I didn’t know how I wanted Hyraj to react. Maybe she would quietly accept it, the two of us going our own ways from now on. Maybe she would tell me it was a waste and to just go with her. Maybe she would get angry, upset that I would decide something like this without talking to her.

It was like I wanted to have my cake and eat it. Wanted her to be upset, but didn’t want to upset her. I knew that was too selfish, though, so I just waited to see how she did react, willing to accept it. That was the least I could do.

So I waited, watching her as she sat there, hand still in her backpack. Her expression never changed, her tone—when she finally did speak—level and unhurried.

“Is it that? Well, I am sure you have carefully considered the matter.”

The weight of all the maybes melted at those words and left behind a hollowness as I found out how unimportant I was to her. Then again, was I one to talk? Would it not have been stranger for her to want to stay with someone who wanted to abandon her?

There I went, giving myself more worries.

“I have tried,” I whispered, scared to speak normally in case my voice cracked.

A moment of silence hung for painfully long before she finished fishing out whatever it was she was after in her backpack. “Then, I suppose we shall need to make sure you have whatever it is you need too,” she said, standing up.

I didn’t know how I felt, but I also stood up and followed behind her as she left the house.

The streets were usually quiet at this time of day, but that had been for the week. Now, children played on the cobblestone road while parents made groups at the side of the road, mostly mothers, but maybe a third fathers? The children made their groups too, some older ones kicking around a ball, some younger ones just chasing each other in circles, some in the middle playing make-believe, huddled together with dolls and wielding sticks like swords.

It was nice. At the orphanage, there were a lot more children than TVs, so it wasn’t like we could all spend every day off happily watching what we wanted. Until they were five or six or so, the little ones could spend hours playing mums and babies, or sisters. Playing happy families.

Of course, we weren’t there for that, so we walked over the couple streets to the main road where most of the shops were. I had gone with Fesa before for groceries, but those weren’t quite the places Hyraj was interested in visiting now.

No, we went to a tailor first, or maybe a seamstress? I had sort of thought those were just, like, the gendered names for the same job, but that was because I hadn’t thought about it before. Although the store was run by a man, he had a female assistant who measured Hyraj while he chatted about (what I guessed were) fabrics and styles. Left to think about the difference between a tailor and seamstress, I wondered if it was what kind of clothing they made and maybe he was a seamstress—a seamster?

I wasn’t sure how clothing shops worked in my world before sewing machines and all that, so I had no clue if they had ready-made clothes or would make new ones. In the end, it was a bit of both, the man showing off some dresses before taking them back into the back, maybe to adjust them? Whatever the reason, Hyraj walked over to me and I thought that meant it was time to go.

Turned out, I was wrong.

“May she take measures of you now?” Hyraj asked, gesturing at the woman with the measuring tape.

I froze up, very much not expecting that. Slowly regaining the ability to speak, I stuttered, saying, “Th-that, um, no, no need.”

Hyraj raised an eyebrow. “You have one set of clothes, what are you to wear when washing them?”

I had nothing to say to that.

A little later, we left the store for the time being. Dresses weren’t adjusted in a minute. Anyway, she didn’t need much else. Some more oil for her lamp, a set of cutlery from the blacksmith (who just made household things, not swords and armour), nothing else she bought particularly interesting. An hour or so passed before we headed back to the clothing store.

There were some other customers this time, the manager chatting to them as the assistant measured someone, but he quickly finished that conversation and came over to us. “Ah, our valued customer! Please, we won’t be a moment,” he said, then immediately strode off to the door to the back.

I wondered why he seemed to treat Hyraj so well, noticing the other customers giving us a kind of dirty look? But the reason why he did was pretty obvious when a woman from the back came through with like five dresses. They were nothing fancy, this not a fancy shop in a not fancy village. White-ish, linen-ish cloth that went from wrist to ankle, no real embellishment beyond a pretty bit of sewing around the neckline, a sort of lacy pattern, but sewn into the cloth, no lace attached to it.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

As well as those, there was also a blouse and like clown trousers? Loose except for the ends. I wondered if those were her pyjamas… up until she handed them to me, asking, “How are they?”

Not for the first time, it took me a moment to realise, only then checking them properly. They honestly felt a bit rough, wrinkled just from holding them. “Great,” I said, softly smiling.

She turned around and paid, the manager including a basket for her to carry the clothes in. Despite me trying to take the basket and the manager trying to give it to me, she carried it. That part of her really hadn’t changed since we were camping out in the woods.

Outside, we walked—not back to the house. I wondered if there was something else she still wanted to get, taking us along the main road to the far side of the village I hadn’t been to before. Shops and houses lined the road for a while, then there was a short break of nothing before some other buildings.

