Yuna und Twistleaf Shadowgear

The lanterns were already lit when Yuna tumbled out of the Wandering Gate and into the middle of the Sunspinner Festival. Everywhere she looked, colour exploded like a burst of confetti: violet banners swirled from rooftop to rooftop, a honeycake seller called out in a voice like a warm drum, and somewhere a fiddle was playing so fast it sounded like laughter. Bella trotted beside her, tail curled up like a little question mark, and the two of them understood each other the way sunlight understands a windowpane — warmly, without a single word needing to be said. Yuna pressed up on her toes and looked all the way to the centre of the square, where a tall spiral of glowing lanterns was being built, one by one, up towards the evening sky. Each lantern was a different colour — peach, emerald, deep blue — and a little card fluttered from every one. She could just barely read the nearest: MAKE A WISH. LET IT FLY. "Oh," Yuna breathed. "I want to put one up. I want to put one right at the very top." Bella bumped her nose against Yuna's knee, and a warm, fizzy feeling bubbled up in Yuna's chest — the kind that meant: yes, let's. But then she looked properly at the top of the spiral. It was very, very high. There was a narrow wooden ladder curling around the outside of the lantern tower, and the top rung was so far up that the people standing there looked like tiny painted buttons. Yuna's stomach gave a slow, unhappy roll. She did not love heights. She had never loved heights. Heights made her feel like the ground was very far away and had forgotten about her. She stood there for a moment, her star hair clip catching the festival light, her feet not moving. Bella sat down beside her and simply leaned — a warm, steady weight against Yuna's ankle. It felt like: I see it. It's okay to feel wobbly. That was when Yuna noticed a gnome perched halfway up the ladder, completely still. The gnome was small — smaller than most gnomes, which was already quite small — and she was wearing a coat with so many little pockets that it looked like a patchwork quilt. She was holding a lantern in each hand, and she was not moving up. She was not moving down. She was simply gripping the rungs so hard her knuckles had gone white. Yuna watched. A minute passed. The fiddle played on. The gnome still didn't move. Yuna walked over to the base of the ladder. "Hello up there," she called, not too loudly, so she wouldn't startle her. "Are you alright?" The gnome looked down — only a tiny bit — and then looked very quickly back up again. "Perfectly fine!" she called back, in a voice that was clearly not perfectly fine. "I am Wrenwick — Wrenwick Shadowgear, specialist in mechanical precision and festival rigging. I am simply... pausing. Strategically." "You're scared of the height," Yuna said, not unkindly. A long pause. "...Yes," said Wrenwick, very quietly. "I rigged this entire tower. Every gear, every hook, every lantern-clip — that was me. But I have never actually gone all the way to the top. And today I promised I would. I promised I would hang the last lantern myself, the gold one, because it's the most important." She took a shaky breath. "And now my feet have decided they are not interested in that plan." Yuna looked at the ladder. She looked at Wrenwick. She looked at her own feet. Her own feet were also, if she was honest, not completely enthusiastic. But she felt something from Bella — not a sound, not a word, just a little nudge of warmth, like a paw pressed gently against her heart. And Yuna thought: she built the whole tower. She did the hard part. She just needs to know she's not alone on the last bit. "What if we go together?" Yuna called up. "I'll come up to you. And then we go to the top together. One rung at a time. You don't look down. I won't look down. Deal?" Wrenwick's white knuckles loosened, just a little. "You're... also afraid of heights?" "A bit," Yuna admitted. "But I think there's a difference between being afraid and letting the fear make all the decisions." She put her hand on the first rung. It wobbled slightly — it was meant to wobble, she told herself, it was built that way — and she climbed. One. Two. Three. She kept her eyes up, on Wrenwick's pocket-covered coat, on the gold lantern that glinted in Wrenwick's hand. Four. Five. Six. Her heart was beating like the festival drum, loud and fast and a little too much. But she kept climbing. She reached Wrenwick. The gnome looked at her with wide, relieved eyes — the colour of old copper, Yuna noticed — and without another word, they turned upward together. One rung. Two. The festival sounds below them softened into a warm, distant hum. Three. Four. The wind up here was gentle, like something breathing slowly. Five. And then — the top. Yuna grabbed the final platform and pulled herself up, and then the whole of the Sunspinner Festival spread out below her in every direction — a quilt of light and colour and tiny joyful people, all of them laughing and spinning and reaching for honeycake. It was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at. Wrenwick climbed up beside her, clutching the gold lantern. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Wrenwick clipped the gold lantern into place at the very tip of the tower. It lit up like a little sun. A cheer went up from below — distant, warm, like applause from a dream. "I built all of this," Wrenwick said quietly, looking out at the festival, "and I almost didn't let myself see it." Yuna looked at her own hands on the railing. They had done it. She had climbed a very tall ladder while being somewhat afraid of heights, and she was still here, and the ground was still down there, and everything was fine. Actually, more than fine. Coming down was much easier. Wrenwick turned out to have an entire pocket full of honeycake samples for "quality-testing purposes," and she shared all of them generously. Bella was waiting at the bottom, and when Yuna landed on solid ground, the cat wound around both of them in a figure of eight, purring so loudly a nearby vendor asked if someone had brought a small engine to the festival. Wrenwick patted one of her many pockets, a little bashful. "I may have also installed a tiny motor in my coat for emergencies," she admitted. "For warmth." As the stars began to appear one by one above the festival lights, Yuna found a quiet step near the honeycake stall and sat down. Bella curled into her lap, heavy and warm. The gold lantern at the top of the tower glowed steadily. She had been afraid. She had gone anyway — not because the fear disappeared, but because someone needed a companion for the hard bit. And it turned out she needed the same thing. The fiddle played one last slow song across the square. The lanterns swayed. And Yuna, with Bella's purring rumbling through her like a lullaby, let her eyes grow heavy. The festival lights blurred softly into gold. And she was almost, almost asleep. Goodnight, little hero. You went up anyway. And the view from the top was worth every rung.