In honor of Valentines Day, I believe a threeshot is in order. Of course, I kept this for a few months, but the occasion is definitely appropriate. Enjoy!

PART ONE

It was meant to be a brief visit, but Howard thought it might last for eternity. Already, their few moments wandering the halls of the palace seemed to drag on for hours. Stellovet was halting her siblings every few feet to speak with whoever was present. Hero and Kent threw themselves into the fifth argument of the day. And Chim…what had gotten into her? Every moment she reached for an older siblings' hand, desperate to show something. She had gotten interested in performing tricks. But Howard couldn't watch her, not now; his ears alone felt overloaded as it was.

"Luxa is in the throne room, Kent! She must be having lessons at this time of day."

"Lessons are never held in the throne room. They are not even in the same wing," Kent scoffed to Hero. "We must look by the nursery, or else on the field—"

"The nursery? Luxa is too old to be so close to the nursery. And I do not want to walk so far to the field, and even if we had fliers, I doubt we are allowed to—"

"Hero, lower your voice!" Stellovet turned from the guard she was gossiping with, so abruptly that her neck might have broken. "You are both wrong. Luxa holds her lessons near the kitchens, which are nowhere near the throne room or the nursery. However, perhaps we could check in the nursery and leave you there if only to quiet you!" She turned back to the guard. "I apologize for my siblings. Now, remind me, what do you do when you are not guarding? In fact, how long will your shift take?"

"Stellovet, please." Howard ran a hand over his eyes and took her from the guard by her arm. Stellovet had been right, in fact, but he wasn't about to announce that. She'd return to the guard with an inflated ego and renewed will.

A small hand tugged at Howard. "Howard! Come see this!" Chim said excitedly. "There is a very high balcony, and it is large enough for us to all sit on the edge!"

"No, Chim, we are not going to sit on the edge."

"Then watch me walk it."

"No!" Howard said so loudly that Kent and Hero paused. Howard took the opportunity when he saw it. "We are going to walk to the kitchens, through the nursery wing. We will ask for directions when we are close. And we will be quiet."

A moment of contemplation, as if this was a deal being offered and not a set of directions. Kent raised his hand. "Will we walk like soldiers?"

"You may," Howard said with a slight exhale. This could actually work.

Stellovet sniffed. "I would rather not." And then she started down the hall. Kent and hero stood erect, saluted to each other, and then began what they pretended to be a long and weary trek. Howard took Chim by the hand and followed, and all was peaceful for a full corridor. Until Hero exclaimed:

"Kent! You were not supposed to start on your left!"

Howard suppressed a groan. They were not always this bad, his siblings. The twins normally played more than bickered, and even Stellovet, flirtatious as she was, had her pleasant points. But times had been trying for their entire family after the War of Time, even once Howard and his father had come home to the Fount. York worked tirelessly to aid Luxa in repairing Regalia—with his own city relatively untouched and Vikus still half paralyzed—and Susannah showed equal interest in seeing the surviving nibblers to a new home. And with no political standing, no duties to a throne, and no people to heal, Howard was the best candidate to take on his siblings.

Howard found himself living in the past, with no future to help build. Flashes of Gregor, Pandora, Nike, Ares, Ripred, Lizzie, Boots—flashes of memory hit him like an epiphany, triggered by the mention of a word or the mere sight of an object. And each time, he found himself thinking, "It was real." He had not been Howard, the eldest child, the caretaker. He had been Howard on the quest, Howard with the plague, Howard looking after and sometimes saving the lives of his companions. And they were companions who had come to know him as well as he knew himself. There was something to fight for, something to protect from—

And now there was only something to remember. Like water that had run dry, that world had evaporated to live only in people like him and Luxa. He saw the same memories in his cousin's eyes each day, and knew that the fairy story was done. A chapter of their lives had ended. And what was there to begin?

Howard didn't know he had been blocking out his surroundings until Chim almost pulled his arm out of his socket. "Howard, please, may I—what is wrong?"

He blinked, and then rubbed the mistiness out of his eyes. "Nothing is wrong. May you what?

"May I ride on the fliers?" Chim pointed out the window to a flock of fliers practicing dives. They must have been a quarter mile away.

"They will not hear you," Howard said, and tried to listen to the twins, who looked ready to claw each other's hair out.

Chim, however, persisted. "Then may I call them? I can call very loud. Will you let me?"

"No. Hero, you may not hit him!"

"Then why may Stellovet hit him, but I may not?" Hero retorted. Kent raised his hand to wallop his twin back, but Howard rushed up and grasped it firmly.

