§
I narrowed my eyes a bit as the princess returned to the tea pavilion.
“Yer just gonna light a grenade an’ toss it at me like that?” I snorted. “You got some unique ideas about teamwork.”
She gave me a breezy smile. “I just thought it would be faster that way. You’re up!”
I rolled my eyes, but before I went, I glanced at the one seated next to me. “You ready to play yer part, woman?”
Lydia gave me a dissatisfied look with a raised eyebrow. She don’t think much o’ me. I’m too much o’ what she calls a ‘barbarian’.
“I understand my role, Captain,” she stated. “But I don’t believe it’s time for me to take the stage yet.”
Without Rhea here sittin’ with us, she’s much less timid than she seemed when I first met her. I guess the whole ‘goddess’ thing bugged her more than me.
“It’ll be yer turn, soon enough,” I said as I stood, then turned toward Tiana and gave her a proper bow. “I’ll be headin’ out now, Princess.”
“Good luck,” she wished me with a smile.
When she created the effigy earlier, the princess disappeared from the table, so I reckon I did the same once I took control of it. Suddenly, I stood in the bedroom on Huade, where a very pretty and very bewildered girl still sat in the bed, clutchin’ bedsheets to her chest as she looked around. She was likely wonderin’ what happened to the princess.
Her eyes grew huge the moment she saw me, and her grip on the sheets became a defensive gesture. Not that the sheets or her thin arms could defend against much.
Now, back when I really was the age that I appear now, I mighta been tempted to flirt a bit in this situation. But in truth, I’m a granny, and my relationship to this cutie is a lot more than a bit confused. I judged it better to not go there, so I gave her a bow of introduction, sweeping my arm before me and bending my knee.
“Do pardon my intrusion into yer bedchamber, Missy,” I requested as I introduced myself. “An’ pleased to meetcher. Captain Sirth, atcher service.”
Her brows rose, as she took in the situation.
“A… sailor?” she guessed, tipping her head. Come to think of it, the sailor’s clothing of Quiara is not too different from that o’ Huade.
“After a fashion,” I stated as I rose. “We sail the sky on my original world, on account o’ the sea bein’ too lethal. You know about other worlds bein’ different than here, so that shouldn’t be too big a surprise.”
Her forehead wrinkled cutely as her lips pressed together… it’s no mystery why the princess and her husband are fond o’ her. She really is a cutie.
“Your… original world…” she repeated, her eyes growing narrower.
“Give that goddess of yours a call,” I suggested. “She’s the one who set all this up.”
The cutie’s face went blank, then her brow wrinkled up as she seemed to listen to something for a moment.
“She says that you’re a previous incarnation of Tiana,” she noted, more like she was confirmin’ it to herself than asking me. “Tiana said something of the sort, too.”
“That’s about right.” I scratched the back o’ my head and added, “I understand I was born about seventeen centuries ago… no, in Huade years, about fourteen. I lived for about forty o’ your years. But I ain’t exactly a ghost.”
After watching her sort through her thoughts for a few moments, I smiled and added, “I imagine it’s not easy havin’ this conversation while you’re in bed all naked. How ’bout I wait in the sittin’ room so you can dress? You can get more details from Rhea while yer at it.”
She blushed a bit, then nodded. I put on my charmin’ smile and gave a nod in return, then headed out.
A maid understandably shrieked when she saw a stranger emergin’ from the princess’s bedroom. As soon as I cleared out of her path, she dashed through the door I had just exited in order to check on her charge. I plopped onto the princess’s overstuffed chair and grinned at her petrified coworkers as I listened to Mir reassurin’ her that I was a guest.
§
I contemplated the strange being who had been sitting in the overstuffed chair when I arrived.
She bounced out of the chair the moment I entered the room, but as I approached I had caught an impression from the hall of her sitting slightly sideways with one leg hooked over the arm of the chair in a remarkably un-ladylike fashion. Then she immediately proceeded into an unfamiliar style of bow, all sweeping arms, bending knees and overly dramatic flair, with a well-practiced greeting that was also not in a style I knew. I had the sense that she was treating me to the courtly manner of some foreign place.
Just judging from the outfit she wore, she was certainly foreign, despite her completely fluent Dorian. Her top seemed to be armor, in the form of boiled leather but made in the manner of a corset, of all things! What a thing to be wearing on the outside! Under it, she wore a nicely-stitched blouse with sleeves that only reached her elbows but had flaring cuffs, showing that the garment had been originally sewn in that odd design. The two garments worked together to bare and lift her upper bosom as daringly as the current fashion in Atius. Mother would certainly approve.
She wore trousers that only reached her knees, because her heavy leather boots did the same. Female sailors, birdkin girls and the occasional female adventurer wear similar things, so I have seen it before, but it was terribly out of place here, deep in civilized territory. Although, in combination with the basket-hilted cutlasses on her hips, it suited her.
I had also seen female adventurers wearing the same long braid wound into a bun. It’s a common way to keep long hair while not providing enemies with a convenient handle to grab in close-quarters combat. So overall, she simply seemed like another adventurer.
But three things screamed abnormal to me.
