The kind of weather that made Emi despise being outside.
After so much anticipation and buildup, the day of reckoning had arrived–here fell the very first snowflakes of the season. And how was she celebrating it? Riding in a gondola down the East Balarand with Tia and six students from the Bright School, the most prestigious private school in the city.
Tia didn’t even go to that school; he was taught at home by a private tutor, just like Emi. But such was his envious social ability that he was able to meet people his age just by going out and searching for them. It was a greater magic than any sort of incantation Emi had ever read about.
The Bright School students chatted away about classes and drama and all sorts of stuff that Emi had no involvement in whatsoever, while Emi stared out at the city expanse bundled up in two jackets and a thick toboggan.
It had been over two weeks since she last saw Beatrice, and she felt miserable. Beatrice, the soldier that she was, had surely gotten over it, but the gaping wound in her own heart would surely remain like this for good.
That was for the best. She did not want to have the capacity to feel love for another; that would make her impending marriage to some woman she’d never met go much more smoothly. It would simply be a fact of life, in that case. Nothing special.
Emi looked past the canal to the city streets. There were fewer people out than usual, a side effect of the snow piling up on the walkways. There were Dannark guards posted outside a tiny bank building, standing firm at their post even as their metal armor likely began to freeze. A pair of greyback bears approached the guards. They paced back and forth, begging for food. The guards did not move, and the greybacks eventually gave up, scrambling away to find another group of humans.
Tia Knoll, as par for the course, was sitting there in a sensible white blouse to match the snowfall, but his skirt only went down to his knees. Surely he must have been freezing out there, his legs bared to the world like that! This man was crazy.
He appeared to notice Emi looking his way, and scooted across the seat, closer to her. “Is this not so much fun?” Tia asked.
“I wish you didn’t invite me,” Emi said.
At this, Tia merely laughed. “I only brought you out here to get you in the sun a little bit. And what do you know, we are receiving our first snowflakes of the season. Wintertime is upon us.” He stuck his tongue out and a snowflake landed on it.
The gondola was currently passing in view of the Eldin Bridge. If one crossed that structure and headed eastward, they would soon find themself in the Elincian countryside under Dannark occupation, where civilization was said to be bright and unstoppably beautiful. If one went the same distance westward, they would find themself on the front lines of the Dannark-Doros War. Both of those things were on Elincian soil. Their kingdom had it all.
Gods, it was like Emi was unable to think about anything remotely positive these days.
“So. My parents were talking to your parents,” Tia said. “Apparently your fiancee is finally coming to Balarand soon. Are you excited?”
“I’m, uh, excited.” She looked away and stared at the Eldin Bridge with all her might. “Sure.”
Tia shook his head. “Sure, except your parents also told my parents that when they told you, you would not tell them anything, and you ran up to your room crying.” That was a confusing string of words.
“How embarrassing. Why would they…” Ugh, her parents.
“Well, they might not be telling you, but they are telling my parents who are telling me that they are worried you may cancel the wedding and ruin their reputations. And that you will be ruining your own future over youthful disdain.”
“Very telling,” Emi said. “They care so much.” She wasn’t sure she could roll her eyes any harder than right now.
“They do. They simply do not understand life outside of that of government officials. It is all social events and grand bargains and power plays to them. My parents are the same way, only with a massive textile business.”
“They really don’t care about me.”
“They do. But they also do not know of the girl.”
“The girl…?”
Tia flashed a knowing smile. “It has been many long years since you and I became acquainted, Emi L’Hime,” he said. “It does not take a master sleuth to figure out that you are in love.”
“I’m not in love,” Emi said. “I’m in a conundrum.”
“What?”
“Uh, nevermind.” She thought that would sound better out loud. “Don’t tell anyone about it. Please.”
“Of course not. I am no coin-store floozy.”
“I know. Even a coin-store floozy’d have the decency to leave a grieving girl be.”
“Grieving?” Tia raised an eyebrow.
By this point, the others in the gondola, so absorbed in their discussion about the latest gossip surrounding who slept with who and when, had become a world apart from the two of them. Emi felt at ease to spill her guts out; Tia had that way with people. “I gave up on it. All of it. There was a girl, but I broke things off. No, it was mutual.” So obvious of a lie that she had to pause to keep from laughing. “But either way, it’s over. I’m just waiting for my fiancee to arrive and take me away forever so I can live a happy life as a housewife with six children and pose for the family portrait paintings every year or two.”
“So I am not to expect any new faces at your family’s party as I had suspected?”
Oh right, the big winter party was coming up really soon. The servants had already begun preparing the foyer for it, which was how Emi ended up on mop duty six days in a row. Her arms were going to be gigantic and muscular and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“The only new face you can expect is if my fiancee makes a shocking appearance at an inconvenient moment when I’m dancing with another person and then cancels the wedding out of anger and jealousy.”
“You have thought this through.”
“It’s all I get to do between studying and failing to figure out how to build a gear box toy,” Emi lamented. Tia didn’t seem to quite understand what she meant, but he kept his cheery smile anyway.
The gondola passed under a small bridge, and Tia’s face was covered in shade for a few moments. All she could see of him were the whites of his eyes, and the whites of his far-too-shiny teeth.
Tia laughed. “I like you,” he said. “If I were a girl, I would probably eat you all up, with that gorgeous hair of yours.”
She looked at her hair. Gorgeous? More like, too long and always getting in her face. “And then I’m really glad you’re not a girl,” she responded.
“Me too,” he said. “By the way, I hope you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Abandon your family and run off with this girl of yours.” They exited the bridge and light reemerged on tia’s face. “It would be such a romantic endeavor.”
“Didn’t I just say that I’ve given up on all of that? It’s over,” Emi said.
“But you are also an overdramatic brat sometimes,” Tia replied. “You clearly do not mean what you say, even if you want to.”
“Well…”
“Your life is yours, not your family’s,” Tia said. “Run off, get married, have a family out in Fathie, become a travelling merchant on a ship, go foraging in the forests… Just do what you wish to do. Especially if it involves a girl you love.”
Emi gulped instinctively. “I’ll… think about it.”
As if she hadn’t been thinking about all of this for weeks now.
As if she hadn’t been constantly fretting about what she’d tell Beatrice all this time, why she had suddenly disappeared from her life. “Sorry, but it turns out I can’t see you anymore. I have to marry some woman I’ve never met.” It was so stupid! She had never been more frustrated in her life. Avoidance was probably the best tactic at this point.
…No it wasn’t.
“I know how hard it is to deal with your life under your family,” Tia said. “That is why I just ignore them completely. My grandfather almost died of shock when he first saw me in a dress. And I’ve done it ever since.”
“I wish it were that easy…”
“Well, we all rebel in our own way,” he said. “You just have to find yours.”
“Today’s the final day of classes,” Mr. Statusian announced to his students. The cheers were immense. “Settle down, settle down. This may be exciting news to those of you who are continuing their AA-grade studies in the spring, because you deserve a good break. But for those of you receiving your certificate next month, this is the end of your time at St. Helens Academy. Whether you try out for the priesthood, begin an apprenticeship, or simply move on with your life, I hope it’s been a fun journey, and one you can look back at with fond memories when you send your own kids here someday.”
There were murmurs throughout the classroom. A few sniffles.
Mr. Statusian continued. “However, you still have one task ahead of you– the Winter Ceremonies. We’ve been practicing this all autumn and now it’s time to choose which of you will perform the rituals to protect Knoll Park for the upcoming year.”
Mr. Statusian began listing off the students accepted to perform the ritual. And one thing Beatrice quickly noticed was that all the people listed were long-time students, the ones in the program for seven, eight, nine years, no matter their prestige or their grades. Even Bodhi got a spot, and his grades were… subpar.
Beatrice was ready for her name to be called, regardless.
Still very ready.
Yep, still waiting…
“And then last but not least, Beatrice Ragnell.” He paused for a moment. “If you’ve noticed, that’s every single one of you who has qualified for graduation. If you wish to join, there is a spot for each of you.”
“It’s not really a selection then, is it,” Beatrice whispered in earshot of Bodhi, who was sitting next to her as usual. But he had no snarky remark this time; he didn’t seem to have heard her in the first place. The smile he wore on his face was genuine. And it made Beatrice understand, if only just a little bit, what the point was for all this. One powerful parting memory with the academy so maybe you’d be more inclined to go to the church more often in the future.
She was so grumpy her name got called last, though. That had to have been intentional.
Everyone was finally excited about something together, though. That was nice. After all this practicing and studying for something nobody would ever have used… It turned out that they were going to be utilizing their group magic after all, all together.
Beatrice wished she had been a better friend to her classmates. She had pushed them away in favor of learning more intensely, but in the end, they were all in this together, and she was going to have to work with them.
After class, Bodhi lingered longer than usual. Once Beatrice gathered her things and stood up, he spoke. “Hey, uh…” he said, but trailed off from there.
“Good luck on the ceremonies.” Beatrice smiled even through her mild annoyance.
“Yeah, I hope you’ll be there,” he said.
“Of course I will, silly.”
“Well… Anyway, maybe you can help me practice a bit.”
“Of course. I’m sure you’re already great, though; you don’t need to worry.” He wasn’t all that great, but she was sure the practices he would be made to go through would be fairly rigorous.
Bodhi laughed. “No way.”
Mr. Statusian shouted, “Everyone has ten minutes to exit the building. My apologies.”
