I told you that this would be out a lot quicker! What can I say, your wonderful reviews and kind attentions inspired me, so really it's all thanks to you! Thanks especially to Miette in the Rain, alamodie, and manveri mirkiel for your reviews, and sorry for the feels, Gushlaw for favoriting, and Kouji-wolf for following.

OH! AND HAS EVERYONE SEEN THE WORD-OF-GOD INFORMATION ON LARK THAT TAMORA PIERCE POSTED ON HER TUMBLR? AL;FKJASDJ CHECK IT OUT AT post/88686509442!

I had a few reservations about putting this in as a chapter for this particular story, but the idea for it was one I've had since the story's conception, and it turned out being one of the easiest to write and, in my personal opinion, one of the best chapters to date.

Special disclaimer this time, I borrowed words directly from Sandry's Book; those ones are in no way mine. Just saying. Also, clicking on the link above will in no way benefit me. I just think it's something cool you might want to look at.

xXx

Kintsugi- the art of repairing broken pottery with gold

Timeline: Far before Sandry's Book.

"We did it for your own good."

He left right then. He turned around and walked out of the house, away from his parents' faces, away from the forge, from the village and the shepherds who tended the lands surrounding it. It wasn't until night fell and he had finally stopped walking that he even realized he hadn't packed a single thing, and didn't have one plan for what to do. He couldn't sleep. His magic hummed under his skin, buzzing with energy and he didn't know why. Mamadou didn't know if he would ever be able to sleep again.

He sat under a tree, and when he saw a single torch bobbing through the inky blackness, at first Mamadou thought it was some farmer coming to tell him to get off his land.

Instead it was a familiar face, which was the last thing he wanted to see.

"Go away, Khady!"

"You left so quickly," His sister said calmly, completely unbothered by his tone. "I thought you might be hungry."

"I don't want anything from that house." He growled.

Khady was as serene as before. "I brought some of your clothes as well. If you run away, you should plan a bit better."

"I don't want anything from you. From any of you."

She sat beside him, eyes on the horizon. "There's something I've been puzzling over for a few years now. It didn't make much sense, but I just got some new information that might explain it."

Mamadou shifted so that his back was to her. "I don't want to hear it."

She put the pack around his shoulders. Mamadou slung it off and threw it away from him.

With a sigh, Khady stood. Walking around to the other side of him, she retrieved the satchel and knelt in front of him. Mamadou stared at his knees rather than look at her.

"They might as well have made me a slave for my own family. They helped everyone but me. And it was not for my own good!"

Khady didn't argue. Her fingers played over the pack as she continued as if without interruption.

"Baay tells so many different stories with the other elders. He must know dozens of them."

"I don't want to talk about Baay." He said. He never wanted to talk about either one of his parents again.

In all his life, he'd never seen his sister lose her temper. She didn't now. "But whenever you asked for a story, baay and yaay only told you the story about how poor we used to be. I could never understand why they told you so many times." Khady bent so that she could look into his eyes, whether he wanted to or not.

"Do you understand why?"

"I don't care why!" he mumbled into his knees. Distantly, Mamadou was aware that he was shaking. He hadn't opened the pack, but he knew that there was a knife inside it. He was pretty sure it was melting, because the feeling of it matched that of his insides.

His sister left it at that. She placed the pack on his knees. "I'm not saying to come back. I'm trying to help you understand. It doesn't have to be the same as forgiveness." He didn't respond. "I put in some things to remind you of us."

"I don't want to remember anything."

In the end, Khady had to kiss him goodbye on the crown of the head, because he wouldn't look up at her.

Mamadou waited until morning to go through the bag. Every keepsake she had smuggled him went into the ditch. He kept the food only reluctantly, though he knew he would need anything he could get on the trip to the coast.

He almost broke his tooth biting into the first loaf of bread, and that was how Mamadou discovered that she'd hidden coins in the bread, knowing he wouldn't see it until he was hungry, and starting to realize how much running away would cost.

