Azia had more than enough options, in terms of future experiments. Even as she punched deeper into her to-do list, branching questions led to curious places. She had accomplices, and she had resources. She had as much time as she wanted to exploit, and she had an anomaly more than willing to participate. For the past twenty-four hours, all she’d done was drown in her own thoughts.

  Staring at walls was a secondary success, as was useless fidgeting. “Fatigue” was a viable enough excuse for Seleth, given her rigorous schedule to begin with. He’d never stopped teasing her about her sleeping routine, anyway. He’d never brought up his floral stressors, either. Azia kept her mouth shut about the same, whether or not sunflowers silently haunted her instead. She refused to bring him back there, just as she refused to leave her room. It probably wasn’t the healthiest form of research.

  Azia had made progress, and she had clear evidence of that on a desk not so distant. She hadn’t bothered to clean her glassy mess as of yet, flasks and dishes still splattered with chemicals. What open residue had touched the air was all but gone, dissipating into nothing and leaving only blackened smudges behind. At the very least, she’d conserved what raw toxins still mattered. Precious waters, too, had fled. That was new.

  Granted, she’d sealed blues so graciously gifted behind sturdy walls, perfectly preserved within one humble vessel. A flask likely did an injustice to purity, and she still might not have deserved to harbor tranquil tides next to substances far more corrosive. If nothing else, Azia was grateful that she’d had the chance to keep it at all. It wasn’t as though she could find the drive to do anything with it, at the moment. That was likely a disservice to his help, too. She resolved to find a better way of storing purity, at some point, provided he was willing to try again.

  She’d already chided Cailin as to the extent of his drive, by which the pain of others risked coming second to progress. Azia hadn’t quite figured out whether or not Seleth had been in pain in the first place. Whatever horror had touched his face still bothered her immensely, as did the aftermath of a flower’s spell at large. Were she to push him into it again, she wondered if she’d force out what he couldn’t find himself. More than that, she wondered if she’d only wound him further.

  The sharp bang against her door nearly scared her to death. Azia almost fell off the bed altogether, her hands fleeing her head fast enough that she outright slapped herself in the face. It took two more hits for her to register it as a knock.

  “Aziaaaa,” she heard, loud and undaunted.

  Azia didn’t have the energy to resist. She could hardly find the energy to move. “What?”

  “Lemme in.”

  “Sure.”

  Even the fact that it was a demand over a request didn’t faze her. Normally, it would’ve been agitating, and her intruder would’ve skirted the same line. If she was going to force her way in, it was the least Klare could do to make it through on her own. Hands full or not, Azia didn’t move an inch. Admittedly, watching Klare fight to push the door open with her foot was somewhat entertaining.

  Azia couldn’t find a smile as vivid as she would’ve liked. Still, her lips turned upwards in the slightest, and it felt good. “What are you doing?”

  Closing it looked equally difficult. Klare hooked her heel around the edge of the door, practically kicking it shut. The fact that it worked was impressive, actually, despite the bang of a different kind that followed. Ideally, the two tufts of flimsy paper in her hands were worth it, billowing steam and crinkling in her grasp. “Kassy made banana bread.”

  Azia raised an eyebrow. “What, she got bored of the pumpkin bread?”

  It didn’t matter that she wasn’t invited to sit. Klare claimed a place beside her with far too much force, more or less bouncing atop the mattress in the process. Miraculously, not one crumb of soft brown escaped its paper blanket. “She said she wanted to try something else. It came out pretty good, honestly. Seleth can’t eat, right?”

  “Can’t, doesn’t, we’re not sure. It may or may not be harmful to him. I don’t want to risk checking,” Azia admitted.

  Klare shrugged. “If you don’t check soon, I will. He’s missing out, anyway.”

  She sounded like Ginger. That wasn’t especially a good thing. Azia lost the subject soon enough, and she was grateful for that much. Klare thrust one steaming square of fluff in front of Azia's face, fast enough that she was all but certain it would fall. “Here. Eat.”

  Azia did as she was told, partially, wrapping her fingers around the clump of hot paper with care. “Thanks.”

