“I won’t apologise for one second. We made mistakes. Fuck me, big ones too. We tried to run from our responsibilities and came tumbling bac into our own messes.” Ruby sensed their tea was coming to an end and scoffed another dumpling. With her mouth full, she stuck out her tongue.

“Really?” Lilith’s deadpan expression soon cracked into a smile.

“Yeth,” Ruby lisped, before swallowing the last of her supper. “We can get on with life knowing others can live theirs.”

“Do the others know?”

Ruby nodded. “Well, actually, me and Leopold know. Duffy, too, of course. I have been unable to find Arden. Do you know where he is?” Slipping in the real reason for her visit, Ruby expected to be rebuked, but sighed with relief when Lilith proffered an answer.

“I’ll tell you if you answer a question.”

“Go on?”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Ruby reflected on the past. When last, she and the silent swordsman had seen one another, they had sung the song to erase the troupe from the memories of all mortal things. When she realised that had been thirty years prior, her heart sank.

“I thought as much.” Lilith pointed to the window and rose from her pile of cushions. “Let’s take a stroll, I’ve something to show you.”

Ruby followed, regretting eating so much at the prospect of another of Lilith’s educational hikes. They left the comforts of Lilith’s parlour and ventured out into the mid-afternoon sun. A traditional house by all accounts, Lilith’s residence in the centre of Akashima’s capital was an edifice to tradition. The paper walls and pine struts marked it as one of the oldest houses in the city, but the garden broke convention with imported trees and flowers from across the world.

“This place really is something.” The spell singer admired the evergreen shrubs cut neatly into pillars surrounded by flower beds. Each bore the fruit of a tree from all the great continents, and she listed Fallien pears and Aleran tomatoes amongst them. “I’ve never seen some of these flowers.”

“For centuries, Akashima closed its borders to all. As part of the democratic process, we invited, all be it slowly envoys from all the great nations to our home. Every flower and tree you see came from seeds brought by those envoys. It’s a reminder of what we have accomplished.”

“What you accomplished; you mean?”

“For a long time I was proud of what I had done but realise now I was never alone. The Senate warmed to the ideas I was presenting like a glacier thawing, but warm they did.”