Dawn could hear people whispering about her. Some people were rudely talking about her looking “mixed,” and she wondered if it was for that reason that they were speaking loud enough for to hear, like there was no way she would be able to understand. It was true that her parents were both of different ethnicities—her mother being a Native Emmerikan and father Midlander—but it was so weird when people made such a big deal about it.

Some of those rude people were concerned that she was a little girl—an eleven-year-old, she wanted to tell them—riding the train by herself, and that was at least nice of them. She had been excited about traveling through Aeftenn alone. Her maternal grandparents were not fond of traveling, and she did it a lot, thanks to her aunts and uncles, most of whom were not her blood relatives but close friends of her parents, who invited her to visit them throughout the year. Being by herself spared her from their constant grumblings.

This time she was going to visit her uncle Lucas. He had moved to Midland, a country within the continent of Aeftenn, recently. She had been disappointed in that because she had already explored much of the country with her paternal grandparents, who were much more excited about traveling, but then she realized that she could be his tour guide—and his translator—this time instead of being lead around the cities. It was fun to show off to adults that she knew more than they did every once in a while.

An announcer came over the intercom to announce their location, interrupting her thoughts, and she grabbed her plain black carry-on luggage from the seat beside hers. It was weird dragging it behind her when she was used to carrying a bag on her back, but it had been a gift from her family. Plus, it was bigger than her backpack, and she needed the extra room because she was bringing some presents for her grandparents and her uncle Lucas.

There was a tight group of people at the entrance of the train. They were talking to each other, likely thinking it was okay to stand there because it was not too busy in that time of day.

“Entschuldigen Sie mir bitte!” Dawn called to them.

A few people looked at her, frowning, and then they stepped to the side to allow her through.

“Danke schön!” she called as she ran past them.

It was an underground station with fluorescent lighting illuminating her path. She wove her way through the people until she found the staircase where was supposed to meet with Lucas, but a quick sweep of the area told her that he was not there. He might have been waiting for her outside of the station, but that was not where he had told her to meet him.

A man ran down the steps. He wore a black jacket over a blue dress shirt, and his dirty blond hair had been allowed to grow past his ears. His eyes were wide with panic as he looked around the room.

Dawn giggled, and she ran toward him. Her luggage made quite the racket as she dragged it behind her.

“Uncle Lucas!” she called to him.

Lucas jumped at the sound of his name, and he lowered his gaze. When he noticed her, his shoulders sagged with relief. He held out his arms for her. Dawn abandoned her luggage as she launched herself into his arms, head resting on his sternum just above his belly.

“Oh, there you are,” Lucas said in his Cognitian accent, which he mistakenly insisted sounded more Emmerikan than it used to. “I was afraid I had missed you.”

“No, you got here right on time, as usual!”

Dawn kissed Lucas on the cheek, and she pushed herself out of his arms. She looked at his hair, and she tugged on a stand behind his ear.

“You let your hair grow out!"

“Yeah, I haven’t had time to get it cut," Lucas said, scowling as he brushed back the hairs she had grabbed.

“It looks funny.”

“You looked funnier dragging that bag around. It’s almost as big as you are.”

“It is not.”

“Is so.”

“Is not.”

“I’ll buy you sweets if you agree with me.”

“And I won’t give you the presents I brought you unless you agree with me.”

Lucas raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Oh, you brought me presents?”

“Yeah, that’s why I had to bring a bigger bag.”

“I see.”

“So, will you agree, then?”

“What if I offered you lots of sweets and a trip to that one ice cream place—the one your Oma said was your favorite?”

Dawn crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at him.

“Which one is my favorite?”

“Das Eishaus?”

Dawn continued to look at him through narrowed eyes. She noticed the smirk that he had was just barely keeping suppressed as he waited for her to respond.

“I’m only going to agree,” Dawn said, “because I know you’re too stubborn to let this go.”

Dawn giggled, and Lucas chuckled. He brushed her long black hair behind her ears, and he kissed the top of her head.

“Let’s get going, shall we?” he said, holding out his arm for her to take. “My apartment isn’t too far from here.”