  Klare’s smile outdid hers by a longshot. She buried it in bread so soon after, anyway, sinking her teeth into the crumbling pastry. It wasn’t at all a surprise when a full mouth did nothing to stem her speech. “Ah ya makin’ any progreth?”

  “Finish chewing, good God.”

  It was a relief when she did. “Are you making any progress?” Klare repeated, infinitely clearer. “How goes the research stuff?”

  The smile Azia had managed to cling to faltered, slowly but surely. She cast her eyes into a little slice of bread, untouched and still every bit as warm. “It’s…going.”

  “Okay, what does ‘going’ mean?” Klare pushed.

  She gestured half-heartedly towards her lingering theater of tarnished toxins atop the desk. “I’ve been messing with reactions and whatnot. Found some things out. I need to talk to Cailin about them, at some point.”

  If her quiet tone carried anything clouded, Klare didn’t acknowledge it. She was throwing her attention into a more flavorful cloud altogether, and Azia was starting to wonder if she really was shedding crumbs onto the covers. “I can’t believe you were worried about him fitting in. They love him. I’m guessing it’s the meteorology thing, but still. He’s been doing most of the forecast work since he got here. Did he tell you that?”

  Azia fidgeted with one thin corner of swaddling paper. “No. I…haven’t really spoken to him much.”

  “They better not keep him. He’s ours. You’re just borrowing him.”

  Azia scoffed. “He’s a person. You talk about him like he’s an object.”

  “You do the same thing to Seleth,” Klare countered, her tone far too smug.

  She wished she had the energy to laugh. “Fair,” Azia said softly instead.

  It was soft enough to give her away. Untouched bread likely did the same, and Klare’s face fell. “Is something up?”

  For a moment, Azia didn’t answer. She couldn’t find the words to try in the first place. Staring at fluff wasn’t helping, and yet it was all the alchemist could do. Klare only leaned closer, lowering her head and battling for eye contact. “You and Seleth get into a fight, or somethin’?”

  That would’ve been easier to explain--were it recent, at least. Azia almost wished they had, if not for the sake of simple conversations alone. Given that even she didn’t understand the situation, whatever she could offer to Klare would be messy at best and useless at worst. It might’ve been better than keeping it in.

  She sighed heavily, forsaking the little slice of bread and turning to the researcher. “Something happened with him yesterday. I can’t wrap my head around it. It was new. I’m not sure how to handle it.”

  Klare leaned back onto one supportive palm, still demolishing her own dissipating fluff with the other. Now there were crumbs. “You have my attention.”

  Azia hesitated, assembling muddied words with care. “He has…problems with his memories. I think it was brought up at the Dissemination after the Thunderstorm. You heard about that part, right?”

  She took a bite. She nodded. “Vaguely.”

  “When I first met him, some of the things he told me he still remembers didn’t make sense. He shouldn’t have any knowledge of them at all. If I’m understanding correctly, he has memories that precede the Sunburst.”

  The second bite was far slower, marred by the confusion on her face. “Keep going,” Klare said anyway.

  It was easier said than done. Azia did her best, given the blooming crisis that followed. “He said he liked sunflowers. I was surprised that he even knew what a sunflower was. He’s been helping with so much recently that I wanted to give him something back, so I brought him to the nursery yesterday. I took him to see the sunflowers, and he…”

  She trailed off. Phrasing it was almost impossible, given that she hardly knew what “it” was in the first place. Klare didn’t let her back down, nudging Azia's foot with the tip of her boot. “‘And he…’” she echoed, only half-teasing.

  Gripping her neglected bread tighter was likely a bad idea. Azia might’ve been doing a disservice to Kassy’s baking. She couldn’t help it. “The way he reacted was…I can’t even explain it. He was so out of it. He may as well have not even been there. He started mumbling all of this stuff about dying, and I couldn’t get him to come back to me. When he finally snapped out of it, he looked awful.”

  Azia closed her eyes. It didn’t help erase the image of the terror that had seized Seleth’s own. “And he said he remembered something,” she finished quietly.

  Staring became eating. Azia figured Klare wouldn’t stay stunned for long. Eyes shut or not, she could hear it. “What’d he remember?”

  Azia shook her head. “He doesn’t know.”

