Daily Dose Of Frimmel

Come winter, elves are rather useless.

Himmel has known this for years, and there is probably a perfectly scientific explanations about how much body heat they lose through their ears alone, but it is only when Himmel and Frieren are married and accustomed to sharing a bed that he realizes /why/ she is so helpless in the cold.

It is, most likely, because every part of her practically turns to ice.

When he comes home late from a job, he'll find Frieren a tiny lump under the covers, curled up tightly in the middle of the bed with her whole body burrowed beneath the quilt to conserve heat. He lifts the covers and she whimpers. He touches her arm and then her calf and winces because it really is like sticking his hand in a dish of ice water. And when he crawls gingerly into the bed beside her, she attaches herself to him immediately and remains that way until morning.

Then he stops finding it amusing and begins to think of his wife's wintertime predicament as a most serious matter indeed.

Their bed begins to collect new blankets, mostly courtesy of their neighbors. Once, he moves their traveling bedrolls in front of the fireplace and suggests a change of scenery. And yet other times he simply lies there in a valiant effort to let her absorb every degree of warmth in his body even though he can feel the very life draining from him as her icy chill seeps through his skin. He rubs her icy feet and blows warm air on her stiff fingers. He takes to kissing her nose just to leave a little warmth there.

He tells himself it's a noble sacrifice: she simply must be made warm.

Frieren is babysitting.

This is not the kind of thing that logically ought to happen. Frieren is not the kind of person who logically ought to be trusted with anybody’s children. But Heiter is grading papers, and Eisen offered Stark to socialize his ward, so now, after a meeting with her advisor, Frieren must babysit, and Himmel, who has never had anything better to do in his life, tags along.

Frieren’s version of babysitting, though, unsurprisingly consists mostly of making it as far as a park with a playground and then turning Fern and Stark loose.

Then she sits on the nearest bench and pulls out her laptop and Himmel can’t help but ask, “really?”

“I have work to do.”

“You’re not going to play with them?”

“My job is to supervise, not participate.”

Himmel gently flicks her ear, which twitches in response. “You’re missing out, you know.”

“Hardly.”

“You are.”

He gives up, though. It’s only when five minutes pass and she’s still buried in her work that Himmel realizes that she doesn’t intend to stop.

He pokes her cheek to get her attention, then gently closes the lid of her laptop, stashes it in its plain black sleeve. Then, while she looks at him as if she cannot believe this betrayal, he slips the whole thing into her backpack, zips it, and stands, offering his hand.

“Really,” he tells her. “You’re missing out.”

They find a safe place to set her backpack - by the jungle gym, where Stark and Fern are trying to climb the wrong way up the slide and where they will be able to see it from any vantage point on the playground - and then he directs her to the seesaw.

“It won’t work,” she tells him. “The weight is too imbalanced.”

But this only means he can send Frieren close to flying each time his side of the seesaw comes down, and her indignant protests soon turn to dogged efforts to do the same that more often than not only result in her slamming into the ground hard enough to jam and ankle. Still, Himmel does not make it nearly as high up, and this disappoints her.

She is not particularly gifted on the monkey bars, either. Spending recess reading a book in the corner of the yard every day of elementary school probably did it. But Himmel, who has yet to find an athletic activity he doesn’t take to famously, finds them delightful. Frieren watches him walk himself across, back and forth, probably five or six times before she decides she’s had enough and goes to fetch her backpack.

Stupid fun-loving boyfriend, distracting her from her work. Some people don’t have the time or the inclination to-

“One more,” Himmel calls after her as she goes for her backpack. “Just one, I promise!”

-play.

As if they are children, not babysitters and phD candidates old enough to have some of their own. As if there is nothing better in all the world to do on an open afternoon than mess about with playground equipment.

Frieren narrows her eyes. “Which?”

And it’s only because he gestures to the carousel that she agrees.

She remembers being little, reading her book peacefully in the grass at a park much like this one until Flamme forced her to stand up and find something to do for fear she’d “never get socialized.” She had chosen, naturally, to sit down cross-legged in the middle of the carousel with her book and wait for the other children to start spinning it. This plan worked so marvelously that Flamme gave up on the idea that taking her reclusive adopted daughter to the park would make her any more social and signed her up for swim lessons instead.

Those self-same swimming lessons where she had met the little boy with fat cheeks and blue eyes and boundless energy who had been just too late to catch her carousel phase but was nevertheless waving her over now.

She doesn’t sit in the middle this time, though. She has no book to read, and anyway, she’s too old now for that not to make her sick. So she braces herself against the metal bars and prepares, because if anybody is going to get the carousel going fast enough to make you vomit, it’s Himmel.

And he does. But the wind catches Frieren’s pigtails, and he takes a flying leap onto the platform with a whoop of joy that would not befit a man of his age unless it were Himmel, and-

She leans back, feet planted wide, pulled from the center by the force of the turning table, and tips her head back, and she thinks - how nice this is, this playing. Even if it is a waste of time.

