Kids Find The Darndest Things

"Papa! Papa, look what I found!"

Nitzan turned from his whispered conversation with the tea shop's laconic owner to see what his son found, and immediately felt his gut twist. In Izotz's hands were three tiny, tiny shards that softly radiated fragments of Deirdre's power, the same obsidian-and-citrine of her core. He knelt to hold his son's cupped palms, and tried to keep a facade of calm as he asked the question consuming his mind.

"Icy, where did you find these?"

Izotz dropped the shards into Nitzan's hands and pulled at his sleeves, leading him into the tea field, eventually stopping by a fence--a fence that had been shattered by the force of the impact, with a trio of craters--small, but disproportionately large for the size of the core shards. As Izotz described the creature he had chased until he found the "shiny rocks", Nitzan kept an ear out for signs of any other, less... innocent... hunters for the shards.

"So. Core shards."

Alishan, moving with the silence of a ghost through the tea bushes until she spoke, looked down at where he was crouching with his son.

"They will not approach. I am not the only guardian here."

Izotz looked up at Alishan, not quite understanding the implication of her words but understanding that it was serious. "Were the rocks important?"

Alishan and Nitzan both nodded. Nitzan looked between the other two ringox, and made a decision. "Alishan?"

"Hm?"

"Is it alright if I leave Izotz with you for a few days?"

Alishan snorted. "Delivery, then."

Nitzan nodded, then turned to his son. "Be good for Ms. Alishan, okay? I need to give what you found to the owner."

Izotz nodded, clearly somewhat confused but going along with it, and Nitzan ruffled his hair fondly. Alishan gently nudged Izotz to follow her back to the shop, and Nitzan carefully pretended to not hear her promise Izotz the candies Nitzan had told him he couldn't have if he came with her as he watched them leave. Returning the shards to Medysa was going to be an ordeal, if the rumors he had heard were as true as they seemed to be shaping up to be, and while he'd need to get moving soon... the fear of seeing what had happened with his own eyes was hard to face. He took a breath to steady himself, and hopped into the Shrine Between Worlds with a mission and dull, aching dread.