Chapter 374: You’re Late

The academy’s pickup area was thinning out around her, other students collected by parents, guardians, vehicles she recognised, and the combination of the cooling evening air and the faint awareness that she had been waiting longer than expected was doing specific things to her patience. She was getting anxious.

Ash hovered at her left shoulder, puppy sized and golden in the fading light reflexion even though it’s scales are black, his small wings beating in the unhurried rhythm of something that didn’t particularly experience impatience but was paying close attention anyway. He had been watching the road with the focused stillness of a creature whose senses operated on a register well above what the situation appeared to require, his head tilting at small intervals, tracking something that hadn’t arrived yet.

Then a mana mobile came down the road.

Not an unusual event. Vehicles came and went constantly. But this one moved with a quality that was different, not in its speed, which was perfectly reasonable by the time it reached the pickup area, but in something harder to name. The way it occupied the road. The particular confidence of its line. Lily’s eyes tracked it with the instinctive attention of someone who had grown up around people who moved through the world at a different weight than most.

She frowned at it. Unfamiliar model. Unfamiliar registration. Coming to a stop directly in front of her with an accuracy that suggested whoever was driving had known exactly where she was standing.

“Where’s big brother,” she muttered, not quite to Ash, not quite to herself. “Who’s pulling up in this thing,” She glanced down at her bracelet again. Checked the time. Sighed through her nose with the comprehensive disappointment of someone who had expected better from the evening and was adjusting their expectations in real time.

Ash made a small sound. Not alarm, nothing so strong as that, but interest. His head tilted further, his golden eyes fixed on the vehicle with an expression that, on something that small, somehow still managed to convey the impression of an ancient intelligence working something out. His wings stilled. He hovered without moving, reading whatever it was he was reading.

The driver’s side door opened.

Sophie stepped out.

For exactly one second, Lily’s expression cycled through: surprise, recognition, processing, and joy, in that order, with no gaps between them.

“Aunty Sophie!”

She was already moving. The smart bracelet, the time, the inexplicable mana mobile, all of it ceased to be relevant information. She crossed the distance between them at the particular velocity of a small person who has decided that running is completely appropriate and launched herself into Sophie’s arms with the total physical commitment of someone who had never once considered that this might not be welcomed.

Sophie caught her, easily, naturally, her arms coming around Lily without hesitation, and the sound she made was warm and genuine, her composure softening in the specific way it softened for exactly two people in the world, one of whom was currently being squeezed with considerable enthusiasm at chest height.

“Hello, little one,” Sophie said, her hand moving to smooth Lily’s hair.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Lily said into her shoulder, muffled and delighted. “Big brother didn’t say,”

The other door opened.

Bruce stepped out.

Lily’s head came up from Sophie’s shoulder so fast it was almost audible.

“Big brother!”

She released Sophie, not ungently, but with the immediate singlemindedness of someone who had just recalibrated their priorities, and crossed the remaining distance to Bruce in four steps, arms already open. He caught her the same way he always did, one arm coming around her securely, the other hand finding the back of her head, and held her with the easy solidity of someone who had done this enough times that it had become one of the fixed points of his day.

Ash, who had been hovering in focused silence throughout all of this, made a decision.

His small wings flapped twice, rapidly, with a burst of energy that had no tactical purpose whatsoever. He shot forward, looped once around Sophie with a sound that was somewhere between a chirp and a rumble, pressed the flat of his tiny scaled head briefly against her cheek, mimicking, with the concentrated sincerity of a creature who had observed affection and concluded it was worth attempting, then banked sharply and did the same to Bruce, nosing once against his jaw before pulling back and resuming his hover with the dignified bearing of something that had definitely not just done something extremely small and extremely endearing.

Bruce looked at him.

Ash looked back.

Neither of them commented on it.

Lily pulled back from the hug to look up at Bruce with an expression that had transitioned, with remarkable smoothness, from pure delight into something more considered. Her eyes narrowed by approximately three degrees. Her lips pressed together in the specific configuration that meant she had something to say and had organised it into a presentation.

“Big brother,” she said. “You’re late.”

“I know,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry, Lily.”

She held the expression for another two seconds, maintaining it with the discipline of someone who felt that accountability required a proper witness period, and then it dissolved entirely, replaced by something considerably more cheerful.

“It’s okay. It was only a few minutes.” She stepped back and turned to look at the Fenrari properly, her gaze moving over it with the focused appreciation of someone conducting a genuine assessment. Her head tilted. “You bought a mana mobile?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“Recently.”

Lily walked a slow half circle around the front of it, examining the lines of the chassis, the way the mana drive housing sat flush against the vehicle’s undercarriage, the particular quality of the paint that shifted very slightly in the light. She stopped. Looked at Bruce. Looked at the vehicle again.

“I like it,” she announced. “It looks really cool.” A brief pause, during which something occurred to her. “How fast does it go?”

“Fast enough,” Bruce said.

Lily turned to Sophie with the instinctive accuracy of someone who has identified the more forthcoming source of information in a room.

Sophie looked at the middle distance with great serenity and said nothing.

Lily filed this away. “I’m getting in,” she said, and opened the rear door with the confidence of someone for whom this had already been decided, stepping up and settling herself into the back seat with the satisfied air of someone claiming a space they fully intended to enjoy.

Ash drifted in after her, circling once in the interior, sniffing, apparently, at the materials, the vents, the seam of the door, before selecting a position on the seat beside Lily that he clearly considered optimal and folding his wings with the gravity of a creature resolving a significant question.

Bruce closed the rear door, moved around to the driver’s side. Sophie was already in, her seatbelt drawn, her posture the relaxed posture of someone who had survived the speeds that had produced this vehicle and considered the return journey relatively uneventful by comparison.

Bruce settled into his seat. The Fenrari’s systems came alive around him, quiet and immediate.

From the back seat, Lily’s voice arrived with the particular carrying quality it had when she was being conversational rather than just loud: “Big brother, this seat is really comfortable. Is it mana infused?”

“The cushioning, yes.”

“How come the back is this comfortable and you’re up front doing the driving.”

“Because I’m driving.”

“Sophie could drive.”

“Sophie is not driving.”

Sophie turned slightly toward the window, the expression on her face one she was taking some pains not to let the front facing cabin reflect backward.

“Aunty Sophie,” Lily said, pivoting without pause, “do you know how to drive a mana mobile?”

“I do,” Sophie said.

“And big brother won’t let you drive.”

“Big brother is driving,” Sophie said, with the diplomatic neutrality of someone who was absolutely paying attention to this conversation and equally absolutely not getting involved in it.

Lily considered this. “That seems unfair.”

“Life often is,” Bruce said, and pulled out of the pickup zone with the smooth, unhurried ease of a vehicle that contained, among other things, a small dragon who was currently pressing his nose to the rear window and watching the academy recede behind them with the focused attention of a creature memorising a location for future reference.

“Ash,” Lily said, “stop leaving nose prints.”

Ash did not stop leaving nose prints.

Lily watched him do it for another three seconds, then gave up and looked forward instead. Outside, the academy district fell away behind them, the road opening ahead as Bruce found the Fenrari’s pace, not the pace from before, nothing close to it, but still brisk enough that the evening landscape moved with purpose past the windows.

“Big brother,” Lily said, after a moment.

“Mm.”

“Next time can you not be late.”

“I’ll try.”

“You said that last time.”

“I know.”

“You were late that time too.”

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