“Well, I’ll try and help you when I can. You know where to find me.”
“Thanks, Beatrice.”
Bodhi was nice. He was probably going to be a great shoe cobbler someday. She wondered if they’d be able to stay friends even after graduation, or if they had too little in common, in the end.
She wanted to help him, because he deserved it for being there for her even when other classmates were jerks. Or even when she was a jerk.
“Hey, Bodhi,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re a good friend.”
If Emi wasn’t going to be around, Beatrice wasn’t going to let her mood sink. She had ambitions. She had friends. And now she had a new extracurricular activity to occupy her for the rest of the month. She had everything she needed here already. If she did see Emi again, then that would be great, but she wasn’t going to let herself get down. Beatrice had a ceremony to prepare for.
Nearly her entire wardrobe from the past two weeks laid on the floor. Useless, stupid gears were littered around like marbles thrown by a mysterious child. One of her many stacks of books against the wall had toppled over, and she had made not a bit of effort to stack it up.
Instead, she studied quietly at her desk, of course also covered in gears and books. Today, she was learning the military history of Ulric Fathie and the Gang of Eight Campaigns.
She didn’t even bother locking her room today, so Ms. Khami and any number of housekeepers could walk in and out doing whatever they needed. Emi’s parents were at Castle Balarand for a meeting with occupation government officials, so it was just her and the housekeepers, as usual.
Emi was increasingly interested in figuring out whether the Teal One would defect to Elince and fight the Fathie Empire, but she felt distracted. Perhaps, her room was at the point of mess where she could no longer concentrate. Or, maybe, it was something a little easier to explain.
She looked back at the intricate mess she had designed, the art piece made up of mounds of clothes dirty and clean, of springs and cogs, of screw plates and one calliper. Lots of cold metal, easy to stub a toe on, the ultimate source of pain. Well, the second-ultimate source, anyway.
Somehow, she felt like she had ended up creating something that symbolized her own life in all of this. All these gears and clothes strewn about, and all those images of that blue-eyed wonder Beatrice shattering her heart every time she closed her eyes.
Emi couldn’t bring herself to see the girl again.
Just as Emi had decided to purchase an entire set of gear box tools to tinker with, and quickly gave up in a dramatic fit, so too had Emi fallen into a great conundrum with a beautiful girl, and was now leaving her behind as if she never existed. It was eating her up inside, but with the letter she received, she knew there was no better option than to give up now.
And yet…
For some reason, ignoring the story of Ulric Fathie in front of her, Emi’s mind, or rather the cogs and gears inside of it, began to formulate a new elaborate scheme to get her out of the house without anyone noticing. For some reason, those plans had her sitting at the library, waiting for Beatrice with open arms.
And for some reason, she was enacting those plans.
If the housekeepers had already finished cleaning–and they seemed to have, she noted as she peeked out the bedroom door– she could probably exit through one of the backroom spiral staircases that led to the barn nobody ever used. It had become a storage room ever since the L’Hime Family’s last horse died, but housekeepers often used it in break times, so it was risky.
This was starting to get exciting, Emi thought as she dressed up in winter clothing and prepared to brave the cold. She hadn’t snuck out in so long that it was starting to get a little boring, just asking permission and leaving through the front door. She took one look back at the useless, unused gears laying all over her bedroom, and wondered if maybe she was overthinking the symbolism for dramatic effect (she was).
But as soon as she closed her door and locked it– she saw Ms. Khami staring up from the foyer. “Miss L’Hime, where do you think you are going?”
So close.
***
With four other housekeepers helping, Emi was given a mop and bucket of water right in the foyer.
“You want me to clean ALL of this?” Emi asked Ms. Khami. This house was so wide, so spacious so uselessly big.
“Of course! We will be helping,” Ms. Khami told her. “But you have to learn what a proper lady goes through, and life is not about sneaking out and having fun. It is about being your best self and sometimes that best self has to mop a large room.”
“But it… looks clean…”
“Nothing is ever as clean as it can be,” Ms. Khami said.
“You know, I employ all of you, and this isn’t fair, and–” Emi stopped herself before she said something remarkably stupid. “I understand.”
She’d basically holed herself up in her room for the past two weeks aside from obligatory social events, and she had been making her fair share of messes around the house. It certainly wasn’t becoming of her to yell at housekeepers who had done nothing wrong and always provided valuable help through everything.
It was her fault for not letting Beatrice know what was going on in her life sooner, about the engagement that had hung around her neck for the past five years. It was just that she felt so scared about everything and she didn’t know what to say, and… that was no excuse. No excuse for how she was acting right now, either.
So Emi was going to help out Ms. Khami, because she deserved to be a real part of this household now and again. Ms. Khami was actually smiling for once, and it made Emi smile back, in turn. She was actually going to help.
Now… how did one use a mop…
The maid next to her, a girl her age who must have been a recent hire, noticed Emi’s apprehensive attitude. “Are you having trouble?” she asked.
The girl had jet black hair with eyes to match, and sported a goofy grin. Her hairstyle was nearly identical to Emi’s, but long, going well past the shoulders.
“Yeah, I have no idea how to mop, um… Miss Maid.”
“I’m Pip,” she said. “I really like your house, Miss L’Hime. Let’s get it clean!”
“What do I do, just…” Emi sloshed the mop around in some water and slinged droplets all over the floor.
Pip shook her head, and then wiped a speckle of water off her cheek. “You princesses don’t do much work around the house, do you?”
She wanted to say she was only a diplomat’s daughter, but she decided to refrain from overexplaining things that made her out to be even more of a brat than she really was. “No, I don’t… Can you, uh, help me?”
“You sure? You ready for this?”
“Yeah, what’s so hard about mopping a floor?”
The next two hours were some of the most grueling of Emi’s entire life.
Beatrice had spent her entire afternoon at the library, yet again with the faint glimmer of hope that she would see Emi, but it didn’t end up happening. Instead she spent her day reading up on a book titled Theoretical Uses of Magic If One Were to Tap into the Soul Itself (Which Is of Course Impossible). It postulated that one could enter dreams, inhabit other bodies, even create a copy of oneself, if only the soul could be harnessed somehow. It speculated about a secret race of beings that inhabited the dream world, and were the conduits with which we could access the secrets of the Gods. While it was all certainly wrong, it was interesting reading, and she was quite engaged in thinking about how the author came to all of these grand conclusions.
However, for possibly the first time in her life, she felt nothing but disappointment to be reading a book. And she knew exactly why: It had been over a week since she last saw Emi, with not a peep from her since.
Maybe something had gone wrong? She had checked at Emi’s house, but some housekeeper woman turned her away when she tried to ask for her. It must have been something important; maybe Emi wasn’t even in Balarand at the moment.
Still, Beatrice felt gross, like her heart was covered in sludge and she could no longer move about without feeling pangs of anxiety. What if it was something she said on their last… date? What if Emi had simply found someone better, who was richer and taller and whose hair wasn’t a mess of curls and tangles?
Beatrice looked over at her Dad, who stood at the front counter as usual. He was reading the newspaper while waiting for an elderly couple to finish picking out books from the new releases. The two women looked far too feeble to be carrying so much at once, but they each had a basket full of titles to check out. It was good to see people loving to read books.
Emi and Beatrice both loved to read books…
She hadn’t told Dad about her, and as long as this current situation persisted, she definitely wasn’t going to. It was embarrassing to mention, and she knew how he would tease her about it, so it was best to wait until there was more concrete news to report. Hopefully he hadn’t picked up on it already.
…There she was, thinking about Emi again. She had to keep reading to distract herself.
When evening came and the library closed up, Dad came around to her desk and patted her on the back. “Studious as always,” he said. “But it’s time to go home for some supper. Mom’s making shepherd’s pie again.”
“That sounds good,” Beatrice said. “But I was thinking I might go out tonight and meet up with some friends.” This was a lie. She was planning on going over to Emi’s house again, just to try and see…
“Again? You must be making some close friends, Beatrice.” Dad gave a knowing smile, and Beatrice blushed. He knew. (Parents always know.) “Mom sure will miss you again. You know how she gets when she has leftover food.”
After a moment of deliberation, Beatrice said, “Okay, Dad. I won’t,” her heart sinking at even that hypothetical situation of meeting Emi dissipating. “I’m sorry about… going out a lot.”
“Whoever it is you’ve been spending time with, they must be very important to you. As long as you don’t neglect your schoolwork, that’s fine with us,” he said. “Though if you ever want to talk about it, you know we’re here. Me and your Mom.” He went back to the service desk and grabbed a few things, including a worn leather-bound book with many bookmarks sticking out of it.
“What are you reading there, Dad?” she asked.
“Oh, this? This is one of the oldest books in the library, titled Quest. It’s a novel written many thousands of years ago, in the time before Elince was united, and Balarand stood alone as a city-state. I‘m trying to use the depictions of city life here to figure out what the people of ancient times may have worn.”
“Oh, for Mom?”
“Yes, for Mom. I’ve gone through so many books lately and learned so many things about ancient Balarand, but there isn’t much detail on the fashion of the times. But this book has plenty of it. I think she will be very pleased.”
“Do you really?” Beatrice asked. “Lately Mom hasn’t been very talkative, and I’m almost worried that…”
“She’s a little melancholic? That’s what I’ve noticed, too. So I’ve worked extra hard and I think this is going to make her very happy.”
