Chương 17: Hand Holding

It had been six days since I lost my tongue. It was mostly back. I could feel it when I pressed it against the roof of my mouth: present, functional, still slightly wrong at the edges. My taste buds were still not working properly, making bugs taste like texture, temperature, and not much else. The human brain had quietly filed this under silver linings and declined to discuss it further. I was walking to the guild. I knew I was walking with someone.

I could feel his presence beside me like a warmth in the air, a slight displacement of sound, a sense of occupancy without evidence. I looked down at my hand. I looked at his hand. I grabbed it.

"W-what are you doing?" he asked. I looked at Norman. I had learned, through trial and error, that holding his hand was a reliable solution to the problem. There was this one particular incident involving a crowded market, losing him entirely for forty minutes, and spending the rest of the afternoon retracing my own steps. His face didn't work as a landmark, but his hand was attached to him. I nodded. This was meant to communicate all of the above. Norman appeared to receive none of it.

He tried to pull his hand back. I held on. He stopped pulling. We kept walking. Then Xyno came out of the apothecary ahead of us, carrying two bags. The first one clinked, the other one produced no sound at all but also looked full. She stopped when she saw us. She looked at our joined hands.

"Are you two on a date?" I shook my head.

"I know, right." Xyno smiled.

"Somehow, hearing it from you is annoying even when it's the truth." Norman's expression didn't change much. She giggled.

"I know. Truth hurts."

"It's more the one saying it than the truth itself," Norman corrected. I reached out with my other hand and took Xyno's too. She looked down at her hand. Then at me.

"I still have funds for my experiments." She patted my head once, which ended up patting my rock instead.

"So I won't be doing quests for a while." She pulled her hand, turned, and walked off. I watched her go.

"Just the two of us, then." Norman looked at me. I nodded, glanced down at my hand, still holding his, and decided this was an acceptable outcome.

At the quest board, Norman pulled a paper from the F-rank section. He held it out with the other hand I wasn't holding. I read it. Collect vegetables from the Millfield region. Assist with local agricultural needs as required. I considered the word agricultural. Agricultural meant fields. Fields meant soil. Soil meant things living underneath it. I had eaten field bugs before. They were different from dungeon bugs: softer, earthier, and definitely wouldn't eat me back.

They would make a perfect appetizer, once my taste receptors finished whatever reconstruction project they were currently in the middle of. I nodded. The human brain observed my reasoning and clearly wanted to object. We went to the counter. Eris looked at the quest paper Norman set down. Then she looked at Norman. The look lasted longer than required.

"It's just an F-rank," Norman said. Eris stamped it. The stamp came down with slightly more conviction than the quest paper had done anything to deserve.

"Are you two dating?" Nill had materialized at the counter beside us.

"No." Eris's eyes didn't move from Norman.

"They're not. Go back to work."

"Fufu." Nill covered her mouth, which did nothing at all to muffle the sound.

"Aren't you jealous that your daughter found a date before you did?" Eris turned her head. The turn was slow. Deliberate.

"You'll be joining me to close the guild tonight." Nill's expression collapsed.

"I can't. I have a date."

"You had a date."

"Eris—" Eris ignored her. She came out from behind the counter and stopped in front of me.

"You only hold hands with someone you like." I nodded.

"A lak Noman." I remembered. My tongue had not fully regenerated yet. Eris seemed to understand what I was saying.

"As a love interest." I failed to understand what Eris was saying. I tilted my head. Eris sighed.

"You can only have one love interest." I considered this. I looked at Norman's hand. I looked at Eris. I released Norman's hand, reached out, and took Eris's instead.

"A on hol hans with Eis, then." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Eris looked down at our joined hands. Something moved across her face that wasn't quite the expression she'd been wearing a moment ago.

"Sure. That works, for now." She patted my rock with her free hand. Behind us, Nill was still making her case to an empty counter. Norman had returned to being part of the scenery, which was where he seemed most comfortable.

We walked without stopping for most of the morning. Somewhere along the way I found a beetle sunning itself on the grassless ground: small, dark green, its shell throwing back a little rainbow every time it caught the light. I picked it up, held it toward the sun, and watched the color shift across its back. The human brain pointed out, unhelpfully, that we had somewhere to be. I ignored it. There was always somewhere to be. There was not always a beetle this good.

I was still turning it over my palm when the sound of wheels reached us from behind. A cart came around the bend, pulled by a buffalo with the resigned expression of an animal that had long ago stopped questioning its life choices. An old man sat up front, reins loose in one hand, a straw hat tipped forward against the sun while shouting, "Get off the road! Do you have a death wish?!" Norman raised a hand before I'd even finished deciding whether the buffalo looked friendly. The cart slowed. Words were exchanged.

A few coins changing hands, something about "heading that way anyway." Then Norman was gesturing for me to climb up into the back, which was mostly empty except for a few sacks of something that smelled like grain and old rope. I set the beetle in my pocket, where it clicked its objections for a while before settling. The ride was smoother than I expected, mostly because the road itself never bothered to change. No ruts, no sudden turns, nothing to jostle against.