  “How do you not remember what you remember?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  When she opened her eyes at last, Klare looked more baffled than ever. There was something judgmental in her tone, somewhere. “He said he knows something came back to him, but he can’t figure out what it was. He can’t 'get it out,' was the way he worded it.”

  “And that was the first time that ever happened?” Klare asked.

  “Yeah. He looked so overwhelmed that I’m afraid to press him on it. I’m afraid to even bring him back there again,” Azia confessed. “It’s been driving me insane since it happened. I want to pry, but I don’t want to hurt him.”

  Klare was running out of bread, and Azia was almost positive that she’d managed to bite the paper. She never acknowledged it. Had she been less distraught, Azia probably would’ve teased the researcher about it. Right now, she was hunting for what fragile relief came with simply arranging the situation out loud. “You think maybe the sunflowers set him off? You said he remembered them before all of this, right?”

  Azia had entertained the same, fleetingly. She hadn’t managed to keep her thoughts straight long enough to chase that one further. Klare’s voice helped. “Yes. I’ve been wondering if they had anything to do with it, too. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Did Seleth tell you anything else he remembered before you guys met?”

  She’d forgotten his exact wording. She worked with what of it she could salvage. “He knew about fish, but he didn’t have that reaction to the ones in the library. He asks a lot of ‘you guys have those’ sort of questions. The way he says it bothers me, like he’s seen things we haven’t. Other than that, he said there were 'warm things,' and 'cold things,' and 'bright things.' He said he mostly remembered feelings.”

  “That doesn’t help much,” she muttered.

  Again, Azia’s eyes were a magnet for cooling bread alone. “I know.”

  The far-too-noisy crinkling of paper was distracting. The tiniest thump across the room was equally so, and Azia witnessed the exact moment that Klare’s useless toss missed her wastebasket. The effort was almost pitiful, if not annoying. Azia’s gaze drifted to the new litter on her carpet, instead.

  “Does he have anything else that he likes?”

  That was enough for her to raise her head, at least. “What do you mean?”

  “Besides sunflowers,” Klare offered.

  Azia paused. Shift in topic be damned, she indulged it anyway. It wasn’t as though she had much to say on her own. “He likes alchemy, apparently. I learned that yesterday, too. He likes doing new things in general, I think. He seems to enjoy traveling. He likes my bike a whole lot more than he should.”

  He liked her a whole lot more than he should’ve. That might’ve been the worst one. Azia refused to say it.

  “I said that wrong,” Klare corrected, crossing her legs comfortably. “Are there things he likes that you didn’t show him? Stuff he already liked when he got here?”

  Again, it took a moment to rack her brain. She nearly came up empty, save for a singular exception. “He likes the stars,” she murmured. “He said they make him happy.”

  “There we go,” Klare concluded plainly. “Things like that.”

  For once, it was Azia’s turn to stare. “I’m not following. What’s the difference?”

  A finger gun clarified nothing, and yet she earned one anyway. It came with an actual answer, at least, albeit just as confusing. “Maybe he brought that with him, however that works. It sounds like he’s got little itty bitty memories, even if they don’t mean much.”

  To be fair, wherever Klare was going didn’t mean much, either. “I could…understand that, I guess.”

  “So, mess with those,” she added.

  Azia fell silent. Eventually, she raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Figure out what they are, and mess with them,” Klare clarified. “Dunno if it’ll do anything, but it’s worth a shot.”

  “What do you mean ‘mess with them?'” she asked incredulously. “His memories?”

  “Look,” Klare began, clapping her hands together in borderline exasperation. “Seleth remembered sunflowers from before. When he saw them again, they triggered his memory, somehow. There might be other things that do that to him, if he knew about them already. It might bring back something he can actually remember. It might not. Again, I don’t know. It’s still something to work with.”

  Azia’s silence was born of something else altogether, the second time. Slowly but surely, her eyes widened. “Do you mean…trigger his memories manually?”

  “Exactly.”

  Where her thoughts had raced so fervently mere minutes before, every last one screeched to a halt. What was left only swirled aimlessly, and she was calmer than she’d assumed she would be. Azia was still speechless, all the same, and it took far too long to shake off what bricks had hit her in the stomach. “I…that’s…where would I even start?”