“Well, that’s good,” Beatrice said. She liked it when her parents were happy, and happy together. The way they looked at each other… she wondered how she seemed when she looked at Emi. At least, when she was ever around. “Actually, I do have a question,” Beatrice added. “How did you and Mom meet?”
Dad chuckled. “You asked that once. You were real little, and I was still real young, and all I told you was, ‘It was pure magic, honey.’ I guess that isn’t what you’re looking for in an answer now.” He went to Beatrice’s desk and sat down across from her. “I came to Balarand when I was about your age, looking for work after my father sold off his farm and moved to Fathie. I didn’t have a place to stay, any friends, or much of an idea of how the world worked, but I had a spirit to accomplish something. I just didn’t know what, yet.
“Then I saw your Mom on the first day, a seamstress’s daughter who lived on the corner of the first street I walked down, and after one look I knew I would marry her–she was the one. I introduced myself to her and told her as much, and she laughed me right off. She had as much right to; I was a street rat, for Goddess’s sake.
“So I kept at it. I worked as hard as I could, saved up money, and finally rented a place not too far from our home now. I asked her on dates, gave her presents, but nothing worked. She was persistent, even then. Eventually, after three years, on my way home from another rejection, I got hit on the head by an apple someone tossed out of a passing carriage. Knocked me out for two days.
“Your Mom cared for me, and then… something happened after that. We fell in love. And then we had you, and I got my degree at the Balarand College, and now I work every day to keep you two happy and safe. That’s our life story.”
“Wow.”
“Do you think… Is that what you’re going through now?” Dad asked.
“I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “Probably.”
“Well…” Dad let out a sigh. “I know that this might be tough for you, what with your junior priest studies and all. You’re a good girl and you deserve to find yourself right now if you want. But you know you can’t take it with you. You’re supposed to love the Gods when you’re a priest.”
“I know, and that’s… something I’ve thought about recently,” Beatrice said. “I’m really worried about it because I’ve really started to care about someone and… Why can’t I choose both?”
“Take that up with the Gods,” he replied.
“I want to! I wish they would… Well, you know. I just want to do what’s right.” It felt so unfair to expect such absolute devotion when they wouldn’t even… she wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“I don’t make up the rules. I just follow their Wills, because I know that will be the path to happiness,” he replied.
Beatrice wished she could feel as positively about it. “It doesn’t feel like the path to happiness. Maybe I… I don’t know.”
“It’s okay night now,” Dad said. “All I can say is right now, if you think you’re onto something, you should grab onto it. It’s okay to have a fling right now. Better to have one now than regret it later, right?”
“Right.”
“Now, let’s go home and meet that wonderful woman of mine.”
They journeyed home and Beatrice’s Mom greeted them with a scrumptious shepherd’s pie. Her smiles were never as bright and shining as Beatrice once remembered them, but she was glad to have someone who cared about her as much as she did.
She wasn’t sure how she was going to deal with the impending nature of leaving her family and friends behind to join the priesthood, or if she’d even end up doing it at all, but for now that was all okay. Her time with Emi was just a fling, for now. For now.
Emi washed herself off and stepped into the steaming hot bath. Her body flared up and she let the water soak all the worries of another stressful day away. All she would ever need to be content in her life was a nice rice bowl and a soothing bath. Everything else on top of that was a bonus.
That’s what used to be the case.
Recently, it had become a bit different. One worry, one outside element, had decided to join Emi here this evening, like several before it, and prevent her from fully enjoying herself: no matter what she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Beatrice.
Was she in love?
And here was the age-old question that we all pose to ourselves. Is what we’re feeling right now, the way we think of that certain someone, really special enough to warrant using such an important term? Words are words, but when you’re wondering if you’re in love, words are like a barrel of blast powder waiting to be lit.
Was it love? And, was it love from first sight? I don’t know.
And as for Emi, she didn’t know either. Every time she saw Beatrice’s face, every time her arm brushed up against hers, she felt her core temperature rising, her cheeks blushing, her breaths staggering. A lump would form in her throat, as if she were about to spill tears.
She couldn’t even pretend what she felt was close friendship, or treasured kinship. They’d known each other, what, a month? But after their last meeting… Gods, that night.
It was undeniably, incontrovertibly, absolutely a romantic feeling that Emi felt. It was impossible to act like she didn’t dream about the idea of kissing her every time she saw her, every time she THOUGHT of her. Spending a whole lot of time fretting and skirting around the idea just seemed like a waste.
But that didn’t mean that she was in love. Surely love wasn’t her heart beating fast every time she saw someone. She could say the same thing if she saw a wolf or a boar. There had to be some specific identifiable trigger where she just… knew it.
Since she didn’t know what the trigger was, clearly she still wasn’t there yet.
It wasn’t love. Not yet.
Emi sank deeper into the bathtub and gurgled bubbles up to the surface. What a situation she was in right now…
If it wasn’t love, then it was a conundrum.
She kind of liked that. “She was in a conundrum with Beatrice Ragnell,” Emi said to herself.
Emi let the bath soak over her and she tried to enjoy herself.
***
“You look pleased with yourself,” Mother told Emi as they ate chilled clams at the supper table.
“Y-yeah,” she replied.
It was just Emi and her parents tonight, and her plates were set out for her right across from them, on the lonely side of a very long dining table. Something about this made Emi gulp. She felt an interrogation coming on.
“Ms. Khami tells us you haven’t been doing as well in your studies lately,” Father said.
“And you have been sneaking out,” Mother added.
Tonight was a scold-a-thon after all.
“I…” She couldn’t think of any good excuses for her actions without divulging her private romantic, uh, conundrum.
“We know she’s been too hard on you, but she just wants you to be the best version of yourself you can possibly be,” said Father. “We do too.”
“But what if I’m already the best version of myself?”
“Nobody’s the best version of themselves, Emi; that’s why we have to work hard.”
Emi vehemently disagreed but she decided to keep it in. She would be the mature one this time.
“You won’t have to worry about Miss Khami too much longer, though,” Mother said. “You’ll be traveling the world with your wife soon enough.”
Ugh. Not this again. How come she didn’t get a say on her own future? How come she was being married off like some painting being put up for auction? Nobody even asked her if she liked girls in the first place…
She did, but that was beside the point.
“By the way, Lady Khara is finally coming down to the city once her term as Bureau Governess is up. You’ll finally be able to meet her once and for all.”
“But what if I don’t want to meet her?”
Father scoffed, waving his hand about as if Emi had just told a funny joke.“Oh trust us, you will. She’s amazing; she personally brought public education to the entire city of Cannapak. Within ten years, every young boy and girl will know how to read and write and perform arithmetic, just like in Balarand.”
What did that matter to Emi? Anything at all? Anything?
“And there’s more,” Mother added. “As promised, Lady Khara has written a letter for you.” A servant appeared behind Emi, spooking her, and handed over an unopened letter, sealed with a bright red wax stamp and the insignia “KHARA” written on it.
Emi took the letter.
“Go ahead,” Mother said. “Read it. We want to know what it says.”
She did:
“To my Emi,
I find that these are troubling times that we live in, fraught with conflict and chaos. When I think of you, however, all that melts away. You are the solid object that keeps me grounded lest I float away into the etherflow.
Your parents have been kind enough to tell tales of your beauty and sing great praises of your intellect. With a sharp nose and a sharp wit, you have been able to cut a great path for yourself in Balarand, and when we are united we shall cut an image for ourselves across the continent. Together we could bring peace between Doros and Dannark. Together we could shape mountains.
Your visage appears often before me in my slumber. A wife to call my own that will accompany me on this quest of my life, someone to bring me closer to the Gods, is all I have wished for in my years in this mortal world, and I am so grateful that you wish to be the one to fulfill this for me. I could not ask for more.”
What senseless drivel was this? Emi was almost taken aback by how inane Lady Khara’s letter was. She hadn’t expected much, but… this was even less than that.
She continued to read:
“I have talked a great deal about the timing of our engagement. It has been a long, arduous five years since we were first brought together by your family and mine, and in that time I am sure we have both grown immensely in our lives. As you have now come of age and I have entered the final stages of my role as Bureau Governess here in Zahn, I have begun to realize that we can put off no longer what we were made to do. I wish to finally meet you for the first time.
Our wedding shall be this spring, I have decided, and it shall commence on schedule with Balarand’s famed Moon Festivals. We will be married right under the stars and fireworks, a beautiful ceremony to befit a beautiful woman such as yourself. I tremble with excitement as I put this announcement to my pen. I apologize if my sloppy hand has tainted this letter, but I am too far gone in anticipation to hold my wrist still.
Please, write me back at your earliest convenience. I would love nothing more than to hear from my future wife before I hold you in my arms for the first time.
Sincerely,
Novella”
Oh my. I can’t say that was a particularly innovative letter. Honestly quite embarrassing. Emi was practically exhausted, the letter was such a chore to get through. She did think a wedding under the stars sounded romantic, but it was also–
Wait, spring? That was just months away. The winter would begin, and then in a flash… the wedding would be here. It had been years and years that her parents had been talking up this engagement and this Lady Khara woman, to the point that she had almost considered if it were an elaborate practical joke. But… it was finally happening. And there was little time left. Emi lowered the letter to her side and stared across the table at her parents. They both looked positively giddy.
