The Carolds Farm

Hazel lets out a big yawn as the five of us walk along the asphalt road that weaved through the acres of farmland surrounding the Carolds Family Home. The last of the evening sunlight crept over the mountains illuminating the golden fields of wheat and other grains—the types of crops that the Carolds were known for best—each of them standing tall and ready for harvest in the autumn season.

“Are you sure we’re able to stop by this farm, Dahlia?” Peony asks, “I wouldn’t want to intrude on some random person’s farm especially when we still have enough hours of daylight left to make it to your farm for the night instead.”

“Yup!” Dahlia replied, “like I said, I spent a lot of my childhood on this farm, and I know the family who owns it well. We could stop by to visit my parents but I believe my extended family deserve to know how I’m doing as well, especially because we didn’t get a chance to visit last year.”

After stopping by to visit her parents as well as my house a year ago, the six of us were given orders to immediately head to the north to support the frontlines. Now that we were called back south of the mountain range again, we had decided to make another stop by the farms once more with Dahlia leading the way.

“Personally, I’m just glad that we don’t have to set up camp again,” Hazel mentions as she lets out another yawn, “setting everything up takes a toll on my old bones.”

“More so than fighting the Wilted?” I asked.

“Sure,” Hazel joked.

When we finally make it to the front door, Dahlia gives the door a light knock as she stands there silently, bracing for the moment she got to see her family again after almost 2 years apart.

After a few seconds, the door finally opened and we were greeted by the sigh of an older lady with blonde hair wearing a green shirt and a pair of jeans. Upon seeing us, she opens her mouth as if preparing to ask who we were, but upon seeing Dahlia, her face that was full of confusion just moments before immediately crumbles into a pained smile as she grabs her tightly and pulls her into a heavy embrace.

“Nozomi! You’re back!” she sobs out Dahlia’s real name as she tightly hugs her, before turning her head and announcing Dahlia’s return to the rest of the household.

The sound of forks clinking onto the table from another room was soon followed by hurried footsteps running through the wooden floorboards of the house, as two young teenagers who looked only slightly younger than Dahlia appeared from a corner and ran to tackle-hug her.

“Nozomi!” the boy cried with tears in his eyes.

“Big sis!” the girl followed suit, “we were both so worried about you! We didn’t think you’d make it after being gone for so long…”

Dahlia gives the two of them a playfully rough pat on their heads as she teases them, “and you two are still the same crybabies as I remember.”

“Aww, cut Max and Lyra some slack Nozomi,” a bald man with a mustache and hairy chin appears from the corner and cooly leans on the wall, “it’s only natural after you missed the opportunity to visit us last year.”

Dahlia gives him a knowingly smug grin and says, “stop acting so cool Mr. Carolds and come give me a hug too.”

He lumbers over to her and pulls her into a tight bear hug with his burly arms, and as much as he tried to hide it, a small tear manages to slip out from his eye.

“Ok, ok, I’ll stop playing around just this once,” he says.

After finally pulling away from their embrace, Mrs. Carolds looks behind Dahlia to the four of us who were awkwardly standing behind her, and waves us in.

“Well?” she says, “There's no need to be shy; anyone who helps our little daughter is welcomed into our home.”

Past the teary-eyed reunion which gave the rest of us a sense of homesickness, everyone was tired from having to walk through the rocky terrain of the mountains and just wanted a place to relax for the night.

“With the war going on out there, it’s a wonder how y'all managed to keep everyone alive,” Mr. Carolds says, giving Dahlia a pat on the back, “especially this one right here. We were worried sick about her, but we’re glad to see she’s in good hands now.”

The group freezes upon hearing his statement, the entire room suddenly becoming awkwardly silent as Mr. Carolds wonders if it was something he said wrong.

“...Not everyone…” I silently murmured, cutting through the silence, “we had one who didn’t make it back… her code name was Hyacinth.”

“Oh… I–I didn’t…” he stammers, but Iris cuts him off.

“It’s okay Mr… Carolds was it?” Iris assures him, recalling his name from Dahlia, “you didn’t know. As for your little girl over here, she’s putting in her fair share of effort in keeping herself and everyone else alive, so you can rest assured that we’ll keep doing the same.”

“...Can you guys stop calling me a little girl now?” Dahlia jokingly complains, “I’m almost 18 now, and you’re still referring to me like I’m still a kid!”

“And we’ll keep calling you one until you aren’t,” Mrs. Carolds laughs, “now then, go show your friends the way to the showers. I’ll make some extra dinner for the rest of y’all while you’re at it—y’all must be tired and exhausted from all the fighting up in the north.”

                                                                           -ˋˏ ༻❁✿❀༺ ˎˊ-

“We really should’ve taken the offer from Mr. Carolds to sleep inside his room in the farmhouse—this hay is uncomfortable,” Hazel muttered from the top floor of the barn loft we were staying in for the night.

“You know we can’t do that,” Dahlia said from above me, “if any of the Wilted launch a surprise attack on us, not only will it be harder to fight inside that small house, but we’d risk putting them in danger.”

“Heh, you sound just like Peony right now. If she was awake, she’d be the one lecturing me about this instead,” Hazel jokes, “and for once, you’d be agreeing with her.”

Dahlia pouts at her but then relaxes her face and lets out a sigh.

“I guess… I just really care about them—given that I spent a lot of time on this farm growing up and all… I remember playing tag with Lyra and Max when I was younger; running around in the dirt and mud and then getting hosed down in this very barn afterwards… if I wasn’t helping around on my family’s farm I’d usually be hanging around this one…”

“Sounds like this place holds a lot of sentimental value for you,” I remarked from the hay loft underneath her.

“Yeah…” Dahlia quietly murmured. She then rolls over to the railing and pokes her head down to where I was laying and asks, “hey Lily, you still have your camera on you right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well if you don’t mind, can you do me a favor and take a picture of me here so I have something to look back to when we leave?”

I smiled, pulling out my camera from the bag next to me, and getting in position to snap a picture. A few clicks later and the camera processes a photo of Dahlia hanging upside down from the railing doing a double peace sign.

“Alright, alright that’s enough noise for the night,” Iris’s voice calls out from the other side of the barn, “we should all get some sleep before Peony wakes us up at who knows what time tomorrow…. I actually don’t even know how she’s even able to sleep through all this noise.”

“Well she is the only one who was an actual soldier before the war started,” Hazel pointed out, “she probably got used to the noise over the years. But anyway, I agree with Iris, let’s wrap it up for the night.”

One by one everyone bids their goodnights as they all drift off to sleep. Everyone that is, besides Dahlia.

Instead she had the intense urge to explore around the farm one last time before they had to leave again. After all, she didn’t know when she’d get another chance to stop by.

Quietly she slips out of the barn so as to not disturb anyone’s sleep, and after sneaking a few meters away, she activates her Esper powers—which not only gave her an improved stamina capacity but also the ability to move three times faster than the average human—and begins running through the fields of wheat and corn and into the forest that bordered the farms.

It was the first time in a long time that she got to run so freely and wildly like this, and as she breathes in the chilly night air, a wave of nostalgia hits her as she’s reminded of the times that Max and Lyra would play tag with her, even despite her superhuman advantage.

To compensate for it, Max and Lyra often dug mud traps for her to accidentally get stuck in, and over time she eventually came to memorize all of their locations. Dahlia looks around the place, mentally pointing them out as her eyes stare at an oddly placed bush, an obvious one next to a tree, and a few of them in the crop fields that their parents would sometimes get mad about.

As she’s reminiscing about the past, two familiar screams suddenly cut through the night.

Max and Lyra, Dahlia realizes as she immediately rushes over to the direction of the noise.