I had no idea what my mom was talking about, but whatever she wanted to say, I knew this wasn’t the place to say it. While my dad was an outwardly stoic man, mom was the exact opposite, wearing her heart on her sleeve and being unable to hold anything back to save her life. Unfortunately, that saying might have proved to be more literal in its meaning if she wasn’t careful.

“C’mon, mom,” I said, hooking my arm under hers and dragging her deeper into the house. “Let’s get out of here first, then we can talk.”

From the way I could hear my dad talking a lot louder than he usually did, I could only assume he was trying to drown out our voices. Maybe he was just being overly cautious, and my mom wasn’t loud enough to be heard, but I knew we couldn’t be too careful.

Mom seemed to agree with my unsaid assessment and let me drag her to the opposite end of the house. As soon as she deemed it safe enough to make some noise, however, she launched herself into me. While I was bigger than her by a fair margin, I still struggled to keep my balance.

“Oh, Lena. I heard everything from your father. I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. This is all my fault,” she said, her voice shuddering with every word.

I wanted to console her, but I was a bit emotionally burnt out by this point. And something about what she said bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out exactly why.

Before I could figure out a question to ask her, she shook her head.

“No, we mustn’t give up hope just yet. Surely there must be a way to fix this. It doesn’t have to be you. Maybe I could go in your place. Your father would be furious, but he would understand.”

I looked at her, as if analyzing her would somehow make it easier to make sense of what she was saying. It didn’t help. My mom was more disheveled than I’d ever seen her before, with her usually neat hair messy and wild, like she’d been grabbing it and trying to tear it out. Her eyes were unfocused and wild, and she seemed like she was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Mom?” I asked, hating how pathetic I sounded, but not caring at the same time. “What are you talking about? You’re scaring me.”

Her eyes snapped to me, as if she just realized I was there. I almost flinched back from the intensity of the motion, even though I knew my mom would never hurt me.

“Mom,” I said, growing more anxious by the second. The fact that I had no idea what she was worried about made it all the worse. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

My mom looked at me as if I’d asked her something absurd. “I thought you would’ve figured out by now,” she said, a little cautiously. “Your father told me what had happened out there.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Dad only saw Ryuji for about ten seconds before he ran back here to talk to you.”

Mom mumbled to herself for a second before looking at me. “Lena. Can you tell me how the Otherworlder’s been acting around you?”

“Mom,” I said, growing a bit frustrated by the lack of communication. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head violently, accidentally flinging some tears onto my bare arms.

“It’s possible that your father was simply mistaken, dear. I don’t want to scare you for potentially no reason. Please. Tell me how the Otherworlder’s been acting around you.”

I wanted to protest, but the way my mom was acting was uncharacteristic of her, and frankly she was scaring me just enough that I didn’t want to argue with her. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to say. I hadn’t really been paying attention to Ryuji. I’d been much more focused on keeping my own emotions in check.

“He’s been…” I paused, struggling to find the right words to describe Ryuji. “Pretty normal,” I say, surprising myself when I realized it was the truth. Mostly. “Aside from the fact that he cast a fireball big enough to burn a city to ashes, without breaking a sweat, he’s been acting surprisingly normal.”

Somehow, my mom didn’t seem to care about my description of Ryuji’s abilities.

“Normal, how?” she asked instead. “How exactly has he been interacting with you?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“That’s not helpful,” my mom said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking them. “Lena, honey. Please try to think.”

I felt my fear slipping away and slowly being replaced by irritation. “I don’t know,” I said, stressing each word as I peeled my mom’s hands away. I was still growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. “It’s been more than a bit stressful for me mom. “If you could just stop talking in riddles and just tell me what’s going on, maybe I could tell you what you want to know.”

My mom flinched back, as if just realizing that she was treating me so roughly. “I-I’m sorry dear,” she said. Biting her lip nervously. She opened her mouth and closed it, as if thinking about what to say, before she stared me in the eyes. “Just tell me. You must have been walking around with him. How were you walking? Side-by-side? Him leading the way? Were you leading the way?”

Of all the options she suggested, the last one was easily the one she seemed most nervous about. I hesitated to answer, since it was clearly the one answer she wouldn’t be happy about, but I still had no idea why such a thing could even matter.

“I was walking in front.”

My mom gasped and stumbled backwards. Normally I might have lunged forwards to catch her before she fell, but her reaction was so unexpected and nonsensical that I remained frozen in place.

“Lena,” she said, apparently unfazed by the hard fall. “Please tell me, were the two of you making good conversation? Or did the Otherworlder seem silent or distracted in any way?”

Again, the way that my mom’s voice shuddered as she described the second option made it obvious that it was the wrong one, but unfortunately, that was what had happened. Though we made a little bit of small talk, I couldn’t honestly say that we’d talked all that much. I hadn’t been in the mood to complain either. If Ryuji didn’t want to talk, then it was less chance for me to screw up.

“He was pretty quiet.”

