Lucas Albright wasn't really paying attention to his job–which at the moment consisted of shifting anything shiftable from the bedrooms out to the sorting area where Dinah was sifting things into different piles. He was too busy thinking over the revelation bomb Dad had dropped on them, about Seeker Tempest and the elves and the Romans and everything.

It kinda explained a whole lot.

He didn't remember a lot from his history classes in school–mostly that Mrs. Cripslock would think he was taking notes if he glanced up from his doodling every couple of minutes and made a face like he was paying attention… But he remembered the war stuff real good. Because that was the fun part of history. Swords and fighting and big battles and stuff. But because wars never just started, he'd had to learn some of the politics around them too, and those had stuck because it turned out it was kind of interesting to look at why guys decided to fight.

Small guys banding together to take out one big mean guy was kind of a common theme, back on Earth.

Back on earth…

He sucked in air through his nose as another gutpunch hit him. This one came with memories, of Mimi and Boompa and the rest of the family gathered around the barbecue on Boompa's back porch, grilling up burgers and chicken and stuff, everyone laughing, and…

Put it away, Luc, he chided himself, sniffing and wiping his nose on his arm. He'd already made peace with it. Right? Of course he had. He'd already been here a couple of weeks. That was plenty of time. He didn't need to waste time thinking about…

Home.

He waited patiently until the tears stopped and he could see again. At least none of the girls were around to see him like this. Wasn't manly to just start crying out of nowhere like this. Stupid emotions. He was probably just tired. Yeah. That was it. And Seeker Tempest's story had thrown him off too. Yeah. That was why he was dealing with all these stupid emotions. Come on Luc, get your head back in the game and move this dresser out already. Stop dwelling on how you'll never taste Boompa's famous chili, or Mimi's lemon meringue pie…

He waited patiently again for the tears to stop.

I wonder if the others miss… I guess I can't call it Home anymore, huh? He should talk to them, maybe. Dad always said it was easier to bear a burden if you shared it around.

He shook his head once to clear away the last of his blurred vision, then hunkered down and lifted with his back. The big three-drawer dresser came up off the angled deck, and he staggered under its weight, almost losing his balance, before managing to catch himself and start duck-walking out towards the big hole in the hull. The one that Dad had made, not the one that the big ugly ship that had sent them here had made. And as he did, his mind wandered.

He'd never been as into fantasy books as Liv was. He preferred outdoorsy stuff, camping and football and stuff. Y'know. Proper boy stuff. At least according to his buddies. But he had to admit, some of the stuff she'd recommended to him had been pretty awesome. Fated heroes from beyond the world, coming in to kick the bad guy in the butt and save the world while getting cool powers… Yeah, he could dig it.

And now he was in one. He heaved the dresser another step forward and stopped to wipe the sweat from his eyes. It was funny. The books always talked about how the hero fit right into the new society, took up their task with great aplomb, just threw themselves right into everything.

They never mentioned how much they missed their Boompa's gravelly voice when he was telling stories about his time in WW2 as an aircraft mechanic.

He emerged a couple minutes later, puffing and grunting, into the late-afternoon sun. Well, the late-afternoon cloud cover. The island was finally giving in to its tropical nature and calling in some clouds for what felt like a rainstorm coming up. He hoped, idly, as he wrangled the big mahogany dresser over to Dinah, that Billy could do something that would keep the rain off of them.

Holy heck was this dresser heavy.

I should have asked Bel for help, he thought, before his manly instincts rose up in unanimous declaration that such a path would have been an absolute betrayal of the Boy Code. Men did not ask their older sisters for help moving stuff. Ever. Period.

"Here ya go Di," he called as he set the dresser down with a thump. He stopped to breathe, sucking in deep lungfuls of slightly moist air and trying to calm his beating heart. Lordy. He definitely should have asked Bel for help. The look she'd given him when he'd told her he could handle it himself… Well, he'd been called 'stupid' by his sisters plenty of times before, so he'd learned to recognize it even when they weren't saying anything.

Maybe she'd been right this time. His muscles were screaming at him. He was gonna feel this tomorrow. Probably.

"I haven't gone through the drawers yet," he continued after he'd gotten his breath back. "I figured it was easier to just haul the whole thing out and let you do your thing."

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"Thanks Luc," Dinah said without looking up from the box full of miscellaneous junk Isabel had hauled out on her last trip. "Just set it down and I'll get to it in a sec. Hey, do you think we're gonna need Krazy Glue? Your dad's got like ten bottles of the stuff in here."

"No idea. Go ahead and bring them along though. Maybe we can use the alchemy station to turn them into glue bombs or something."

"Yeah, that'd be awesome. Oh hey," Di looked up from the box and turned her really pretty green eyes on him. "Me an' Mrs. A are going hunting tomorrow. Wanna come with?"

Luc blinked. "Hunting? Already? I thought we had plenty of food."

"We got a couple weeks, if we don't mind eating lots of canned chili," Di said, gesturing at another stack of cans that Onesie was currently picking up one at a time and placing with great care onto Harry's sled. "But if you're huntin' for the table, you don't wait until you're outta food. 'Specially if you're in a new place and don't know how the game works around here, where they walk, where they lay, stuff like that."