“Everyone needs a little carousel in their life!” Himmel crows over the scratchy din of the turning carousel. “Don’tcha think?”

But Frieren doesn’t answer, barely hears him. They are turning, turning, slowing, and when they finally start to slow enough that she can make out the real shapes of things around her, she finds herself hopping down from the table and gripping the bar and then breaking into a dizzy, stumbling run.

She does not want it to end. She doesn’t understand why, but she cannot stand the thought that the table will stop spinning and everything will come to an end.

And after, when they are lying face-up in the center, inside hands joined, outside hands resting on their aching stomachs, Himmel laughs and turns to kiss her cheek and says, “I told you, darling.”

She swats his hand away, but after a moment she thinks better of it and rolls over to lay her cheek against his chest.

This is a known quantity, a dance to which they both know the steps. He drapes his arm around her shoulder and kisses her head. She squirms closer.

“I’m thinking of this one for the bathroom, see? What do you think?”

Frieren takes the swatch from Himmel and examines it intently. It is a shade of cream that almost looks pinkish, the kind of color she would never have imagined would need to exist, but she doesn’t hate it.

However, how the color would look on the walls of their new guest bathroom is not the most pressing question it raises.

“Why,” Frieren asks, frowning, “does it say ‘Blushes of First Love’?”

“Oh, that’s just the name of the color.”

“Why ‘Blushes of First Love’?”

“I dunno, I guess it looks kinda blushy?”

“It doesn’t.”

“…in a sense.”

“It definitely doesn’t.”

“The name’s not important, Frieren, what do you think of the color?”

She frowns. “I’m not putting something called ‘Blushes of First Love’ on my walls.”

“Frieren, c’mon.”

“It’s florid and undignified.” She likes both of those words very much. “And it doesn’t look like blush.”

“That’s not-“

“Do you have a second choice?”

Himmel sighs and produces a swatch painted a very pale shade of orange from his bag. Frieren likes it immediately and knows from the relief on his fade that Himmel can tell.

“It’s not exactly typical for a bathroom, but I thought it might be all right,” he says. “Even if it’s not as good as Blushes of First Love.”

Orange bathroom. She likes the thought of that.

Then she looks down at the right corner of the swatch and reads the little white caption and scrunches up her face.

“‘Passionate Dusk’? Who writes these things?”

“Oh, come on, I can see it on your face that you love that one!”

“‘Passionate Dusk’! It’s ridiculous!”

“Why are you so bent out of shape about the names?”

“They’re stupid!”

“In a few years, you won’t even remember what the color was called!”

“And until then, every time I take a shower, I have to look at the wall and know that it’s called ‘Passionate Dusk’!”

“Why do you never have this much energy when I try to get you up in the morning?”

She blinks at him as if this is the most asinine question she has ever heard in her life. Himmel runs a hand through his hair and sighs with immense and longsuffering pathos.

“I kinda like it,” he mutters under his breath. “‘Passionate Dusk.’”

“…why?”

“I dunno. It’s evocative. ‘Passionate Dusk.’”

“Would you please stop saying ‘Passionate Dusk’?”

“Passionate Dusk,” he says. Then he leans in to whisper it in her ear: “Passionate Dusk.”

Goosebumps rise on Frieren’s arms. She hates when Himmel does that - whispers right in her ear like that. Makes her feel shivery in ways she doesn’t particularly appreciate, for they mean having been gotten the better of.

Himmel was always so sweet before she married him. He still is, but now that he knows she’s not going anywhere he’s much less shy when it comes to making her angry, and this is a development Frieren dislikes very much.

He’s not supposed to make her feel such troubling things.

That’s not what husbands are for.

But then, she was the one who said she didn’t care what colors they used to paint their new house.

“I hate it even more now,” she flatly informs him.

“So mean, Frieren, you’re supposed to think that’s irresistible.”

“Hardly.”

He makes a crabby noise and then kisses the side of her neck before he pulls back to get something else out of his bag. More swatches, it seems. He spreads them out on the table in front of them.

“Or we could go a totally different direction,” he says, all business once more. He’s always been at his best when he had something to apply himself to. “I know it’s overdone, but you can’t rule out the beach bath, can you?”

“Uh.”

“I mean; it’s just so charming,” he goes on, sounding for all the world (he often does) like a woman in her fifties, “don’t you think it’s charming?”

“I don’t care.”

“Look at this one.” He pulls a bright, clear shade of blue from the stack and holds it out to Frieren. “Great, right?”

“Looks like your hair.”

“Oh, shush.”

“‘Chlorine Fragrance,’” she reads from the caption. “Hm.”

“That one’s a little dumb, but-“

“It’s not nearly as dumb as ‘Passionate Dusk.’”

“Infinitely dumber.”

“Is not.”

“Well, unlike some people, I know when to let something go.” He chuckles, kisses her neck again, but this time he squeezes her waist, too, just to watch her squirm. He loves watching her squirm. “And I’m perfectly fine with looking at Chlorine Fragrance for a while.”