“Well, what did it say?” Father asked. “Did she perhaps mention something about… a wedding?” His eyebrows raised.
“Are you excited? Aren’t you proud such a wonderful woman? …Emi?”
There wasn’t a trigger to set it off. She didn’t even feel it coming until a drop hit the back of her hand. But for some reason, tears poured out of her eyes.
“Emi, what’s wrong?” Mother asked.
She pushed back her chair, ran off, and headed back into her bedroom. With a slammed door and a crash on the bed, she let her sobs run loose in the only place she felt free anymore.
She didn’t want to be married. She just wanted to spend her life here, just like now– a happy life for her friends and family and maybe Beatrice too. But that might be about to end, she realized. All in a matter of months, it was all going to be over.
She really was. But after that night, school was the very last thing on her mind. It was like a completely different world to her.
Emi had taken her hand and placed it in hers, gazing at her with those eyes as dark and warm and deep as soil… She couldn’t believe that, after all that fretting and worrying and staying awake late at night thinking about someone she barely knew, she actually ended up with her hand grasped within hers.
Mr. Statusian was lecturing about something or another. Honestly, Beatrice wasn’t paying much attention right now, which was rare, but she knew she’d started all of this already on her own. One of the big downsides to studying outside of class was that she already knew all the material that was going to be discussed, and even if she made a valiant effort to participate in the lectures, she usually was not learning much new. Not listening to the professor, as was happening now, was not going to impact her life at all unless he–
“Miss Ragnell? What do you think?”
“Uhh…”
“Yes?”
“Umm…”
“Did you hear the question?”
“Yes of course, I’m just… Uhh…”
The entire class stared at her. Beatrice, the one who always came to class two weeks ahead on the readings, who sat back in her chair confidently any time a tough question was postured, now sitting in front of everyone caught off-guard in a complete daze.
She couldn’t take it.
Beatrice got up, took her school bag, and bolted out of the classroom.
She locked herself in the bathroom for a while, not to cry but so she could get some semblance of privacy and think about what the heck was going on with her. Even though it was not a difficult puzzle to solve. Obviously this was because of Emi. Well, not Emi as much as herself thinking about Emi.
That back there was just so embarrassing.
As much as she hated to admit it, she relished her status as the class suck-up, her position as the top student in almost every subject. Being a complete dolt in class and obviously not listening to the teacher would jst make everyone lose their respect for her. She wasn’t sure if that was what upset her so much, though. Maybe it was seeing the look on Mr. Statusian’s face when he realized she hadn’t been paying attention? No, it wasn’t that either.
Beatrice felt confused that anyone, even a girl as pretty and graceful as Emi, could make her act like this. It shouldn’t be like this. One girl taking priority over her life of service to the Gods? Being a junior priest was never that important, and even someone like her couldn’t treat it as more than it was, but this was Beatrice’s life. Or, it was supposed to be.
At the moment, though… ugh, what was she doing?
She walked over to the mirror and peered into herself, her mediocre appearance wrapped up in the guise of cuteness thanks to the St. Helens school uniform. They say looking into a mirror is a great gateway to analyzing the inner self, but at this moment, Beatrice felt more like it was a great gateway to annoying herself even more.
Junior priests didn’t need to look suave or sexy. They needed to think deeply, embrace compassion, and, of course, pay attention in class. Looking hot meant that you were exempt from things as lowly as a junior priesthood studying magic you could never pull off on your own. It meant you could go where you wanted, do what you wanted, be what you wanted. It meant you could change the world and accomplish great things even without devoting yourself to the service of the Church. You could make your own harmony… or… something.
She wasn’t sure what her mind was trying to tell her anymore, except that it refused to stop thinking about the other night.
Gods, she held that woman’s hand. Somehow, in some bizarre continent known as Tsubasa, someone as unremarkable as Beatrice Ragnell managed to hold hands with… well, with Emi L’Hime. She could practically imagine it right now, skin against skin, her thumb caressing her index finger…
…And this was what ended up getting her caught zoning out in class. Exactly this. Beatrice leaned her head against the mirror and gave a frustrated groan. She was hopeless, wasn’t she?
She stayed and sorted out her thoughts some more.
Beatrice left the bathroom about twenty minutes later and returned to the classroom. Class had already ended and most of her fellow students had long since left. The only person she saw was Mr. Statusian standing by his desk, hand on his hip as if he had been waiting all this time for her to return. She balled up her fists, sucked up her pride, and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left class like that.”
To her surprise, Mr. Statusian didn’t laugh it off like she thought he would. Instead, he asked, “Do you want to talk about what’s going on right now? I’ve never seen you act like this way until the past few days and… If you need to talk about anything, anything you need to get off your chest, something like that, that’s okay.”
About what’s going on right now.
Beatrice very briefly considered telling her him everything, going into great detail about the girl she had spent the evening with who for some strange unexplainable reason had turned Beatrice’s heart into putty. “No, there’s nothing to talk about, I was just… having a bad day today.” She hoped that was a sufficient enough excuse and that he wouldn’t see through it. Trust me, adults always see through it.
The two exited the classroom and walked into the hallways.
“Well, don’t worry about that. It happens to everyone,” he said. “Everybody knows you’re one of the best students in this entire school. Whatever it is that’s distracting you will be over with pretty soon, and you’ll be right on your way towards making the priesthood.”
Beatrice’s face went ghostly white. “The priesthood,” she muttered, too quietly for her teacher to hear.
All these feelings in her heart, all the jumping around for Emi L’Hime, was running completely contrary to her life path, the path she had chosen for herself when she was just a child, standing four feet tall and pointing to her Dad at the old lady handing out food to the homeless. She was going to be the one to bring new harmony to Tsubasa, that’s what she always told herself.
Now, suddenly, after that night with Emi, thinking about that was almost an alien concept to her. Like a different person had dreamed it up, and she had simply inherited it along with all the other junk floating around in her mind. The only thought her mind would give her was this image of Emi in her arms, both of them old and wrinkled, sitting out on a dock and watching the sun set past the Balarand River, the sky purple and the endless farms and towns across the waterway going dark. Beatrice hated herself a little bit for how specific of a thought that was, and how much it plagued her imagination.
She would never speak of this to anyone, least of all Mr. Statusian.
“Now, there’s no homework for tonight,” Mr. Statusian said, bringing Beatrice’s attention back to their conversation at hand, “but I know you’ll probably do some studying anyway, so here’s some documents I compiled earlier that I can give to you for some extra reading.” He said this as if Beatrice would lap up any study material like a trained dog… Honestly, it was an accurate assessment on most days. But today…
Today felt like a completely different existence. A world with four moons, not five, or a world where tall people were discriminated against, a world where you didn’t need to become a junior priest to get a decent career in Balarand. None of that was real, but it might as well have been.
Her mind boggled.
“Thank you sir, but I don’t think I’m going to do much studying tonight,” she said. “I think I have something else planned.”
She said that calmly, but her heart was pounding. If Mr. Statusian knew what was going through her head right now, there would be no end to the shame it would bring him. His star pupil was a fraud.
“Are you sure? Well then, I hope you do whatever it is you want to do.” He stared at her, trying to analyze her, and Beatrice was doing a terrible job of hiding herself. But, after a moment, he relented, and his expression eased up. “I, on the other hand, will be going straight home to grade all of my students’ papers on the last essay. I’m looking very forward to seeing how you did.”
Oh no! Beatrice didn’t even know there was an essay assignment, let alone that one was due… She definitely didn’t do it! What was coming to her… ? What was happening to her…!?
“I’m just kidding with you,“ he said.
“Oh… Haha… Very funny…”
“I try to practice my joking skills with my students before I go home to my convent. Otherwise I get called Ulric the Plainsmith. That was my nickname back during training.”
“Oh, really? That’s oddly demeaning.”
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the wall. Mr. Statusian and Beatrice both turn to look, and it turned out to be a soldier from Dannark, their face completely covered by a helmet except for their mouth and chin. “This building is closing in five minutes,” the soldier said. “Gather your things and leave or we may place you under contempt of occupational law.” Their eyes were obscured, but their mouth had a stern frown that told that they were not going to skirt the law just because the people in question were a student and teacher.
Her heart had been beating fast from thinking about Emi, from trying not to let Mr. Statusian know what an emotional mess she had become. Now her heart was beating fast because soldiers were staring at her, pikes in hand.
“Come on, Beatrice, we need to get out of here. Thank you for your time,” Mr. Statusian told the soldier. “We apologize for inconveniencing you.”
Beatrice had no idea that the soldiers had encroached upon the junior priest academy. This meant that the new government was taking firmer control of the education system and that there may have been some sort of subversive movement or something along those lines. There had been quite a lot of protests lately, but those never involved the school, did they?
Despite her feelings on the subject, she couldn’t help shuddering. This wasn’t going to go over well with her classmates, that was for sure.
They hurried out of the school and Beatrice began walking home. Mr. Statusian followed her and caught up with her. “Hey,” he said. “I forgot to mention the other news from the lecture. St. Helens Academy has been put under tighter supervision starting today. A few of my coworkers have made some comments recently that were against the wishes of the occupation government and those remarks happened to be printed in the Balarand Circle. It may not be fair to the students, but… the school now has a curfew of ten minutes after the final class period ends. I don’t enjoy it myself, but the government has offered us very generous financial support. So…”
“So, it evens out?”
“You could say that.”