They looked newer, but older, made of bricks that were all the same size, yet covered in grime. No one cared about keeping them clean. They were all two-storey buildings too, some bigger, and we eventually came to one that was rather big indeed. I realised why we were here when I read the sign on the gate in front of it: The Tax Office. Well, that was my interpretation of it now that I knew more about the jobs there.

“I should be working here and living in the dormitory adjacent,” Hyraj said, gesturing at the smaller building beside the office, “if you have need of me.”

I tried not to cry, suddenly reminded of our situation and all the emotions began to rush forward. “And you know where I’ll be if you have need of me,” I whispered, afraid my voice would crack if I spoke louder.

“Indeed.”

The long walk back was in silence and I was thankful for that, giving me time to pull myself together. It felt like having more goodbyes in my life actually made the next goodbye even harder. Because I knew goodbye meant goodbye, that no one actually came back if they could help it. Not at the orphanage.

It was hard to tell myself this time would be different, not when I knew I had nothing to offer her. Still, I put on a smile, held my head up, ready to play pretend for another week.

Arriving back at the house, I left my new clothes in the room, then went out to watch the little ones while Driddle and Fesa cooked, needed that normalcy right now; Hyraj stayed in the room, saying, “I shall go out for lunch shortly.”

So I sat in the lounge. Chroj was here today, off in the corner whittling with Herf next to him, watching. Chroj was an apprentice carpenter. Well, right now he was more like the apprentice’s apprentice, mostly sweeping and sorting wood; carpentry was usually a family business, so he was doing the jobs the child taking over the business would do at his age. Most of it went over my head, but I didn’t want Driddle thinking I was dumb, so I didn’t ask too much.

I also knew about Mr Lurchen now. He worked in a town nearby, but nearby meant more than a day’s walk, so he didn’t come home much when his work was in season. She’d told me the job, but I had pretended I knew it when I really had no clue, nothing like any word I’d heard before.

Their situation was pretty sad. Parents didn’t approve of their marriage, so their families didn’t help even after the first kids were born, so they moved somewhere they could at least make enough money to support themselves. How she spoke, I thought it was normal here for grandparents to help look after the kids, get old clothes and cots from cousins—some of the stuff I knew went on with families in my world. Well, even at the orphanage, we handed down clothes and toys and stuff.

Anyway, I understood why they needed to rent and other people here maybe didn’t. Made me feel like, even though I was being kind of selfish to stay here, I was also helping this struggling family. Helped me feel better about it all.

Idly thinking about that while watching Lallie tease Yinnie with a piece of yarn—very much making me think of teasing a cat—Driddle popped through, joining me.

“How was shops with the Selyo? See me surprised you weren’t carrying basket,” she said, ending with a chuckle.

I softly laughed too, but that word—Selyo—lingered in my head. Still hadn’t found a good time to ask Hyraj about it. “It was fine. Oh, she bought me some… sleep clothes,” I said, cringing at how I had started to speak before realising I didn’t know the word for pyjamas.

“Is it that? Must be a lucky day, maybe I’ll get a cheque from Da,” she said, her tone still light.

It rubbed me the wrong way, though. That had happened a few times by now. Something about the way she spoke about Hyraj leaving me feeling like I was missing the joke, but couldn’t see how. It was never something bad, no, just… something.

She moved on, chatting about other things, and I started to forget the feeling. But then she said, “It’s good you can get away from her. Really, she gives you lefsonsa and thinks you’ll stay with her? Selyosa don’t understand real people.”

And it clicked.

I didn’t know what to say, what to do, thankful she had at least been too involved in her own rambling to not notice my reaction. Once I could think, I felt the need to escape—right now. It took me a moment to fumble together any words that would work, careful to plan them about before I started speaking this time.

“Sorry, but I remembered something. Can I check it quick?” I said, gesturing at my room.

“Go on, then. Nothing Fesa can’t handle today,” she said, smiling.

It almost hurt to smile back.

A blur, one moment I was sitting next to her at the child-sized table, the next I was back in our room, curled up on the floor with my back to the door. One second, two, and I finally noticed a gentle sound.

“Louise?”

I looked up, seeing Hyraj there. Of all the things in my mind right now, there was one that pounded like a migraine, so I softly asked, “What does ‘Selyo’ mean?”

Long before she spoke, I saw the answer on her face. The face that never showed anything. All that time looking for her little smiles meant I knew exactly what the opposite of a smile was, like I could see the flash of anger in her eyes.

I bowed my head, already putting together an apology, should have known better than to even say the word so blatantly, just like I wouldn’t have asked someone in my world about a slur.

The shortened sorry wasn’t enough. “My apolog—”

Before I could finish that long word, her finger touched my lips, silencing me. I slowly looked up, only to see her step away and sit at the table. For a moment, I wondered if I had imagined it, but there was a taste lingering on my lips. A hand cream I’d seen in her backpack that had a subtle smell like citrus.

“Shall we go out for lunch?” she asked.

I nodded.