“Hmph.”

“Or at least until I forget how stupid it is.”

“Still not as stupid as-“

“Or,” Himmel cuts her off, holding out a peachy color, “we could go full coastal grandma.”

“Ew.”

“It’s who I am, darling, don’t try to fight it.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I’m not encouraging this.”

“But it’s such a nice color!”

“‘Dewy Lips,’” she reads. “Did they hire a romance novelist to write these?”

“I mean, maybe? An out-of-work one?”

“Hmph. Figures.”

“Hm?”

“Because I doubt their books would sell if this is the kind of stuff they find sexy.”

“They’re paint colors, Frieren, they don’t need to be sexy.”

“No, but why so they all have names like-“

“Here,” Himmel says, with an edge of desperation, handing her a tannish cream. “This one’s basic enough, right?”

“‘Cream or Off-White?’?” She reads. “Why would the color ask me what color it is?”

“It’s an expression!”

“Still!”

“You are exhausting, my love, exhausting.”

“What? I just want them to give the colors normal-sounding names.”

“Mmhm. Like what?”

“Yellow. Red. Light blue.”

“That’s not descriptive enough, Frieren, they sell hundreds of colors.”

“Or like this one,” she says, reaching for a rusty-red swatch. “‘Watering Can.’ Descriptive, but concise. To the point. Perfect.”

“…seriously?”

“I vote Watering Can.”

“You can’t just pick based on the name!”

Mana concealment is good for hide-and-seek.

Of course, Frieren is still banned from playing, because a thirteen-hundred year head-start in learning to detect even the smallest traces of mana is just too unfair to overlook, but she frequently cites the game as a reason Hagel ought to be diligent about practicing. He might not be in any real danger of being found out by nefarious parties if he can't, the way that Frieren was when she was young, so she gets significant mileage out of the argument that a baby mage who can conceal his mana is likelier to be the last one found.

It doesn't matter that none of his playmates even know what mana is.

Or that his father is a perfectly ordinary, non-magical swordsman.

Hagel is only four years old, after all. He doesn't realize yet that he's being tricked, and therefore expends much more effort trying to suppress his mana output than he does finding clever places to hide. He is, Frieren notes with pride, making considerable progress for such a young child.

This is the state in which Himmel finds his son when he opens a high cabinet above the stove.

Himmel is not sure, at first, how he got himself all the way up there, but he's not only managed the climb, but to cram himself into a cabinet his full height above the stove in fetal position. He's hugging his knees to his chest to make himself fit and concentrating intently, which has the effect of making it appear that he's shaking with the effort. Maybe he actually is.

This kind of reckless disregard for both safety and sensibility is exactly the kind of thing Himmel was terrified his child would inherit from his mother, who at very least has the skill and experience to extricate herself from such situations, and it often appears that, unfortunately, she did indeed pass it down to him.

Himmel can't help but ask, "how were you planning to get down from there, bud?"

Hagel makes a very sour face at being caught and replies, "mama."

Himmel sets his hands on his hips. "Is that how you got in there?"

"Mm-mm."

"Does she know you're in there?"

"I donno."

"Then how was she gonna help you get down?"

"Spells."

Himmel adores his family. This does not preclude him from admitting that their antics shave precious years off his lifespan nearly every single day.

"Can I give you some advice, Hagel?"

"Mm?"

"Don't count on that."

It takes some wrangling to extricate Hagel from the cabinet. Had Frieren been summoned, there would probably be splintered, singe-marked pieces of their cabinets littering the kitchen floor. Hagel doesn't seem to see the issue with any of this, though, going on and on about how disappointed he is that concealing his mana ("I practiced!") doesn't make him unfindable, even when he removes himself as far as the high kitchen cabinets.

She is on her third Chalupa.

Himmel has paid for all three.

This is the most wonderful development he could have imagined.

See, Himmel doesn't see much of a point in dating apps for finding love or anything. Most people who sign up for dating apps aren't looking for love the way he would want it, so it doesn't bother him much that this girl is hopelessly awkward, was forced to sign up by her twelve-year-old sister and their adoptive mother, and is more concerned with where she is going to get more Chalupas than she is with getting to know her date. It's no loss.

Because in a world where the dating app is completely useless for its intended purpose, the best use it could possibly be put to, in Himmel's eyes, is for finding interesting people.

Interesting however. Smart-interesting. Good-at-conversation interesting. Has-a-weird-job interesting. Things like that. People who are fun to meet even if he never sees them again (and, usually, once they realize he has no interest in taking them home unless it is to make nachos and watch B-movies with a near-stranger, he does not).

And Frieren is interesting for three reasons:

For her reticence, obviously.

For suggesting Taco Bell as the location of a first date, specifying explicitly that she was only going to get her family to stop asking and that she might as well get Taco Bell out of it.

And for being so passionately in love with something as objectively awful as a Taco Bell Chalupa.