“Can we get something to eat first? I’m really hungry.”

Lucas agreed. Dawn looped her arm through his, and she reached for her bag, which Lucas grabbed first. He slapped down the extendable handle, and he grabbed the handle that allowed him to carry it at his side like a briefcase—a very large briefcase.

They ascended the steps out of the underground station and into the busy streets of Mönche. It was not the most crowded city she had been to, even in Midland, and it was easy to walk along the streets without bumping into people. That meant she could admire the city.

It had been a couple of years since the last time she had seen it. Buildings of many eras lined the streets: old stone and wood structures next to concrete and metal. All of Emmeric was so different, so new in comparison that it was fascinating to see.

The staring was strange. Lucas Driscoll was a Champion of the Sun God, the Radiant Eagle or the Morning Star, and everyone knew who was. Whenever people recognized him, they would always point and stare at him with their mouths agape in shock. It was rude, but she was used to it. People always stared at the Champions, and she had thirteen of them she called her aunts her and uncles. She had seen it happen a hundred times.

Lucas, however, stiffened, when he realized people had recognized him. Most of the Champions had learned how to deal with the rude stares, but Lucas had never liked the attention. Even in interviews she had found online, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but in front of a camera.

It was funny to Dawn because it was the only thing that seemed to scare the man. As a Champion, he had faced the Gods, beings far more powerful than any human being normally got to fight against, and public attention frightened him.

So, she giggled, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle the noise, and Lucas looked at her, quirking an eyebrow at her.

“Are you laughing at me, Tiny?” he asked, and it was a relief to see the corner of mouth upturn in a lopsided smirk.

“I shouldn’t laugh at you being uncomfortable, I know. I’m sorry, Uncle.”

Lucas’s shoulders lowered just a little, but he remained tense.

“I feel silly for being uncomfortable.”

As they walked to their destination, a few people were brave enough to approach him and ask him to sign something random on their person. They asked if Dawn was his daughter, but he always reflected the question, asking them to respect her family’s privacy.

Both of Dawn’s parents were Champions as well, but they had passed: her father while he had been fighting alongside Lucas and her mother because she had been sad. The governments and media outlets were able to get along well enough to keep her face off the TV and off official websites. Anyone caught taking pictures of her would be fined, and those who were not caught would post her pictures on the Internet, rendering everyone’s attempts to keep her a secret from the world useless.

Dawn has seen some of the theories online about her identity, and it was always funny when they got it wrong, but most people guessed that her mother was Angela White, the Champion of the Gleeful Fish. She looked like her more than she did her father, so it was funny that everyone tried to match some of her features to the wrong people.

The stares became worse somehow when they entered a tavern that served traditional Midlander food, but while the staff became nervous and more polite than Dawn had ever seen them act, no one approached them to ask him questions or for autographs.

With help from Dawn, who was much more fluent with the Milander language than Lucas, they ordered food, declining offers of drinks but getting some for free, anyway—getting the entire meal for free, actually, because business owners were always eager to leave Champions with a good impression. Dawn tried to carry the takeout bag for him, but he had insisted on carrying them as well.

Then, they went to Lucas’s apartment. A couple more people approached Lucas along the way.

One of them was a woman with bright red hair and large sunglasses obscuring a good portion of her face. She was a tourist like them, and she spoke with a different Aeftennian accent than what she had expected to hear in Midland. When she turned to Dawn, the little girl had been expecting her to ask who she was to him, but then the woman had reached out a hand, like she was going to pinch her cheek.

Dawn gasped and recoiled. She heard something clatter against the ground, and then she saw Lucas grab the woman’s arm and shove her away. The woman let out a gasp of her own.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t touch her,” Lucas said, giving the woman a terrifying glare.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Lucas shoved Dawn’s luggage into her arms, and Dawn looked up at him. He continued to glare at the woman as she scurried away.

“Stay close to me, Dawn,” he said, putting an arm around her slight shoulders.

It had been an innocent gesture on the woman’s part, Dawn realized. She had older relatives who had done that to her before, but that was the first time a stranger had done that to her.

