1Who likes Next-Gen fics? I certainly don’t. I started writing this thing ‘cause it kept following me around at night. D:

I wrote half of this to some Golden Sun music, assorted Backstreet Boys songs, Nightwish, and… Caramelldansen? Something is wrong with Sunny…

Chapter 2

The Sprout

"What's the point of going to Vale?"

"It's important to your father, so we're going."

"All of us?"

"Satta." Sitting up on his bed, Satta pouted as he heard the trying tone in his mother's voice. Drat it, he hated it when she got mad at him- and it was becoming easier ever since he'd quit working at the forge. His friends never gave him a break whenever she started shrieking at him- he was bigger than she was for Mars's sake! ...Agh... whatever.

"Better then staying here I guess." Dropping back on the tousled covers of his unmade bed, the boy stared dully up at the earthen ceiling of his room, scratches made in the walls from when he'd been younger. Circles, swords, monsters, stupid drawings that he half wanted gone, half didn't. There was a murmur of conversation floating in through his open door; his father and cousin were laughing something up by the sounds of things.

Was he really related to that kid? Mina and him had been talking about it whenever one of their parents or the fruit himself- Iden- weren't around. They felt stupid for never having known- he had four siblings too! And then it just got better.

The First Company was well known, especially in a trading colony like Loho. Those were the ships that beached themselves in the shallow harbour- all Company vessels. It was supposedly owned by some big-wigs in Vale, but operated mainly out've Lalivaro and Madra. All the world ports were important to it as well, but those two were especially large. Satta knew these things, mostly 'cause of where his parents worked and having grown up around a forge that did business with those very ships.

He'd known his father was from Vale originally, but admittedly very little aside from that. He'd spent time up in the North, in Prox, where he'd met Satta's mother. His parents had both been around to watch the Firing of the Lighthouses and the Rising of the Golden Sun, but they hardly ever spoke about such an amazing event.

Coincidentally, a few years after the Rising, they'd met up again in Loho and gotten married. Needless to say, the story was completely boring with no interesting bits to be had anywhere. And considering this'd be the first time the family had ever left Loho for anything more than a family outing or two to a small hamlet half a day away (business trips, normally) Satta found it hard to swallow that his parents had once arbitrarily wandered around the world. Pah.

Finally, his mother sighed.

"We're leaving tomorrow, Satta. You need to start packing- pack light. And make sure you sharpen that sword your father gave you." Fine, whatever... At least she closed the door as she left, leaving only a few small flames to keep it lit for him to see.

Sitting up, Satta was grinding his teeth. Pissed.

His father was from Vale, and he had a sister there. But now- after all this time- it turned out his old man had once rubbed shoulders with several of the Key Founders of the First Company? What in Mars's name was all this!? Why were they living out here in the backwoods, obeying the beck and call of clay-for-brains miners with their sparkling expectations and their half-witted critiques!? His aunt was supposedly married to one of Weyard's most successful business men- and his mum knew it too! If she was so gun-ho about his dad making money for the family, the why hadn't they ever pitched an extra letter over the mountains and do things that way? Mars! They were all so stupid!

"Like I care about some old man." He said heatedly, finally getting up, and finding the rough travel pack his mum had dropped on the foot of his bed to use. Grah. He set it down right-side up and tossed the flap open, kicking at a dirty shirt on the floor and looking about for anything clean to stuff inside. So stupid. What'd he need the sword for anyways? Sharpen it? Bah. It was fine just the way it was so he left the stone and oil cloth right where they were on the low table. The furniture, like everything else in the windowless room, held several candle nubs and sported burn marks from moody time-outs.

At least it'd get him away from all this damn talk of forges.

“Mina, c’mere for a sec.” Twirling a few strands of her hair as she was called, Mina tilted her head to the side as she saw her father with one hand on the half-wall of their living room. The house was only built half above ground, before dipping the three steps down into the mountainside- and he was standing at the barrier between the two parts.

