I had awoken to a pitiful scene, chairs and tables scattered across the inn and a letter atop me along with a child who had seemingly fallen asleep against the worn-down walls. I could only recall bits and pieces from the night before after I had played on her trauma, but I'm sure whatever happened couldn't have gone well. I managed to get one line she screamed at me from that supposed argument,

"I can't believe how horrible I must be for ever trusting you."

That line alone rang in my ears. Was this something she said because of my provocation or was it some buried belief of hers, emotions that she kept chained for one reason or another? Did she always see me as someone who she had to pretend to like, someone who she couldn't ever tell the truth?

These thoughts plagued me until I could no longer bear the incessant paranoia wracking my mind, and I was forced to get myself together and move on with the day so as to have any hope of distracting myself from the indescribable mistake I had made the night before.

When I stood up, the letter that was supported by my body fell to the ground. It was from her. Maybe it would offer some explanation? Of all the things that I could read, I hope that I won't have to hear more criticism from her than I am already giving to myself. When I opened the letter I didn't find some long, drawn-out explanation of her feelings, nor did I find anything concerning the night we had just experienced, all that was written were four words.

"Deal with the child."

Right. The child. He was still asleep on the wall when I looked over at him for the second time. How did this random child get here? I assume either she found him somewhere nearby and decided to make me atone for all my sleights by forcing me to foster this random kid, or he walked in on our fight and got caught in whatever crossfire ensued between us. He looked extremely skinny, nearly malnourished, with pitch-black hair that stretched to his shoulders on the back but rested right over his eyes. The only other people I've met with that hair were from the eastern nation of Elknid, however, he didn't have any clothes or possessions on him that would tell me where exactly he was from. He was dressed in rags that were hanging onto him for dear life, and in his left hand lay a pocket watch with the chain linked to the rags around his torso. I walked over to the child to wake him up so I may have a better chance at understanding how exactly he got here, but as I walked over I was able to see behind him, and there was my answer. A katana nearly half his size was what he chose to balance between him and the wall as he dozed off. While this confirmed that he was from Elknid, only a few families ever had swords that were made with specific stylistic choices for them, like the handle or the guard. Usually, the sheath was imprinted with the crest of whatever family the sword was made for, along with a specific color of the sheath itself, but this one was so worn down that I couldn't discern a specific color, much less any sort of thing resembling a crest. Whenever the highly renowned noble families of Elknid birthed a son there would be parades marching through the streets, and eventually, all of the other nations would catch wind of the news, but I hadn't heard of any of those families having children, let alone a boy recently enough for this child to be from one of them.

I flicked the boy on the head until he eventually woke up. Maybe a bit too hard though, he seemed disoriented when he finally opened his eyes, at least more so than any normal person would be when they're just waking up. When his eyes met mine I prepared to ask him a few questions, but as quickly as he had awoken he dashed away from me to the other side of the inn.

"I'm not going to kill you, I just need to ask you a few questions."

He was shivering. The fire had presumably been out since the innkeeper had left, he wouldn't trust two people getting more drunk by the second to make sure the entire place didn't burn down. He looked at me, and then back to the katana he was clutching close to his chest. He readied the blade by his side and it seemed as though he was preparing to draw it.

"Hold on just a second. First off, you wouldn't win a fight against me if you tried your hardest. I don't think in your state you could even start a fight with anyone. Second, if I wanted to remove you from the face of this earth you wouldn't be here preparing to swing your heirloom at me fearing for your life. Finally, you had been asleep until sunrise this morning when I woke up, and I haven't done anything to you yet. I don't want anything from you, you're just some kid who ran away from his home and is now trying to survive by hoping to run into some good samaritans. I'm either hung over or recovering from being knocked unconscious, so either way I really have no reason to hurt some random child who I woke up in the same room as. Can you, at the least, answer my questions? You don't have to come over here, I just need some sort of understanding of what is going on around me."

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The kid returned his sword to his chest, and he grabbed a nearby chair to sit down. I could hear his entire body recoil as he sat, how long had he been out in the countryside alone? The trip from Elkid to Melantia is long enough when you go through the capital, if you go around it you have to navigate the woods adjacent to Aerdal which is hard enough for professional adventurers.

"Now, where did you come from? How did you get to this village?"

He didn't respond, he just sat there with his sword and stared at me.

"Can you speak?"

He nodded.

"Are you going to?"

He shook his head.

"Great, well I guess we're going to ask only yes or no questions. Did you come from Elkrid?"

He stood still once again.

"Well now I'm lost, you can't answer questions without speaking either?"

He started to shake his head, but eventually, he took a deep breath. His lungs sounded like that of the innkeeper's.

"I don't remember where I was yesterday. I woke up and I was here."

He started violently coughing, and before falling to the floor he managed to get one more thing out:

"I need water!"

I sprinted over and caught him before his head hit the floor, he clearly couldn't withstand another injury. Just as I was lying him down on his back the innkeeper had opened the door and walked in. I stumbled over my words as I tried to explain the scene he was viewing.

"Listen I, uh, a lot of stuff happened- you know friendship is complicated-"

"She told me what happened last night already, patron."

"Well you joining in to chastise me shouldn't be your priority right now, this kid needs water and I don't remember where you put the version of it that isn't taken from the local stream but I ask that you give him that water."

"I do not know what you could possibly be talking about-"

"Now isn't the time to be saving face, he's morbidly dehydrated and just passed out after saying a few words."

The innkeeper rushed over and grabbed a glass bottle from the shelf under the barrels full of beer and wine. It had a stamp on it from the capital. Probably his personal supply. He rushed it over to me while opening it and I forced the entire bottle down the kid's throat. He seemed disheartened that this water was being used.

"For the record, by the way, anyone who isn't drunk can tell that at least something is wrong with the water that you hand out to the masses. One whiff of it and I can already make out the watered-down piss. It's also hard to not notice that you practically deny people access to the water until they've had three or more drinks. Harder to tell that water doesn't seem quite right when you're still recovering from the aftertaste of alcohol."

"I am not going to spend thousands of Melus on clean water. Maybe if you had not ridiculed that noble family that was trying to stop people from mistreating every single source of water they could find because you thought they were trying to impose their will on the 'poor citizens of defenseless Rheadrith' then we would not have this issue."

"The nobles always pretend to have a cause that befits their reputation, how many other towns do you think have been ransacked for every resource they could muster because the people believed snobs who lamented about how every single aspect of their suffering was entirely their fault?"

"Is that why you pushed away nearly the entirety of your party? Because of your distrust of nobles?"

"Why are you bringing up past mistakes now, did you find whatever Alena told you infuriating beyond compare?

"I do not care about what happened between you last night. If anything I'm more upset at the large bill in my future that is only increasing by the second."

Right, the water. I took the bottle out of the kid's mouth and held my head on his chest listening for any signs of breathing. If he died right in front of me I'd be in a deeper hole than I had already dug myself into. By this point, I had accepted that I wasn't going to see her for a while, but if she ever found out that I let the random child she entrusted me with pass away I'm sure she would come find me just to end my life herself.

My hopes were answered when the kid sat up and violently coughed once more. He spat out blood and dropped his sword as his hands clung to his chest. After a rough few minutes of me hitting his back as hard as I could while making sure not to knock him across the floor, he took a deep breath and looked at me.

"Who are you?"