your sister.
“I’ve been better,” he said. “I feel kind of periphery in this whole deal, you know? Like in every situation we run into, I feel like I’m not the one who plays the biggest role. That’s just—”
“Cyrus,” Celeste said, interrupting. Cyrus bit his lip. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have stopped you. Continue.”
It’s hard to be jealous when she’s like that.
“It’s just hard, because my whole life, most of the attention has been on me. People love paying attention to me, either because of my joking nature or because of who I was and who I would become someday. And now it’s like… Typhos didn’t just destroy most of this world and Anatolus. It’s like he also killed my identity.”
Celeste didn’t say anything, but Cyrus knew she was deep in thought, a sight that gave him the patience to wait for her to speak.
“First of all, Cyrus, you aren’t periphery in any of this. You’re the one who rescued Crystil and I that one night on Anatolus. You’re the one who led the charge to rescue me from prison. Maybe you don’t have the magic I do, but who cares? I can’t win this battle alone.”
“I guess you’re right,” Cyrus said, the last point the most critical to him. “And I guess it’s all ego, really. I don’t like admitting that, even though I have a big ego. I know logically the most important thing to do is crush Typhos and bring peace back to both worlds, but…”
“But you want to feel like you had the biggest part.”
She always gets right to the point.
“Cyrus, if we win, the story is not going to be ‘Celeste saves the world, Cyrus helps.’ It’s going to be ‘the Orthrans save the world.’ No, you’re not going to play the biggest part. But you are not going to play the smallest part, either. You’re going to play an equal part.”
At that moment, the two of them saw Crystil walking toward one of the shells of a ship, still in the process of being built. She grabbed some tools and joined two humans and a Kastori in building the ship.
“Besides, you may yet have a bigger part with someone else in our group.”
“I—”
But Cyrus blushed, and Celeste laughed, bringing some much-needed levity to the situation. May yet. I could already have, but probably for the best we didn’t. Crystil saw them both and waved, and the two waved back, Cyrus meekly and Celeste eagerly. Celeste saw her brother’s weak wave and laughed again.
“We can talk more as we go, but are you good? And tell me honestly.”
Cyrus gave a slight smirk.
“I’ll get there. I believe I can get there.”
Then he chuckled.
“It’s too bad I’ll probably freeze to death on Vostoka. But on the flip side, maybe if I freeze to death, I can finally catch up on the sleep I haven’t gotten in the last couple of weeks.”
“It’s too bad we don’t have time to put you in two-year hibernation again,” Celeste said with a wry smile, which brought a similar response from Cyrus. “I wish I could say that you could get some sleep. But…”
“I know,” Cyrus said. Typhos won’t let us sleep. We have to bring the battle to him by making Celeste more powerful before it is too late.
“They’re getting us the thickest clothing possible,” she said. “Clothing specifically designed for cold weather, high-wind environments. They haven’t been used in some time, but it’s there.”
“Good,” Cyrus said. “The Winter Hunting simulation will finally pay off. And I promise not to shoot at the largest gigantes before we’re ready.”
Both of them laughed at the memory, most especially Cyrus since he no longer had the pain that accompanied the end of that simulation.
“Far as the planet goes, do we have any intel on the planet at all?” he asked.
Celeste shook her head.
“I really don’t know anything,” she said. “I saw what Typhos showed me. He showed me a planet that is all snow. It has one distant sun, close enough to make the temperatures tolerable during the day,
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