  Klare shrugged. “That’s on you. You’re the one in charge of him.”

  When she fell silent again, Klare moved to cup one hand beneath her own, cradling crinkling paper in tandem with an alchemist. She pushed upwards with such force that Azia nearly dropped the crumbly slice altogether. The way that it almost crashed against her lips was just barely unpleasant. “Now eat your bread,” Klare teased. “Thank me later.”

  Azia recoiled in the wake of the flaky specks that splattered her mouth. They were delicious, admittedly. She regretted not indulging while it was warm. “First of all, stop. Second, I’m not sure if this is a good idea. I don’t want to strain him, or hurt him, or--”

  “All of my ideas are good ideas,” Klare interrupted. “Plus, you’re the one who’s always saying that he signed up for this.”

  “This is different.”

  “How?”

  “His past is different,” Azia mumbled. “I don’t know what’s in there. Neither does Seleth. It hasn’t been much of a pleasant topic so far.”

  Again was Klare at war with bread, fighting and failing to feed Azia herself. “Cross that bridge when you get to it. You’re gonna have to unravel whatever he’s got in there eventually. It’s unavoidable.”

  Where she’d already splattered covers with crumbs, Klare was beginning to do the same to Azia’s clothes. Resisting that part was getting difficult. “But--”

  “If you’re so worried, just talk to him about it. See what he thinks. He'd probably be down for it, if you’re the one asking him,” she pressed.

  The third time she was besieged by fluff, Azia didn’t object. For once, she accepted the mouthful that was more or less forced upon her. It was still warm enough to do justice to beloved baking, and she’d be sure to thank Kassy later. For how flavor robbed her of words, Klare’s motives might’ve been twofold. She grinned.

  “Quit overthinking everything so damn much. Cailin wanted to talk with you, anyway. All of us, really. Family meeting. You know you’ve got people you can work this stuff out with, right? Or was all of that crap about sharing Seleth just for show?”

  Azia stole a second bite, and it was equally worth the effort. It had taken long enough to find a smile, whether or not it was as warm as fruit-blessed fluff. "Did you just call it a 'family meeting?'"

  “I know what I said.”

  Bread sufficed to stifle a laugh on her behalf. “When?”

  “Now, ideally,” Klare said, rising from the mattress. “Didn’t expect all the sunflower stuff. He’s probably wondering where the hell we are. That’s the whole reason Kassy made the freakin’ bread.”

  Azia winced, leaping to her feet much the same. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you looked miserable,” she answered far too bluntly. “We can bring up the memory thing, if you want. Not sure what Cailin was hoping to talk about, himself. I haven’t asked him much about his own research lately besides all the weather stuff.”

  “I wasn’t miserable,” Azia mumbled. “Just…overwhelmed.”

  “You’re always overwhelmed. Should’ve thought about that before you became an alchemist.”

  Her grin, playful or not, was a solid distraction from sunflowers. Azia finally found the drive to return the same. “And maybe you’d know what hard work felt like if you weren’t a researcher.”

  Klare scoffed as she made for the door. “I’m revoking your bread. Give it back.”

  The laugh that did make it out was a distraction, too. It was welcome, nurtured into something satisfying beneath the words of her accomplice. Azia refused to admit that, even momentarily, she’d hesitated to trust in them at all. Bread had been an innocent offering, light and fluffy. Whatever nostalgic suggestions had followed were borderline crushing, by which she still hadn’t fully processed the concept.

  In lieu of experiments far more violent, Klare’s shared wisdom was at least reasonable. Regardless, as with so much else, whatever strayed from the alchemy Azia knew was a trial by fire. If she burned Seleth in the process, she wasn’t sure that she could forgive herself.

  Even in isolation, the library had always been comfortable enough. She was fine with indulging in the peace of the environment alone, with or without Kassy’s presence. Aging books and plush seating had always made for a gentle research hub, nurturing scribbles Azia couldn’t forge on her own. Sharing wasn’t awful. Given the sheer size, if not solely given the location she studied in at all, she’d be remiss not to expect that much.