Lucas blinked again, trying to not notice how those eyes looked when they blinked. "Game? Wait, what game? Like Parcheesi?"

And that was when he learned what Dinah's 'are you stupid?' look looked like.

"No dummy," Di said with a laugh. "Game. Y'know, deer an' elk an' rabbits an' stuff. Y'know. Game."

"Oh. Right. I knew that," said the city boy who had never once been on a hunting trip and had been looking forward to trying it out when their trip to Hawaii had been so rudely interrupted.

"Uh-huh," said Di, in a tone that very clearly conveyed that she didn't believe a word of it. "So you gonna come or not? Give you a chance to try that scattergun on your back out on somethin' other than 'skeeters."

Lucas shuddered at the memory of the last time he'd had to employ his shotgun. "Yeah, it'd be nice to try and shoot something that isn't trying to eat me first, I guess."

Di laughed. "Luc, you really think there's critters around here that come in that flavor? Even the herbivores 'round here probably got, like, electric horns or fire-spitting glands or somethin'. We're gonna be huntin' dangerous things, sure as shootin'. But hopefully ones that are good eatin' too."

Lucas gave it some though. Again. City boy. Never had meat that didn't come in cellophane wrapping on a cute little styrofoam tray.

"Would I have to do the whole blood and guts thing?" he asked, a little self-consciously.

Di started to laugh, then caught the expression on his face and sobered up instantly. She smiled instead, a soft gentle thing, and nodded.

"Yup," she said simply. "It's part of the whole thing. You want to eat a critter, you can't just pop it and let someone else do the dirty work. It ain't respectful. My paw always said, if you're gonna take a animal's life to feed your own, you gotta do the ugly work too. That way you never take it for granted…"

Di trailed off at the end, and Lucas winced as he recognized the far-away look of a Memory Ambush. Probably talking about her dad had brought it up.

"Think it'll get easier?" he asked quietly.

Di blinked, looked at him strangely for a second, then understanding hit and she sighed. "Truth? I hope not. I don't wanna forget who we left behind. 'Cause sure as heck they ain't forgot us."

"Yeah," Lucas said quietly. "I think I agree."

The silence stretched out for a long moment… But the weird thing was it wasn't uncomfortable. Memories danced through both their heads, he was certain, and neither one of them cared that the other saw it.

"So," Di finally said. "You comin' huntin' or what?"

"Yeah, I will," Lucas said with a smile. "Gotta pull my weight, right?"

"Darn tootin'," Di grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "Now enough mopin', let's see what you brung me–What the deep-fried twinkies is that!?"

Lucas spun around, hand going to the butt of the shotgun hanging on his back. "What? What? Another crab? Something else?"

"Luc!"

Lucas blinked at the tone in Di's voice and turned back around to see her staring at him like he'd just grown a third nose. "What? What did I do?"

His sister's friend just stood there, alternating wide stares between him and the dresser. "Are… Are you feelin' alright?" Her twang was more pronounced when she spoke. It got that way, he'd noticed, when she was feeling especially emotional about something.

"Uh, yeah?" He raised an eyebrow, then glanced down at himself. "Why? Did I hurt myself or something? I don't see any blood…"

Di stared at him for a second, then turned and started pulling drawers out of the dresser. Clothes, bric-a-brac, and some of Dad's old mariner books came tumbling out, along with one of those big heavy mag-light things that you could use equally well as a flashlight or a club.

"Luc…" Di turned back to him, a weird expression on her face. "Did you bring this out here by yourself?"

"Huh? Well… Yeah?" Lucas frowned. "Why, what's wrong?"

"Luc," Di said patiently like she was talking to a four year-old. "This dresser is solid mahogany and stuffed to the gills with… Stuff."

"Uh-huh?"

"It's gotta weigh like 300 pounds."

"What? No," Lucas snorted. "That's ridiculous."

"Hey Bel! Liv!" Di turned and hollered at the boat.

"What?" came two replies right on top of each other.

"How much does that mahogany dresser your folks got weigh, you reckon?"

There was a scuffle of movement from inside, and then Lucas's sisters both poked their heads out of the hole in the hull.

"What, the one in the bedroom here?" Liv asked, blinking in the light.

"Gotta be… What, three, four hundred pounds maybe?" Bel said, frowning. "Took Dad and Tomas like an hour to wrangle it down the stairs and stuff. If I remember right, they needed to use a crane to get it from the dock onto the boat."

Lucas blinked. "Wait. That can't be right?"

Bel speared him with a look. "You calling me a liar, little brother?"

"Why can't it be right?" Liv asked, butting in.

"Because Muscles here just hauled it out by his lonesome," Di said, hooking a thumb at the dresser sitting innocently on the sandy soil.

There was another flurry of motion, and suddenly Lucas found himself surrounded by estrogen and the target of three very similar female stares.

"You moved that?" Bel asked, pointing at the dresser.

"By yourself?" Liv asked, staring at Lucas like he'd grown a fourth nostril.

"I… Guess?" Lucas looked back at the dresser. It didn't really weigh that much, did it?

"I… guess I'm getting stronger?" he said helplessly.

"Finally something works like it's supposed to," Liv said, throwing her hands up.

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