A girl who could love a Chalupa, he thinks, could love anything, and he's somewhat ridiculously enamored with the fact that she can.

"It's questionable whether or not it can even be called food," she says coolly between bites, after she notices him watching her. (His own Crunchwrap Supreme, it must be said, is long gone.) "But I find it intriguing."

"Intriguing enough to eat three of them?"

Her eyes narrow. "I have a naturally high metabolism."

"No, I mean, you must really like them. Is all I meant."

"Oh." She pauses to consider. "I suppose."

She supposes?

He is beginning, charmed as he is, to get a picture of why her family was so desperate for her to land a date.

Quite frankly, he doesn't know how she hasn't already.

Idiots on dating apps love a girl with quirks.

(He is one such idiot.)

"I'm not gonna lie, Frieren," he says, "I kinda can't do Chalupas."

"Entirely understandable." She daintily licks some meat juice (is it even meat?) off her pinkie finger. "Like I said, whether they should be called food is highly questionable."

"But, uh…all the more power to ya…?"

"I consider it my duty to use my naturally high metabolism to the fullest before menopause."

He almost chokes on a sip of his Baja Blast.

"Menopause? Aren't you twenty-two?"

"And slowly creeping towards my middle age."

What a strange, strange girl this Frieren is.

Theirs is a companionship of both accident and necessity, and if asked, Himmel couldn’t recall how it began. But he’s grateful that it did.

He’s found, at different points, many people here who knew Frieren when they were alive, but none she had ever mentioned, and therefore none, he concludes, who really mattered to her. He found her mother, once. But the Frieren who her mother knew is not the one Himmel journeyed with, and for that, he needs somebody else.

Himmel can’t say how long he’s been in this enchanted, miserable place when Flamme finds him, but it feels like much too long.

He knows her by her earrings. Kind of Aureole to give her a copy of the ones she passed down when she died.

“Let me guess,” is the first thing she says to him when he recognizes them, and her hair, and her falsely carefree air. “Would-be lover?”

It takes Himmel a moment to be willing to admit it.

“Something like that,” he says.

They only talk about Frieren at first, filling in the gaps in each other’s knowledge. It is a functional arrangement: Flamme had always hoped Frieren would take a journey like theirs and is eager to know how they managed it, never saw her make friends or get herself stuck in a mimic, and Himmel knows only crumbs about her past. They laugh often and try to pretend that it isn’t lonely to talk from a so-called paradise about somebody they miss desperately in the world of the living; he is glad for the company.

But it grows from that.

Flamme is the sort of person he admires most, lively and fun-loving but full of conviction. She looks at Himmel, after not too long, like a long-lost son.

And there is no point in it when they’re stuck here, waiting for all eternity for the people they love to expire and join them, but both of them have been thinking it for some time when she says, “if I’d been around when she met you, I’d have told her what was up.”

He smiles. “Would you?”

Flamme ruffles his hair.

“She just needed a push,” she tells him. “If I were around, and someone like you came calling…well. I’d have kicked her from the nest in a heartbeat.”

“Uh…”

“I’m serious. I would’ve.”

Most people do not realize who Frieren is, and she's never minded that. Less publicity means less bother, and that is always good.

But the ones who do only want to talk about Himmel.

"I remember when he came to town," says a shriveled old woman of eighty-five, who sighs rapturously as a schoolgirl. "I was eight, and I'd never seen anyone half so handsome."

Many people say things like this. Frieren only nods.

"You were a lucky woman, Miss Frieren, traveling with a companion like that."

Himmel's never met a human as apathetic as this one.

Whether they'd like to or not, whether they ever actively consider it or not, most of them know how short their lives are. They fall into despair over wasted time or do as they please because it'll all be over soon anyways. It takes a certain vigor to compress the emotions and experiences of centuries into a single one, and perhaps less of it to despair over the death of time they have to do it in, but still, emotional energy. So it's not common, Himmel has learned, to meet a human who cares as little about the passing of time as most elves he knows.

This tiny mage might as well never have learned that her life will be over in a few short decades.

She crams her head with knowledge, sure, but nothing else seems to get into it. She travels with companions, but her approach to doing so could hardly be classified as cherishing the time they have. And when Himmel looks at her, he sees a challenge.

His life will span millennia if he's lucky, but the part of it that contains a beautiful little mage with nothing but spells in her head will be ruthlessly brief.

She does not comprehend this.

He will comprehend it for her.

"Live a little," he always tells her, playing it off with levity, as he drags her along for another diversion, or, "life's too short," words that would strike him as far too cruel for an ordinary human, but she has to wake up and get it - that this life of hers won't last, that he would hate to see her while it away and end up with nothing to show for it. There's a reason most of her kind are so full of energy and direction. It only seems right to help her see that the same sense of urgency which compels everyone else should be hers, too.

"I'm tired," comes her usual excuse.