Her parents liked to laugh and chuckle about how barren their house had been when she and Satta had been little, but Mina could never remember a time like that- not until this morning at least. She’d been woken up by the sound of her father rousing Satta to help him move a table. Why? To put it beyond that half-wall and into the lower section of the house, that was why. And the deeper reason? Well…

Everything had been taken down from the shelves, and Mina’d helped her mother stack the better china carefully next to the lower fireplace in a big box. Their writing table was completely covered with the nick-knacks from the walls and was resting at an odd angle beside her door, leaving the upper level of the house almost completely bare of… anything.

Iden was just finishing stretching his back out after helping her father lift the family’s padded bench and settling it over the dining table, and Satta was fiddling with a lock on their parent’s door. And earlier- Mina’d seen her mother going off to visit briefly with one of their neighbours with the family’s cream, eggs, and the few fruits and vegetables they’d already acquired for the season. Their cured meats, dried, and persevered goods were all locked up tight in the room past their bedchambers, and reserved as the pantry anyways.

In other words, the entire house was packed up as if they were getting ready to really move- except that they’d pushed it all further in instead of taking it outside. Somehow, all the fuss had Mina second-guessing just how wonderful an idea this trip to Vale really was.

Her father looked all big and shaggy in the traveling cloak wrapped around his shoulders, like a bear with a bit of grizzle already having grown in along his chin. She was pretty sure he’d been up before anyone else in the house that morning- their third since Iden had arrived. As he waved her over she came obediently, Iden quickly hopping up the stairs in his fur-lined cloak again, horribly over-shadowing the plain brown one she’d tossed over the kitchen pump. Her father offered her a smile though as he took her hand first, and then her cousin’s.

“I haven’t done this in a while, but I think I might as well show you two how it’s done.” He said kindly, before addressing Iden briefly with, “I’m still surprised that Isaac didn’t touch on much more than the basics. He was always so eager to learn when he was young.” Her cousin went a bright scarlet, and Mina fought the urge to giggle at his reaction, Satta coming up the stairs and rolling his eyes in a bored way. Her brother had a heavy pack identical to her own slung over one shoulder, his own cloak hooked over his arm as he moved past them.

“Um-um… Well I… hmm…” Never mind, she did giggle at him, but quickly felt bad for it as he seemed to shrink in on himself and fall silent. Aww…! She didn’t want to embarrass him!

It was the warm feeling that quickly enveloped her mind that pushed any thoughts of her cousin from Mina’s mind. The hard stone of the floor seemed to reach up to her through the soles of her shoes, soothing and ever-present as the sandy grain of the walls became faceted and clear to her eyes, a yellow haze fading across the edges of her sight before the warmth of the psynergy flooded down her limbs and banished any remaining early-morning sores.

“Reach, but pay attention.”

For a moment she wasn’t sure if he meant to reach with her mind or body, but her hand seemed to come up on its own accord and answer for her. It was hard to tell with the haze and high of the energy, but Iden mimicked the motion, their hands both resting on different sections of the half-wall, her father standing just over the stairway leading down to the over-crowded den.

She almost thought it was like… touching water, a still pool where the liquid almost seemed to jump up and suck against her hand. Only instead of being cold and almost not there, this was stone; strong and warm and waiting to be moved how she said- it was thrilling!

Drawing her hand up slowly, it was like her vision bent, the world slowing for a long string of moments. The wall bent under her fingers, arching up and spilling over itself- threads of gold light keeping it together and truly solid as she tried to do it on her own, but felt a guiding structure to the act put in place by her father. It wasn’t restrictive though, and the flow of power made her almost giddy so she wouldn’t have minded even if his influence had been stronger. Look at that! She could make it spiral and swirl around itself like paint!

“Alright, alright you two…” Her father’s chuckle sounded both far away: yet all around her, thrumming through the stones above, below, and before her. “Bring it to the ceiling now, lock it in place.” Lock? He meant weave, but she didn’t say so. It was so surreal, how she lifted her hand up higher in front of her- the way Satta always got to do when he was showing off with his silly little flames- and watched the earth follow the motion; just like a kitten’s nose!

She did what he said though, feeling the living earth overhead respond to the swirling sands she raised up to it, and how the two began to merge seamlessly without Mina so much as having to think about it. A cascade of golden light washed over it all like a final gloss on wood though, and she felt how sand became stone, and gold became brown.

