Hana couldn’t remember many nights in her life that rivaled the awkwardness of the one she had just spent. Her tent was still soaked, despite her best attempts at drying it. While Hana was happy to sleep inside it, the boy called Mati suggested that they sleep outside instead, taking shifts to stoke the fire so they wouldn’t freeze to death or “get eaten by your boyfriend, if he comes back,” as he had put it. She didn’t appreciate the humor, even though he had probably saved her life.

She also didn’t appreciate him staring at her while she tried to drift off to sleep. He looked mostly harmless, save for the sheathed sword at his side, but what kind of person would be trekking through these woods alone? Besides her, that was.

So around mid-night, she sat up from her spot on the ground, and faced her supposed savior.

“What’s your story?” she asked.

“Don’t have one,” he replied.

“Sure you do. You’re out here, alone. You must be going somewhere.”

“That seems like a good assumption,” he replied, scratching his nose.

“Are you going to make me ask a million questions, or can you talk like a normal person?”

If there was anything worse than an annoying traveling companion, it was one that wouldn’t even have the decency to help her pass the time.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Mati said. “I don’t quite feel like myself at the moment, so I’d rather not speculate.”

“What happened to you? A bump on the head? You were attacked by amnesia spiders?”

“What are those?”

“I don’t know! I just made them up. Maybe you should just go to sleep, so I can sit here by myself.”

“OK,” he said, and promptly turned away from the fire and laid down. A few minutes later, he was snoring so loudly, Hana thought her parents could probably hear him.

Her parents. She wondered how they took the news that their only daughter, their pride and joy, was now basically dead. Hana had tried to put something down on paper, but the words refused to come, so all she had managed to write was “I’m sorry.”

Which was true, but not really. It was the Elders who should have been sorry. For lying to her, to everyone, for all those years. She at least took some small satisfaction that they were now faced with a future without purpose, and could do nothing now but hope that Hana somehow managed to destroy that stupid sword.

She pulled out the map again, trying to figure out how many more days of camping in the woods were ahead of her before she reached the town of Marburel, but the next thing she knew, she was waking up on the ground, next to the smoldering fire, the map nowhere to be found, with the boy holding a piece of charred fish only a few inches in front of her face.

“Breakfast?” he said, smiling.

“Eww, gross. Get that thing away from me!”

She sprung up from her resting spot, inadvertently knocking Mati’s hand aside, causing the offering to fall to the ground.

Surveying the scene and Mati’s somewhat shocked expression, Hana felt a twinge of embarrassment. The loud hunger pang that gurgled out from her stomach only made her feel even more ridiculous. She was out here by herself, with no friends or family coming to save her, and she slapped away the only person actually trying to help?

“I’m sorry,” she said, picking up the fish, which she hoped wasn’t too dirty. “I was a bit startled, that’s all. I ... I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s OK,” said Mati. “Maybe waking you up with bowfin wasn’t the best idea.”

“Whatsathat?” said Hana, who had greedily stuffed most of the serving into her mouth. She had to admit, it tasted quite delicious. There was a tang of citrus from somewhere and somehow, even though they are leagues away from the tropics, and it was salted just right.

“This is ... amazing,” she said. “And I’ve gone and ate the whole thing. Looks like I’m on a roll.”

“Don’t worry,’” said Mati. “I ate already. Down by the stream. Was a bit impatient.”

“Oh,” said Hana. “If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get the limon?”

Mati chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“That’s what you’re wondering about? How I carried a cured fruit halfway around the Continent?

“Well,” said Hana, feeling a bit silly. “You weren’t answering any of my other more serious questions. I’m just trying to be polite!”

“Fair enough,” said Mati. “And it’s not limon, it’s actually bark from a tree found only in this forest that somehow mimics the taste of citrus.”

“Oh,” said Hana. “That sounds less exciting than I was hoping for.”

“If you want excitement, you’ve come to the wrong section of the Continent. We’re pretty far from the Great Cities, and even the towns are tiny.”

“Maybe I like tiny,” said Hana. “Where I’m from...”