Himmel has lived dozens of her lifetimes now. He's helped generation upon generation of her people in their everyday tasks, made a name for himself that's passed down in families for years to come, adventured with more parties than he can keep count of and loved and lost each and every one - and yet he's never met somebody so seemingly determined to walk aimlessly until she reaches the end of her life and then collapse unceremoniously into a heap at the finish line.

"Isn't it fun, though?" he always asks her. "Wouldn't you like a little variety?"

"No," comes her inevitable answer. "I want to sleep."

Frieren is not the first human Himmel has thought he loved. No, far from that. But she is probably the first who made him feel such frenetic urgency to make her see what a thousand years have taught him in only ten.

What most people don't expect before they work with Frieren is that she's actually good at her job.

Himmel thinks this is absurd, because anyone who watched a single minute of any role in her solid repertoire of television appearances would know that. Even someone who half-watched one of them while scrolling through social media notifications would have picked up on it. But most people are just too dense.

Most people, as far as he learns after he's cast alongside her in her first feature film, think that Frieren is coasting along on the coattails of her Three-Time-Academy-Award-For-Best-Actress-In-A-Supporting-Role mother, who adopted her when she was two, because Hollywood hates a vacuum and loves a nepo baby, but also because no one who's ever spoken to her would think she could act.

When she's not in character, after all, she seems incapable of looking like she doesn't hate you.

He learned this when she accompanied her mother to a red carpet as a teenager (Flamme, famously, never brings a date), right as she was starting to land bit parts here and there, and, when greeted, looked at him like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

Basically:

Frieren has a famous mother.

Frieren appears to hate absolutely everyone else on earth, and she can't hide it for love or money.

Nobody thinks there's any way she could inhabit a role the way this indie drama about brooding high school students demands.

Then, on the first day of taping, she shows up on set chewing gum.

She's supposed to be a girl named Lasch, a slacker whose disciplinary record is impressively riddled with offenses in spite of her apparent lack of interest in everything around her. Not too bad for a girl who always seems so disengaged, but Lasch has a sharp, ironic with that nobody sees in Frieren, and some recognizable but random quirks: only wearing long sleeves on even the hottest days, chewing gum and blowing huge bubbles that pop in people's faces when she's irritated. She's got a mouth on her, speaks fluently in gallows humor, and would probably spit on you if you crossed her.

Frieren doesn't seem to have enough punch to play a girl like that until she shows up on set with a pack of bubble gum and snaps a translucent pink bubble of prodigious size in a costar's face at the first snarky comment she gets about what her mother did to get her this part.

"Nothing," she says coolly, and then, just like Lasch would, she turns on her heel, offers her the parting gift of a vulgar hand gesture without turning to look back at her, and walks away.

Laughing, Himmel notices, watching her face as it retreats. She's silently laughing as she goes.

What a woman.

"Method actors, amiright?" Himmel asks the unfortunate costar, who still looks a little scarred, but absolutely deserved it.

"Method actors," the actress (Aria? Aurora? Something like that) scoffs.

"Most nepo babies don't bother with that, y'know."

"She's just showing off."

"That she's talented?"

Then Aurelia (maybe?) scoffs.

She hadn't realized that her accusation was, if anything, a confirmation that she knows there must be talent buried somewhere deep inside that mass of apathy and bad manners. And she hadn't meant to say that.

"She might open up a little if you don't start with an accusation of bribery," he says lightly. "Just a thought."

Then he goes after Frieren, who does not need to be gone after, but deserves the congratulations.

"Thanks," she says flatly upon receiving them, and that is all.

Himmel hadn't really wanted this part - yet another high school role, and he'll be twenty-seven before it premieres. He's not a huge fan of his character, or what this movie is trying to say, or how hard it's trying to deconstruct tropes that would be much more fun if the screenwriters, much too in love with their own cleverness, left them intact with a wink and a nudge of self-awareness. It doesn't mean anything. It's not the kind of creative endeavor he looks for when he chooses which projects to take on.

Stark has hardly slipped off his jacket and thrown it over the back of a chair when something takes its place.

Fern can't cover as much as the jacket does, but she drapes herself over him like its replacement, and he can feel her warm breath against the back of his neck and smiles.

"Hi, Fern."

Her slender arms wrap themselves like rope around his waist, and she tells him, "I'm looking for my husband."

She doesn't talk this way often, low and teasing. Goosebumps break out over his arms where they're not covered by his wraps; he likes this enough to play along. "Are you?"

"Mm." She lets go of his waist to press her palms to his shoulderblades, and her fingers dig in a little as they inch their way up from there. "He's…tall, handsome." She reaches the top and folds her fingers over the top of his shoulders and squeezes. "Broad shoulders."

Keep going, he would very much like to say, but if he does she'll realize that she would normally be embarrassed by a display like this and do the opposite. And she can't make him feel like he's going to catch fire and then douse him with the ice-cold water of her usual shyness, so he simply says, "oh?"

This was the correct choice.

"Strong arms," she goes on, running her flat palms along his biceps. There is a sly smile in her voice and mischief in her hands, and both of those things are not like Fern at all. "You seen anybody like that around?"

