“These are your friends?” Scule’s mother asked, her beady eyes skimming over them as she took them all in. The poor woman blanched slightly at Shia’s jagged smile, but she seemed even more put off by the hood covering Lumel’s face. “It’s not very polite to keep your face hidden when imposing, you know. And what’s wrong with that elf’s teeth?”

  And just like that, Vin decided he didn’t like Scule’s parents very much.

  “I told you, Shia is a different type of elf from a completely different world than ours. They worship plants and eat almost entirely meat,” Scule droned on, as if he’d said this a hundred times already. “And Lumel’s world was underwater, her appearance tends to alarm people, so she tries to cover herself up as a courtesy most of the time.”

  “You’re the magical princess?!” Nute gasped, rushing over to the edge of the river and staring up at Lumel with wide eyes. “Did you really live in a palace and everything?”

  “Yes…” Lumel said, clearly taken aback by the sudden excitement displayed by Scule’s younger sister. “…but it wasn’t all-”

  “That’s amazing! I’m so jealous!” Nute squealed, raising her hands like she was reaching for something. “Can you pick me up? I have so much I want to ask you about!”

  “Nute!” Scule’s dad barked as he narrowed his eyes at them. “Don’t get too close to the giant-folk! It’s not safe!”

  “Smite me, dad, you can’t just say stuff like that,” Scule sighed, shaking his head. “Don’t listen to him, Nute, my friends are totally fine. Well, Shia did threaten to eat Reginald the first time we met, but Reginald hasn’t held it against her.”

  Nodding in agreement, Reginald tackled Nute from behind, catching the yelping petian in his saddle before hopping across the river and darting up the uncertain pulmon’s robes. Lumel blinked as she suddenly discovered Nute standing on her shoulder, and the young girl stared as she got her first look under Lumel’s hood.

  “Did living underwater wash away your skin?” she asked with that simple, harmless curiosity that all children seemed to have. “I don’t think you need to hide your face just because of that. It’s a little scary, but you’re a princess, so it’s probably a good thing to be a little scary. That way you can scare off the bad guys that try to kidnap you.”

  Lumel’s mouth moved, but no words came out as she tried and failed to come up with an appropriate response to that. Luckily for her, Nute had plenty to say to fill the void.

  “So Scule said you’re a magical princess who can teleport around! Can you teleport me around too? Oh, and he said you can breathe underwater! Which makes sense if you lived underwater, of course. Do you have gills, or do you breathe water like how we drink it? How large was the palace you lived in anyway, and did you have a room to yourself? I have my own room, but it’s not very big, and I can hear Copi stomping around late at night half the time, it’s really distracting.”

  While Lumel struggled to begin answering all the questions her new best friend had for her, Vin watched as Scule marched over to his parents and quickly had a quiet argument with them. His father looked red in the face and ready to blow a gasket at the fact that Nute was on Lumel’s shoulder and chatting with the pulmon, while his mother continued to simply judge silently as she looked between the four of them, as if expecting any moment now they would reach over and kick down the old red house just because they could. While the three of them argued, Copi turned and stared at Vin’s prosthetic arm.

  “Is that the arm that the Relic Guardian chopped off in the holy district?” he asked, his eyes wide. “Does it still hurt?”

  “No, I can only feel pressure and such,” Vin said automatically, before he realized what Copi’s question entailed. “Wait, if Scule told you about all that, does that mean you guys know your divine classes are all gone and the lockdown is pointless?”

  “Yeah, Scule explained all of that,” Copi shrugged. “Tiny Town isn’t really as into all the Gods and everything as the rest of the citadel. We still worship them and thank them for taking us in when our village was destroyed, but we’re not blinded by faith like everyone else. Because we keep our distance from the giant-folk, we’re still able to think for ourselves.”

  Vin frowned as he listened to Copi parrot words that he had a feeling had come directly from Scule’s father. Granted, his father was actually correct in this case, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  “For the last few years, Tiny Town has been petitioning for some of the divine classes to help us reclaim our lost village,” Scule’s father said, his frown never once having left his face since he’d set foot outside. “They’ve always refused, claiming it was too dangerous, or that the density of monsters was simply too high. And now with this lockdown in effect, the motion’s ground to a halt entirely. If you ask me, this whole thing is just one big excuse to shut us up and keep us here.”

  “You think they locked down the entire citadel… a city with tens of thousands of people… just to keep a few hundred petians here?” Shia asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

  “I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” Scule’s father said, his frown turning sour. “Not only do you show up uninvited, but you can’t even be bothered to follow our local customs. What gives you the right to think you can talk to me like that?”

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  “For the last time, I invited them,” Scule snapped, glaring at his parents. “So long as you two keep accepting the help I’m providing, I get to call this place home as well, so my invite is as good as yours. And for the record, despite me telling them they didn’t have to, they did bring welcome gifts.” This last bit was said with a backward glance thrown over his shoulder, and Shia quickly nodded as she got the hint.