“But does that really make up for how harsh they’re treating the students?”
He smiled, but his eyes were glaring off at the soldiers patrolling the school grounds. “Well, personally– I probably shouldn’t tell you this– but I suggested to my co-workers that we refuse the money entirely. I believe suppression of our freedom to gather in a public space and communicate with one another has the mark of a very unprosperous occupation to come. I don’t like it one bit, but the majority of the teachers agreed more funding will help the school in the long run and I will support that decision.”
This was the first time Beatrice had heard Mr Statusian talk so openly about the occupation. She rarely talked about it with anybody other than her parents because as anyone knows, politics are not a good subject to make small talk with. It was a bit unnerving to hear his opinion so openly stated.
“Just… don’t write what I said down in the newspaper,” he added.
“I’ll try my best,” Beatrice said with a single laugh. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Statusian.”
“Yes, and good luck on your plans today.”
“Thank you.”
Thank you, but Beatrice didn’t need any luck, she thought as she made her way to the library. She wasn’t the type to believe in luck, not when the world was so intricately connected. The only differences were the decisions each person made.
Luck was only an excuse for those that made poor decisions, or those that thought the Gods were the only force in Tsubasa. As much as Beatrice had an inner fire of conflict inside of her, that was a mere ember compared to her desire to see Emi again. If there was anything in the world that mattered more at that moment, she couldn’t have named it.
She entered the library, said hello to her Dad, and sat down at a table. It was time to wait for the girl of her dreams.
But, it turned out Beatrice wasn’t very lucky today. Emi never showed up.
Beatrice and Emi met back that evening at the front of the library, and Beatrice dragged Emi the short distance back over to the marketplace, the same one where they had first seen each other all those weeks ago.
The sun had begun to set, and two of the moons were already visible in the evening sky. Some street lamps had been lit, and scene around them glowed warmly, even as the weather grew colder and colder. It was as if the whole world had suddenly become tinted blue and orange.
“My parents always told me to stay away from places like this,” Emi said.
“Well, your parents are too overprotective,” Beatrice said. “Though, considering you’re a member of the L’Hime Family, they might be in the right. I can’t believe you’re the brother of Reo L’Hime! He’s so cool.”
“He’s… cool…?” Emi did not want to know the answer to this question.
Beatrice gave the answer anyway. “My classmates talk about him all the time. Some of the girls in my class have posters of him on their bedroom walls.”
“R-really…?”
“No.”
They walked side by side down the long marketplace road, surrounded by shops and stands all over the place, and jam-packed with people in all directions. Emi tried to ignore the crowds but she was still getting apprehensive being so close to so many in such a small area.
Beatrice noticed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah… I’m fine. Let’s just keep going.”
Neither of them intended to do any shopping this evening, but the smoky meat stands and glittering jewelry shining against the copious lanterns made the whole area fun to walk around in. The smell made it even better.
“And so you’re a junior priest, right…?” asked Emi, her smile wilting before Beatrice’s eyes.
Beatrice felt the color drain from her cheeks and promptly replied, “Well, a junior priest is just that. I don’t know if I’ll do it for real. It’s a big step, obviously. You know.” Beatrice rubbed the back of her neck. Emi felt satisfied with that answer for now.
“Of course. The future is always in motion, after all,” Emi then said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It means I have no idea what I want to do with my life,” she said with a chortle.
Before Beatrice could say anything else, Emi’s eyes took notice of a booth displaying a set of bright, ruby-red earrings. She paused and let Beatrice walk ahead of her while she examined it.
They looked like they might make a wonderful present…
Emi glanced at Beatrice, then back at the earrings, then back at her. They were beautiful, but they wouldn’t suit her, she thought. Part of her appeal was the was she exhibited some sort of warm aura with her plain outfits and subdued smile, some sort of magnet where Emi was a very reactive metal. The way she walked, even, exuded a strong sense of herself; she swayed her hips like she had a specific purpose in every step, and yet carried herself lightly. These earrings didn’t capture that aura at all.
Beatrice, noticing Emi had fallen behind, stopped in her steps and turned back towards her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“N-nothing,” Emi said.
She noticed the stand selling earrings next to Emi, some of them about as red as the girl’s own face. Was Emi trying to buy her a present this soon into their… their evening together? A bit weird. Still, she was unable to stop a giddy smile forming across her face. “I don’t need anything,” Beatrice told her. “That kind of stuff they sell is usually junk anyway.”
“Oh, no,” Emi said, her voice perking up at the sound of being vindicated. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to buy them. They don’t suit you.”
“Hey!”
“Wait, no, I mean…”
Beatrice’s stomach gurgled.
“I mean, I think I should buy us food first instead.” Good save, both of them thought. “I don’t think either of us have eaten since we went to the library, right?”
“I think you’re right. But I can buy my own food, you know!” What Beatrice didn’t say was that she only had three silver coins to spend and that was her entire allowance for the week. Emi, with a coin purse with more than Beatrice got in a year, hadn’t even considered the idea of running out of cash.
They stopped at a food stand offering one of Balarand’s signature dishes, the stuffed salmon bind. There were so many varieties it was hard to choose from, including fried rice, cream cheese, sour cream, and a near-infinite variety of vinegars and sauces.
Emi was a bit bewildered by the selection and decided to choose one at random. “I’ll have the spinach,” Emi told the cook at the stand.
“Ah, sorry, fresh out.”
“I’ll have the… grape?” That didn’t sound particularly appealing, but–
“Don’t got that either.”
“I’ll have the fried rice, then,” she said dejectedly. She liked fried rice salmon binds, but… they were far from her favorite, and on a night like this, for some reason, she was hoping for the absolute best.
Beatrice continued to look at the variety of options for stuffing, and her ears perked when she came across one unfamiliar term. “Crabspice?”
This question sparked a flash in the cook’s eyes. “Crabspice, yes. It’s a very strong spice found way out in the Torano Islands. You ever heard of there?”
“Well, yes,” Beatrice said. She knew of the Torano Islands, though only from their history with the ancient art of soul-taking. I’ve visited those islands only once; they are beautiful, but are a very limited trading partner these days, now that the fishing industry in Kent has become so prominent.
“But… what’s a crab?” Emi asked.
“I don’t much know myself,” the cook said, “but I’ve heard they are gigantic, terrifying creatures with pincers that could snap you or me in half in an instant. Whatever brave souls actually killed one, well… they’re heroes. Bringing it all the way to me, so I can offer it to the world. You wanna try?”
“Sure thing,” Beatrice said.
“It’s a bit spicy, you know.”
“Well… it IS called crabspice.”
“Are you sure, Beatrice?” Emi asked, having chosen the fried rice salmon bind. She hated spicy foods.
Beatrice shot a glare at her. She took the salmon, wrapped up in wax paper, and began chomping at what was once a member of one of the mighty Balarand Salmon shoals. Salty and savory.
“Spicy? Oh, this is nothing,” Beatrice said. “Emi, you’ve got to try this. It’s really tasty.”
“No thank you.”
She bit further into the salmon and reached a point of higher crabspice concentration. Extremely sweet at first. It was a bit hot, but Beatrice couldn’t resist eating more and more. But then…
“Yack!”
The cook handed her a cup of water and she gulped it down in a single moment.
Beatrice, panting out of her mouth, said, “It’s… a bit spicy after all– Hic!” she put her hands over her mouth. “Oh– Hic! No…”
“You’ve got the hiccups?” Emi laughed.
Beatrice growled like a frightened animal. “Hic!” She grabbed another glass of water and drank it down. “Hic!”
“I’ve heard if you hold your breath a really long time they’ll go away.”
“I’ve heard you need to swallow a lot of sugar,” the vendor said, “I have a cream-filled salmon if you want it. Half-price.”
“No– Hic!– thank you,” Beatrice muttered.
They continued on towards their nonexistent destination, all the hustle and bustle of the marketplace at night a mere backdrop to these two girls hopelessly engaged with each other.
“I never stay out this late,” Emi said.
“Are your parents going to be mad at you?” Beatrice asked.
“Well, my housekeeper will.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot you’re–Hic!– a L’Hime. You have a very tough life.”
“Very. It’s not fun and games being in a diplomat’s family. Everyone blames your family for everything that happens, and my parents are always away, and then there’s so much pressure for you to act like– You’re making fun of me.”
“No, I’d be much too frightened to tease a diplomat’s daughter,” said Beatrice. She winked. Emi pushed her away playfully.
“I’ll have you know, my family–”
Emi shrieked as a small greyback bear skittered by.
Beatrice broke out in a riot of laughs and hiccups. “A greyback?”
“It’s not my fault!” Emi exclaimed. “They roam around the city all day and pop out of nowhere. They freak me out is all.”
“The most adorable animal in Balarand, and you’re scared of them… Oh, Emi…”
“What’s that supposed to mean…”
They were near the edge of the marketplace by now, the last few shops before the street ended and the city turned back into an orderly row of businesses and houses. The market stands here were quaint, often elderly people selling knick-knacks, or the down-on-their-luck hawking whatever they could find. They usually didn’t have much besides old junk.
Something odd caught Beatrice’s eye, though, and made her turn towards one of the booths. There were various metal objects placed around on the table. It certainly looked like old junk, but…
The seller, a mustached man in a turban, looked at the girls, his mouth neutral but his eyes smiling wide. “I see you’re interested in my machine.”
