Chapter 43

I had no recollection of what happened after I was done with my meal. Blank, it was completely blank. I assumed it was what frequent alcohol consumers who claimed to suffer from memory loss experienced. I didn’t like it though, what if I had done bizarre embarrassing things during that time? How would I face other people then? Not knowing was worse than actually knowing, so milking the details out of Xan would take priority. I just had to figure out how to do it without him knowing, he might exaggerate things if he realized I didn’t remember. Maybe there was a potion that helped with such issues.

But first, I had to go through my morning routine like always. I had become like one of those elite athletes always showed in documentaries of old earth going through their training, claiming that training started early in the morning when they woke up. In a way, each minute of every day could be considered training, even sleep time. Rest was a form of training, training the body to recover. But they didn’t have Mana potions like the Realm of Mesily did, even though several people had told me that proper rest was still necessary if I really cared for my own body, I still thought that I could push myself further than I could on old earth.

As I was leaving the washroom after my morning bath, I caught my image in the mirror. The dye had finally completely washed off, leaving my hair its original black color. How long had that been? Three days? Looking at myself in the mirror, I didn’t appear any different than I did a few days before, but at the same time, I looked different. I looked relaxed, free and not the haunted thing I had been before the finals. I smiled to myself as I left the washroom, and went in search of breakfast.

I found Xan already resting in the living room’s large sofa.

“Took you long enough. I thought you were going to spend the rest of the day there,” he said as I sat down on one of the single-seaters. Then he gave me a piercing gaze as he asked, “Are you actually a woman?”

“No!” I exclaimed, before calming myself down as I continued, “I just like playing around with water, it feels nice on my skin.”

“Really!?” the change from suspicion to excitement was so fast it actually scared me enough that I nearly sat up. “Then we should go swimming sometime.”

That had me half excited too, but I just hadn’t thought there would be swimming pools in Mesily. “There’s a swimming pool here?”

“Swimming pool…” he mulled the phrase over before answering. “No, but there is a river en route to Makndre from here. We could stop there for a swim.”

And the excitement was gone, completely, never to be seen again. “A river!? With fish, frogs, toads… and other slimy slimy things? Noo!”

“I didn’t take you for someone scared of such things,” he said with a predatory look on his face. I hoped he wasn’t one of those people who liked playing pranks on people, if that was the case, our friendship would end fast, faster than it began.

“Scared of them? No. But think of all the diseases they carry… eehh!!” I said as I shook my head in disgust.

“Anyway, there is something to bite on the kitchen. Be quick about it, so we can head out to the bazaar,” he said pointing to the kitchenette where I noticed a covered up bowl on the counter.

“Isn’t it a little too early for that?” I asked as I went for the bowl.

“It’s already morning. I’d say we might be late if we don’t hurry,” he said, mimicking eating fast with his hand.

I looked around the room, only to realize for the first time that the room didn’t have any windows to the outside. For a claustrophobic person, that would have been an issue, good thing I wasn’t, like at all. I thought as I quickly down the cereal-like contents of the bowl, eager to get to the bazaar, no other reason.

…

The streets were less populated as we made our way to the bazaar. I didn’t know where that was, so it was all Xan in terms of direction. I kept a steady pace by his side, not doing the follow up shtick that I had done the day before, but on occasion, I had to run to catch up with him after he took a turn and I didn’t. It was embarrassing every time it happened, but I never allowed myself to revert back to the follow up position, it was the small things that mattered. What did they say, you begin constructing a tower by laying down a single brick? Or something along those lines.

The morning air was fresh and cool, refreshing even me, and I occasionally found myself taking deep breaths just so I could enjoy it more, but I had to hold myself back from spreading arms wide and spinning like a maid in love, or was that swooning? I felt free like I had never felt like before, and I was sure it was because I had someone to rely on again. What I would be eating by the end of the day didn’t have to come out of my pocket. As much as I didn’t want to be relied on Xan, some part of me wasn’t fully accustomed to being on my own and taking care of myself. But Xan was way too young to be considered a father figure, so he had to be a brother instead; I might have had a brother his age on old earth.

“What are we going to the bazaar for?” I asked as we took another unfamiliar street. I really should have been paying attention to the streets, trying to cram them.

“To shop, for clothes,” he answered without ever taking his gaze from up ahead.

“You need more?” I asked in bewilderment. His current volume of clothes could barely fit his carriage, if he bought more, we might have to walk to the Duchies.

“Not for me.”

“Then who?” I asked, but I already knew the answer before he could say it.

“You, who else.”

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“But…” I checked myself up. I had worn the cleanest and most patched up clothes I had, I thought I looked passable as it was, and I still had my farmhand clothes, those hadn’t been damaged during the fights. “I don’t need new clothes. I have plenty already.”

Finally, he looked at me. “Those rags, you call those clothes?”

“Hey! You are the one that sold these to me,” I objected his dismissal of my best clothes. “Not a week ago, I might add.”

“Well, they are rags now,” he said after giving me a once over. It left me feeling very self-conscious about myself, forcing me to grip my staff harder for comfort.

“But shopping for clothes is so cliché, everyone does it almost always after getting to a town or city,” I said.

“What?” he asked as I finished with the statement, forcing me clap my mouth shut with my free hand.

I had nearly exposed myself as what I really was, not that it would be easy to gather that from that statement. But the only reason I had made it was because that was what the main characters always did when they got to a town, shop for clothes, especially at the very early stages of the story, or game. I had unwittingly fallen into that cliché trap.

Actually, I hadn’t. I was already months old in the Realm of Mesily, plus I had gone through two other towns… which I had bought clothes on nearly my first day there. Yeah, I had been caught by it.