Stellovet halted, and then turned around with fire in her eyes. "I never hit Kent!"

"You did the day after Father left to fight," Kent called. Stellovet stalked over and crossed her arms imposingly.

"You needed to be hit, if you were going to take my bread!"

"It was mine!" Hero objected. "Kent got it for me."

"It was never yours," Stellovet said. "I specifically claimed the loaf—"

"You claimed the loaf, but Hero's slice was not part of the loaf. It was not like you were going to eat the entire thing," Kent grinned, "since you always saved half of it for Lucius."

Stellovet turned scarlet. "The farmer's son has nothing to do with me hitting you, and I say you deserved to be hit, because you two were in the same room as I when I—"

"I say," Hero said, "if Mother was there, you would have had to apologize—"

"And the bread would have gone to the livestock!" Stellovet said. "Oh, wait, forgive me. It was already in the hands of livestock when I lost it." She glared to Kent.

Howard stepped in. "Stellovet, this is no occasion for—"

"Oh?" Hero said. "What are you, Stellovet? Certainly not ready for marriage, I heard Father say, if you continue to gossip like this!"

"Hero!" Howard and Stellovet both exclaimed.

"Howard, I found a stairway!" Chim called. She had peeked around the corner of the next hallway, and took a few steps to the opening.

"My marriage is nothing you would understand," Stellovet growled. "You who still play near dead bodies! Why do you not embrace a crawler as well?"

Howard turned back to the argument. "The crawlers are not—"

"But she can still stand a dead body and not run away shrieking!" Kent defended his sister.

Howard tried again. "It does not matter—"

"It is so long!" Chim's voice echoed as she stuck her head into the entry of the spiral staircase.

"What reasonable person does not dislike a dead body?" Stellovet said.

"It is not a matter of disliking, Stellovet, because you are afraid of the dead," Kent said, "especially the giant, flea-ridden gnawers!"

"Kent!" Stellovet cried and stepped back.

"With their overgrown teeth and their coats mangled and covered with blood—"

"Kent, that is quite enough!" Howard said.

"Oh yes, because we have not even gotten to Kent and his fear of spinners!" Stellovet said in glee. "With their long, hairy legs and those eyes that look right into your—"

"I could go down in five seconds, Howard!" Chim said from the stairs.

"Stellovet!"

"Hero!"

"Watch!"

"Chim!" Howard cried and ran to the staircase. But it was too late. He had seen her awkward footing, he'd noticed the missing brick, but now the only thing he wanted to see was Chim, who had toppled headfirst down the stone, circular stairway. Howard's limbs seemed to freeze over, so he could only submit himself to the thuds, crashes, and mangled cries. Imagination took over from there.

At last—too quickly—silence. Howard's breath caught in his throat, and he counted to himself, waiting for some sort of noise that signified life.

"One…two…three…" If his head counted beyond ten, he was going to have to assume something very unfortunate had taken place. But a quiet sniff, and then the sound of whimpered tears brought air rushing back into his lungs.

"Stay there," Howard said quietly, but with such force that Stellovet, Kent, and Hero dared not move. He stepped down the first step as if he was an old man. Perhaps he was avoiding the step with the missing brick, or perhaps he was weak with images of Chim weighing him down, none of those images being good. All he knew was that, wish as he might to go faster, he did not want to imagine what pain his sister might feel at knowing her siblings had not been there for her.

Step by step, the whimpers grew louder and heavier, more urgent, more punctuated with sniffs, until Chim was on the verge of—

"Hush."

The noise stifled itself. It sounded as if Chim was crying into someone's breast.

"Hush now, little one."

Howard's speed doubled.

"All is well now." A choked laugh. "Oh, what a worry you gave me…"

Howard's feet flew, and the spiral staircase ran past him in a blur until he fell onto his knees at the bottom. And there lay Chim, wrapped up in the arms of a girl no older than Stellovet.

"Chim!" Howard pulled the six-year-old into his lap and held her so that she was sobbing into his chest. He rocked her back and forth, feeling her torso and arms for injuries with one hand while the other held her head under his chin. When he felt nothing serious, both his arms encircled her and he let out a trembling breath. Chim had not stopped crying, despite her injury-free state.

"I am sorry, Chim," Howard murmured. "So very, very sorry."

Chim sobbed and hiccupped into his shirt, which soon dampened. The girl trembled in his arms, which only made him rock her more. For a few moments, it was just Howard and his sister, before Howard realized that the girl who had first held Chim was still beside them on the floor.

