that promise.

Pidge has never believed in that story.

"We are lucky to have been so prosperous for so long despite the village's size. The elders aren't about to tempt fate by changing things now."

"Still, don't you think it's kinda ironic? It's because of that dumb old pact that we're dealing with the warlock problem in the first place! He obviously just wants us to leave him alone, but the village keeps growing closer and closer to his house. If we would just cut down some trees we could build in the other direction instead—"

"You know things just aren't that simple."

Of course not, Pidge thinks. That's what you always have to say. And somehow she gets more from Colleen than she could ever get from, say, Coran.

"Well, what do you and dad think of Yorak?" Pidge feels her mother glare at her at the mention of his name. They're not supposed to say it out loud, she suddenly remembers too late. She bites her tongue for a fraction of a second. "Do you think he's bad, too, or—"

"Katherine." She's interrupted again, and this time by a stern and uncommon use of the first name she hasn't gone by in years. She was Katie even before she was Pidge. "Tell me you aren't talking to him."

"Of course not," Pidge lies, thinking about how short he is. Does that count as a lie? It's not like she and Yorak have regular conversations, but she knows her mother would be mad if she knew about their brief confrontation.

"Not everything is the way it appears to be. You're proof of that, aren't you? Hiding that big brain of yours in that tiny head." Colleen gives her daughter a playful sort of shove. Pidge resents being called tiny, but does understand what her mother is getting at. Then, she feels her mother's weight shift as her shoulders sag, and imagines that her mouth has settled into a flat line. "There are... things that you can't know yet. But you'll know them in time, and then it will all make sense. I promise. ...Don't you trust your folks?"

Pidge doesn't answer that one with a word. More of a grunt. Because she doesn't trust them— not really. She doesn't trust any of the adults. After all, she and the other young ones are always being forced to play by unfair rules. They're asked to blindly trust in old wives' tales that they aren't allowed to learn for themselves. They just have to accept that the truth is awful enough to justify all of it.

What did Yorak DO, anyway? She wonders. Did he burn the village down? What, she wonders (with a creeping feeling of dread that's unfamiliar to her), is the warlock's heinous crime?

Colleen leaves Pidge to her own devices after patting her head one last time (and insisting on kissing her forehead), but Pidge continues to pout and to wonder long after her mother is gone— she doesn't understand what Colleen had hoped to accomplish by visiting anyway. She loves her mom, but they've never seemed to understand one another, not in the way that she just gets her dad.

She doesn't understand anything anymore.

The more Pidge thinks about it, the less it all seems to make sense. Coran says that the rivalry with the warlock Marmora goes back to his grandfather, before Chieftain Hieronymus Smythe, but how could that be if Yorak is as young as he is supposed to be? Lance said that Takashi said he's only about sixty. Is Yorak being blamed for the sins of his forefathers, then? And is that fair?

She decides that she ought to poke around the library records and see what she can find. But she knows in advance that that is a fool's mission, and that the necessary information is surely locked away where only the high council members can read it. She finds herself thinking about that council, too— will Mr. Griffin get Coran's old spot when Coran becomes the new chieftain? And will they need another member then?

She thinks, and she keeps thinking. No turning her brain off now. It's going to be a long night.

Pidge waits for several minutes that feel like several hours. She waits just long enough that she's sure her mother is asleep (she knows her father well enough by now to know that he's lying when he says he's turning in, that he always stays up for several more hours mixing tonics and cures for his patients). She is quiet as she crawls out of her bed, slides her wiry frame out of her bedroom window, and crawls her way back up to her fortress of solitude in the roof.

She calls it her star hut.

Colleen Holt took up the practice of white magick to assist her husband with their healing work about a year ago. Somehow no one has pointed out that hypocrisy, but whatever the case, it did pique Pidge's interest. That curiosity led her to the next town over, where she got her hands on her first set of Tarot cards and her first star chart.

Lunar magick— it comes in many forms, like any other magick, but Pidge is mostly interested in the divination aspects. She thinks that predicting things is kind of like math, which she's good at, and she's always been nosy enough to want to know about things before they happen. Space itself is fascinating, too, and she often stares at the stars and wonders if there are other worlds out there beyond her mortal comprehension, beyond what even a warlock could imagine.

She pulls out her trusty telescope and her detailed maps. She must not be very good at star-charting yet, because so many things are changing so fast without her knowledge or permission. She's noticed those weird patterns in the sky, though. She knows not what they mean.

Pidge is deep in a murky swamp of thought when she is dragged suddenly out of it by a familiar sight. It's not something in the air, but on the earth. When her telescope is pointed in the direction of the woods, she sees Lance there, by the edge of the forest, looking nervously over his shoulder, trusty bow in hand and quiver full of arrows slung over his back. She cracks a smile at their similar mindsets. He, too, is sneaking out, and going much further.

Something moves to the east of him, just a flicker, and she moves her instrument to try and catch it in her lenses. It's... she's not sure what it is. There is a moment of something inexplicably dark, like a shadow, that goes slithering into the trees and is gone as quickly as it had appeared. She looks back for Lance too late. He is gone, too, having been swallowed by the foliage and the blanket of night.

For a moment, she retracts, squinting and pursing her lips. She has a feeling that she should warn Lance, but how could she? What is she even warning him about? What was that just now?

Whoever— or whatever— it was, something strange is in the air over Plaht tonight. And only time will tell if that is a good or a bad thing.