“Everyone shops for clothes, what is wrong with that?” Xan asked after he waited for a response from me to no avail.

“Yeah, everyone does. I was just being…” but I couldn’t find any appropriate word to complete that sentence, swinging my staff a little as a distraction, and nearly hit a passerby. I quickly apologized, “Sorry.”

They nodded, giving me a slight smile before they continued on to wherever they were going, leaving me standing stock still in the middle of the street, with my mouth hanging open, I’m embarrassed to admit.

“Close your mouth, and compose yourself. You are embarrassing me.”

I turned to blink rapidly at Xan, still unable to close my mouth. I looked back to where the passerby had disappeared to, then back again at Xan. I tried conveying what I was thinking, but nothing came out, I resorted to overtly gesturing at where they had gone off.

“That’s just worse,” Xan said as he took my hand and pulled me away from the scene.

I was lucky it was early morning and the streets weren’t as crowded, not many people to see all that monkey business. But maybe it wasn’t better, maybe a crowded street might have forced me to get moving faster.

“Elf!” I finally said when I got back my speech ability.

“Yes, he was an elf,” Xan replied in an exasperated voice.

“HE!!!”

“Yes, he was a male elf,” Xan maintained his tone.

I tried to compose myself as I processed what I had just learnt, both through experience and from Xan. If that was a male elf, what will be my reaction when I met a female elf? Maybe they were uglier than their male counterparts. Then I remembered the source of all that trouble.

“My staff! I dropped it,” I said as I tried to turn back to retrieve it.

“Here,” Xan said as he handed me my trusty staff, we had been through thick and thin together. Even though it was most probably the fiftieth version, it was still my trusty staff. “You didn’t look like you were of a mind to pick it up, so…”

That sobered me right up as I jumped to quickly defend myself, “I’m not always like that. I have better control over myself, that was just unexpected.”

“Good thing it happened out here. If it had been in the arena, during a fight, that would have been the end for you.”

“In the arena, it would have been different. I wouldn’t have lost my wits so,” I said with as much confidence as I could master after behaving the fool not minutes prior.

“Are you sure?” he asked, throwing me a sideways glaze. I remained resolute as I returned his gaze, nodding a little. “Well, remember that talk we had about the other species?”

I nodded at that, how could I have forgotten, we had had it just the day before.

“Well, we will have it again when we get back. This time, make sure to take notes,” he said, stressing out the notes-taking part.

We proceeded to the bazaar in relative silence after that. I couldn’t be sure what was going through Xan’s head, but I was most definitely preparing myself mentally for the encounters with the other species, trying as best as I could, to picture them in my mind. I already had a reference frame for the elves, as for the others, I used my prior knowledge of the fantasy races plus what little Xan had said the day before.

…

The bazaar was… I had never seen one before, so I had nothing to compare it to. Besides, with how close together the stalls were, and the number of people bustling through the small pathways left, I couldn’t do much else other than keep track of Xan, which was easier than the day before because he hadn’t let go of my hand since the elf incidence.

I didn’t get to see any other elves though, or any of the other species for that matter. I might have caught sight of a green skin in passing, but that was hard to tell. The pair of horns were completely my imagination, nothing else.

The bumping I was going through was heart-attack inducing, I always ended up squeezing Xan’s hand a little tighter each time it happened. There was no way he would agree to take me to another bazaar after we were done, not that I would want to go to one either.

Soon enough, I found myself inside one of the stalls.

“OOhh! Xan, how have you been?” said an old merchant as he came to us almost immediately. “Here to swindle me again?”

“Hahaha, old man. Who swindle who? I think you are mistaken; it was you that swindled me. You changed exuberant prices for your rotten pieces of clothing. The last piece I bought from you didn’t make it past the gates before it was coming undone.”

Oh dear, I’m not leaving here alive. I thought as the two old friends continued their banter.

‘Clare, please remember me after I am gone.’

‘You have not yet done anything worth remembering.’

‘Clare, what did we say about you humoring my feelings?’

‘I should do it.’

‘Did that statement—’

“Oh my! Please tell me you didn’t come here dressed like that,” the old merchant interrupted my conversation with Clare.

At first, I didn’t understand what he said, then it kicked in, and I was furious. What did he mean exactly with that statement? Did he think I had come dressed all nice and then changed my clothes just before entering his shop? Of course I came dressed like this, it is my best set of clothes, I’ll have you know.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t helping my case at all. I tried calming myself down, telling myself that it didn’t matter what he thought or said. None of that mattered in the grand scheme of things.

“We are looking for a full set like the one he is wearing, only in a slightly different color,” Xan said, already moving on to what had brought us to the bazaar.

“What’s wrong with this one? It seems to be working for… quite well,” the old merchant said, clearly tripping over what pronoun to use for me, even though Xan had clearly addressed me as ‘he’.

“A matter of preference. The light turquoise stays, maybe a little on the pale side; the turquoise becomes teal; and the dark one goes black,” Xan gave the new color scheme without even consulting with me, not even a glaze to make sure I was okay with what he was picking up.

The old merchant didn’t even wait for Xan to be done with his preferences before he was already removing clothes from their hangers and placing them in front of us. Looking at them, I began to appreciate Xan’s choice of my new colors even before I tried them on. The attention grabbing turquoise was gone, replaced by the cool teal. And now that I saw the black trousers next to the teal long coat, I realized my initial choice of dark turquoise trousers was just awful.

The old merchant picked up one of the two pale turquoise shirts he had presented to us, holding it right next to Xan, as if asking for him to feel it. And Xan complied.

“This was one cost me twenty gold from the Sieral Plains…”

I lost track of what else he said after that, only remembering one thing, it cost him twenty golds.