Dear dairy nobles are problematic.
“There is no need to be upset about it,” Aluma says
“I am not upset,” I say in indignation
“yeah, you are sharpening that sword into nothing because you are feeling fine”
“I am fine just a bit distracted,” I say as I put the sword in the scrap metal pile.
“It’s fine. You know he has a, what did you call it… space ship? And you don’t that is a good reason to be upset.” Aluma says.
“Thank you for pointing it out, but I don’t care that he has a spaceship, however cool that is. I don’t have the ability to take it with me when I leave anyway,” I say.
“Okay, so you are not upset about the spaceship. Are you upset about the fact that he teased you about your crush on the snake woman?” Aluma asks.
“I don’t have a crush on her! First of all, she is way too old for me, and second, I have never met her,”
“I did not get a lot of the hokum you two were discussing yesterday, but aren’t you able to travel in time? Can’t you not travel to a time when she was still young?”
“I could, maybe if I am lucky, but that feels weird. Like very wrong on several levels.”
“I see I was not aware of the different levels of okay and wrongness for time travel; I have to brush up on it,” Aluma says, deep in thought.
“So you are considering his offer of travelling with him?” I ask, a bit curious now.
“I am thinking about it. What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t think I am the best person to ask but I would do it. Explore the endless reaches of both time and space sounds like fun, especially with a guide.”
“Yeah, I know, right? It is just I would have to abandon my people.”
“Time travel, you can be back before next week. I hardly think that that is a problem.”
“That is true,” she says with a smile. “So I should do it then?”
“Uhm, well, there is another thing,” I say, feeling rather awkward.
“And what is that?”
“I might have seen it wrong, but I am pretty sure he was flirting with you.”
“So you thought so too, then?” she asks with a bright smile.
“Wait, you actually like him?” I ask, even more surprised
“I mean, he is cute and sweet, he reminds you,”
“Reminding you of me, is that a point in his favour?”
“Yeah, you are both very comfortable to be around. It is like I have known you my whole life when, in reality, I have known you for less than a week.”
“Really, I did not know you saw me like that,” I say, a bit touched.
“Yeah, you are like the sister I never had”, she says while patting my back.
“Aluma, thank you. I don’t know what to say,”
“Say you won't act like a stranger once you have a bigger spaceship.”
“I won’t have a bigger spaceship. All I have is this plate,” I say while showing the abacus.
The abacus, for its part, decides that this is a good time to vibrate and light up, signalling that it is fully charged.
“Wow, how did you do that?” Aluma asks in excitement.
“I didn’t do anything; it means that I am ready to leave this place.”
“Right now?” Aluma asks in surprise.
“Well, after I have gathered my things, of course,” I say.
“But the tribe still needs you,” Aluma say
“The tribe is fine. I delivered the weapons. I taught you the basics, and the other Traveller will still be here for another week before he leaves, so you don’t need me.”
“Wait, do you want to leave because you feel inferior to him?” Aluma asks in a serious tone.
“That might be one of the reasons, but I also want to get home. I know Traveller said that since I can travel in time, I should not worry too much, but I just miss home.”
“I see that is alright then, but I will miss you a lot.”
That touches my heart a bit. “I will miss you a lot as well.”
“So, will you give up travelling when you get home?”
“I am not sure. Maybe I go back to travelling when I am an actual adult.”
Aluma sighs. “We at least say bye to everyone.”
“Sure I will, and I will see you later, I assume.”
She smiles. “Yeah, let's hope so.”
I spent some hours meeting people and am now saying my final goodbyes to Amule, Aluma and the Traveller.
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“Good luck out there,” the Traveller says,
“Thank you, and there is really no hint you can give me about the future?” I ask, doing my best puppy eyes
He sighs. “There is one thing I can say, but not sure if it is helpful,”
“What is it?” I ask in excitement
“Well, you always used to complain that you did not marry the woman who taught you how to control fire.”
“I can control fire?”
“In the future, you can, yes.”
I stand speechless at that, “that is crazy.”
“No crazy is how many libraries you burn down with it,”
“I do what now?”
“Don’t worry about it. Have a safe trip.”
“Thank you,” I say before pressing the crystals. Green. Blue, purple, green.
I take a deep breath of the air and almost immediately regret it. Ooh, boy, does this place stink. I take a good look around the place. I am in some kind of medieval village. There are several people walking up and down the streets carrying different barrels and crates of stuff or just visiting the market. So it turns out time travel is real. That is cool. It is also nice to see humans again in an existential crisis kind of way, But this better not be the age in which the trialled witches because that would make things rather awkward.
I stroll the village for a while, trying my best to learn the different customs of this place. Sadly I can’t really learn anything all that interesting besides the fact that the harvest was great this year. There are some other rumours as well like the Duke of Gondal getting divorced and a new Barron being sworn in. But without any understanding of local politics, this means nothing to me.
It is at this point that I start to worry. I don’t really have a place to stay or anything to eat. I also severely lack the local currency. I could go into the forest that lines one side of the village, but that seemed unappetising. Sleeping in the jungle is one thing. Sleeping in a forest where it rains is another thing; I don’t want to freeze to death just yet.
That is when I overheard a disturbing conversation. Two men are talking next to a carriage. Their clothes suggest that they can’t really afford a carriage. They are drinking something while chatting.
“Do you have the goods?” one guy asks the other man.
“Yeah, she is loaded up into the carriage, real fighter. That one almost scratched my eyes out,” the scrawnier of the two complaints.
