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“Today,” Gladiolus announced, “We’re going to practice walking.”
Noctis crossed his arms, just because he could. “I know how to walk. I did it just now.”
Gladio frowned, but there wasn’t any anger behind it; not like before. “You want my help in getting you ready for Yule, or not?”
“Yeah.” Noct meant it.
“Okay, get up on your toes.”
Noctis frowned, but stopped once he saw that Gladiolus himself was on tiptoe. Noctis moved to copy him.
“Good. You feel how everything on your body is higher up than normal?”
Noct nodded. He was starting to wobble a bit; standing on tiptoe wasn’t something that he could do for very long.
Gladio was still up on his toes, but wasn’t wobbly one bit. Did training to be a Shield mean that even your toes had to be strong? What kind of exercise did you do to make your toes strong? “What I want you to do next is to drop down so you’re standing using all the parts of your feet, but try to keep your shoulders and neck right where they are now. You got it?”
Noctis thought about how that would only make him hunch his shoulders over his ears, like he was giving the biggest shrug ever. “Got it.”
Gladio was getting a little wobbly now, but he didn’t seem to notice it. “We’ll do it together on three, okay?” He nodded his head in time with his counting, like Ignis did whenever he was doing scales on the piano. “One, two, three.”
They both dropped down. Noct’s shoulders were higher and further back than usual. His head was up and steady. He felt taller, almost like he was still on tiptoe but he knew he wasn’t. Gladio just looked like he always did whenever Noct’s dad or Gladio’s dad was in the room and Gladio stood up straight.
Gladio nodded again. He circled around to Noct’s side, giving Noct the same sorts of light pushes he used when he was correcting Noct’s forms and stances. Noct made his shoulders go back even more. This caused him to feel even taller . He was getting afraid that he was going to lean back too much and fall. This wasn’t falling drills. This was different .
Gladio gave the little grunt he made whenever he was happy with whatever Noct was doing. “Okay. Now we’re going to make sure you can stay like this while actually walking.”
The kitchen smelled like Yule: ginger and cinnamon and cloves and chocolate and peppermint. In the corner of the kitchen that Ignis and Noctis were using, Ignis took off the towel that was covering the mixing bowl that had their dough. The other smells of the kitchen were overpowered by the smell of sweet saffron bread.
“ Finally ,” Noct said. He took a deep breath full of the smell of the bread, thinking of warm blankets and breakfast in bed.
Ignis dumped the dough from the bowl and began cutting off pieces. “We’ve still got a ways to go before we can have saffron buns for tomorrow.”
Noct knew that, of course, but at least they weren’t sitting around and waiting for the dough to rise. He rolled out the pieces of dough Ignis had cut into long strips.
They got to work making shapes from the strips. Ignis hummed for a moment, then started to sing, softly: “...we gather full of hope, for day’s illuming.” He made a strip look like a curly, backwards S.
Noct rolled his dough strip into a spiral and joined Ignis for the next line: “Banish the dread of night, with heaven’s sacred light.” They’d been practicing the song with Gladio all week.
Ignis looked up at Noct, his face red. “I hadn’t realized I’d been--”
Noct added raisins to the center of his spiral. “You don’t need to apologize, Iggy. We need to practice for tomorrow.”
Ignis cleared his throat. “Right.” He went back to humming, starting from the beginning of the song. He put raisins near the top and bottom of his backwards S.
Noct joined in with Ignis’s humming as soon as he could. Ignis didn’t stop this time, and they went through the song over and over and over until all of their strips of dough were curls, hoops, and spirals dotted with raisins.
He and Ignis moved the finished buns to the baking sheet, then Ignis covered up the buns with the towel. “They’ll need to proof again.”
“ Again ?” No wonder people only made this stuff for Yule. It took forever .
Noct felt weird, wearing so much white. Even when he was in Tenebrae, he was still allowed to wear his usual black. It was even weirder to see Ignis and Gladio in white, too. Noct yawned, then Gladio, then Ignis. It was weird to get up so early, too, but this was a Dawn Feast, so they had to do it when the sun was coming up.
Gladio and Ignis put the crown on his head, and Noct threw his shoulders back and picked up his chin. He used his magic to light the candles that circled the crown. Ignis handed him a tray, and Gladio filled it up with saffron bread and ginger cookies. An Oracle used to do the same thing whenever she visited havens during the winter, Luna had told him, putting the light on her head so her hands were free to carry more food and drink for any travellers that she might have found along the way.
The crown full of lit candles was hot and the tray fill of food made Noct’s arms wobbly. He kept his movements slow and steady; he didn’t want anything to fall.
Gladio opened the door to Noct’s dad’s bedroom. The light from Noct’s crown lit everything near him in a pale orange. His dad’s bed began went from shadows to candlelight as he, Ignis, and Gladio got closer
Ignis whispered, “One, two, three.” Then the three of them began to sing.
“In this hour of darkness,
With shadowslooming,
We gather, full of hope,
For day’s illuming.
Banish the dread of night,
With heaven’s sacred light...”
Prompto offered a saffron bun to Noctis. “Bring forth the morrow,” he sang, just loud enough for everyone in the café to ignore them. “Bring forth the dawn!” He sat down, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I always get it stuck in my head during Yule.”
“Better than ‘I Want to Ride My Chocobo’,” Noctis said, taking a bite out of the bun. Not as good as Ignis’s, but then, few things were.
Prompto pressed a hand to his heart. “You’re killing me, Noct. You know that, don’t you?” He poked at his saffron bun and started nibbling at the candied fruit.
Noctis started breaking his bun up into chunks. “You know, one Yule Gladio, Iggy, and I did a Dawn Feast for my Dad.”
Prompto looked like someone had just offered him a clutch of chocobo chicks. “OMG, did you sing the song? Did Ignis make the saffron buns? Did you guys dress up with the robes and the candles and everything? Are there pictures ?”
Noct gave Prompto a shove. “I’ll tell you about it, but I’m not showing you the pictures. You’ve still got to unlock another level of friendship to get that part of my backstory.”