“Machine?” Beatrice asked.
Emi smirked, realizing she knew something that Beatrice didn’t. “Machines are little contraptions made of different parts. Put them all together, and they do stuff.”
“Do… what?”
“Uh… I don’t know.” That was the extent of her knowledge.
The man laughed. “They can do all sorts of things. This one, for instance…” He pointed to a large device with numbers protruding out of the front. “This one can calculate any math equation known to man. It’s the ultimate powerhouse. But, for you, maybe this will be more interesting.” He motioned to a small cube with a lever sticking out at its side. “Just crank this, and you can power the machine… giving it life…”
He began turning the lever in a circular motion, and a tiny twinkling bell started to play from inside the metal box. It was a simplistic nursery tune, but the fact that it was playing by itself just by moving the part outside… How did it work?
Suddenly, Emi was captivated. What kind of creation was this, that could–
BOING! A fuzzy greyback bear puppet popped out of the top of the box, its paws sticking out as if it were greeting you. Emi jumped backwards a full foot. Beatrice was, once again, incapacitated with laughter and hiccups.
“H-How did you…” Emi was at a loss for words, partly from shock.
“It’s the magic of machines,” the seller said.
“Magic?!”
He chuckled. “Only the magic of man, that is. The gears and coils inside work together to form a creation so divine, it rivals the Gods. We are our own clockmakers.”
Beatrice furrowed her brows, but didn’t say anything.
“And what’s this one called? This, uh, scary thing?”
“I call it the jack-in-the-box. Great for children. Do you want it?”
“Wow. How do you make one of these…” Emi was completely bewildered, but fascinated. You and I may take gear-powered devices for granted these days, but in Emi’s youth, it was almost mythical to see something as intricate as a clock being created for entertainment.
You could learn a lot from her. Or maybe not, what with all your gear rockets. You better clean those up after I finish this story.
“Buy it, and I’ll sell you the schematic,” the seller told her. “Then you can build your very own.”
Emi took a satchel of coins from her purse and plopped it onto the table. The money clanged against the wood with a loud thud. “How much?”
The seller smiled.
So that was how Emi ended up with a jack-in-the-box, and how Beatrice, the one with the school bag, ended up carrying it for the rest of their evening together. It was heavier than it looked, Beatrice came to learn.
After a while further, they finally reached the end of the marketplace, and there was a split. Directly ahead of them were two paths; north, with a short tunnel passing under the Grand Concourse that encircled the capital district, carriages and chariots speeding by at all hours; or south, in the direction of Beatrice’s apartment, and where Knoll Park and the Balarand Theatre had been situated for centuries and the cultured made frequent visits.
Without much deliberating, the two of them went south and walked across the narrow pedestrian bridge, passing over one of the countless canals running east-to-west throughout the city. Below them, a gondola floated gently in place, tied up to rest for the evening. The sun had finally disappeared under the curvature of the continent, and all five moons were shining on full display. It was like something out of a painting.
Emi stopped walking and looked out at the night sky, only the faint shadow of Gonda Tower sticking out as the buildings stretched on across the floodplains.
They were very close to one another, standing on this bridge. Beatrice exhaled, and her breath turned into a fine vapor in front of her. Emi’s did the same, and Beatrice watched as the girl breathed in again, and then shivered.
“Sure is getting cold out,” Beatrice said.
“Sure is.”
Emi felt a tickle of fabric on the back of her hand. It was from Beatrice’s coat; the two of them were so close that they were practically touching. With her eyes fixated on the canal and the rest of Balarand, she moved her hand just a little bit closer, continuing to brush it against the coat. If she really wanted to, she could reach out and touch Beatrice’s face, rub her fingers against her freckles. The only thing stopping her was the fact that that would be really strange and probably make her hate her forever.
It was a cliche to say she felt warm even in this sort of weather. But also, no matter her proximity to the girl next to her, Emi was too cold.
Beatrice, on the other hand, felt a little too hot, and wondered when she’d be able to set down her school bag. She was very concerned that her back was going to be all sweaty by the time she got back home. But she, too, felt the same feelings going through Emi’s head, I’m sure. As loath as she would be to admit it, Beatrice was smitten, her heart pulsing fast enough Emi could hear it. Nearly feel it.
They stood close to each other, angling their head to face the other without their noses getting in the way. They were very, very close.
Then Beatrice said, “I really like you,” and Emi, without thinking, took a full step backwards. “Oh.”
“S-sorry. I really like you too. I mean, I think you’re a likeable person. I, um, yeah.” Emi stepped back to her previous position, but Beatrice had already turned around and started walking away. Oh, Gods, why was she so bad at all of this…
There were more Dannark soldiers out patrolling past the pedestrian bridge, where the two were headed. This area, being the most “cultured” part of Balarand, was more tightly watched than anywhere else in the city, the pewter-gray armor of the foreign soldiers having become a fixture throughout the southern half of the city.
In front of the Balarand Theatre, built three thousand years ago by the Demigod Dramaturge, there was a small park consisting of scattered trees and sculpture. In front of the statue to Empress Nievol, there was a bench that the two sat down on.
Being the Empress’s own visage and a common source for protests, there were even more guards posted around this statue. But they didn’t seem to pay the girls any mind. They let their minds ease and let the rest of the evening pass them by.
It was the perfect place for people-watching, the perfect spot to gaze on the pretty, soft atmosphere of an evening in Balarand. Neither of them were concerned with that right now.
“I don’t– Hic!– do this enough anymore,” Beatrice said.
“This is the first time I’ve been out at night without my family,” Emi said. “Sounds like we’re both a bit unfashionable as human beings, huh?”
“We’re not very interesting at all, the two of us.”
“Not really.”
Beatrice put her hand through her hair for a moment, feeling uneasy about being close to such a beautiful girl with her hair so messy right now.
Emi couldn’t stop thinking about how much she wanted to play with the curls in such a beautiful girl’s hair.
Emi’s right hand and Beatrice’s left hand were both on the bench, the sides of their pinky fingers touching. Beatrice moved her hand a bit closer, just to see what would happen, and her finger rested right above Emi’s. Emi pulled her hand away and closer to herself.
Trying to ignore what she thought was another embarrassing moment, Emi began a new topic of conversation. “I can’t understand how we never met before in the library,” she began. “Your father works there. I go about once a week. I think it’s some sort of force field that’s been intentionally trying to get us to avoid each other.”
“The Gods have their ways,” Beatrice said. “They didn’t want us to meet–Hic!–before, but now they do.”
“The Gods did this?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I highly doubt that. Maybe we’ve met before, but we just don’t remember.”
“I highly doubt THAT.”
“You’re right. I’d never forget you.”
Beatrice winked. Emi chuckled.
“But wait, there must have been some specific days we both were in there. What about National Reading Day?”
“I never go to that,” Beatrice said. “It’s always so busy in the library on that day I just stay home.” She gave it more thought. “What about King Kline’s Birthday? I did a lot of reading that day last year.”
“Nope,” Emi said. “I had to go to all the stupid parties for those celebrations.”
“I’ve never really thought about–Hic!– Ugh, nevermind…”
Emi giggled and blushed. Even her hiccups accentuated her magnetic aura. “You’re just so cute. Has anyone told you that?”
“Not really. So, uh, thanks.”
“You’re welcome…” Her blush certainly wasn’t going away.
“What about you?” Beatrice asked.
“Well… people constantly compliment me, but it’s mostly because they want to get in my skirt.”
“And this situation is different?” she joked. She tried to narrow her eyes and give a lascivious smile, but this look was interrupted by a, “Hic!” She sighed.
Emi was paralyzed with embarrassment at the very mention of that, joking or not, and tried to steer the conversation away. “Anyway, tonight’s been really fun.”
“It really has.”
“I don’t really want it to– Ack!”
Beatrice suddenly grabbed Emi’s hand and squeezed it tight. Emi struggled to get loose for a second, but when she realized what was going on, she relented and let Beatrice slide her fingers in between hers.
For everything that came before, this was the moment when Beatrice and Emi’s story truly began. It changed their lives. In a way, it changed mine too. One simple act of putting hands together, fingers intertwined.
They walked away from the marketplace, holding hands, not caring what anyone else would think about a junior priest and a rich layabout displaying their affection so publicly.
And they just walked around.
Eventually they ended up in Emi’s neighborhood, where Beatrice was taken aback by how large the houses were.
“This is crazy…”
“Have you seen the mansions around Lake Geoffrey?” Emi asked. “These are just dingy apartments compared to those.”
“Hey…”
“I mean, apartments are fine. I just, uh…”
“I guess apartments don’t have a whole maid staff, or butlers and servants doing your every bidding.”
“That’s not… I mean, they usually don’t do everything I tell them to unless I pay them extra, though!” Emi stammered as she tried fruitlessly to offer a defense of her bizarre affluent lifestyle.
Beatrice shook her head jokingly, then asked, “Which one is yours?”
“That one.” Emi pointed over to her home with currently only two windows lit by candle, looking pretty uninviting in the middle of the night like this. “I’m probably going to get in a lot of trouble when I get back.”
“Well you don’t have to go back just yet.”
“I do… Any later and my parents will call the police to search for me. They’ll think I’m being ransomed or something.” Emi let go of Beatrice’s hand, slowly. “But tonight was great.”
“It was.” Beatrice set down her school bag and gave Emi the toy she bought. “Here’s your thing.”