She stopped and reminded herself that she was no longer an Arristian. She was Bevellarian through and through.

“... it’s so intense, crazy, full of people, colors, and tall buildings. I needed to get away from it all before it swallowed me whole.”

“That’s Bevellar for you,” said Mati. “Been there a few times myself. Some of them weren’t terrible. Is Tina’s still there? Some of the best noodles in the Library District.”

“Umm, I think unfortunately it’s not around anymore. But I don’t live so close to there.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Oh, too bad. Where do you live?”

Hana swallowed. She hadn’t thought this lie through to the various branches. She hadn’t been to Bevellar, her parents hadn’t been to Bevellar. The closest she had gotten to the City was reading an old history that one of the Travelers had brought back. But it did sound like a fascinating place.

“Somewhere that’s not very impressive. Anyway!”

She stood up too enthusiastically and accidentally knocked over her pack, which made her feel additionally foolish, if that was even possible.

“I should probably get going. I’m not going to get to Marburel just by sitting around and talking.”

“Oh, OK,” said Mati.

“I guess I never asked you. Where are you headed?”

Mati considered the question for a moment, but just shrugged his shoulders.

“Dunno,” he said.

“What do you mean, you ‘dunno’? You don’t live here in the woods, right?”

“No.”

“So where do you live?”

“I’m not sure, really.”

Hana looked at the boy with his sad features. She could obviously empathize with his situation. She knew exactly what it felt like to be lost. But she had enough problems to deal with. Taking on a stray was not something she was equipped to handle at the moment.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I hope you find your way.”

She picked up her pack, stowed her map inside the pocket of her jacket, and walked away from the camping site.

“Don’t look back, don’t look back,” she said to herself. She wasn’t going back, couldn’t go back. Forward was the only way, even if it meant dying in the process.

Hana made it about 30 seconds before she did an about face.

“Come on,” she said to Mati, whose head perked up when she re-entered the clearing. “Let’s go.”

----------------------------------------

“You sure you’re not hungry?”

Hana was stuffing her face with some sort of fried potato concoction that she had purchased from a colorfully decorated food stand just off the Marburel village square.

“No, I’m good. But, umm, you enjoy.”

“Thank you, I certainly will!”

The cuisine in Marburel, despite its close proximity to Arris, was like a world away. Spices, crunch, colorful vegetables, it was an explosion of taste and sight that Hana was not used to. Her village had been workmanlike in its approach to everything, and that meant food as well. They were concerned with yield and sufficient nutrition, not pleasure. She understood it, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. Now, she supposed, she could eat whatever she wanted.

“What is it you want to do here?” asked Mati. “You seemed very eager to get to this town, but we’ve spent the last hour wandering around the food stands and not much else.”

“Can’t tell you. Top secret,” Hana mumbled between the last few bites of her starchy treat. She wasn’t sure how much further Mati was going to travel with her, but if this lasted more than a few days, she was going to need some sort of cover story. Fortunately, the rest of the journey to Marburel had given her ample time to think and ... she had come up with nothing. Hopefully something would spark her imagination after she met with the deacon later in the afternoon.

“You’re funny,” said Mati.

“That’s what they always said about me back home.”

In truth, Hana had always been too serious to have been called funny. Her would-be beau Leras had enough humor for the both of them, she had told herself. Now perhaps he would be free to find someone with a similar disposition.

“Well, I have a bit of time to kill before my meeting. You can follow me around if you want, or if you want to go off on your own for a bit ...”

She hoped he would get the hint that she wanted to be alone. Helping him get here was good enough in her book, and if he wasn’t capable of finding anyone in this town to help him, then she really didn’t want to be stuck with him, even despite his pleasant face and long arms.

“Walking around aimlessly sounds right up my alley!”

“Really?” said Hana. “Then I guess let’s walk down to the river edge.”

Marburel sat on the aptly named Marburel River, which fed into the larger Gallawash, which conveniently deposited one at the Great City of Calaniera if one were so inclined to transfer to one of the ships at Lakevale, a slightly larger town on settled on both sides of the Wash. Hana predicted there was a good chance the deacon would be sending her there next.

