The four Taymons don't get far in their deliberations. Giada hurriedly explains the situation as best as she can while Fallon bounds up the steps to retrieve the book and knife. Rian and Edeline confirm that they have received no gifts themselves, a fact which seems to bring them relief.

No one ever knows what to do with a gift from the chimera.

Edeline and Rian take turns reading the attached notes. Their reactions are less worried and more serious than Giada had anticipated, for which she is grateful. It is Rian who speaks first after he finishes examining them.

"Yours mentions diving in, and Fallon's mentions a war. I don't know what else it could mean except that you're diving into the war, whatever that implies." He regards her with his steely gray gaze. "You're not planning to enlist, are you?"

Of course she isn't. Giada loves her job at the archives too much to relinquish it for steel or scrimmaging.

After flipping through Fallon's book and confirming for herself that there is nothing of interest in its pages, Edeline asks to see Giada's knife. Obediently, Giada hands it over, cognizant that this is the first time someone other than herself will handle it, and oddly reluctant to give up that sole right. What's this reaction for, I've barely had it, she wonders to herself.

Edeline takes the knife in hand but almost drops it in her initial surprise at its touch. "It's so warm," she says, eyes wide. Giada frowns at this. She had not noticed. To confirm its temperature hasn't changed since her last holding it, she reaches out to rest her hand against the red and black wrought metal. It is cool to her touch. After telling Edeline so, Rian and Fallon each test it as well, both confirming that to them, it is almost uncomfortably warm.

"Maybe it's different for you because you're the one it's for. We might not be meant to touch it," Fallon suggests. "But my book looks like it's the same for everyone."

Before they can pursue this line of thinking any further, a distant knock is heard. Edeline, as the eldest, leaves the parlor to answer whoever is at the door. After it opens comes the sound of voices, low but happy to see one another.

Edeline's steps back to the parlor are tailed by those of a few others, her own tread louder than usual, likely trying to alert her siblings to the presence of others coming in so that they may hide the chimera's gifts if they wish.

Giada has a narrow window in which to decide if she will hide her knife away, and ultimately decides to do it. She does not want to try to explain something that she herself doesn't yet understand. Hurriedly, she places the sheathed knife behind her back so that it is between her and the chair, hopefully concealing it from view. Following her lead, Fallon places his already inconspicuous book under his sketching paper in his lap, shielding it from a cursory glance. Rian takes Giada's note from the chessboard table and pulls it into his pocket just as Edeline and three guests enter the room.

Giada recognizes them all, her sister's longtime friends having been frequent visitors to their home for years upon years. Or, two longtime friends and one strained acquaintance. The former are Dalmar and Marikit, each nodding their greetings to the three siblings. The latter is Taihei, the younger son of one of the city's wealthiest aristocrats, often called Tai by those scant few who voluntarily talk to him. Giada frowns to see him. She does not like Tai.

Despite Edeline walking in first, Tai quickly pushes past her to examine the beginning moves made by Giada and Rian in their game of chess. Rian tenses at his approach. He does not like Tai either.

"You can do better," Tai says, hands clasped behind his back as if in deep thought.

Giada does not know what he could possibly be thinking so deeply about. "We've barely begun," she points out. "Also, hello."

"Yes, hello." He pauses from surveying the black and white patterned squares to look around the room. "When will you change something around here, Edeline? It's been exactly the same in all the years I've known you."

Fallon bristles at this. In a heartening comeback for the rule of three, he is the third Taymon to dislike Tai. Additionally, he is especially protective of the layout of the family parlor, treasures its changelessness. Since his early youth, it has had the same blue walls, cushions, and drapes as ever.

"Have some tact, Tai," Marikit admonishes, moving to stand behind Fallon's chair, looking down onto the beginnings of his sketch of the view outside the parlor's tall glass windows. She examines it with the beginnings of a smile. "Good work."

