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Hvergelmir turned the golden peacock feather over and over in her hand, studying its details, waiting for some answer. If she could have willed it to give up some secret -- to betray some hint of what to do -- she would have. Alas that life didn't come with any such cheat codes.

The little trinket measured almost a foot in length; all expertly shaped from solid gold, inlaid with green and blue and white and orange gemstones for color.

This belongs to me, she told herself. Everything on that island belongs to me. Every keepsake and ornament in that treasure room belongs to me as it belonged to Nephthys before me, to do with as I wish. It's mine, she told herself firmly.

But she still felt like a thief, sitting here, holding it.

Planning to sell it for cash, like some simple hundred-year antique.

'I bought this at a jeweler's shop in a market on Delta Anthera a thousand and fifteen years ago,' she could picture herself saying. 'It's pure gold, and maybe emeralds and sapphires or something? How much do you think I could get for it?'

She felt miserable at the prospect -- surely none of her peer knights would ever consider such a lowly thing as pawning one of their precious homeworld relics to put a down payment on an apartment.

You've got plenty of them in that big treasure room, she tried to remind herself. There's nothing magical about this one. You can't live on a couch in someone else's apartment for the rest of your life, and the job with Orah's family just covers clothes and shoes. You have to fend for yourself.

It didn't help. It felt dirty, somehow. Cheap.

Hvergelmir sat there, twirling the gold feather, for a long time -- not even bothering to pass the time spinning thread as she usually did. By the time she noticed the Chaos aura approaching, it was almost on her -- and definitely heading in her exact direction.

She set the gold feather in her lap and squinted in the dark, awaiting its approach.

The silhouette was, once again, familiar -- familiar and welcome -- almost. It seemed off, a little, bulkier than she remembered it being, and the heavy footfalls came accompanied by added sounds, too. For a moment, Hvergelmir entertained the worrying notion that her sweet, gentle Titan had been mutilated into a half-youma as a punishment for setting her and Kairatos free -- but she remembered Babylon's note from a little while ago, his assurance that Titan had seemed fine. He'd have said if the captain was sporting any extra arms, and it was less likely he'd been found out in the interim. She was just being anxious. He was probably just carrying something.

Hvergelmir expelled the breath she'd been holding, and let her mouth open into a wide, toothsome smile. "Titan," she called out, voice a little choked up with the excruciating joy of seeing someone too deeply treasured who had been too long missed.

She'd put her hands up the first time they met, and Titan had understood. He'd taken her at her word, and honored the gesture -- peace, truce, cease-fire -- with word and deed, setting his hammer to the ground and walking away from it, into her space. It was the same each time they met, the same routine in different forms. A pile of weapons shed between them outside the biker bar, once. A hammer snagged on dirt and grass, another -- the sidewalk cracked from the force of its fall as he'd tossed it aside on his last visit. And this time, all patient, complicated effort to complete the task. She waited while Titan adjusted all that he was carrying and set his weapon aside before admitting himself into her space.

He'd never given her cause to feel threatened by him, hammer or no hammer. That wasn't the point. It hadn't been the point for quite a while.

Hvergelmir smiled and reached out an impatient hand for the chance to touch his face, his hair, raise him by the chin so she could see him in the lamplight. "You're here now," she said. "Safe and whole -- that's what matters. I had faith in you."

That had been hard. She wasn't naturally given to expecting much for herself from other people, however well she thought of them. It was hard to believe she merited the effort.

Tara was the only other person she believed in like that. Tara, who'd never given up on her, whose friendship was practically an inviolate rule of the universe.

There were other people she trusted -- Camelot, Babylon, Ida, Kairatos -- even Chariklo and Kerberos and little Astrophyllite -- but trusting someone and trusting them to love you may as well have been worlds apart. Doubts whispered so loudly. She still needed more time.

"I wasn't expecting any gifts," she said, unharried. "But I would be very pleased to consider them."

Hvergelmir wondered, with a little apprehension, what I have been preparing things meant -- but there was time to find out. He'd explain in his own time, or she'd eventually ask.