He used the stolen coins, earned off the magic that had been taken from him, to book passage to Winding Circle, and he was too angry to consider looking back.

xXx

It was years later, long after he'd shed the name Mamadou and taken up that of Frostpine, that the boy turned man received a letter off a boat fresh from Mbau.

He sat in his forge, turning over the paper in his hands.

She had found him, after all these years. Khady had been nothing if not determined in his youth; he should have expected that nothing would change.

And Frostpine should have moved past this hurt long ago, but looking at the words she'd managed to send over who knew how many countries, all he could feel was the same rage building up that he'd felt back then. He had to fight the urge to throw the piece of paper into the flames, just like he'd gotten rid of everything else from that chapter of his life.

"Er.. Frostpine?"

Niko was peering into the forge. The vague worry on his face was probably due to the fact that the tools on the wall were vibrating.

Glad for an excuse to put the letter back, Frostpine stood. "Niko! When did you get back from…wherever you went this time?"

"Just this morning." Despite the resettling of the tools, Niko still looked ill at ease. "That's part of why I came to see you."

"Then come in!" Frostpine ushered him into the forge. "You didn't stop by last time you were here, too busy with your new quest, whatever it is?"

He smiled thinly. "Yes."

Frostpine watched him. They were old friends, and he could read the question Niko didn't want to ask in his face. "If there's any way I can help, tell me." And if it meant delaying the turmoil brought by the letter on his table, all the better.

"That's just it." Niko sighed, rubbing his face. "I found a child with ambient metal magic. I was hoping you'd be able to teach her."

"And she has magic with all kinds of metal?" Frostpine repeated. "Because you know how many mages only have an affinity for one or two types."

"I'm sure. Her magic is nearly identical to yours."

Niko went on to explain more, about how she didn't know she had magic, how she was a Trader cast out from her family. Frostpine was more concerned with the thought that, after so long as the only metal mage equipped to handle all kinds of smithwork, there was someone who could share the buzz of metal under his skin. It wasn't Frostpine the mage who agreed to help Niko so readily, it was Mamadou the boy, who knew what it was to have the world ripped out from under his feet.

xXx

Daja Kisubo was back again, skulking around the edges of the forge as if she wasn't sure she had the right to be there, but as soon as Frostpine asked for her help she took to gold-pulling like a duck to water. Niko had urged him to be slow, but he offered the lessons to her early anyway. He recognized the look on her face as she began to draw out the gold; her magic flowed into the metal as if it had been waiting its whole life for the invitation.

Her lips trembled as she looked from him and his offer to the gold.

"If I hadn't- If our ship hadn't sunk, if I wasn't trangshi now-"

His stomach flipped. "Daja-"

She shook her head. "I would have gone my whole life thinking I was wrong. Thinking I was dirty to want to do lugsha things. Being a bad Trader. Being a bad Kisubo."

"Don't blame your people. They live hard lives." He told her.

It was not until Daja had gone home and night had fallen that Frostpine realized what he had told her. How he had preached forgiveness for this particular sin, and for the first time been able to see it without the veil of betrayal that had shielded it until now.

Unable to throw away the letter from his sister, Frostpine had stashed it under a pile of sketches. He unearthed it now, smoothed out the creases, and began to set a reply to paper.

"I still hear from my youngest sister. It took me a while to grow up enough to write to her."-Frostpine, Daja's Book

xXx

Just a little headcanon of mine. I realize this might not seem too much like it was about Daja's relationship with Frostpine. I wanted to write about how Daja's arrival as Frostpine's student changed him, and not just the other way around.

About the names and vernacular in this piece: We know Frostpine comes from Mbau, but the only thing we really know is that it has good mahogany, ebony, and brasswork. Research shows that this could be Senegal, Ghana, or the Gambia. Since I'm going to study abroad in Senegal this year I was more interested in using this country as a reference point, and thus I took the name Mamadou from a list of popular Senegalese names. So is the name for his sister, Khady. The other words are Wolof, a common language in the general region, found in a glossary below.

Lastly, special mention in the next chapter if you can correctly guess why I chose this title!

Wolof Glossay

Yaay-mother

Baay- father