He turns, exposes himself for the stupid ear-to-ear smile on his face, puts his hands on (around) Fern's slender waist and squeezes.

"I dunno," he replies. "Have I?"

Frieren does her best at raising Hagel, but there are things a child wants that never seem to occur to her.

Himmel holds this against her no more than he blames her for her lack of understanding of his desire for her or his occasional need for reassurance, but Hagel is too young to have learned yet how his mother's mind works, or to realize that her strange reticence on matters of the heart doesn't signal a lack of love but a lack of understanding.

Sometimes he needs a little bit of guidance.

Himmel senses when he hears sniffling and cracks open the door to Hagel's bedroom that this might be the moment for it.

"Hagel?" he asks softly. He doesn't open the door any further; Hagel, like his mother, jealously guards his privacy. "Are you all right?"

Hagel is quiet for a moment - even the sniffling stops - and then Himmel hears the plop of little feet hitting the floor. When one is admitted into Hagel's bedroom, it is always in this fashion. He opens the door, and his pudgy tear-stained face looks up at Himmel with something between defensiveness and hope.

He kneels to meet Hagel's eyes, brushes a tear from Hagel's cheek with his thumb, and only then says, "what happened, bud?"

Hagel, silent, sniffles, and as he lowers his face, his ears flatten against his head. Frieren's never do that; it came as a surprise, the way Hagel speaks with his ears. Sometimes it strikes Himmel as sweet. Others it makes the picture even sadder.

They've had him for ten years now, and a fully-human child of his age would be able to read and climb trees and hold a halfway-grown-up conversation, but he's still so little, his face still so pudgy and innocent, and-

"Mama doesn't love me."

"What?"

He looks up at Himmel and briefly looks irritated that he isn't understanding. "Mama doesn't love me."

"Wh…why would you think that, Hagel?"

His lower lip protrudes a little and it puffs up his cheeks. "She doesn't."

"Bud-"

"She doesn't!"

"Yes she does, Hagel."

"But she never says it back!"

Oh.

He's gotten so used to that, telling Frieren that he loves her without expecting the typical response, that it would never have occurred to Himmel that the lack of an I love you too might give his son unhappy ideas. But, then, of course it does. Any child whose mother never returned those words would think what he does.

"I'm sorry, bud," he says gently, stroking Hagel's cheek with his thumb. "But I promise your mama loves you."

"But…but…"

"She just thinks a little different than you and me," he says. "So I bet she just doesn't realize that when people say 'I love you,' they want her to say it back."

Hagel's forehead creases with irritation, but he doesn't say anything.

"How 'bout this?" Himmel asks. "Next time you wanna tell her that, you should ask, 'do you love me too'? And I bet you anything she'll tell you she does."

Hagel frowns. "Mmph."

"Really. I promise."

"You promise?"

Himmel smiles. "She doesn't say it back to me, either," he tells Hagel, "but I know she loves me."

"But-"

"She does love us," he says again. "She's just the kind of person where sometimes gotta look really close to see it."

He could let it make him angry, the thought of Frieren nodding silently at their son's declaration because she never knows what to do with expressions of love. It almost does. But he has practice seeing things from her side now, and as much as the image twists his heart like a wrung-out dishrag, he knows all too well that there's no lack of love in her lack of a response.

It's no different, really, than her blank expression at his caresses when they're supposed to spark understanding. It is no more a rejection. She simply needs prompting. Frieren is a difficult woman to love, sometimes, but it is not - as he once suspected - because she's cold, or because she doesn't love them.

The younger Hagel is when he realizes that all Frieren needs is a little nudge, the more clearly he'll see that.

So he's eavesdropping (only a little) when he hears Hagel's footsteps in the hall a while later, and when the bedroom door opens and Frieren greets him. He hears her ask if he's been crying and worry at the reason, and the springs of the mattress creak when he climbs up to sit with her.

"Mama," he hears Hagel ask, "do you love me back?"

And he can't remember the last time the rush of affection he gets when he thinks of his son felt so strong.

Frieren is quiet for a long moment, then, softly:

All Frieren ever told Himmel is that she was training a new girl at work. She mentioned that the girl was just out of college and, per the ring on her finger, probably married. That was all.

Because Frieren is and ever will be a useless narrator of the events of her own life, Himmel heard no description whatsoever of this girl, her job, or the nature of his wife's relationship to her until she asked out of the blue if she and her husband (so she does have one, then) could come over for dinner, and Himmel was so happy he nearly jumped out of his chair.

From this exceedingly out-of-character desire to socialize, Himmel surmised a closer relationship than he'd been expecting to hear about. But he was not in the slightest expecting this.

The girl - woman, it feels strange to look a grown woman in the face and call her a girl - is taller than Frieren by a good head and a half. She and her husband, who looks like he runs marathons in his spare time, have matching sets of exceedingly squishy cheeks, and the effect of their respective babyface is amplified when they are taken in together. She's holding a still-casserole dish covered in foil with oven mitts, and everything about her looks soft. And when she's put the casserole down, she pulls Frieren into her arms and veritably enfolds her.