Fallon glows at her praise. Marikit works as a jeweler by the pier, an area of high import in their coastal city. Because of her trade, she has a keen and discerning eye. A compliment on the detail of his work is not delivered lightly.

However, that same sharpness of sight works against the Taymons' favor when she spots a scrap of parchment on the floor. Before anyone else can pick it up themselves, Marikit reaches down with quick fingers to grab hold of it.

"For Fallon, after the war," she reads. She frowns in confusion.

Dalmar comes to stand by her shoulder, holding out his hand. "Let me see that, Kit."

She hands it over, and now it is Dalmar's turn to frown at the words. "You got one, too?"

Fallon sits up straight in surprise. "What do you mean, 'got one too'? You also have a gift?"

"Not me. Zahara." Dalmar's younger sister would have been there herself to visit with her friends, particularly Giada, but she had promised to spend the evening with her grandfather, painting together. At breakfast that morning, she had spoken to Dalmar about an amulet that had been left upon the jewelry box on her vanity table. It came with nothing of explanation but the note: For Zahara, as the world turns. She had tried putting it on, but nothing had happened.

After Dalmar explains these circumstances to the Taymons and his friend (and Tai), Marikit offers to examine the amulet for him, perhaps searching for a hidden widget or purpose. Fallon and Giada uncover their gifts and also offer them to Dalmar and Marikit's curiosity. Tai barely seems to be listening himself, until there is a lull in the conversation.

"No one has asked, but I might as well tell you," he says. "I also woke up to a gift. It was nothing but a bottle, though, filled with sand."

"Did you open it?" Edeline asks.

He raises his eyebrows at her. "Why would I open it when I don't know what it does? For all I know, the sand is poison." Giada suddenly feels a little foolish for having pulled her knife out of its sheath so quickly, hardly being what one would call cautious.

He continues: "Mine also came with a note, but it made just as much sense as yours. It said it was for me, 'while I waited'. But I wait for nothing."

Fallon eyes his book thoughtfully. "I can't believe Giada has a knife with a dragon hilt, and Zahara received a pendant of gold, while all I got was an empty book."

"If we're comparing useless gifts," Tai says, "I'd be more than happy to take your book in exchange for my pile of sand."

A sudden loud thump outside distracts them, and even Tai's usual mask of indifference slips as all seven rush to the window to see the source of the noise.

In the garden, among the roses, is a man. His hair is light brown, his limbs uncoordinated, and his face freckled. Pulling himself up from where he had evidently tripped on the plants and fallen, he is immediately recognizable to Giada as the same man who had intruded on the archives in the morning.

When he brings himself to stand upright again, his eyes fly right away to the seven faces pressed close to the window, all watching him with wide eyes as if he is a strange animal in enclosure. No flicker of recognition shows on his face until he catches sight of Giada, who is watching him right back.

His immediate reaction to seeing her is an expression of fear and a quick shake of his hand, where he holds the same bell she had seen him with by the bookshelves. Just as it did in the morning, the ringing of the bell causes him to disappear.

In frustration at still having no questions answered about the man, Giada bangs her hand uselessly against the glass, startling Fallon beside her. "Again?" she says.

Fallon turns to her right away, sharp-eared as he is. "What does that mean?"

Edeline latches on too: "You know that man? He's not a suitor of yours, is he?" Giada pulls a face of displeasure at this. She has no suitors.

"You can definitely do better," Rian mutters, a joking inflection in his voice.

Giada is exasperated with them all. She knows she will not be able to wriggle out with a lie, there are too many witnesses to her outburst. "The same thing happened this morning, while I was working. He showed up, spoke hardly ten words, then rang the bell in his hand and was gone."

"Do you know where he comes from?" Dalmar asks, practical and focused in this moment of astonished confusion at what they've seen.

"No, not his name or where he's from, or even how he got that bell."

"That last one's not hard to guess," Tai says. "We must not be the only ones the chimera left gifts for."