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Having Amanda listening to me talk, ramble, droning on and on about troubles that had absolutely zero to do with her surely had to be wearing down on her psyche.

Today. A day consisting of just me, her, and us together. That’s what today was supposed to be. Yet instead, here we were, her day put on indefinite hold for my thoughts of something else.

Someone else...

I’d be a little ruffled if I were her, honestly... just a little... seriously...

There should be hints of it somewhere, a crack in her generosity, hiding behind that polite smirk of her perhaps, or swirling within those soft hazel eyes blinking attentively back at me. There had to be.

But as much as I believed her distaste was apparent, I never actually saw anything to verify my claims. Her smile never twitched, and her stare never flickered. Quietly, kindly, she just stood and listened.

.....

Amanda has seriously gotta be the patron saint of patience, compassion... if one ever needed proving the existence of divine angels among us mortal men, then she would immediately be my irrefutable testament number one.

“You want to try granting Ash’s wish, that’s why you’ve been staring wistfully out my car window like you’re in some kind of music video?” Amanda slumped her head with a snort as if what I just told her was the most absurdist she’s ever heard. “And you’re actually considering it? Fulfilling it? Didn’t you mention she requested this midway into a fever dream? It’s not like she really meant for you to do it, right?”

Her puckish leer looking up at me clearly took me for a fool for even pondering a notion as outlandish as this.

Which, yeah... I guess it is pretty ludicrous now that I think about it.

“So are you really going to do it?” She asked, batting her eyes directly towards the floor, where the dull gray tiles were smeared all over with a bright white beneath our feet. “You’re going to give Ash her little sister back?”

“Of course I’m not,” I hastily replied, exiting the painted circle. “Like you said, it’s a fever dream wish – I was just considering it, just a thought...”

“And yet, nevertheless, you spent this much time pondering on it,” She expelled a breath, amazed. “You must really want to make her Christmas, didn’t you?” And once more, another breath left her smirking lips, this time in the form of a long dreamy sigh. “Ahh, what I would do to have you give me that kind of consideration... or just a tiny drop, at the very least...”

Hearing her words, listening to her tone had me almost in a panic – that was the last thing I ever wanted her to think.

“You will! You are! I do think of you, I always think of you...” I said, trying my hardest to sound as earnest as I could. “As much as everyone else, you’re always on my mind. I want to make your Christmas special too.”

That’s when her gaze turned impish again, replacing her sigh with an amused chuckle. “My, my, now you’re just playing damage control, aren’t you? Just saying what I’d like to hear so you can please me, right?”

“No, I really – !”

“Well, it’s working,” She leaned forward, peering up at me with an eager smirk. “Please, do not let me stop you – keep the coddling going, come on.”

Blinking dully, staring drearily, I slowly shuffled out of view of her playful stare, retreating to the same familiar spot against the wall where I’d hunker down between breaks, funneling out my thoughts adrift just a little more.

“The thing about Ash is, she already has everything she could ever want in life,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm,” Amanda agreed, nodding, walking, stopping before me. “She has you.”

“And I don’t really make much of a merry Christmas...” I muttered under a cold, frosty breath. “And if I do ask her what she wants, then she’ll just simply make up something for the sake of pleasing me, not because she actually wanted it. I don’t want that. I want to do something, I want to make her happy.”

“Ahh, what a riddle...” She dropped her whimsical tone, her smile an understanding one this time. “How exactly do you make the happiest Elf in all the lands even happier than she already is?”

I know this one, it’s an easy riddle.

“By getting her the one thing she could never have...” I answered.

“Lenora,” Amanda affirmed. “Yeah, guess that’ll do the trick, alright.”

“Summoning’s just one of my answers,” I said, briefly glancing back at the symbol in the distance. “Too bad it’s also the wrong answer.”

“Oh?” Her head tilted to a musing right. “How do you figure?”

