By midmorning the air had turned clean and cold. Frost held in the shaded ruts. Stubble fields ran on both sides, neat and empty, and a rook followed them from post to post, curious and unwilling to admit it.

  Buttercup kept pace at Jannet’s shoulder, drifting as if the light itself were bearing it along. It listened the way a good audience listens: alert, greedy for details, happy to be surprised.

  “Another story,” it said. “A long one.”

  “All right,” Jannet said. “Rome, then.”

  It brightened. “Start at the beginning.”

  He did, and this time he did not keep the details to himself.

  Jannet explained what Rome was. A city. Then an army. Then an empire. He described roads that cut through entire continents. He spoke about stone, law, force, and the way it all grew too large to carry its own name. Buttercup didn’t blink often. It asked questions.

  "What does it feel like to live in a world where the road always keeps going?"

  "Loud," Jannet said. Laughingly. "It provides safety, until it doesn't."

  "Safe how?" Buttercup asked.

  “It provides the world with an interconnectedness that is hard to imagine, but it hides the costs.”

  He told them what that cost was. Names turned into census numbers. People sorted by uses. Places changed into a tax roll.

  "And then?"

  "It falls, as do all things" he said. "The rot is soft at first. Then it's hard and by then it is far too late. People just stopped doing the jobs that kept it running."

  Buttercup asked for another. Jannet told it about King Arthur. Not the shining version. Not yet, not at first. He told buttercup about a boy with no say in the weight he was asked to carry, a version of the story that the housewife Jannet had always admired and related too. And about a sword hidden in the land itself. About the endless fields of Avalon the lands of milk and honey. Buttercup was delightfully pleased by the idea of milk and honey. Though Jannet wasn't sure they understood the description specifically, but it didn't matter.

  “There are a few,” I said. “In one, he dies at Camlann with Mordred’s spear in him, and his knights scatter. In another, he gives the sword back to the water, and Sir Bedivere watches a hand rise, take it, and sink. Some say the queens come for him and carry him to Avalon to be healed. Some say monks later find his grave at Glastonbury and carve the words that call him the once and future king. The one I liked the most had him sail to Avalon and promises his return.”

  "Another! Another!" Buttercup exclaimed playfully.

  "More cartoons?" Jannet said, and smiled.

  Jannet went on. “There was one about a boy with a drill who believed you could break through anything if you kept going. He wasn’t strong at first. He was scared. But he chose to move forward anyway, and that choice kept saving everyone around him. It made me feel like stubborn hope mattered, even when the sky said no.”

  Buttercup listened, turning in a small circle. They said nothing, so Jannet kept going.

  “There were the giants,” Jannet said. “Metal bodies, cages for people with nerves and pride. The stories were about war, but really they were about who you become when you are the one holding the controls. The weight of a cockpit. The way a cause eats children. Sometimes the right thing was only the least wrong thing. That mattered to me. It said you could still try to be decent when the world made decency hard.”

  As Jannet went on with story after story. Buttercup drifted closer, eyes bright.

  “And there was the one with the girl who changed clothes in a burst of light,” Jannet said. “She was clumsy and kind, and she kept choosing kindness even when monsters laughed at her. She fought with friends who argued and made up and carried each other through bad days. Love was not a spell. It was work. It was late nights and showing up again. That taught me that shining is not about perfection. It’s about keeping your heart open when it would be easier to close it.”

  Buttercup nodded. They hovered beside him, quiet for a long breath. “Those are good stories,” they said. "Why did you watch such stories in secret?"

  “They are,” Jannet said. “I hid them because bad people like to laugh at what you love. But they helped make me who I am today.”

  The road stretched long. They shared stories until the day was done. Then another. Then another.

  On the road one morning, Jannet stopped.

  The field ahead had once belonged to the village Old Ben lived outside of. The road had run straight, and the soil had been dark with effort. Now the houses were gone, and only broken boards, charred wood, and a few misstacked stones remained. What was left of a plow had been melted, and the gate had fallen on its side.

  There was no smell of death.

  Jannet tasted the air carefully. He detected no cooked meat, no rot, and no blood, only old ash and cold dirt.

  Buttercup hovered without speaking.

  “I do not smell them,” Jannet said.

  “And I do not hear ghosts,” Buttercup said.

  Inwardly that revelation deeply relieved Jannet but only for a moment.

  They walked through what had once been the door. In the wreckage, Jannet saw a board unburned clean in the black. The word TREASON had been carved into it.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He did not touch it. He stood and looked, and he understood what had happened. Buttercup said nothing.

  Jannet finally spoke. “They did not burn them. They either took them or drove them off.”

  “Which?”

  “There is no smell of carts, no wine or iron grease, and no scattered fear. If they had run, the fear would linger. The air is clean, so it must have happened awhile ago.”

  He pointed toward the creek. “Old Ben had mules, good ones. If he had a warning, he would take that route, wait in the scrub, walk at night, and avoid patrols.”

  “Would you find him?” Buttercup asked with emotion.

  Jannet thought in the silence letting the question hang. He picked up the plank and turned it over. The word faced the dirt. He placed it down flat. His claws stayed on it scratching out the word.

  “No,” Jannet answered finally. “It is my fault this happened to them.”

  Buttercup landed nearby and sat still.

  "I don’t think I want to know this story," they said.

  "You don’t have to," Jannet said. "Let's go."

  They left. The land beyond was quiet; the fields had gone to fallow, the ditches no longer showed frost, the birds had returned to calling, and the sky held its light steady. They spoke little after that. Buttercup hovered in silence and kept close, and Jannet walked.

  Three days later in midafternoon, the tree line ahead changed.