“This is so cool…”
“So are you,” Beatrice said. “Um, when do you want to meet again?”
Emi tried not to let her good mood fade, but it was hard when she thought about a question like that. “About that… I don’t know. I have to help prepare for my parents’ big winter house party soon. Guests from all over Elince and Dannark will be there. And then I have to attend the party…”
“Parties are fun,” Beatrice said.
“You’ve never been to a rich party.”
That was true, though Beatrice thought it could never be any worse than those parties for Summer Break they always had at the end of the school term. The food they brought in was always pretty bad and the teachers played all the music, which usually meant it was done poorly. “Well, I’ll see you at the library sometime soon then.”
“I’ll… I’ll go every chance I get.”
“Me too.”
“Well…”
“Well.”
“Good…”
“Good what?”
“I don’t want to say it.” Emi was tearing up again; twice in one day. She couldn’t finish that word, because that would mean this night would be over, and time would have to pass before the next time she saw this girl. She couldn’t let it end.
“Then I’ll say it.” Beatrice took a step forward and extended her hand. “Goodbye.”
Emi shook it and cried. “Beatrice,” was all she could say. Beatrice gave a crooked smile–and then hiccuped one last time.
Beatrice and her Dad passed by a shrine to Phyra, where people were lined up and performing their daily prayers. It was interesting to watch people so devoted that they went to these shrines every single day to increase their fortunes, or give their thanks, or make atonements, or do whatever else it was they thought necessary to appease Her. Beatrice had even heard that there were those that went to eight, even ten shrines a day, one for every major member of the pantheon that worked their magic in Balarand.
Even on a day as cool as this, there were still as many people waiting on the Gods as there were people out shopping in the marketplace. That never ceased to impress her, not one bit.
One thing Beatrice always appreciated was the way that the shrines in Balarand seemed to simply poke out of the cityscape. They were always small, always nestled in between two larger buildings, unassuming and wood-built, ancient and holy even as everything around them was modern, sleek, boxy. This shrine to Phyra was particularly tiny, consisting of just two steps for people to kneel and pray, and the tiniest little statue that acted as an icon for her presence. Size and grandeur didn’t matter, though, as long as the Gods deemed the shrine worthy, and as long as the people could reach it. That’s what the Church always said.
Beatrice thought it might be prudent to do some restoration work on these shrines to keep up the harmony a little better–some of them looked absolutely decrepit–but that would require more money than the Church was willing to give. The only small shrines that still looked in any way holy were the ones dedicated to Nexurk, the God of War, and that was a subject far beyond touchy in this city.
Dad didn’t seem to mind. He always prayed at the shrine to Bk’Man next to the apartment, across the street from Bodhi’s family’s shoe store. Every single morning, that bald head of his touched the wooden floor, his risk of a splinter growing more dangerous with each passing rainy season. She admired his devotion.
Soon, the two of them entered the library. Immediately, Beatrice made her way towards her usual desk, before her Dad was even able to step behind the service desk and prepare for work. “I can’t believe you are actually studying on your day off,” Dad remarked. “Isn’t there something else you could be doing with your time? It’s going to get too cold to enjoy the city pretty soon, you know.”
“Oh Dad, you know I love the winter,” she said. “I’m excited for the cold!”
“You’ll catch a cold, with that attitude,” he said.
Dad was always so concerned with his only daughter having a happy and pleasant youth when his only daughter cared more about succeeding at the goals she had set for herself. That daughter had already skipped breakfast today so she could get to the library early, and it showed from her lazy shirt-and-trousers attire and messy hair frizzing about in random directions.
“And I’m not studying, Dad, I’m just going to read a book,” Beatrice added.
“A book about…?”
“About, erm, the practical applications of soul magic…”
He shook his head slowly.
It wasn’t necessarily for school, but… she thought that it would better help her understand group magic rituals. Every time she saw Mr. Statusian use those sparks of magic he could summon, it made her giddy inside to try and train and do something like that herself. She wanted to get better so she could become the kind of priest that Tsubasa needed, someone who could help others, someone who could keep the harmony of nature and make the world a better place, even if that meant working to the point of exhaustion on a day off from school.
She probably did need to take it a bit easier.
But with her Dad being immediately greeted by several customers wishing to look up or check out books, she was now on her own for the next several hours of the day. It was time to sit down and crack open her academic text. She pulled out Fourteen Essays on the Study of the Soul and its Inherent Properties, and–
–And, from the corner of her eye she spotted something familiar.
Emi, over at a desk in the very corner of the library, silently reading a book of her own, titled A Yellow Romance. She’d apparently been here some time, already comfortable and leaning back in her chair.
Just as pretty as ever.
Beatrice’s face flared up. It had been so long since the last time she saw her that she was almost convinced it was never to be. It… had probably been less than two weeks in reality… but it still FELT like a long time.
After a moment of hesitation– why would she be way off over there anyway except to get away from distractions– Beatrice decided to approach and scope out the girl responsible for a lot of fretting emotions within her for quite some time.
She stepped closer and closer. She tried straightening out her all-too-plain shirt that had probably been wrinkled from the wind outside, and trying to make her hair look a little bit less like she hopped right out of bed with it… which she did. Having messy hair was a poor way to make friends. But it was her only option.
“Hi there,” she said to Emi.
Nothing. No reaction. She didn’t even glance her way.
Was it the way she said it…? She probably didn’t put in enough emotion into her greeting. Probably didn’t even notice she was there, considering how unremarkable and unimposing Beatrice was. She stepped even closer, to the point that there was no way Emi wouldn’t notice her standing right in front of her. “Emi, is that you?”
Still nothing.
She was obviously ignoring her. Beatrice could take rejection, but not the silent treatment. This actually made her mad, and she was not going to stand for it. So she went back to her desk, took her school bag and library books, and placed them on Emi’s desk across from her.
“I’m just going to read right here, if you don’t mind.”
She didn’t respond, so Beatrice took that as a tacit acknowledgement of approval.
A little while passed. Unlike last time she was too flustered to study next to Emi, she was actually having a decent time. The fact that she was being a jerk and ignoring her was probably helping.
She read a good ways into the book, though the essays were all a bit boring because of the completely unscientific realm that they inhabited in their discussion of topics pertaining to souls. It was all essentially conjecture because none of these theories had never been successfully done. Body transfer, spontaneous mutation, soul chrysalis healing… All interesting on paper, but… Okay, not very interesting on paper either.
Her read was interrupted with a gentle tap on the shoulder, making Beatrice jump up in surprise.
“Hi, Beatrice,” Emi said, looking towards her but not making eye contact. “I’d really appreciate if, um, you moved somewhere else.”
“Wh… what?”
“If that’s okay with you,” she said.
“I haven’t spoken to you in a couple hours,” Beatrice said. “What did I do?”
“Well, I haven’t, uh, I haven’t read a single chapter of my story since you sat down. I was trying to see if Princess Valentia would choose Lady Gwinette or Lordess M’tsargh’i, you know.” She let out a soft chuckle, but Beatrice couldn’t figure out if she was joking or serious.
“What does that have to do with me…?”
“You’re, um…”
Beatrice was starting to feel a little guilty. She had apparently done something wrong, and she didn’t even know what it was. How could–
“You’re, um, incredibly distracting,” Emi said. “As a person.”
The nerve! Beatrice quickly stood up and began gathering her things to move tables. She wasn’t going to–
“I mean, distracting in a good way,” Emi added, even if that sentence was a bit nonsensical and did little to calm Beatrice’s mood.. “Because I really want to get to know you better and I constantly think about what I want to say to you.” Tears started to well up in the girl’s eyes. “And I’m sorry if I sound like a jerk.”
Beatrice sat back down. She felt the impulse to reach out and touch Emi’s face, to wipe the tears off her face. A girl that pretty didn’t deserve to cry.
Oh, she was actually doing it, her index finger catching a teardrop just as it fell from her eye. Beatrice pulled her hand away. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Emi grabbed Beatrice’s arm and pulled the hand back towards her. “No, I’m sorry. What I really meant to ask was, uh, do you want to… go anywhere sometime maybe, or… uh, anything like that?”
“Yes,” Beatrice said flatly. “I do.” She pulled her hand away again.
Emi’s face lit up. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
“W-when?”
“Right now.”
“Right now? Uh, okay.” Emi stood up for a second, then sat back down. “Actually, no, I want to finish this book first. It’s really good.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Beatrice said. “I guess I’ll go read over there or something, so I don’t, uh, distract you so much.” She couldn’t help but giggle when she said this.
“Actually, I think I’ll go outside for a bit. I like reading outside better.” She did? Then why was she reading in here…?
“Yeah, I’ll wait for you,” Beatrice said.
“Thank you.” Emi sped out of the library.
Beatrice realized she was starting to get dizzy from her heart beating so rapidly. Now she was the one who was completely unable to read a page of her book.
Emi had been standing for over an hour, and it didn’t seem like she was going to stop anytime soon, but at least she was getting some reading in.
Her current book was an epic poem written early in Elince’s history called The Inundation. Being as it was, it was extremely dry and loquaciously written, even if it was supposed to be a tale of war and romance among the three municipalities that eventually merged as one after the Treaty of Balarand.
The current section was about a captive princess being rescued by a knight in shining armor, but unlike the typical fairy tales, it was a ruse by the princess, who collaborated with her captors in order to defeat her own kingdom’s champion.
