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[color=8407c2]”[i]Dedushka[/i] believed when the last Void is gone, the Nox will clear away.”[/color] Deprived of her foot stool, even at her own request, Rivka stretched out across more than one seat. The small bag she kept next to her was tucked under her head, giving her the perfect angle to watch the sky and the lights that passed above the car. Each streaming, flickering light as they hurried by and the thick, oppressive cloud of raw magic that strained them so. The fog that threatened to blot out even those stubborn lights and plunge the city into darkness.

At least the city had more than twenty three.

The corners of her mouth quirked, a faint expression suspended somewhere between a smile and a frown as her mind drifted away to a different sky.

[i][color=8407c2]”Little goblins!”[/color]

She laughed and swung the smallest of her assailants up onto her hip, greeting the other little marauders with pats on the head and ruffles of their hair. It was like wading through a human tide trying to reach the kitchen, but she listened attentively so far as she could differentiate all of their questions. 

[color=8407c2]“I am going to be an Ars Magi, that’s right.”

“Of course you can have an autograph. Of course I’ll come to visit.”

“I would love to listen to what she taught you, but I need to go see babushka myself first okay?”[/color] She laughed again and set her littlest cousin back down at the edge of the kitchen, gesturing them all away with a smile and the playful [color=8407c2]“Shoo, shoo, this is my party and I need to catch up! Chase each other around!”[/color]

[color=chocolate]”They’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day, Riva.”[/color]  The same fingers that first showed her how to play the piano brushed over her cheek and the old woman smiled. [color=chocolate]”So has everyone else, of course, but they’ve been bursting. So proud that their sistra is going to be a big hero.”[/color]

[color=8407c2]”Babushka,”[/color] Rivka greeted warmly, leaning down to kiss her cheek and wrap the smaller woman in a tight embrace. [color=8407c2]”I’ve missed you.”[/color]

[color=chocolate]”I missed you too. I’m glad you’re here early, I wanted to talk to you. Sit, sit.”[/color] She waved a ladle at a stool near the counter and her granddaughter sank onto it obediently, just like she had done since she had to climb onto it. [color=chocolate]”I couldn’t be prouder. Before, but certainly when I got the news. It makes me so happy to have you here tonight. I’ll see you again before you leave, I hope, but it was important to see you.”

“I don’t think I’ll be here when you come home. You’ll be training for a long time, and then you’ll be working. I’m old.” She waved her hand. “I’m not complaining. Your family will take care of anything I leave until you can claim it. But there are things that I want you to know, and I have to tell them to you now.”[/color]

Rivka bit her lip and resisted the urge to argue. But her babushka was old. Maybe seventy six wasn’t quite so old in the old world. But it was now. Every year she was away the odds of their reunion would get lower, and lower, until the day she returned for her funeral. It hurt. She could face leaving home even if she had never done it because her parents, her siblings, her cousins, they would all be here when she returned. But her grandmother…

[color=chocolate]”I know, Riva.”[/color] Her smile was comforting, Rivka’s thoughts clear as day on her face. [color=chocolate]”But everything in its time. You, though. You’re going to be an Ars Magi for a long time. But you don’t know what that means to me.”

“My father was the last of us to live in Russia. None of us have laid eyes on home since, and my father... “[/color] The pot boiled and she reached out to turn the heat down, using the lull to collect her thoughts. [color=chocolate]”My father was never the same man. My family told me about who he used to be, how he had laughed, and sang, and enjoyed life to the fullest but I never got to see it. My father stopped singing decades before I was born. He composed the most beautiful pieces, made sure our family survived here in Baeterrae. But he left something important behind in Russia. There wasn’t anything he regretted more than fleeing his home, even if he didn’t have a choice.”[/color]

Her voice caught and she took a long breath, favoring her granddaughter with another, sadder smile.

[color=chocolate]”He would be so, so proud of you Riva. ‘That girl is going to lead us home’. I can just hear him.”[/color] Rivka cocked her head silently, feeling the other shoe begin to fall. [color=chocolate]”But he would be wrong. We’re never going home, Riva. This is home. This is what you need to protect. The Nox is never going to go away, not when it makes monsters of men. Not when we spend our strength so desperately to keep it outside. We’re all going to realize that soon. All of us that have spent so long dreaming of our return. We created this, somehow, and we can’t undo it.”

“And that’s when they’ll need you. They’ll need you for hope, Riva, just as much as we will. Just as much as your cousins will when I’m gone.”[/color] Two glasses and a bottle came off of the shelf above the stove, and when they were full Rivka’s babushka extended one to her. [color=chocolate]”I think that’s an awful burden. But if anyone can take it you can, da?”[/color][/i]

The glasses clinked again in her ears, and Rivka felt again the way the drink had burned. And the toast her her babushka had raised a few hours later knowing full well that for her it would go unfulfilled; [i]Poka ty snova ne vernesh'sya domoy.[/i]

[color=8407c2]”But I think he was wrong.”[/color] She added under her breath, suddenly tired of the view. So she looked away, and let her eyes drift over the soldiers. Captain Wei held no interest for her. The captain’s words drifted into her ears without tone or passion, nothing but a rote recitation of the facts. Facts that she didn’t really care about. Until she reached her destination she was cargo, and like good cargo all she really cared about was arriving. She would have preferred to talk with the other girls but they seemed…. Reticent. A nap might have been nice but even for her that would have been awfully rude.

Instead she entertained herself with looking over the soldiers’ weapons, without much interest for the men and women themselves. She saw mostly more robust, powerful versions of what she had practiced with. The cylinders, if she had to guess, were of a more potent stock than what she worked with. Her target pistol only had six shots, after all, and she was only shooting paper. Or wood, or cardboard, depending. But the principle was the same and she examined the mechanisms in as much detail as she could at a distance, seeking differences where she could find them.

Another try, perhaps.

[color=8407c2]”Where are you all from? Miss.... Ssselma,”[/color] She continued, finally remembering the tall girl’s name. [color=8407c2]”Is that a touch of Germanic Hasta?”[/color]