We stopped along the way to gather some wildflowers, so when we reached the small graveyard and Gia led us to where Mark was buried, I stood there for a while before placing the loose bouquet on his tombstone.  It was weird, really.  It was almost like I could feel a pull towards the ground below, like my heart knew that he was buried there.  It hurt, but there maybe was something cathartic, too, about finally getting to see where he was laid to rest.

Toph tactfully suggested Gia show him around, leaving me alone for a bit at Mark’s grave.

For several minutes I just stood there, struggling with the words I wanted to say.

“I’ve missed you,” I finally whispered, tears filling my eyes but not spilling over.  “I’ve missed you so much.  I finally got out of here, got a real education, and things have been good that way.  But I’ve always missed you.  My new friends, new family – they can never replace you.”  I took a deep, if wobbly, breath.  “I’m sorry for not telling you about me being a dragon.  I wanted to.  I just – Mother didn’t want me to, and I was trying to honor her wishes.  I guess she was scared you might blurt it out when you were mad at someone about the war and wanted to threaten them with a dragon.”

I could almost imagine Mark looking affronted, then reluctantly admitting that she might have been right.

“I wish I could have gotten my dragon form before that day.  Then we could have escaped town together.  Before – before Marilyn made that impossible.”  I swallowed hard.  “But I hope you’re happy about the curse.  You said the town would never get peace unless someone came in and forced it upon everyone, so, um, that’s kind of what Mother did.  Because she knew peace was what I wanted.  Because – because I’d lost you.  So in a way, the peace that the town has now?  You helped.  You helped make that happen.”

My heart hurt a lot as I said that, though.  Yes, Mark would have been delighted to have actually had a hand in ending the war, but it sucked that it had come about only through his death.

I wished there had been some other way.  Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t turn back time.

“I don’t know who to be,” I added softly.  “I don’t know what I want to do with my life.  I’m free to feel emotions now and not be so closed off, and I don’t have to worry about the feud around me, but…I don’t know what I do want to do.”  I tilted my head back to stare at the clouds.  “I admire your passion.  You knew what you wanted to do and wanted to try, even if it felt impossible.  But I just have nothing.  No interests, no personality.”  I could almost imagine him rolling his eyes at me.  “I don’t know who I am without you and Mother,” I admitted.  “Without having a goal like escaping this town.  I just…I don’t know who I am.  Who I want to be.”

I also knew Mark couldn’t answer that question for me – it had to be something I found out for myself.  That didn’t make it any easier, though.

I spent a few more minutes at his grave, then took a deep breath and got to my feet.  It was time to get back to the point of our trip.

When I went to rejoin Toph and Gia, their attention was focused on the road.

“Bill’s coming,” Gia murmured.  “He must have heard you’re in town and someone probably spotted us out here.”

Oh great.  Following up an emotional moment with emotions of a different variety.

I stepped out in front of them and started walking towards the approaching group.

When we were within a few yards of Bill and his followers, we stopped, all just looking at each other for a moment.

“Well,” he drawled at last.  “Look who’s back.  And on the wrong side of town.  What are you doing here, Winter?”

“Checking up on things,” I told him coolly.  “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s a curse on the town that requires my forgiveness to lift.  I wanted to see if things had changed since I left.”  I raised an eyebrow at him.  “To be quite honest, you’re not giving me the best impression for a reason to forgive you.”

He bristled up.  “How dare you!”  He snapped, his eyes ablaze.  “You stole our magic and now you waltz back into town as if nothing happened?”  He took a couple steps closer to me, his entire being suggesting he was trying to intimidate me.

Bad news for him, I wasn’t intimidated that easily.  I never had been scared of him, exactly, and now I happened to know he didn’t have magic.

“Technically speaking, I didn’t place the curse.  The curse just activated when I was injured.”  I folded my arms across my chest, staring back at him fearlessly.  “And yeah, I’m back in town.  Not as if nothing happened – in fact, I’m hoping things have happened.  And don’t forget – you have to earn my forgiveness.  Trying to come up and threaten me isn’t going to work.”