Frieren's colleague is rather slender, but, given her birdlike stature, the picture still gives an impression much like that of somebody sinking into marshmallow fluff.

"I can't believe you finally invited me over," she says, still squishing Frieren - who is face-level with her chest, and probably not breathing well - in her embrace. "I thought you never would."

"Mmph."

This is about as much as Frieren can say with her face so obstructed. That said, her colleague is clearly not asking for a reply, so it doesn't seem to matter very much.

The colleague soon introduces herself as Fern, and the dish in her casserole container as cinnamon rolls for their breakfast tomorrow, because "Frieren told me she likes sweets." At this, Himmel has to resist the urge to let out an undignified whoop of joy, and restricts himself to a much more sedate "that was sweet of you," followed shortly by "you shouldn't have."

And then the chicken wings are late.

Himmel was in charge of ordering the chicken wings, even though these are Frieren's friends, because she would forget to. Actually, she'd told him to order whatever he wanted. And chicken wings sounded like a plan at the time, but now they're delayed, and as such, he tries to make conversation with Fern's husband, who is as sociable as Himmel and should be impossibly easy to talk to, while casting nervous glances every few seconds over at Frieren and Fern, who are, well.

Entangled would be a way to put it.

Fern appears to enjoy playing the mother, and Frieren is not very discriminating in her choices of humans to use as pillows, much to Himmel's chagrin. He had not known to expect that his wife would enjoy snuggling up to her colleague so much when all he had to go by was her vague description of Fern as "a coworker."

It doesn't worry him. He's not jealous. He's not, really. Everything is-

"It takes getting used to," Stark whispers.

"Do you?" Himmel asks faintly. "Get used to it?"

"Fern has pent-up maternal instinct."

Clearly.

It's still just a little bit strange.

This, however, opens the door to easier conversation with Stark, who's more than happy to share how he met his wife, how long it took him to pick up on her hints, and how often she brings that up when she wants to beat him in an argument. Stark's friendly as it is, but he lights up when he's describing Fern, and for that alone, Himmel likes him immensely. He barely feels like he knows a thing about Stark that isn't also about his wife, but he suspects he's probably no better when meeting new acquaintances, so he forgives him this oversight.

He's just getting to the part where he realized that Fern likes to cuddle with her coworkers when they're off the clock (apparently she'd been to their house once, without bothering to mention that she had) when the man delivering the chicken wings arrives and is heartily tipped only because Himmel is starving enough to make him look like an angel come to earth just to drop off his wings.

Then, Frieren detaches herself from Fern, both women eye the containers of chicken and dipping sauce spread across the coffee table like rabid wolves, and within no more than ten minutes, only three measly wings and all of the celery sticks remain.

Himmel knows, of course, how much Frieren will eat if given the chance, and his own appetite is ever-increased by his long runs. Stark spends most of his free hours in the gym, apparently, so this makes sense, too, but Fern…

"Blame the baby," she says when she notices Himmel watching her, and takes the second-to-last wing without breaking eye contact for an instant.

"There's a baby…?"

Since when is there a baby? Stark hadn't mentioned-

Well. He did make that comment about maternal instinct.

And it would explain the clinging.

"Congrats," he says, then takes the last wing.

She can't be more than twenty-five. He spares a glance at Frieren and wonders if she will pick up on his telepathic signal and divine the message that we're even older, but has no particular optimism that she will.

"Oh, did I forget to tell you that?" Stark asks sheepishly. "Sorry."

"It's, uh, don't worry about it."

Another thing Frieren hadn't told him, but then, Frieren relates only those details which she finds important, and that doesn't always line up with, well, what actually is. It may be best to move on.

"So, uh, what's Frieren like at work?" he asks.

She reddens, and he laughs. How he loves knowing that he has that effect on a woman who so rarely shows any emotion at all.

"Boring," Fern says.

Frieren glowers at her. "I'm there to do my job, Fern."

Fern pouts. "Even in the break room, you just sit next to me and don't talk."

"I'm resting my brain."

"You're being rude!"

Maybe, he thinks, less mother and daughter than sisters. He hadn't expected she would've become so close to somebody at her office, but she really should have someone besides him.

“I never understood that, what made him feel that way about me.”

Heiter is looking at something slightly to the left of Frieren’s head, and there is a faraway look on his face that tells her he doesn’t want to answer, but after a moment, he forces out the words.

“It would break his heart to hear you say that, Frieren.”

“Hm?”

“I mean, think he would say that the answer is obvious.” Now he manages to look at her, but his expression is as heavy with sadness as with fondness. “And that he should’ve made it clearer.”

“No, he made it perfectly clear that-“

“You challenged him,” Heiter interrupts her. “You made him laugh. Gave him new things to consider.”

Frieren frowns. “None of those are very notable benefits.”

