Allister Hale's Story Graveyard.

When River woke the next morning she groaned silently. The middle schooler her roommate had rescued the night before was a warm bundle in her arms lulling her back to sleep. Despite this River got out of bed chasing the bigger temptation, hot fresh pancakes smothered in her favorite toppings.

River frowned when she saw a plate on the table perfectly loaded with pancakes. She sat down and picked up the fork and knife placed next to the dish and cut into it savoring the flavor of the nettled butter as it mixed with the honey and pancake.

At times like this River hated Luke, they weren't dating and yet he still looked after her better than any of her ex-boyfriends. She did have some feelings for him, they had been roommates for two years now so it was more or less inevitable, but most of the time she was content to dismiss those feelings as loving him like a brother. She was ready to admit that she mostly enjoyed the way he doted on her.

River frowned opting to ignore the feelings she wasn’t ready to deal with as she ate her breakfast. Instead she focused on something she felt less conflicted about hating Luke for.

Luke had an almost supernatural sense of timing which he demonstrated that morning by setting a platter of slider sized pancakes on the table accompanied by everything they had in their fridge that could be used to top a pancake. That alone could have just been one of those things that Luke did, if it weren’t for the fact that their guest chose that same moment to walk out of River’s room.

River looked at their little witch girl cosplayer. She clearly had a terrible hangover. River hadn’t smelled any alcohol on the girl the night before but that didn’t rule out the possibility of other chemicals.

The girl settled into a chair and copied Luke as he deliberately sampled the various toppings. Eventually the girl settled on a combination of butter and honey, which prompted River to give Luke a victorious smirk. She later realized she was spared from noticing that the smirk could be seen as flirting. Their little teenaged guest chose the next moment to speak.

River fancied herself a polyglot, something that only distressed her more as she listened to the girl speak. While River couldn't be absolutely certain she was confident in her assessment that the language the girl was not from earth. Entirely separate from that realization was the fact that River could understand every word the girl spoke.

The girl introduced herself, as Iris the apprentice of master mage Gerald Moonstream court wizard and regent for the chevalier of Fallowcreek who, she informed them, was also the reigning duke of Westwinter.

She explained that her master was teaching her a new ritual when she noticed a mistake in the magic circle used to perform the ritual, who everything went blindingly bright and how she woke up in River’s bed to the smell of the pancakes.

Iris finished by explaining the next part of her improvised spell. She explained that she had one week to chose an Elvi’at’ha, a word that meant some combination of the words, hero, saint, angel, champion, noble, home, and family.

The sub meaning that bothered River the most was family. An Elvi’at’ha wasn’t something Iris could call her family; it was a group of people she could call a family. It hadn’t helped that Luke had been the one who decided that a week’s worth of clothes for Iris would be enough. She didn’t think it was his odd sense of timing at work, but it didn't help.

More than her suspicions that Iris’s Elvi’at’ha was River and Luke, River was bothered by how she believed Iris’s story. ‘How’ was an important word here; what Iris told them was a capital ‘T’ Truth.

Bless him, curse him, do what you will with him; Luke proceeded to handle the issue. After breakfast River showed Iris to the bathroom, when River returned to the main room Luke looked at her and simply said, “I think…. I think we need to get ready for, whatever, the rest of this spell of hers is going to do to us. It sounds…. We’re going to be like heroes summoned to some kind of fantasy world.” River just as simply nodded in response.