Apparently Bill didn’t understand English.  “You had better lift that curse.”  He pointed his finger almost in my face.  “You had better, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Or what?”  Gia gave him an incredulous look.  “You don’t have magic right now, and you can’t actually beat her up or anything, and she’s a freaking dragon who still has her magic.  What exactly are you planning to do?  Not to mention, threatening her is kind of the opposite of earning her forgiveness.  Or have you forgotten that the way to get the curse lifted is to earn her forgiveness, not threaten her?”

Bill glared at her this time, but Gia wasn’t about to back down.

“Shut up – ”  He started to say.

“No, you shut up and listen.”  Gia literally hissed at him.  “You and people like you are still living in denial.  You need to wake up.  If you did, you’d realize the town is doing better with this curse.  Yeah, no magic, but you know what?  No deaths, either.  Kids aren’t scared to go to school.  Kids are actually learning.  People aren’t dealing with injuries every other week.  We’re actually starting to try to deal with things like house repairs and figuring out how to better our town instead of getting stuck in a stupid, lethal cycle where everyone fights over nothing.  Our town is starting to get better.  So even if you could threaten Winter into agreeing, don’t you dare.  Not if you pretend to care about this town or hydras.”  She glared at him fiercely.  “Don’t you dare drag us back into the dark ages just to satisfy your ego.”

She started marching forward, then paused to look back at me and Toph.  “Come on, I’ll make you dinner and then we can figure out where you’re staying tonight.”

I was startled, but impressed, and immediately followed her, leaving Bill fuming – but silent – behind us.

Gia didn’t say anything until we got back into the house, and then she took a moment to just stare angrily at the sink.  “I guess I hoped he’d at least try to get forgiveness.  But he can’t even think through what would be smartest for him – let alone what’s best for the town?  He’s no leader.  He and Marilyn both – they’re just interested in themselves and keeping their own power.”

Toph rested his forearms against one of the barstools, looking thoughtful.  “Neither of them have realized that they could keep their position if they pivoted to try to provide help to the town instead – to lead it forward?  Seems like they’re the ones costing them their positions, since if they’d been proper leaders from the moment the curse was cast, they could have helped the town instead of focusing on the negatives.”

“Yeah.”  Gia stared at the sink unseeingly for another moment, then sighed.  “Yeah.  That’s what some of us hoped initially.  We were kind of lost at first, not having our magic, and some of us looked to our leaders for how life should look now.  But they’re all stuck in the past.”  She started rifling through her cabinets, pulling out what she’d need to make supper.  “So we found new leaders.  The store owners, the history teacher – anyone who was willing to actually lead when we needed it the most.  To be honest, I don’t think even if we get magic back that most of us are going to be okay with letting Bill and Marilyn and people like them still being our leaders.  We know what real leadership is now, and they’re not it.”

Toph rolled up his sleeves and went to wash his hands so he could help, and I followed suit.  “The store owners are the biggest leaders in town now?”

Gia nodded.  “Mostly.  They’re our main source of food, you know.  The history teacher, though – he’s human, and he’s tried to be neutral for years.  You could almost see how relieved he was with the curse and he was the most outspoken to begin with about taking advantage of it.  He helped both sides figure out how to just start forward again, and people are willing to listen to him because he’s human.  Yeah, he’s married to a hydra, but they don’t have kids or anything, so even kapras are willing to listen to him a bit more because he’s as close to a fully neutral source as we have in this town.”