My mom let out a low moan. “It’s just as I feared.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d yelled at my mom, but I was seriously considering it. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that a volatile mage was standing at the other end of the house. I still had no idea how similar an Otherworlder’s anatomy was to ours, but I wasn’t discarding the possibility that he had enhanced hearing. “What’s just as you feared?” I hissed instead. “You still haven’t told me anything, mom.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all my fault.”

I felt my eyelid twitch at the non-answer. I leaned down and grabbed her shoulders, hard enough for it to be impossible to ignore, but not hard enough to hurt her. “Mom. What is it? If it involves me, I deserve to know.” Though I had intended to say it with conviction, I suppose the shakiness behind my voice took away some of the power behind my request.

Even so, my mom looked me in the eyes, tears flowing down her cheeks and nodded hesitantly.

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“You.” She paused, taking a shaky breath to gather her composure. She didn’t seem to find it, but she spoke anyways. “You’ve got a lovely ass.”

I wasn’t surprised that I’d somehow misheard her, with how badly her teeth were chattering as she said it. Maybe if it were any other context, I would’ve laughed at the absurdity of what I misheard, but I was just too stressed to find any sort of humour in the situation.

“Sorry mom,” I said. “I couldn’t hear you properly. What did you say?”

My mom looked up at me, took another deep breath, and spoke again, this time with a bit more clarity.

“You’ve got a lovely ass. Breasts too. It’s likely he hasn’t noticed yet, if he’s been trailing behind you. But when he does…” My mom trailed off, choking on her words as she sniffled.

Even though I definitely hadn’t misheard her that time, there was no way I hadn’t misheard her.

“What?” I asked, again.

“You got it from me,” she said, completely misunderstanding my confusion. “We come from a long line of women blessed with immaculate genes.”

I opened my mouth, as if to respond, but no words came out. My mom held her face in her hands as a low gasping sob escaped from between her fingers.

“I’m sorry. Ryuji’s infatuated with you, Lena. But don’t worry. We’ll get you out of this somehow. I wouldn’t be able to live if you became a follower.”

“Mom,” I said, finally finding my voice. “What are you talking about? There’s no way Ryuji would fall in love with me after a few minutes.”

“It happened to your father,” my mom said, her voice taking a wistful lilt to it. She gazed towards me, but her eyes didn’t seem to actually register me properly. “It was eighteen years ago on the midsummer festival, at the peak of the celebration. I had my eye on your father for some time at this point, but he never seemed to notice me until that night. I was wearing a dress that my mother had woven for me, but I had taken the liberty of modifying it to show off a bit more than she’d hoped. She was so angry at me.”

I grabbed her shoulders, intending to shake them and snap her back into reality when I realized something strange about what she said. Whenever I’d asked them about it before, I’d never gotten a clear answer about how my parents had met. Though it was a relatively minor thing I shouldn’t have taken notice of, in the context of my current situation, but the truth of my parent’s marriage had evaded me for so long that I couldn’t help but notice.

Eighteen years ago? Wasn’t I seventeen?

I was pretty terrible at math, so a liberal shake of my head was enough to stop my attempts to calculate how many months separated my birthday and the midsummer festival. Unfortunately, hearing that my birth was potentially the result of a one-night stand was the least of my problems. I would process that trauma once I was more certain of my upcoming survival.

“Okay fine,” I said, shaking my mom’s shoulders and ignoring the horrifying implications on the circumstances of my birth. “But you at least knew dad and he knew you. Ryuji is a stranger. There’s no way he could fall in love with me so easily?”

I’d meant for that to be a statement, but I had a moment of weakness, the smell of hellfire still too fresh in my memory to completely ignore the possibility, despite how ridiculous it was.

My mom stared at me, a look of pity in her eyes.

“Oh, my sweet child,” she said. “You never did understand the hearts of boys.”

My fear had slowly been melting away for a while now, being replaced with exasperation at my mom’s ridiculous theory, but I had refused to completely dismiss it since it could potentially mean my survival. But the casual insult finally tipped me over the edge, as a wave of heat blossomed over my face. Ever since I was a kid, I’d always hung out with boys more than I did with the other girls. Even if I had been interested in dating, the dating pool in the village was non-existent. I knew the boys in the village well enough that I would either feel too disgusted or too awkward to ever consider it. I knew my mom disapproved, constantly telling me that she was afraid I would never end up getting married, but I hadn’t expected her paranoia to extend to the point where she was acting so rashly when there was a very real threat to our village standing at the other end of the house.

“Mom,” I said, my voice coming out without stuttering for the first time in a while. “This isn’t the time.”

“Isn’t the time for what?” my mom asked.

I felt my brow furrow in frustration. I couldn’t tell if she was pretending to be innocent, or if she genuinely believed that she had no idea why I was so frustrated with her. First the mayor, and now my mom. I could only hope that my dad wasn’t somehow signing the village’s death warrant while he was unsupervised.