The girl could not have been older than sixteen, with a heart-shaped face and hair chopped to a medium length to frame it. Her large violet eyes first examined Howard's with a mixture of curiosity and awe. But when he turned to her, those eyes turned downcast as she hummed a small tune and began to peel off Chim's shoes.

Howard was confused. Was she checking for injuries as well? Chim was curious enough to look up, and by the time the girl had propped Chim's foot into an upright position and started speaking softly, Howard's and Chim's eyes widened in recognition.

"Two tiny rows
Of five tiny toes,
Give Chim ten good reasons to wiggle her nose."

The girl leaned down to Chim's foot, pretended to sniff, and made a motion as if to waft fumes away. "Phew!" Chim giggled very slightly, and then a few times more, as the girl played with each of Chim's toes individually.

"Wiggle your nose
At eight, nine, ten toes…"

"Then give them a bath so each tiny toe glows." Howard completed the line softly. The girl looked up to meet his eyes. Something stirred inside him.

"I thought I was the only one who knew those lines," he said quietly, hesitating to add that he had made them up.

The girl smiled, and when she did, her eyes became softer. "I was taught them. It seems like a very long time ago, now."

"Who taught you?"

"Boots the Overlander. Her brother clarified the specific words, but it was Boots who taught me what a help it could be."

Howard's eyebrows shot up. He knew that name.

The girl, for some reason, lowered her eyes so she was staring at Chim's toes again. "I know I have no reason to know the warrior or the princess. Forgive me."

"For what?" Howard asked in a half-laugh.

"For mentioning the topic."

"I was the one who mentioned it," he said, quirking half a smile. "And besides, I knew them as well."

"As did I," Chim said from Howard's lap. "I liked the Overlander."

"And I as well," the girl said gently before her eyes met Howard's shyly.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"I am called Dulcet," she said. "And you are—"

"Meet you Howard, my brother," Chim said, imitating their mother's formal-yet-friendly tone as best she could. "He and I and our brother and sisters live in Regalia."

"No, we are from the Fount," Howard said.

"But we spend most of our time here," Chim said, confused.

Dulcet laughed, and her eyes glowed. "Perhaps we should return you to your siblings, then. They must be worried."

"They fight very much," Chim said, and then squealed as Howard swept her off the ground to carry her bridal style.

Dulcet hid her mouth behind her hand, but her laugh lines were easily visible. "May I be of assistance, Howard of the Fount?"

"Thank you, but I can carry her." Howard shifted Chim in his arms so she was more comfortable.

"No, I mean to say that you might be lost, else you and your siblings would not be so scattered. May I help you find anything? Oh, but that is ridiculous of me," she added hurriedly. "You have surely visited enough to—"

"Actually," Howard said, "could you tell us where Luxa takes her lessons now?"

He only realized after he had spoken that he only left out Luxa's title when he spoke with his family (or Gregor—he should not remember this now, though). However, Dulcet smiled in understanding.

"I believe she studies in the wing east of the kitchen, two doors down the hall on the left side. But I also believe she is with Ripred the Peacemaker, who tolerates no interruptions. However, may I offer an alternative? I am on my way to the nursery, and am in need of volunteers like you," she smiled at him and Chim, "to assist me. Would you like this, Chim?"

"Yes!" Chim grinned. "I will tell Hero and Kent and Stellovet." And, fully recovered, she squirmed out of Howard's arms and ran upstairs to do just that. Howard made to follow, but felt a warm hand on his wrist that made him freeze up.

"While I am asking questions to one above my station," Dulcet said quietly, "my curiosity overwhelms me. Why did you look like you did when I spoke of Boots?"

Howard took a breath in. "I knew her as well. It was a long time ago, though, and she feels almost…dead to me. It was a surprise to hear you mention her—"

"When I am nothing but a nanny?"

"No! No, it was not that at all. I would not be surprised if Boots never forgot you, if you have been as kind to her as you have been to Chim." Dulcet glowed pink at the comment. "It is only that…once she and her family left us, things have been difficult."

"…I am not sure what you mean, and I do not intend to ask. But please, let me share with you what Boots told me herself: even if a person is gone, they live on in your heart."

Howard straightened as he recognized another quote of his. But as he tried to look at Dulcet in confusion, her eyes could evoke nothing but a gentle smile.

I suppose, if you really wanted, you could stop reading here. However, I intend to add conflict to this, hence I made this a threeshot. Are there any opinions on this particular pairing? Come on, someone has to oppose it, and someone has to like it...