Toph looked thoughtful as he accepted the vegetables she gave him to wash and cut up.  “Is there a way to call for a town meeting with both sides of the town?  Maybe you could get the town to vote for a mayor who would lead the entire town.  Start with suggesting the idea – on both sides – before the meeting, and get as many of your people in support of it as possible, but also spread the idea in advance so people can start getting used to the idea.  Maybe people would be willing to elect the history teacher as mayor and he could start making actual changes.  It sound like part of the problem in Terium is the division of leadership, with both sides having their own leaders.  Having a mayor for the entire town might start to help it move towards unity.  Granted,” he admitted with a grimace, “actually electing a major might be difficult.  You’d have the old order people pushing back against it or assuming all the hydras would vote for Bill and the kapras for Marilyn, and then refusing to acknowledge the third party as a leader.  It wouldn’t be an easy thing, but that may be one of the steps you’ll need to take down the road – actually getting someone elected as leader, and making sure it’s not an inherited position.”

Gia let me take over cooking the meat while she considered Toph’s suggestion.  “I like the idea of an elected mayor,” she said at last.  “You’re right, it would be tough to convince people to agree to the idea, and then to actually acknowledge the elected mayor – at least for the old order people – but I think people would like it.  Anyone wanting peace has been somewhat frustrated with the lack of leadership.  Yeah, we have our store owners and the history teacher and us nurses, too, but we don’t have united leadership.  It’d be nice to change that.  And the history teacher would be a good start, if he’s willing, because as a human, he’d be a less problematic option for some people who might not be willing to vote for someone of the other species.”

“He was always the teacher I liked best.”  It wasn’t exactly on topic, but I was feeling a little nostalgic, being back in town and thinking about stuff like my teachers.  “He was the only one who actually bothered to try to teach us.”

“Oh, yes, that’s true.  He’s been pushing for the other teachers to start really teaching, too, and some of them have listened to him, so our schools are actually somewhat better now than they were.  Still not great,” she allowed, “but better.”

“Better is good.  Improvement is good, even if it’s slow.”  I poked the steak strips around in the pan absentmindedly.  “I don’t expect everything to be perfect immediately, but I am glad there’s been some improvement.”

“Some, but we need more, or things will just go back to how they were,” Gia agreed.  “Anyway, I have an idea.  I don’t have an extra bedroom here, but I can take you to meet Jorge, the kapra store owner.  He has extra space in his house since his son left for college, so I think he’d be able to let you stay, plus you were originally viewed as part of the kapra side of town, so people might not be surprised at that.”  She paused.  “Unless you wanted to stay with your family?”

I sighed.  “I’m going to have to see them at some point and get all of that over with, but no, that’s not on the menu for tonight,” I decided grimly.  “They’re going to be furious that I didn’t tell them I was a dragon, didn’t decide to use that to support ‘the cause,’ said anything against Marilyn, and that doesn’t even get into the curse.  No, we’re definitely not staying there.  Too much drama.”

Gia made a face.  “Oh, well…good luck with that.  I mean, when you do have to see them.  Um, anyway, so Jorge it is, then.  And, uh, I figured tomorrow we can try to get a meeting together with everyone siding for peace?  And you can talk to them?”

“Sounds good,” I agreed.  I wasn’t actually thrilled about the idea of meeting with half the town in one way or another, but I did recognize that it needed to be done.

“We’ll also need to talk to Marilyn at some point,” Toph pointed out as he checked cabinets for the dishes so he could start setting the table.  “I mean, judging by how things went with Bill today, I think we have a good idea how that will go, but we still should talk to her.  Just to make sure.”

I stifled a groan.  “That’s going to be super fun.”

I’d never enjoyed hanging out with Marilyn, and now I was going to have to listen to her rant at me some more.  Sure, I agreed with Toph that I did need to talk to her, but I couldn’t entirely forget that she’d been the one who’d killed Mark – and she’d tried to kill me, triggering the curse.  Let’s not forget that, either.

Marilyn was definitely not on my list of people I wanted to ever have to talk to.  That conversation was not going to be fun, but at least I could bring Toph with me to help mediate if we needed it.  And if I had to guess, I’d say we would.

Yay for old enemies.