Hvergelmir left a hand to play with Titan's pretty hair while he fiddled with what was in the bag, taking something out to see. She waited while he did, not wanting to be grabby or impatient, and listened to his description to understand what she was being handed before reaching out to take the two decorated wooden plaques in hand. When he was done, she understood.

He'd gone into the Rift, as he'd intended. He'd seen what was left of their Academy -- and of the Earth's capitol city.

He'd really done it.

Hvergelmir settled the two plates in her lap, atop the gold-and-jeweled feather, brushing light fingers over the edges of the plates with care.

"You're safe?" she asked first and foremost, the concern sitting at the front of her mind. He'd described the Rift as a place of danger, and Bischofite had had much the same to say. Monsters running rampant, crumbling stone and hazards all about. Had Titan been frightened? Had he come to any harm? "You weren't hurt?"

It seemed that way, to all appearances -- he certainly didn't seem to be in any physical suffering right now -- but time healed wounds, and the Negaverse had faster methods, too, she remembered. She could still see the crumpled face of a lieutenant in her mind's eye, Titan forcing an energy sphere down his throat, and the way his labored breathing had immediately begun to even out, regardless of the severity of flail chest as an injury.

Reverent figertips, butterfly-light, flickered just barely over the topmost plate in her hands: the one that, as he'd described, embellished the well and the rising star. Titan had recognized her coat of arms easily enough, and so did she: there was no question of whether or not this shield, this device, was particularly to Hvergelmir Knight of the Cosmos.

I was there, she thought. Another version of me. Another lifetime. I wish I could remember it.

She carefully lifted both plates to swap their places -- setting her own device under the other one. The one he'd described as remembered from a dream.

His dream. His wonder.

The land that waited for him, some great fjord, thousands of miles away. Sun glittering on the water. Green things growing vibrant along the cliffs and hills that rose up on each side -- or so it all existed in her imagination. Hvergelmir could picture Titan the way she imagined he ought to be: strong arms rowing some little boat, perhaps; sunshine glowing in his hair, smile on his face, warm and fuzzy in a fur cloak she knew from her own dreams. She wondered what it would be like, the fjord -- whatever hidden piece of land lay waiting for its protector, revealing itself only to him. Hvergelmir wondered what was there to be found. Whether someday she might see it, get to find out for herself.

She realized only belatedly that it had been a while since she'd spoken. Hvergelmir had lingered long over each of the plates, wondering at their strange provenance. When and why had she come back to Earth's capitol, marking a seat with her wonder's device? Had she and Nærøyfjord crossed paths then -- or was this only the evidence of a strange near miss, their two blazons sitting in the same room for silent centuries, marking only the coincidence of two people who might meet in another life?

"I agree," she said thoughtfully. "What you described sounds like a government building. Whatever took place back then, it must've been empty at the end -- if you found it untouched, and no remains inside, no one made their stand there or laid it siege." That was fascinating compared to what he described as the possible ruins of the Academy -- (her heart raced with just the idea that someone had been so close to it, ruined or not, had seen it for himself) -- a lost and shattered wreck so deeply devastated that even the army who'd conquered it could no longer safely get in. "Beryl's army must've known what they were going after all along, I guess -- if they left whole parts of the city intact, but the Academy's the wreck you're describing. They must've always intended to go after the school -- to tear it straight off the map."

She sighed. Hvergelmir had always imagined a broader siege, the Academy full of its young students serving as an unfortunate casualty of an overzealous conquering force determined to wipe out even its youngest enemies. It was one thing to consider that concept in the abstract -- another to hear that the army might have bypassed the very capitol city itself, moving straight for the Academy to eviscerate it so brutally that they'd left behind a yawning sinkhole too deep and too terrible to attempt to cross.

"You've risked quite a bit," she acknowledged. "And brought back relics beyond value -- pieces of our history that've been lost to us for a very long time. The Knighthood won't soon forget this gesture." And a map. A map! Even if it didn't resemble how the Rift currently stood, just to be able to understand the layout of the capitol city, to see the lines of its streets . . . She didn't think she was the only knight who longed to feel a greater connection to the kingdoms of so long ago -- to feel like they were part of their own war, not someone else's that they'd inherited.