  “I thought this might be a nice addition to your house,” she said, reaching into her bag of seeds and plucking one out. Placing it near the bend in the river, Vin watched as the runic formation for Rapid Growth was silently strung together within her mana pool in a split second, before she began dumping nature mana into the seed. The tiny seed cracked open and sprouted upward, quickly growing larger and thicker as it transformed into an actual, miniaturized tree that was petian sized. It was almost like a bonsai tree, though it looked more like someone had taken a classic oak and shrunk it down.

  At the display of magic and beautiful addition to their yard, Scule’s mother actually looked fairly impressed. Yet while her clinical gaze softened a bit, Scule's father just clicked his tongue.

  “I guess now I’ll have to maintain that,” he grumbled. “Not an easy task for a man with only one arm.”

  “It’s a tree. Just let it do tree things,” Alka snorted, before reaching up toward her head. Vin hadn’t realized that the helmet Deorer had given her to hide her mask-like face wasn’t perfectly sealed to her head, but it would seem that was the case as she retrieved two small pieces of metal that she’d somehow secured to the inside of her helmet. It took him a second, but he blinked as he realized what they were.

  “I brought petian-sized daggers for Copi and Nute!” Alka said, her eyes flaring with mirth and she reached over and handed them to both the two younger siblings whose eyes were wide with excitement. “It’s never too late to learn how to protect yourself from monsters.”

  Scule’s mother gasped in alarm, and his father sucked in a deep breath as if he were about to start screaming, but Scule beat them to the punch. “What a fantastic and thoughtful gift, Alka, thank you so much! Obviously, after learning about how our people’s village got destroyed by monsters, Alka wanted to ensure nothing like that ever happened again!”

  His mother didn’t seem any less concerned and his father was glaring his own daggers at Scule, but Copi and Nute looked so excited at the prospect of owning their own weapons that he hesitated and deflated like an old balloon. Taking advantage of the moment, Lumel summoned a small bottle of wine out of nowhere with a flash of purple.

  “I took this from the palace for no particular reason one day,” she said quietly, placing the bottle that was as large as Scule beside his house. “I don’t even drink much, so I thought you could get more use out of it.”

  “An acceptable welcome gift,” Scule’s father begrudgingly admitted, eyeing up the bottle in anticipation.

  “That’s his way of saying ‘thank you,’” Scule said, smiling up at Lumel and giving her a subtle thumbs up that made her blush. “Something like this will be more than enough to last a year.”

  “It is truly a generous welcome gift,” Scule’s mother said, even going so far as to offer Lumel a small, genuine smile. “Even if my husband won’t say it, I’ll give thanks for the both of us. He’s just a little wary toward giant-folk these days.”

  Seeing how Lumel had put a dent in the frigid armor surrounding Scule’s parents, Vin decided it was now or never to drive it home and go for the kill. Clearing his throat, he reached out a hand. “Lumel, would you mind taking out my gift?”

  “Of course,” she smiled, retrieving a small box with another flash of purple and handing it to him.

  “Lumel’s Dimensional Pocket is capable of storing containers and keeping things from getting jostled around,” he explained as he carefully set the box down in front of Scule’s parents. “I didn’t want to risk this getting messed up or anything.” With a flourish, he pulled off the top of the box, and Scule’s parents’ eyes widened at the decadent display contained within.

  Stacks of miniscule cookies, small plates of puddings and mousse, and even an entire petian-sized cake were revealed to be sitting within the box that now functioned as an impromptu dining table. It was a lavish dessert spread for five petians, and even Scule stared in shock at the display. Unable to help himself, Vin laughed.

  “When I saw that there was going to be a contest between two of The Big Three Chefs in the newspaper, that got me thinking. I ran around to the Chefs and challenged them to see who could make the best dessert for a petian in under an hour. You should have seen how the three of them reacted, each one dropping whatever they were working on to prove that they could make a better tiny dessert than their counterparts. The results are as seen before you.”

  “Vin… This is insane!” Scule laughed, reaching out and going to pluck a cookie from the table, before having his hand swatted away by his mother. His mother seemed just as surprised as he was by her action, but she cleared her throat and stood firm.

  “You know as well as I do it’s bad manners to eat a welcome gift right in front of a guest without offering them something as well,” she said, placing her hands on her hips and frowning at him. “We raised you better than that!”

  “I don’t think Vin could even taste one of these cookies if he tried,” Scule said, rolling his eyes. Even so, he held his hand and didn’t try to sneak another one of the desserts after that.

  “We’ve got a few buckets of fungal juice fermenting in the larder out back at the moment,” Scule’s father grunted, hungrily eyeing up the cake sitting before him. “Won’t be more than a single gulp to your friends, but it’s sweet enough to count.”

  “Fungal juice?” Shia asked, looking excited at the thought. “I’d love to try some!”

  “Come help me grab it,” Scule’s father ordered Scule before vanishing back inside the house. “And nobody touches those desserts until we get back!”

  Scule grumbled but followed his father inside. While the rest of them stood around awkwardly for a moment, Scule’s mother slowly reached out and took a cookie from the table. Holding a finger to her lips, she winked as she took a bite, sighing at the flavors contained within.

  “I don’t care what my husband says,” she said, savoring the cookie as she held a hand against her cheek. “I guess not all giant-folk are that bad!”

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