“We need to make sure the village is safe,” I said, wincing when I realized that I’d said ‘we’. It seemed that I’d accepted the idea that I had some sort of responsibility in containing the threat that was Ryuji. Before today, I had no idea the adults in the village could be so unreliable. “Then we need to make sure the Crown knows that another Otherworlder’s here. Ryuji already seems to be interested in staying in the village for a bit, so that’s more than enough time to get someone to ride towards the City with the news.”

Not having bothered to get up since she’d fallen, my mom stared up at me, a look of confusion in her eyes. “Yes, of course,” she said.

I nodded, glad we were finally in agreement with something. “I already promised Ryuji to ‘lend’ him some money for the trip, but he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to leave and I think it would be safer to keep him in the village for at least a day, just so he doesn’t feel like we’re kicking him out,” I said, immediately hating the suggestion.

“Lena,” my mom said, slowly pushing herself up off the floor. “Why don’t you leave all that to the adults?”

“I would. If I hadn’t seen firsthand how useless you adults could be.” At the moment, my panic was too strong to maintain any sense of politeness. Thankfully, my mom didn’t seem to notice or care about the casual insult. “If dad seems to be handling Ryuji well, I’ll let him take the reins, but from what I’ve seen, letting anyone else handle the situation might just be the fastest way to commit suicide via Otherworlder.”

My mom shook her head violently, grabbing my shoulders again. “You mustn’t get yourself any more involved with this. The more you expose yourself to Ryuji, the more he will come to fall for you.” She paused, letting go and biting her lip nervously. “Although we shouldn’t keep you away for too long. Distance does make the heart grow fonder.”

I threw my hands up in frustration.

“Mom! I get it! I’m not good with boys. I know I’ve never had a boyfriend before. You’ve been drilling that into my head for my entire life,” I said. It wasn’t as bad as I might’ve implied, but the way that my mom brought my non-existent love life up in random conversations did get on my nerves. I hadn’t thought that it would be bad enough to interrupt in a life-or-death situation like the one we found ourselves in, but today had been full of surprises.

“Lena-“

From the look in her eyes, I knew she was just going to say the same thing. I cut her off with a frustrated groan, as I pulled at my hair.

“Mom! This is serious,” I said. “We need to focus on the village.”

“I care about you more than I do this village,” she snapped.

“I live in this village, mom! We all do! I’m not in any more danger than anyone else here. Ryuji doesn’t care at all about me.”

I turned around before my mom could even open her mouth to reply.

“I’ll prove it.”

I vaguely heard my name being whimpered by my mom as I stalked down the hallway. I ignored her and walked across the house, approaching the door that led to the storefront where my dad and Ryuji were talking.

When I opened the door, I was surprised to see my dad trying to kill Ryuji with his meat.

Or at least that’s what it looked like at first.

The amount of free goods that my dad had piled into Ryuji’s arms was absurd. It looked like Dad had taken a large canvas bag that was typically used to transport large carcasses, and had stuffed it with anything and everything he could find in his inventory. But even though the bag looked like it should’ve crushed a man of Ryuji’s stature, with it weighing about three times as much as he did, the Otherworlder was casually lifting the mass with one hand.

My Dad’s face was mostly expressionless, but his slightly wider eyes suggested that he was on the verge of passing out from fear. Ryuji, on the other hand, was looking up at his feat of strength with a sense of childish wonder.

Neither of them had noticed me entering the room, but in my shock at Ryuji’s display of strength, I hadn’t had the sense to close the door gently. It was a heavy door, designed to keep the smells of the butchery and the house separate, so when it slammed shut behind me, my dad and Ryuji both looked towards me.

My dad didn’t seem to recognize me for a split second, but his eyes widened with fear at the sight of me, even more so than they already had been. Ryuji almost dropped the goods that my dad had given him, but caught it when he saw me.

And he smiled.

“Hi Lena,” he said.

It was at that moment that I internally apologized to my mom and said a silent prayer to the Gods, asking them to treat me well in the Aether when I died.

I recognized that smile.

It was the same smile that my dad got on his face when my mom snuck up behind him to give him a hug after a long day of work, the only time his expression didn’t seem so stiff. It was the same smile that Bran got when Polly waved at him from across the road, giggling whenever he would trip over himself and fall flat on his face. It was the same smile that my dog would get before he started humping everything that moved, until one day he tried to hump a moving cart and got crushed underneath its wheels.

Fuck.

“I forgot something,” I said, before opening the door that I came in from and ran down the hallway.

It wasn’t long before I ran into my mother’s arms, shivering as I pushed myself into her chest. I didn’t cry, even though I desperately wanted to. I felt too dry to summon any tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Shh, shh. I know.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You won’t,” she said. “We won’t let him take you.”

I shuddered in my mom’s arms, recalling the gout of fire that Ryuji had so easily conjured from his palms. The way he could lift a horse’s weight in meat without even straining. I tried to imagine my mom picking up a sword and trying to fight with that. I trusted my mom, but I wasn’t blind to the truth of the situation.

I whimpered.