“What about her guards?”
“Like you said, it was simple. Just slip a little bit of poison into their food, and boom, they are all out of commission.”
“Good, that saves us the trouble of getting followed.”
“Why does the count want her anyway?”
“Who knows? We don’t get paid to ask questions just to follow orders.”
“Awh, come on, you don’t even have a guess?”
“Well, there's a noble. They are all weird. Make her his bride or something worse; there is no use thinking about it.”
“Poor girl anyway. Want to stock up on some more food before we go?”
The other man sighs. “I would rather just leave. We have some problematic cargo.”
“Yeah, but it takes some days to get there. I don’t want to be hungry the entire time.”
“Fine, let go. Some food from the shop around the corner. They should still be open.”
With that, they both leave. I slowly creep up to the carriage and try to open the doors, but it is locked. I quickly reach the other side, but it is also locked. I look around for a stone or something to break the window. Then I spot one of the thugs from before walking back.
“Hey, what do you think you are doing?” he shouts at me.
I freeze for only a second, debating on what to do. Then I decided that I couldn’t leave this girl, whoever she was, so I jumped on the driver's side, grabbed the rains, and cracked them, Making the horse whinnied as the carriage started moving forward.
Okay, nobody told me riding a carriage would be this hard; luckily for me, the streets are somewhat empty at the moment, so that gives the people who are still on the street enough room to jump out of the way. Okay, I am sorry, but I feel bad about it, too. Steering is a lot harder than you think. For some reason, if you steer too fast, they will just stop.
Somehow, I actually managed to get out of the village without creating too much trouble. Sorry, fruit vendor. After spending some amount of time on the road, it became too dark for me to continue, so I tried to stop the carriage, which was a lot harder than expected.
When the horrible thing finely stops. I slowly get off why they don’t show in the movies how much your butt will hurt after such an experience. I try to stabilise myself on the carriage, and when I do so, I can hear the soft sobbing of someone inside.
Right, I should get my accidental kidnapping victim out. I walk up to the carriage door only to realise that it is still locked. You know what, let's skip finding a stone and use my good old trusty dwarf axe. I slam the axe head into the lock a few times before it breaks off. Then I slowly open the door.
Inside is a girl, probably not much older than me, completely tied up and crying her eyes out. I slowly try to come inside, but she tries to back away from me, only crying louder.
“Sorry, I did not mean to freak you out; I want to untie you. Is that okay?” I ask.
The girl nods, and I start the process of freeing her from all the ropes, starting with the ones around her mouth.
“These guys were worried about something. It is kind of impressive how much rope they used,” I wonder to myself.
“Jeeh, thanks. I make sure to tell them that the next time I meet them,” the girl says.
“You plan on meeting them again?” I ask, a bit confused.
“No, of course not; ugh, this is why Dad told me not to interact with peasants.” She says with a disgusted face.
“I am not a peasant,” I say absentmindedly.
“Really, then, what are you?”
“A person I guess we got rid of the stupid class system a while ago,”
“Stupid, then how do you know who is superior?”
“By who has the most achievements, I guess.”
“That sounds like a very confusing system,” she says, looking at me with interest.
I give her a long look, “it allows girls to wear pants instead of skirts.”
“Okay, how do we implement that system here.”
“I don’t know; usually, it is by gathering the commons under a united banner and overthrowing the monarch.”
“That is treason!” the girl yelled at me.
“I am not from this country.”
“So?”
“You can’t betray something you're not a part of. So no treason.”
“So you are an invader then? Here to take our land?”
“No, I am just a lost traveller who saw someone getting kidnapped and wanted to do something about it.”
The girl frowns at me, “Thank you.”
“You are more than welcome.”
“So, do you have a plan?”
“No, I do not. I was kind of hoping that you, as the local, had any ideas about what to do next,”
“Uhm, I don’t really know what to do. All the local guards are probably working for the enemy; Dad will notice soon enough that I am gone, but in the meantime, we should hide.”
“That bad, huh? Why would they want to kidnap you anyway?”
“Probably to take my innocence. Forcing my family to marry me to him or suffer great humiliation.”
I swallow, “That is uncalled for; we can’t let that happen.”
“I agree, so what do we do?”
I sigh, “How good are you with wilderness survival?”
“I have never done it. Why do you ask?”
“Because we can go into the forest, probably a lot easier to hide there than in a grass field,”
“And then what?”
“We wait for your dad to send troops or for us to find a dual spacial integument module,”
“What is that?” the girl asks, confused.
“It would allow us to travel long distances together,”
“Can’t we just wait here?”
“We can, but going off the lights in the distance that are coming closer, we don’t have much time.”
She takes a look outside, “fuck pagans basters, okay, let's go into the forest.”
We step out, and I give the horse a good wack with a ridding crop I found, sending them into a frenzy as they run away,
“Why did you do that,” the noble girl asks.
“With a bit of luck, they believe that we are still in the carriage, giving us more time to get away,” I say as I start walking into the dark forest.
“That works?” the girl asks confused.
“I was kind of hoping that the low light from the evening would help us cover our tracts at least a bit.”
“That is smart, so what is the name of my gland saviour name?”
“Traveller and yours?”
“I am Annabelle Von Blanch; what kind of name is the traveller.”
I try to give her an unamused look, but the dark problem does not help in that regard, “glass houses.”
“You live in a glass house? How rich are your parents?”
“This is going to be a long night, isn’t it?”
“Well, we do have to walk to a forest.” Annabelle says with a happy giggle.