  Working in silence amongst alchemists just as quiet was a far cry from surviving a librarian who wouldn’t stop talking. Azia’s one saving grace was the lingering scent of banana bread that still pleasantly wafted throughout their little circle, fluffy and abundant. It was a solid trade-off. She had to wonder exactly how much Cailin had already heard about the fish.

  “--and I thought about putting in real moss, but I don’t know if they’d eat it. And I don’t know if it would make them ill. I think Mars got sick once when I put something in the tank that I wasn’t supposed to. I thought they’d all like plants to hide in and swim around with, but I guess she didn’t. I’m glad fish can’t throw up. She’s the one with the little stripes on the side, do you see her? The blue one?”

  Cailin took her gushing well, bending low as he peered past the glass with a smile. “I do. You care for them yourself?”

  Kassy only beamed brighter. “I love them! I try to make sure they have a really nice place to live, especially since the alchemists worked hard to bring them back. See this? I got them a castle. They do swim in there, and some of them stay inside it all day. I think they like having shelter. Lillith doesn’t like the castle, though. I don’t know why.”

  “Put food in the castle,” Azia grumbled. “Put food in the tank. Maybe it’ll help.”

  “I fed them,” she whined, one pointed finger aimed at clusters of brown between colorful pebbles. Azia sighed. She’d give Kassy exactly one victory, if not for today alone.

  Klare had been engrossed in the same little fish for far less time, her hands instead full of sliced bread once more. That wasn’t a surprise. Even with her mouth partially full, she still had enough leeway to offer the same. She turned to the alchemist, gesturing to what half of the fresh loaf remained. “You want some?”

  “I’m good, really,” Azia dismissed with a wave of her hand.

  When Seleth stared at the bread himself, Azia only side-eyed him. “Did you…want to attempt?”

  He shrugged, flopping against plush cushions with little more than a thump. “No idea what would happen,” he reminded. “Like I said, I don’t really get the urge--or whatever that involves. Not to say it isn’t good, probably. It smells nice.”

  His smile was fainter than she was used to. It was still there, and that should’ve been enough. Even as Azia settled down beside him, she was having trouble summoning her own. She crossed her arms uncomfortably, casting her eyes anywhere except Seleth. She couldn’t even pinpoint why she was uncomfortable in the first place.

  Her gaze landed on a researcher--unoccupied by fish and fixated on a handful of crumbling brown. “I’m gonna eat the rest of it if you don’t want any,” Klare said.

  “I know you will,” Azia shot back. “No doubt. At least save some for Cailin.”

  The meteorologist in question finally tore his eyes from happy triangles, handing Azia the same soft smile as he settled down onto cushions opposite her own. Granted, he did so with far more grace than either of them, given how Klare more or less collapsed just the same as an anomaly. It was a miracle that she didn’t scatter crumbs in the process. “I already had some earlier. It was wonderful, by the way.”

  Cailin had gotten lucky in claiming personal space. Kassy gave almost none of the same to Klare, and it was amazing that she hadn’t outright leapt into the girl’s lap. She spared the bread of a flattened fate, although not by much. “We grow lots of different kinds of fruit in the nursery, so it was easy to get everything I needed. It always is.”

  Of course it was. It still shouldn’t have been. Her tendencies were utterly lost on Cailin, and he had his turn with beaming. “You’re a fantastic baker.”

  Sunshine outdid starlight one thousand times over, in terms of a smile. Given the recent threat to bread so heavily praised, the sweetness of the moment was lost on Klare. “Okay,” the researcher interrupted, her tone just barely short of something sharp. “You wanted to talk, right?”

  Her eyes drifted to Cailin. He nodded, and his own floated to Azia instead. “I’m sorry if I pulled you away from whatever you were working on.”

  Azia shook her head, still hesitant to uncross her arms. “No, not at all. There were things I was hoping to talk to you about, too.”

  “Then this worked out,” he offered, his hands settling into his lap. “Did you want to go first?”

  Azia bit her lip. She had options, and she had a larger audience than she was comfortable with. Really, any conversation that skirted sunflowers felt wrong to approach in front of an anomaly. If her line of thought showed on her face, Klare might’ve caught it. The way the researcher’s eyes darted back and forth between Azia and Seleth was subtle to all but an alchemist.

  Even so, she refused to start there.