That was also the first time she had seen her uncle get angry.

Lucas lived in a tall apartment building. His shoulders finally sagged with relief as soon as they entered the elevator. He pressed a button to one of the top floors, where the nicest apartments would be.

“Sorry about that, Dawn,” Lucas said. “That woman shouldn’t have tried to touch you.”

“I don’t think she meant anything by it,” Dawn admitted.

Lucas sighed, and he adjusted his hat in a nervous fidget.

“No, probably not, but she still should have known better. After we eat dinner, I’ll make phone calls to have guards sent here so they can stop that from happening again.”

Dawn frowned at the bag in her arms at that. All of the other Champions always had guards with them when they went into the public, but Lucas had been stubborn, preferring to walk alone even when he had Dawn. There must have been more to it than just one woman scaring him, but she knew better than to ask about it. He was also stubborn enough not to say anything about those sorts of things.

Dawn remembered how something had fallen to the ground when that had happened, and she looked at Lucas’s hands. He held the takeout bag, and she was relieved that they still had food to eat for dinner. After a long, awkward silence, the elevator dinged to announce the arrival to Lucas’s floor.

Lucas may have been uncomfortable with the attention he got in public places, but he certainly indulged in the finer things in life. The apartment was huge, far larger than a single man needed, and everything inside was expensive, top-of-the-line kind of stuff.

It was an open apartment with a rather large “kitchenette” separated by metal columns, a wide bar, and counters from the living area and the dining area. He had four bedrooms, one of which he used as an office, and two bathrooms, one of which had an enormous bathtub that Dawn was definitely going to use, whether Lucas liked it or not.

They decided to eat dinner before Dawn gave her uncle the gifts her family had made him, and they ate in much better spirits than they had while walking to the apartment.

Once dinner was done and the trash separated for recycling, Lucas went into his office, and she only left his side to grab Lucas’s gifts from her carry-on luggage. There were fragile things in it, but she was relieved to find that none of it had a hairline fracture or worse in it.

The sun was in just the right position to fill the room with its natural glow, making Lucas a mere dark figure as he sat behind his desk. His office was full of cabinets and shelves that held various souvenirs that people had given to him for being a Champion, a hero to the world.

Dawn went to the other side of the desk so she could see her uncle better, and she caught him frowning at his cell phone. He set the phone aside, and he gave her a warm smile as he leaned back in his chair.

“What you got for me, mate?” Lucas said, exaggerating his accent.

Dawn giggled as she placed the wooden box in front of him. It had a detailed falcon engraved in the top of it.

“First, this box is from my grandpa,” Dawn explained. “I don’t know why he keeps making you these, honestly.”

“I appreciate the gesture,” Lucas said. “He doesn’t have to make anything at all, but this time, I have to say he’s outdone himself.”

“Be sure to tell him that, or he’ll be very cross with you.”

Lucas chuckled.

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

Dawn popped open the metal clasp on the box, and she opened it to show Lucas the rest of his presents. It was full of things made out of white and purple beads. The top one showed triangular people all holding hands, and in the center of the people, there was a Falcon. She lifted it out of the box, revealing that it was a long strip that was only a couple inches in width. Four white strings dangled off both ends of it.

“These are wampum belts,” Dawn explained. “Native people used to make these and use them as a kind of currency. We don’t need them for that anymore, but my cousins recently got into making them. They decided they wanted to make one representing each God, and they wanted me to give them to you.”

“Oh, that’s very nice of them.”

Lucas was gentle with them as he laid each of the belts out on his desk. Dawn told him which of her cousins made which belt, and he marveled at how it must have been so difficult to make the Gods with such simple shapes.

The phone on Lucas’s desk vibrated, and Dawn jumped at the sudden noise. Even though she knew she should not have, she took a peek at the name on the screen, but it was not someone she recognized.

“Ah, I need to take this, Dawn,” Lucas said, grabbing his phone and standing from his desk. “You can take a look around here. There’s some different stuff here than what you saw last time.”