“The same reason you wouldn’t want to see your dead pets again,” I explained. “You’ve grieved, you’ve mourned, you’ve accepted, you’ve come to terms – the dead are dead. Sure, I summon Lenora, and it’ll be as if she’s never died. With all the memories, with all the emotions behind those memories. But she did die, she was mourned, I don’t know, I just... I bring her back – snap – just like that. Then, did her dying, all those decades Ash spent mourning... would they even mean anything anymore?”

Was I even making sense? Did I even have a point to begin with? Outloud, it just sounded like a bunch of nonsense, but to me, it made sense.

“I would rather not bring this topic up with Ash if I can help it,” I continued on. “I somehow get the feeling she wouldn’t like it.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Amanda advised, “Because you’d be right.” before settling herself down beside my huddled self, scooting over, hugging shoulders. “I don’t doubt Ash would love nothing more but to see her darling little sister’s smile again for one last time... bringing her here, making her real, at the surface, it does sound like a wish come true... but not if it is at the expense of disrespecting her memory... and Ash would certainly know about playing God like that more than anybody else.”

That got my ears perking, and I turned my glance at her, inquiring, “How do you mean?”

“Oh yeah, forgot... you don’t know, and if Ash hasn’t told you, you don’t want to know,” She shifted an eye at me as if reading an open book. “It’s her story to tell, right? I know you’re considerate like that, so I’m just gonna hold my tongue for now.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to be ignorant to everything,” I rebutted. “Just... what do you mean by Ash playing God?”

“Mmm, That’s a spoiler.”

“Do your best,” I urged her. “Say as much as you think you oughta say.”

“Fine, fine,” She conceded, her brow slightly furrowed. “But for the record, I really think you should start thinking about asking Ash about herself. Like, seriously – how could you love someone wholeheartedly, barely even knowing what makes them, them?”

“Noted.” I nodded. “Well?”

Amanda shifted to a more comfortable position, banging our knees together, the warmth of her coat melding with the warmth of mine, and her golden locks hung draped over my left shoulder as she propped the side of her face against it.

“I mentioned before how Ash was a sworn seeker, right?” She asked, and at the sound of my affirming grunt, she continued. “It’s a title people in Asteria used to refer to those ambitious, foolish few searching high and low for the Lazarus Stone.”

“Ambitious, foolish...” I parroted back. “So I’m presuming it’s no typical easter egg hunt?”

“The Lazarus stone is an object that has no beginning or end. It wasn’t made, it wasn’t created – it was just there. It’s a sacred relic closely linked with the Lady Enstar. You know, because of the whole dead and dying thing and whatnot. The Stone has no sole ownership, no one can truly possess it, over time it would simply cease to be, just fade away from existence, only for a few years, a few decades, before it suddenly crops up somewhere else again in the world.”

“Mmm...” I grunted again. “And Ash’s involvement?”

“Sworn Seekers have the unfortunate task of finding the stone’s new location,” She explained. “And it only appears in the events of major extinction of life. Places where death brims aplenty, corpses line the road wherever you go, in wars, in demon massacres, dangerous places like those. High chances you’d die before you even manage to find it yourself.”

It was here when I noticed Amanda’s silence persisted far longer than it should, and when I looked, I saw she had this disturbed expression on her face.

“Alternatively...” She slowly began again. “If you really do wish that badly to claim possession of the stone. You could instigate those deaths yourself, kill, slay, hundreds, thousands... however many it might take... it’s also a possibility you could exploit.”

My stare grew wide. “Are you saying Ash...?”

But Amanda quickly interjected with a question of her own. “Do you know the reason why Eshwlyn became a Sworn Seeker for the stone in the first place? Why she went rogue, broke the oath of the Old Guard as well as her pledge as an Elf-Knight?”

It was such an easy question to ask that it almost sounded too rhetorical to respond back with a serious answer, but nevertheless, I gave my answer, “It’s so that she could bring her sister back to life, right?”

Wrong. Her stare, her darkening look, the way her breath escaped her narrowing lips – I could never have been more wrong.

“The reason why Eshwlyn desires the stone’s power so badly...” Amanda said, almost too reluctant to continue through. “Was that she could finally and once and for all, kill her darling little sister.”