The town would take time to recover.

As luck would have it, autumn rains had started early. For ten days it showered cats and dogs, and it did clean off the streets.

By the time they passed, the reminders of the festival were the cracked and molten stones in the main square, homes without glass windows, and the growing visits at the cemetery.

Kishirra was always there, with a kind word for everyone.

On the first day of sun, a market day, I was there with Mom as we all tried to go back to a routine. I never knew how much I missed it.

“You look much better!” I said to Berardo, the same young man who had first sold me milk. One lifetime ago.

One Lugana ago, for sure.

“Looks like it. I actually had a gnarly wound on my leg, but your Elf friend said it will heal… I tried not to show it, to be honest. Shame she doesn’t have any of those glowing fire powers anymore. She would be useful around here, we still have trouble with bandits and the like.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly how it works,” I replied while he filled in the jar with more milk. The cow flipped its tail back and forth as if to agree with me.

And that, of course, brought me with the trouble at hand.

Kishirra already could not leave our workshop without being followed by a throng of eager postulants. They all wanted to see her blowing up a barn, or heal their old sick mother, or they were sure they had seen another one of those monsters and if she could follow them to their farm for a check, please and thank you would she, great warrior that she was…

She had found it endearing for a day, amusing for the next, and by now she was quite fed up with it.

“Still a shame. Think she will like it here? She could settle in town!” He remarked giving me my milk.

“Hmm. You would have to ask her. Wait, actually you shouldn’t. Don’t bother her too much.”

“Whatever. I still hope she would. Oh, no, it’s free. You were the one who brought her here after all, weren’t you?”

I blinked, my hand frozen as it reached for the coins.

I had been the one to welcome her in the workshop.

Oh god, all those months ago. The memory was stark, but if I tried to think about that time it felt… fuzzy. Like it belonged to someone else.

Like my memories of Earth – a half-remembered dream.

“I’ll accept it for this time,” I said with a nod and a smile. After all, I knew there would not be another one.

Mom found me as I bought a new pestle for the herbs. And on my way, I stopped to also purchase some ink. And more rolls of reed paper.

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“We have lots of paper already,” Mom pointed out, but I shook my head.

“It’s not for the journey.”

She sighed, wrapping her arm around my shoulder as she dragged me away from the market square.

“Sometimes I swear you pick up the weirdest figures of speech…”

“Elven influence, I guess,” I replied with a grin.

A few hours later, I was in the garden, drawing the crude shape of a caramalia flower, and writing down its qualities to the page.

+++

I found her sitting on the hills looking down the Mar da Candéa. It was the same spot we had explored together, but now all the flowers were gone, the grass was as gold as her hair, and the trees were shedding their leaves into the wind.

I was panting as I reached her, but at least this time I did not have to carry a backpack. And I had made an effort to walk every day. Baby steps. I would be able to do sit-ups any day, now.

Any day. If I had to choose one, always tomorrow.

I approached Kishirra. We did not speak, not even when I sat next to her, resting my head against her shoulder.

The leaves crackled in the wind. It sounded like a gently-popping fire, somewhere off in the distance. Air smelled like damp earth and a faint memory of storms.

“It is a peaceful corner of the world,” she said at last. “I would have wanted to protect it a little better.”

“Stop it, you.” I elbowed her. “You did whatever you could, and then more.”

“Still feel like it was never enough,” she sighed. “But then again I am not the one who will have to decide on such matters.” She paused and entwined her hand with mine. “Speaking of matters I do not completely understand… right before you foolishly threw your only weapon at the demon, that time, you said something alike to ‘Elf GF’. What does gee-eff mean?”

“Oh. Oh, uhm… it means…” I held up our entwined hands. “This, basically.”

“I see. Then I very much will be your gee-eff,” she chuckled, drawing me closer. It was hard to describe, but next to her I felt much much safer than I could ever be huddled up in my room. I wanted to tell her, but right then I could not express myself to the best of my abilities. And the best of my abilities were the worst of most people’s.

So I just tilted my head up and gently pressed my lips against hers.

Kishirra’s eyes widened for a moment, then she set her hand against my cheek and drew me into the kiss.

Her lips were softer than soot and warmer than ember. I closed my eyes and drew into the moment.

When we detached, I felt like piercing through a line of Chalkers if it meant to have one more moment like this.

“Thank you,” Kishirra said, wrapping her arms around me.

We rested like that, mingling our breaths to the crackling of the leaves. The Mar da Candéa glistened green and blue as always, spattered with the whites of fishing boats and the red of the growing reeds. By winter they would withdraw into the depths, and the town would pivot to using the mills to make paper. Bùrian was an industrious city. They would be able to rebuild their glass items soon enough. With some luck, before snow truly set in.

“I cannot fit a role that is not mine,” she stated with a deject sigh. “I do not know the Scriptures past what I had set to memory. And I cannot truly grasp the matters of Faith like a Mannish soul would. They need someone else to teach them if they are going to learn.”

She paused, pursing her lips.

“They are going to need it. If anything, this proves once again how the Adversaries are still at work. Others will come, and when they shall, you must be ready. No matter how long it takes.”

Leave it to her to sound so serious even in such a peaceful moment.

“Those people will try to follow you anyway.”

“That is why we are leaving soon. I will put a good word with some Sunseekers I know in Madua. They will send someone better than me. Besides, I was sent here on a Quest, and I have completed it. Found even more than I had expected,” she chuckled, setting a kiss on my fingers.

“I am ready. I mean- I will when it’s time.”

“You are a brave girl, Lugana Delebasse. Brave enough to teach courage to someone like me.”

Oh come on! Now she was trying to turn my face redder than the lake’s reeds.

“N-Not at all. And you were the one to inspire me to finally take a step out of the bed.”

“Then we have found each other on the road.”

“Yes. Yes, that… sounds like a good idea. Let’s keep doing that.”

“Okay,” she nodded.

We rested on the grass until the shadows grew long and bowed to the setting sun.