Just a long, even stretch of dirt cutting through fields. Just flat, waiting land on either side, dotted here and there with the first low rows of something planted. I sat with my back against a grain sack and watched the buffalo's tail swing lazily against flies it didn't seem to mind. Norman sat across from me, elbows on his knees, saying nothing, which was his usual contribution to most conversations. Everything out here was flat. The fields. The scenery. The farmer's slow, unhurried pace.

Even Norman's face, which I decided was simply a coincidence. We arrived at the village. It was still flat. There were no hills. No natural features breaking up the horizon. Just earth and crop and sky, and between them the huts. Norman moved down off the cart. I followed with him offering a hand. I looked at the hand. I ignored it. I told Eris I would only take hers. I moved down on my own. Somehow, Norman looked disappointed.

But I was probably wrong, since I was still a beginner with human emotions, and reading Norman's expression was the highest bar of all. After thanking the old man again, which was mostly Norman, we walked toward the village. When we entered, the villagers looked at me, assessed me, and returned to their work without a word. I didn't care. I was looking for something else. Then I found it, and walked straight to the well. I drew a bucket. I lifted it. I poured the entire thing over myself, clothes, rock, and all.

I stood there for a moment while the water ran off me in small rivers. I closed my eyes to enjoy it properly. When I opened them, two men were standing in front of me, holding spears. One of them had his spear pointed at me.

"Wasting water is a serious offense." The other one was already moving behind me. I felt my arms being gathered and bound together. I wanted to explain that this was a misunderstanding. That the water hadn't been wasted at all. That it had simply fulfilled its purpose. Unfortunately, my tongue still needed a few more tweaks before it would cooperate with anything that complicated.

"We're adventurers." Norman grabbed the hand behind me. Both men jumped. They looked at him. They looked at his face. They looked at me. They looked at the rock, still perched on my head and dripping steadily onto the dirt.

"You're lying." The man swatted his hand away. They started dragging me. Norman produced a paper from his pocket and held it out.

"Here's the quest." The dragging stopped. The two men looked at the paper. They looked at each other. Some entire conversation passed between them that didn't require a single word. They released my arms. I straightened my rock.

We were led without further comment to the largest hut in the village, distinguished from the others mainly by being slightly bigger and having a second room visible through an interior doorway. Inside, an old man sat at the center of the room.

"Welcome, adventurers. I'm Lunak, chief of this village." He bowed. Not the polite incline of a greeting I was used to. The kind where the forehead said hello to the floor. I watched him do it and filed it under weird human habits. Norman, on the other hand, crossed the room and helped him back up.

"You don't have to do that. We're adventurers. Accepting quests is our job." Lunak accepted the help and straightened slowly. He looked at Norman for a long moment, taking in his thoroughly unremarkable face. Probably.

"The thing is, our village is poor."

"I can see that." Norman scratched the back of his head.

"All we could afford to register was an F-rank quest. The quest itself is to help with the harvest, as posted… but there are bandits. We were hoping…" He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. Norman went quiet for a moment.

"When are they expected?"

"Tonight." Norman glanced at me.

"I don't think we have sufficient—" A small girl appeared from behind Lunak. She crossed the room quickly and took both of Norman's hands in hers.

"Please help us." Norman looked down at her. He looked at her hands wrapped around his. He looked at her face.

"Leave it to us." I looked at the girl. I looked at Lunak, the thin arms of the men outside, the flatness of the fields. I looked at Norman's face, doing its best while twitching at the corner of his mouth.

"Food for the guests is ready." An old woman poked her head through the flap of the other room. Lunak nodded at her, then turned back to us.

"This way, adventurers." He and the little girl led us into the second room. Norman and I followed behind. Lunak stopped at the flap and held it aside, waiting. Norman stepped through first.

"Thanks." I followed and said the same.

"Thank you." Before us, a table had been laid out with food. Mostly vegetables. A pot of soup sitting at the center, steam still rising off it. I sat down immediately and started filling my bowl and plate. Eris had taught me, patiently and at some length, how to use the big spoon to serve myself from a shared pot without making a mess of the whole table. Norman sat too, but he didn't take anything. He looked across at Lunak and the girl.

"Aren't you going to join us?" The girl's face brightened at the question.

"Ahahaha, we've already eaten." Lunak turned and patted her head.

"Come, Riri. Let's not bother our guests." Riri's head dropped.

"Yes, Grandpa." Lunak, Riri, and the old woman made their exit. Norman's jaw tightened as he started filling his own plate. I stood up.

"Don't. Just eat and honor their resolve." Norman started eating with a pained expression on his face. I considered this. Something about it felt wrong. It took me a moment to work out what. Then I realized that there was no actual connection between honor, resolve, and being hungry. I stood up, plate in hand, and ran for the door.

"Hey, wait!" Norman called after me. I ignored him. I pushed the flap aside and looked for Riri. I found her crouched at the corner. I crossed to her and held out my plate.

"But—" she started. I shook my head. I set the plate in her hands and went back inside. Norman sighed when I sat down, though he was smiling by the end of it. I was plateless now. But I still had my bowl. I took some of the vegetables and piled them on top of the soup instead. Somehow, in that exact moment, it occurred to me that I might be a genius. I ate. It was delicious, despite being vegetables.