With the lunch hour winding down, the dockworkers were back at it, loading up goods from the local merchants to be shipped up or down river. Hana marveled at the sheer amount of stacked crates, a third of which probably contained the sum total of every possession in Arris. She recalled one of her birthdays, when her mother had gifted her with a silke scarf from Zanarkland, and imagined that it must have passed through here.

“Out of the way, Uplander!” shouted one of the workers, who was for some reason carrying three crates at once, and Hana dashed to the side, while drawing a peculiar look from Mati.

“What’s an Uplander?” he asked, and she froze. Of course her features would mark her as a daughter of the Upland mountain villages, even though hers was much more reclusive than the others.

“Where my parents were from, before they moved to Bevellar. Sore subject,” she quickly blurted out.

“I see,” said Mati.

Not wanting to discuss the matter further, Hana dashed up the stone steps leading away from the docks and back to the main thoroughfare. Her instructions from the Elder had been brief: seek out the deacon, give him whatever was inside the small sealed envelope she had been given, and tell him simply that “the Soul of Ayre must be cured!” She had no idea why there was talk of curing when she was supposed to somehow destroy the Bane, but for the sake of her sanity, she was trying to take everything one small step at a time.

The Church’s buildings formed an open courtyard of sorts, with the chapel set at the center. The only other piece of advice she was given was that it would not be a good idea to take the sword inside the halo of the Church. Hana was obviously not given any time to interrogate what that meant, but she took it to mean that she needed to stow the blade somewhere else while she spoke with the deacon. Fortunately, there were many bushes abutting the side of one of the peripheral buildings, and so, after making sure no one was watching, Hana stashed her bag in the shrubbery and hoped no one would come across it.

“You don’t have to come inside,” she told Mati as she walked along the cobblestone path toward the red double doors that loomed in front of her. “I think I can manage all by myself.”

“You say that now,” said the boy, again clearly ignoring her not so subtle clue to take a momentary hike, “but when you get attacked by church slimes, you are going to be thankful I came with you.”

“What the heck is a church slime? You’re just making stuff up!”

“I most certainly am not,” said Mati. “A church slime is a slime that lives in the bowels of a church or other holy building. They-“

Hana tuned out the rest of the answer as she pulled open one of the doors and stepped inside.

“Whoa,” she said, staring up at the massive arched ceiling that stretched far off into the distance. At the back of the chapel, a gleaming multi-colored window cast different shades of light on various podiums that were scattered along a raised platform.

“Do they have a church like this where you’re from?” she asked Mati, but turned around to find that he was no longer behind her.

“Hey!” she called out. “Where did you go?”

After a few more seconds of no response, Hana shrugged her shoulders and walked down the church aisle. It was eerily quiet, more so than Hana expected on a weekday. At the small church in Arris, it was common and welcome for the townspeople to take respite there, even to read a book. That there were no other people in the massive sanctuary was a bit off, but Hana wasn’t planning to stay here long anyway.

She eventually spotted the deacon half-asleep in the second row, his head leaning against the back of the bench in front of him.

“Ahem,” she said, but the man’s eyes remained closed. Hana looked around to see if there was someone perhaps more helpful waiting in the wings, but seeing no one, she tried again.

“Excuse me!”

She hadn’t meant to shout but the cavernous building carried her voice up and down the pews, finally stirring the man awake.

“Oh, hmmm,” the man said, finally coming to. “Yes, can I help you?”

“I’m ... from Arris,” said Hana. “The Elder sent me here, to give you this.”

She handed him the envelope, which was closed with a small red seal. He examined the front and back, which were blank, before breaking it open. Although she couldn’t see what was inside, she saw his eyes grow wide as his hand groped within the paper confines.

“Is that it?” he asked, plainly.

“Umm ... oh! The Soul of Ayre must be cured!”

“Aye, that is must be. But I’m afraid...”

The man suddenly lurched forward, grabbing Hana’s hand, and she shrieked in pain, like her skin was on fire. A look of horror came over her face as the deacon’s eyes glowed red with a crackling foul energy.

“... that the cure is going to be worse than the disease.”