First was her face. She had foreign features, nothing like the humans I know. Instead, she seemed to have the same racial characteristics as Ryuu Kowa, which are extremely fairy-like, with almond eyes, high cheekbones and flat noses. It’s true that those characteristics blended into Dorians with strong fairy blood, but not in the undiluted form of this woman and not in combination with skin and hair like Ryuu’s. For a moment, I thought she might come from his world.
Except, Ryuu doesn’t have feathers. And he once told us that the people in his world were all humans, and similar to the humans of Huade. Who also don’t have feathers.
The frontmost were visibly rooted in her temples, with more emerging from her hair above and behind her ears. They moved with a life of their own, in gentle, small shifting motions. After a moment, I realized they weren’t ornaments but rather parts of her body.
Birdkin can’t make their wings disappear, the way fairies and vampires can, but no other race that I know about has feathers. No species at all has feathers only on their head. Although she could also have feathers in spots that are covered by her clothing, feathers go with wings, and she clearly had none.
But of course that brought me to the third out-of-place element. Because my fairy sight was telling me she wasn’t in fact a mortal. But, neither was she a fairy or a monster. If anything, the only thing I could classify her as was…
A spirit? I don’t mean like an elemental, which is a spirit blended with a mortal. She seemed to have…
“I got no physical substance,” she stated with a grin as she plopped back down on the chair. “That’s what you’re thinkin’ right now, ain’t it, Yer Highness?”
She still had the advantage of me, since I had no idea what I was dealing with. Threat, supernatural visitor, or yet another inexplicable being I had made the acquaintance of during my three month memory gap? She acted like she had every right to be here, and a possibility remained that she did. She could well be yet another ally with whom I needed to re-familiarize myself. The maids seemed wary of her, but not alarmed, so somebody had assured them she was not a danger. I remained calm and thought about how to answer as I took my own seat in a chair nearby.
At last, I ventured, “Well… yes. In my [Fairy Sight], you seem to be something like a spirit. I can’t perceive any solid matter in your body at all. But you are clearly sitting in that chair, flattening the seat with your weight. It’s quite an eerie thing for me to witness.”
Her mouth twisted and one brow went up. “You callin’ me fat?”
Shocked, I quickly denied it, leading to the woman tipping her head back and laughing with gusto.
“Sorry, Princess, I just couldn’t resist.”
I blushed and looked away. “You… don’t need to call me that.”
“Yer a fairy princess, yer highness. An’ yer married to a prince now, too. Can’t see how I should be callin’ you anythin’ else, at least until they officially make you duchess and we start callin’ you Your Grace.“
This had gone on more than long enough. I pressed my lips together, then stated, “Putting aside what you are for the moment, can you tell me explain why you are in my suite?”
She scratched the back of her head, then confessed, “That’s the hard part. I have a long list of reasons but I ain’t sure where to start. Wha’d’ya think, Missy?”
Her question at the end was directed toward Mireia, who had just come out of my dressing room with Syl and a chambermaid trailing her.
Mireia crossed over to take a seat on the sofa while stating, “My Lady Tiana, please think of her as my guest for the moment. She’s here to help in your recovery.”
Dubious, I stared at the strange woman. “She doesn’t seem like the sort of professional who would deal with a medical issue?”
A huge grin spread across Miss Sirth’s face. “Yer mostly right, Princess, but this is a special case.”
“An explanation as to how and why you can help me would go a long way toward setting me at ease,” I stated, not hiding my pique.
She just tipped her head back and laughed again.
Mireia answered instead. Although it wasn’t precisely an answer. “Rhea says we should forget about explaining things to you and just have the captain do the most important thing she came here to do.”
“And that is what?”
“Rehearse your magic castin’,” the strange ‘captain’ replied plainly. “You won’t remember bein’ able to do it, after all.”
Uncertain, I asked, “Rehearse my … what?”
She had just said something awfully strange, after all. Although I managed to achieve a crude level of mana circulation, in order to power basic combat skills like [Body Fortification], I’ve never once successfully cast a magic spell. I seemed to be lacking some fundamental quality necessary for doing so.
Studiously keeping my irritation out of my demeanor, I stated, “I believe you are mistaken, Captain. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I have never mastered spell-casting.”
Ignoring me, Mireia asked, “Do you know how she made her breakthrough? Rod told me she use to have some kind of magic handicap, and yet she was able to use it when I met her.”
Finally letting my frown show, I said, “If this is some attempt to tease me…”
Interrupting me– or rather, also blatantly ignoring me– Miss Sirth answered, “She can’t learn the normal way. She picks it up when her Servants cast spells. If you go ahead and cast some simple spell, she can feel how you do it.”
Astonished at her rudeness, I gaped at her, but Mireia simply nodded and agreed. Then, while holding her hand out, palm up, she chanted, “[Fairy Light].”
I shuddered as I felt Light mana drawn through my mana pathway, on its own, without my bidding. Then my eyes grew wide with disbelief as a completely unfamiliar pattern came into my mind and the shining ball formed above her hand
And I understood– no, I felt, at a fundamental level, for the first time in my life– exactly how she had done it.