The warmth began to fade, not completely, but it drained out of her like water through a fine sift, leaving flecks of itself here and there. At least she got to keep the giddy high though, feeling her father release her hand and bringing both hers up to clasp in front of her, a smile threatening to split her face in half as she bounced up and down like a little girl again. It felt so good!

“Daddy! Daddy it worked!” She chirped happily, feeling like dancing as she wrapped both her arms around one of his affectionately, not even looking at the now fully formed wall as she knew in her mind exactly how it looked already.

“Woah…” Was Iden’s only response, Mina glancing over at him to see the other adept running one gloveless hand across the stone, mesmerised. When he looked back at the two of them, she almost thought she saw stars in his eyes too.

“I’ve… I’ve never seen a technique like that before! Turning it to sand, and then reforming like that? And it felt so… so complex and yet simple at the same time.” Looking from the wall, to her father, and then down to his hands, a smile was quickly spreading across his face. Finally, Iden looked around their now barren house again, but it was like he was seeing it in some strange new light- he looked almost as happy as she felt!

“I knew it! This house’s living stone: you didn’t quarry any of it then, did you? That’s why it’s all so smooth, oh wow… this…” He was spinning in slow circles, completely in awe as Mina stuck her tongue out at him for his funny fascination. He really seemed to like buildings: she’d caught him sticking a knife between the stones in their walkway, and had laughed at him for being shocked at how well they were fit together. ‘Just like Tolbi’, he’d said then.

“Don’t they build like that in Vale?” Satta broke in, coming up and leaning against a section of the newly formed stone, a rough tunic over two other layers of blue and white shirts. “Turning stone to sand and back again? Dad does it for everything…” Satta’s pack was resting at his feet, cloak still uselessly tossed on top of it. Thinking on that, Mina detached herself from her father’s side and toddled over to grab her own supplies for their journey.

“No, I’ve never seen anything like it-” Iden answered quickly, shaking his head towards Satta before rounding quickly towards their father, whose arms were folded across his chest, a look of amusement playing across his features.

“Uncle, please teach me!”

“Well…”

“Oh, I see you got the wall up. Good.” Chuckling as she watched her father scrubbing his chin with one hand at Iden's request, Mina glanced over to see her mother carefully tucking her wire-framed glasses into their snug leather casing. Her red hair was loosely braided again, hiding the sides of her face like large red cups, but Mina's was woven much more tightly, and then pinned up along the back of her neck in a sturdy bundle.

"But Mum, won't people who've been here think it odd if a wall suddenly appears where there wasn't one?" Satta spoke up, giving his head a shake as the dark locks of his hair were hanging in front of his orange-tinted eyes. The fool; he should've let their mother cut them back before leaving. Oh well, too late now. Their mother shrugged at the question anyways.

"If they break into our home and know us well enough to note the change, then they deserve both the confusion and whatever wallops your father and I deem necessary if they complain about it when we get back." Mina chuckled at the answer, sharing a knowing look with her brother as he was smiling at the silly idea. Their parents weren't the kind of people to start a brawl even when in the right, so it was funny to hear their mum say it- even if she was fully competent with an arsenal of sharp words.

"Iden, depending on how this journey goes, I might just show you and Mina a thing or two." Resting one hand on his Nephew's arm, Felix was smiling kindly in his usual mellow manner. Iden didn't seem to know how to take that with anything but a polite, awkward thanks, but Mina took the comment as another small joke. Her father had taught her everything she knew about her psynergy, but she doubted he'd hidden too much of it from her while growing up.

"Anita next door took the perishables, cupboards are clean."

"Wood's split, stacked, and ready; everything's set to light once we get back."

"We're riding up to the Sol Burst mine with Master Picard's wagon train, right, Daddy?"

"That's right. Is everyone ready?" The house was so empty; she wasn't used to it being that way at all.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Alright then, Satta, hand me the key."

Short short, but I don't think I need to chase this one with high chapters. Jus' don't much feel like it this time around. Most everything's well planned for me, I'm just slow to type it out 'cause of massive, MASSIVE problems in school this semester. Figures that my grad. year would be the hardest! DX