"Will you tell me more about the building you found -- the Parliament building?" Hvergelmir offered an encouraging smile. "I can help you to remember more about it, if you'll let me." The basic principles of a cognitive interview were one of the many memory-recall techniques Laney had studied as a child, picking them apart to try and find more things she could apply to improving her spelling-bee-winning abilities (which had felt like the most important thing in the world, at the time). The concept served better for recalling events than learned and studied information, though -- which meant it was well-suited to things like this. To helping someone recall what their memory had been storing for them. Something like that could be good for Titan, she thought: show him his brain worked better than he obviously feared it did.

She was hesitant to ask about the Rift in general. What he'd done here had already been treasonous, of course -- finding a sealed place in the fallen city, taking relics out of it and handing them over to the Knighthood -- But Hvergelmir worried that if she broadened her question too far, that might still be asking too much of him too soon. His sense of honor was deeply particular, and she was wary of offending it. Sticking to the building, though -- if it really had been sealed untouched all this time, she wasn't asking him to reveal any sensitive Negaverse secrets that they had a right to keep, only details of something long forgotten to them all. She hoped he might be comfortable enough with that to oblige.

He was always so generous. Everything was always yes, how can I help you, what can I do. It was a delicate and precious thing, to have the favor of such a person -- like holding something made of unfired clay in your hands, its shape so easily ruined by the merest thoughtless touch.

I do ruin you one day, though, don't I, she thought with a pang of familiar sorrow. One day I ask you to die with me, and even then -- yes, how can I help you, what can I do.

"Writing things down helps. Quite a bit, actually -- anything you add to the way you remember things will help you remember a little more. They say we only remember a tiny bit of what we hear -- compared to quite a lot of what we see or say -- and almost all of what we do. A lot of it's still rattling around up there, just waiting to be teased out." She reached out a hand to tweak his nose, light and playful, if he allowed it. "I'd like to try something -- it's a way of helping you go back to that day, to what it was like. Will you let me take you somewhere?"

She took her hand back, then ran a finger across the ring she wore there, the one she always moved to her opposite hand after transforming. Light seemed to shift, and then the great caribou made itself known: standing behind the bench, its spectacular golden antlers dripping lukewarm on her shoulder. Hvergelmir reached up to brush her fingers lightly over a broad, soft-furred blue nose.

She looked up to find Eikthyrnir staring quizzically at the kneeling captain, head tilted to regard Titan with a single, dark eye. "Do you know him?" she asked the creature in a soft voice, wondering. Could Eikthyrnir remember the things the rest of them remembered? The future? Would the caribou know this was the same, very familiar man? Or maybe the past? She held up the verdant coat of arms for Eikthyrnir to see. "Or this crest? Have you seen it before?"

The shimmering creature that stood behind her, looking over her shoulder, glanced briefly over the stall plate -- then back to Titan. Its gaze remained as unscrutable as before: curious, studying. Eikthyrnir was a proud old thing, and could be difficult to read when it wanted to be. She supposed whatever the caribou remembered would remain a mystery for now.

Titan looked surprised, or maybe in awe. Her two companions stared at each other -- one wide-eyed, the other placid -- until finally, Titan broke the silence one more with his familiar, warm-timbred voice.

While he'd been thinking, Hvergelmir had been wasting no time of her own -- quickly rooting through her mind to come up with a place they could go that might help Titan immerse himself in his memories better than he could do here. Having never been to the Rift, this was more than a little difficult -- and relied on her imagination to supply ideas of what such a place might be with, filled in around what sparse information she already knew about it. Eventually, she came up with one idea, though it wasn't perfect. The smells would be off, she suspected, which could be distracting . . .

Still, there weren't many better options. Mostly places they could go would be plagued by security cameras -- a huge risk for him if the Negaverse ever came upon film of one of their captains strolling around blithely on her arm.

"Eikthyrnir is older and wiser than I am," she reassured. "You wouldn't be rejected out of hand just for the colors you wear."

Hvergelmir slid from the bench briefly down to a kneeling position, on the ground next to Titan. Bare-handed, she scratched at the ground till she'd pulled up a small pile of dirt -- the scooped this between both hands and held it cupped there. "For our trip," she explained with a smile that she hoped conveyed I know exactly what I'm doing!. "You don't need any dirt of your own -- I just need this." Then, rising again, she stepped up onto the seat of the bench. The grand caribou stooped slightly, waiting and angling its golden horns to one side for her use as a momentary handlebar. She propped one elbow among them carefully for balance, then stepped quickly up onto the bench's backrest and then immediately astraddle Eikthyrnir's blue-furred, dappled back.