“Frieren-“

“So it would have made more sense for him to choose someone who-“

“He didn’t choose you for practical reasons.” Heiter chuckles now, as it’s hard not to do, however morosely, when remembering Himmel. “He loved you, Frieren.”

“Hmph.”

Then they’re quiet, aimlessly stirring their tea. Frieren’s suddenly feels like molasses.

“I’m not entirely naive,” she says after a moment. “I know what makes people fall in love with each other.”

“Do you, now.”

“And I don’t have the traits that induce romantic feelings.”

Beauty, charm, a sense of fun, the ability to comfort and reassure and coddle, that is. Things that the men in stories want, things the men who forever trailed after Flamme wanted, but not things that Frieren believes could ever describe her. And Himmel had a million admirers with all of those qualities.

What a mystery it is that he only ever loved a woman with none of them.

“Love is a gift,” Heiter finally says. “Best not to question it.”

People are always saying things like this.

They make Frieren want to stomp her foot and pout like a child because she knows no better way to let out the feelings that those empty phrases inspire. She’s never been able to put a finger on why they make her so angry, but she doesn’t care. Everyone, acting as if they understand Himmel just because he’s a man, assuming that she’ll ever be able to be satisfied to leave without a logical explanation of why a man who was loved as much as Himmel was would choose to love somebody who was loved by as few people as Frieren.

It doesn’t make sense.

None of it makes sense.

Himmel was supposed to move on, and realize Frieren was a childish infatuation, and find someone who could make him happier, and stop tormenting her with the knowledge that, all his life, he spent his whole heart on her when it could’ve gone to better use - much better use - if he gave it to someone else.

There must be reasons for such a drastic choice, and no one will tell her what they are.

It is a good run, four thousand years.

Three thousand eight hundred seventy-seven, actually, but it is enough to have earned the right to round up. It’s a good run, anyways. A good, long, never-ending run.

So many years Frieren doesn’t even remember, running together, subsumed into a past that only exists to her as a unit. So many faces seen and forgotten, so many nights towards the end spent wishing it would end already, this endless cycle of meeting and forgetting. And now-

This place feels different when she’s meant to stay.

It has been nearly three thousand years since she saw it last, but she remembers with painful clarity how it felt before, and now the air feels clearer, easier to breathe, though she doesn’t need to. She feels lighter here, where before it all felt heavy with possibility. Frieren has forgotten countless iterations of almost everything in her life, but never in a dozen millennia could she have forgotten that feeling.

It takes her a moment to place the feeling as peace.

Certainty of an end.

She has never once had such a luxury. The warm, beckoning voice that calls her name from somewhere in the distance is one whose soundings she doesn’t have to count and store up for the day they’ll stop.

It’s come to an end, the loss. Here she is no different than anyone, a traveler past the end of her road, dead as anyone. Those she’ll brush past here will be here as long as she will.

She thinks of her family, long dead, and wonders if this is what it would have been like to grow up and grow old among her own kind. Maybe, but for one crucial difference.

"On your left, darling."

Frieren doesn't need the warning. She's already turning, and something heavy thuds against the shield of mana she casts in her blind spot to the left, covering the gaps in her defense. When it finds it can't get through, the monster rears back, leaves its chest and neck exposed before a charge, and it is almost too easy.

It collapses to the ground with a hole in its chest the size of a tree trunk in a heap that kicks up dust. This one, Frieren notes with mild disgust, barely even tried.

"They're getting dumber these days, don't you think?"

Himmel looks up at her, and a smile he tries to hide pulls at his weathered mouth before he can conceal it. He only looks at her for a moment before he reaches over to pat her arm.

"Or you're getting better," he suggests.

"Even you can handle them."

At this, Himmel frowns. "What exactly are you implying?"

Frieren smirks because she likes getting his goat, though it gives her no pleasure to admit: "you're old."

"You're old." He stops, bristles. "And I've still got it. I don't know why you would even imply that I haven't still got it."

He does, however miraculous that is, indisputably still have it. She likes that about him; his advanced age is so much less immediate when he's still doing what he's always done, killing local vermin and charming townspeople and teasing her incessantly. It all makes it easier not to wonder how many more times they'll be able to do things like this together.

"Maybe," she says.

"What do you mean, 'maybe'? I've clearly still-"

"I killed that one."

"But I killed the last one."

"I supposed, but-"

"No 'buts,' Frieren, I did."

"I suppose."

"You," he tells her, "are one tough old lady, Frieren."

"Call me that again, I dare you."

He chuckles. "Most people want to grow old together, you know."

Frieren frowns. "I was already old when I met you."

"Nonsense."

He says things like this often, probably to try to soothe his own sadness, and she never disputes them, even though she wants to.

"Well, I suppose we have payment to collect," Himmel sighs. "Shall we?"

The town elder has a couple of grimoires he'd thrown in to sweeten the pot. She takes his offered hand, wrinkled and weatherbeaten, in her own.