It had yet to become interesting, but she was unable to put the book down and get another, so she stuck with what she had.
One day, I’m going to make you read The Inundation, too. What, you think you’ll be able to decide on your own what you’ll read? Not when you fail out of school because you’re off building gear rockets in the backyard. I swear, sometimes… You have a lot in common with this Emi girl. So you’d better pay attention.
“No, no, stop moving around,” scolded Javert, the tailor who was taking a third round of measurements because apparently the first two times weren’t accurate enough, or something. Either her admittedly-above-average sizes were fluctuating wildly every moment, or else this tailor was just a dumb jerk.
Doing a dress fitting for a single outfit for a single party was unnervingly annoying by itself. Having to re-do it completely halfway through because Ms. Khami soured on the low-cut neckline on the one she had originally picked out had sent Emi completely over the edge.
She simply didn’t care anymore.
The last party Emi went to over at Tia Knoll’s mansion was fine enough without having to strangle herself in a corset and act like some modest princess-in-wait. This new winter party wasn’t for a good month or two and she was already having to suit up just because the Dannark Empress-Consort was going to show up for a couple hours. Oh, how the conquered live to appease their oppressors.
Why her parents wanted to treat her like a delicate prize to be won when she was already engaged to some noblewoman off in Zahn was beyond her. If a Dannark Prince took a liking to her, were they suddenly going to break the wedding off with her current fiancee and trade her up? Did it work like that in the realm of mid-level diplomacy?
The idea of being married, being forced to give up everything in her life to serve the whims of her family with no regard to her own feelings… It strangled her more than any dress ever could. It made her want to be strangled.
At least she could read whatever books she wanted, she guessed.
She felt a sharp pain at her scalp and yelped. The tailor had yanked her hair for a moment, but now he was the one grumbling. “You ought to get a haircut,” he said. “Hair’s getting far too long.” Did he pull on her hair by accident? Or did he really just… Oh, whatever.
Emi took a look in the mirror, looked at herself wearing this currently still-oversized dress, the same dress she would likely be wearing to the winter party in the near future. It suited her, she would admit. Her parents were paying very good money to ensure that it suited her, though, so this was to be expected. And even though it suited her, it was too bright, too flashy for her tastes.
Maybe it was just her. She had been groomed to be as beautiful as she could be, the spitting image of her parents and all the wealth they had given her, but maybe it was just overkill. Her princessly demure image was offset just a tad by her curves, just a tad by her knife-sharp nose, just a tad by her height. None of that she could control, but it was like she was being fit into a box that she wasn’t the right size for, being groomed for a role that didn’t work for her.
One day she’d fix all of that. She swore to the Gods, whichever ones were listening, that she’d fix all that.
Emi had finally reached the point in this epic poem where the captive princess was prepared to pull her ruse on the champion and capture them. However, the champion knight had just been revealed to be none other than the princess’s younger sister.
Actually–
This was fairly compelling. Something about this poetry was starting to get to her. That or the standing for hours was making her light-headed. Was this really a true story, or loosely based on one? You could never tell with these epic poems. She wanted it to be real, because she wanted to be a part of this kind of story. Whether it was the captive princess or the champion sister, she didn’t care.
Speaking of reading… What was she going to do when she went to the library tomorrow?
That Beatrice girl hadn’t been there the last few times she visited, but she also had been going in the mornings lately so she could sneak back in time for lunch.
Tomorrow she was going to time it just right. She was going to time it right and end this stupid fantasy of hers forever.
Why was she obsessing over a girl she’d met only once, twice if you really stretched it? Probably because there was nothing better to do this time of year other than complain about the weather getting too cold and remark with sadness about the slow but inevitable passage of time. This was obviously just some sort of schoolgirl crush and she needed to get over it quickly. Beatrice was a very serious person and heavily concentrated in her studies, whatever they may have been. Emi was just some spoiled rich girl complaining because her very expensive dress didn’t suit her as well as a different very expensive dress.
Not to mention the being-engaged-to-a-noblewoman thing. She didn’t even want to consider the possibility of these two events intersecting. It would remind her far too much that her fate was sealed.
She decided she was going to go to the library, pretend Beatrice didn’t exist, and let this whole thing dissolve from there once the girl expressed her mutual disinterest in Emi. It would be the perfect practice for her arranged marriage– getting over a girl she liked by convincing herself that it wasn’t real. (In reality, such a practice would be very harmful, and I recommend you never do it, but Emi was not always the most clear-headed of thinkers. I will admit she was hardly ever a clear-headed thinker.)
After that, though, Emi could forget about that curly-haired beautiful jerk, about that stupid handshake, about that really embarrassing thing she did with saying her name over and over again… all of it.
“Ouch!” The tailor had pricked her with a pin.
“That is what you get for moving about,” he shouted.
Beatrice and five other students sat in a circle trying to storm up ideas for a group project to be presented at the end of class. To be more accurate, though, it was less a group project and more a group debate right now.
Beatrice wasn’t the type to contribute much to a big conversation and was currently sitting there, muttering to herself, and jotting down anything interesting she heard from the others. But the others weren’t saying much either. Why was nobody ever interested in working together for group projects? Why did they always go so poorly?
The topic was to argue anything from a headline in today’s Balarand Circle newspaper. There were literally a dozen options. But they hadn’t even picked anything out yet. And now they had twenty minutes left. This was communications class, far out of the realm of Beatrice’s interest or expertise, so there wasn’t much she could do.
The classroom, its students divided up into groups scattered around the place, had a special atmosphere reserved for the time of group projects, something nobody enjoys, and never will enjoy for the remaining history of mankind. The collective sense of frustration was so thick in the air that it was breathable. Or maybe that was sweat, because the fireplace was making this room quite warm.
“We gotta do the war story,” one of the girls said. “Dannark is gonna, like, use the new skirmish as an excuse to end the ceasefire with Doros. They’re gonna conscript all the Elincians so, uh, so they can kill all the young people and then there won’t be anyone else left to resist.”
“That’s a terrible topic,” Bodhi said. “How do you argue that?”
“Then do you got any ideas, shoe guy?”
“Obviously not.” Bodhi lowered his cap to cover most of his face, as if he were being cool or something.
Beatrice used to think this whole enthusiasm problem was endemic to religion classes– they were never going to use anything they learned in real life, so they never bothered to learn it in the first place. But communications classes were very important for adults trying to make themselves in the world, and still nobody really cared.
Only this time, Beatrice wasn’t exactly impervious to the criticisms she was mentally lobbing to her classmates.
She found her attention wandering even as her classmates spoke. Why were newspapers printed on such uninviting, rough paper, when they were read by literally tens of thousands every day? That question felt more interesting to her than anything they were currently doing, and she wasn’t even sure why.
“Well, we can talk about how they’re putting more guards at all the Nexurk shrines because of those protestors last week,” Bodhi said. “I think that’s a better topic.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” the girl from before asked.
Beatrice butted in finally, saying, “Maybe it would be a better debate if we chose a different topic than every other group in the class.”
“Like what, Bea?” the girl asked.
“Maybe, uh, something about Reo L’Hime’s floating bridge test?”
They looked at her like she was crazy.
“Isn’t it kind of interesting?”
She faced the daggers of ten pairs of extremely unenthused eyes and felt herself shrink away.
“Whatever, it’s not like I’ll be doing this much longer,” said Bodhi in an admission of defeat. “My pop’s gonna train me the moment I get the certificate.”
“That’s pretty cool,” said one of the students. “You gonna give us free shoes?”
“Yeah, if you give me all the materials and then pay me to make it.”
The conversation then became about Bodhi’s shoe cobbling and the various designs he had been tinkering with in his filled-up sketchbook.
Honestly, it was incredibly annoying that she was going to fail this assignment because she couldn’t bring her classmates to pretend to care about this subject even a little bit. They weren’t going to figure out a topic to argue, and Beatrice wasn’t going to put in the effort to try and lead the group herself. Her frown deepened, and Bodhi seemed to notice that.
“Bea, don’t worry about it,” he told her. “You’ve got the best grades in the junior priest class like, ever. They aren’t gonna hold it against Ms. Ragnell if her slacker classmates do bad on one project.”
“My name isn’t Bea,” she grumbled. “It’s not my grades, though.” She felt really sad all of a sudden. “I guess I was really hoping once I reached AA-grade there’d be more people who… I don’t know. I like being a junior priest.”
“It’s pretty fun,” the girl said. “I like the Winter Ceremonies stuff we’re doing. This here is a load of Mammoth crap though.”
“I’d be a priest if it didn’t mean I have to become some celibate traveler the rest of my life,” another classmate added. There were murmurs of agreement.
“Well, I don’t exactly…” Beatrice cut herself off. She had that conversation with herself too often. The celibacy requirement was no small deal, that was for sure.
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a jump to make it into the priesthood,” Bodhi said. “I’m glad you like it so much, but none of us really want to do that with the rest of our lives. But we know how much it means to you to do well, so… maybe we should try something for this project. For you.”
“It’s okay,” Beatrice told him. “You don’t have to do anything for me.”
It was a bit of a self-pitying comment, but they took that as a resignation to abandon the group work assignment. They ended up picking the Doros-Dannark skirmish after all… just like every other group in the class.
Oh well. It wasn’t long before the Priesthood Exams and then everything would change.