"Up we go, then," she told Titan, tilting her head in a come on up gesture.

There was a moment's very, very powerful temptation not to go anywhere. Titan was, as ever, warm and radiant as a furnace, and Hvergelmir wanted nothing more than to lean back into his solid weight and stay there, forgetting the map and the coats of arms he had stowed in his bags, or the decorative gold feather she'd tied to the end of her cloak, or this business about his trip to the Rift and what he'd seen of the Academy. She just wanted to stay like this and feel safe and warm and cozy.

Wanted to, but couldn't. If nothing else, Eikthyrnir couldn't stay earthbound forever. And there were too many things that needed doing to just while away the hours in companionable silence -- not enough of Titan's hours belonged to her for that. He spared her what he could of his company. She knew. She understood.

"Not the Rift," she said. "But someplace strange."

Eikthyrnir, who didn't need to move at all, barely budged this time -- but there was a sensation of travel, all the same, the knowledge that it was the three of them, and not the world, that had moved. There was a quiet breeze as their arrival displaced the air around them -- gentle and barely noticeable, where science indicated teleportation should have actually created vacuums and explosions.

When Hvergelmir looked around again, they'd arrived.

The Destiny City Aquarium was quiet at night. Quieter still here, in the unfinished Turtle Wing -- where the Aquarium had abruptly ended two years of construction on the new wing after Destiny City's reputation as a troubled city caused one of the other popular coastal aquariums to withdraw their transfer of a group of Loggerheads and send them somewhere else.

The wing had never been opened, still partially complete -- visitors to the aquarium could only just get a peek at it from down the darkened hallway that remained tragically roped off just past the hippo exhibit.

Fake rocks lined the walls, probably shaped from plaster or something like it, painted a matte brown. The only light that filtered in was indirect, glowing a pale and luminous blue from the large water tanks that surrounded them, filled only with water.

The papers said DC was looking into expanding their general oceanic tank into this room as well, rather than let it go to waste. The nearest zoo had refused the request to send over anything from their exhibits.

Construction equipment still hulked shadowed in corners, barely visible in the shifting blue glow. The floor was covered in dust.

Eikthyrnir knelt to let them dismount.

"It should have been a beautiful exhibit," Hvergelmir said quietly, sliding the packed dirt between her hands. "Have you been to the aquarium before?"

How very like him, a gentle giant in all things: he hadn't ever gone in the Aquarium because he'd been hesitant to take up too much space. I think if people can handle the hippo exhibit, they'll be fine with you, love, she wanted to say. Wanted to, but didn't -- it might not sound the way she meant it. She didn't want to seem critical or dismissive.

Instead, she thought, I'll bring you here for real some time, then, you and me. No one will make you feel like you don't belong. There isn't anywhere in the universe that you're not good enough for.

Someday. Not today. Not when he still had Chaos in his heart, undermining his wellbeing somehow.

"I remember," she answered instead, nodding. "I was glad you came."

Hvergelmir watched as Titan took in the strange room, trying to make sense of it. She was pleased with her choice -- it had to be somewhere he'd never been before, somewhere that might inspire his mind to forge connections between unfamiliar surroundings and the specific ones she was asking for. Sure enough, there was a starting place. The light.

"You brought a flashlight," she repeated the information back, quietly. Hvergelmir stepped up to where Titan had gone, keeping one step behind and to the side, careful not to include herself in the scenery, except as a ghostly reflection in the glass tank. "That's good -- that's perfect. I want you to try and think back to that time, imagine yourself walking down into the Rift with your flashlight. You felt nervous, maybe. Or excited? It would've been a dangerous journey. I want you to try and tell me what the road was like underfoot. Can you remember that? Maybe it was smooth and even, like paving or packed dirt? Or maybe it was something else -- like broken rock, or even cobblestones. Did you have steady footing? Or did you have to point your flashlight down to see your path ahead?"