  It had become a jungle, not yet thick but clearly forming. The underbrush shifted, vines reappeared, the bark darkened, the canopy grew more complete, the air gained moisture, and the ground yielded slightly underfoot.

  The living border that marked Newscar’s outer land lay ahead. It was not a built fence but a shaped hedge of plants trained and coaxed into patterns. Jannet saw where the path curved; he had claimed it long ago.

  Buttercup lifted slightly.

  “There,” they said, pointing down the path.

  “We are almost home,” Jannet replied, relief rolling off his tongue.

  They reached the line where the trees began to grow closer. The path narrowed, branches arched from both sides, and ferns and flowering shrubs thickened along the edges. Jannet adjusted his pace.

  Buttercup flew more slowly now. Their motion was uneven, and they rubbed their eyes.

  “Tired?” Jannet asked.

  “Yes,” they said. “I was almost full before meeting you, it's part of why they found me so valuable."

  “Do you need to sleep?” Jannet asked?

  “Soon, but not yet.” Buttercup yawned.

  Jannet led them through. The path is warm and familiar under foot. He passed a tree that had been marked by claw and a great yearning for home Jannet did not know he had overcome him.

  They walked again.

  The path began to show signs of use. Footprints. Tool marks. A rake for clawed hands and mouth laid against a stump.

  He could smell smoke now. The clean kind. Someone had started a fire for cooking.

  The jungle opened ahead.

  Structures. Small ones. Built with care. Lay outside the walls which still held strong.

  Newscar.

  The main road leading to Newscar was clean, pressed flat by passing feet and wheel tracks. The jungle on either side had been pushed back, carefully cut and kept, but not wounded. The city rose ahead of them, no longer a suggestion but a place with shape, purpose, and the weight of time. Jannet paused when the walls came into view. He had not expected them to be so tall.

  They were built of interlocked logs sealed with clay and wrapped in strips of reinforced hide. Bone bracing curved up and over the walkways, shaped and placed like ribs supporting a spine. There were many more banners now, bright cloth dyed in patterns that shimmered slightly when the light hit them. Even more had been raised at the sight of him—extra flags, extra movement. Jannet saw hands pointing. Eyes widened. The city stirred.

  From the walls came a shout. It spread, first in a line, then a wave. Cheers broke out in different voices, different pitches. Some were deep and guttural—goblin throats raised in alarm or excitement. Some were high and quick, the tight trill of gnome joy. But it was the mass of hissing that struck him most.

  There were lizards, hundreds of them, perhaps more.

  The gates opened before he reached them, with no hesitation and no challenge. Inside, the city paused, not stopped but held like a breath taken in unison. Then the crowd pressed forward.

  He saw catfolk in the crowd, and that alone pulled him up short. He had not expected them here.

  The streets of Newscar were wider than before. In places they were paved with bone and stones. Bone-and-leather infrastructure had been made to suit the lizardfolk. Doorways were angled low, ramps had replaced ladders, and every path seemed to coil so long bodies could pass without doubling back. Water ran in troughs beside the road, clean and clear, drawn from jungle springs and filtered through gemstone inlets. The gnomes had built those, he thought, and Randle no doubt had overseen the work.

  Everything was lizard-sized, built for their needs rather than adapted as an afterthought. New markets were recessed into the earth with cool stone floors and shaded roofs. Workspaces opened to the air and used shell fragments and bone pins to shape tools. Leather was cured on high racks, scraped with obsidian, and softened with river herbs. Magic glowed in quiet places: bone lanterns held steady blue flame, and sigils cut into hide and wrapped around beams held weight. It was a city made by peoples who had never been given a place before and were now making one that fit them, Jannet thought.

  There was an arena now.

  The colosseum rose near the center of Newscar, built into the natural slope of the land. Its outer ring was bone, clean and white, tied with leather and capped with polished stone. The seats were packed dirt and plank, tiered so that lizards could stretch along them in rows. A great slab of basalt marked the northern gate, a place for announcements and for names to be spoken. Jannet could feel its purpose: trial, challenge, and celebration.

  The crowd did not wait for ceremony. The first allowed to break through were the ones he remembered best: the first family.

  Rose ran ahead, her claws tapping a rhythm across the stone. She did not slow until the last moment, and even then she crashed into his side with the unselfconscious force of a child who does not understand how much she has grown. #1 followed close behind, his tail flicking with excitement. He did not speak at first; he simply leaned against Jannet and held tight.

  Michelangelo came forward more slowly, carrying two, a new goblin and Baby Goblin herself on his back and waving with his tail. The child squealed at the sight of Jannet, kicked its legs, and reached out. Jannet took the infant carefully, mindful of his size, and the little one pressed its head against his chest.

  Lil Guy clambered up onto his tail before being scooped into a tail hug. Randle stood at a distance for a moment, as if uncertain, then stepped forward and gave a single, sharp nod.

  “We kept it going,” Randle said. “You were right about the gnomes. They know their craft.”

  Jannet looked around. The city had grown in directions he had not planned, but not in ways he regretted.

  The rest of the crowd held back, watching and waiting. Their expressions were not cautious; they were reverent.

  They saw him as something more than a founder and more than a Sovereign. He read it in their eyes, in the way some lizards bowed and others simply stared. In a world where so little had belonged to them, he had given them a start, and they had made something of it.

  He stood in the middle of his city, surrounded by those he had brought together, and he felt the weight of it settle. Buttercup hovered near his shoulder, quiet but grinning.

  “They missed you,” they whispered.

  Jannet nodded. “I am home.”

  For a moment, Newscar held its breath a little longer, just long enough for the whole city to remember how much it mattered that he had come back.