"I think I understand... it's strange," Telle said, a trace of doubt lingering in her words. She looked at her hands, then at her empty cup, and then the table. She was visibly distracted, more eager to listen to her own thoughts after being overwhelmed by the peculiar information.
Across from her, with a demeanor completely opposite to the insecure Telle, was Beth, legs crossed, taking sips from the fresh coffee that had been offered to her a short while ago. She was staring intently at the girl in front of her, unaware that her relaxed posture conveyed a feeling contrary to the one she intended.
Beth had taken it upon herself to explain, though not in great detail, the gist of the unusual dynamic they had.
"Now that you mention it, I suppose so," said Beth, taking another sip of her coffee.
"So, you hadn't really thought about it before? About how strange this is, I mean."
Beth brought a hand to her chin and rolled her eyes in a thoughtful gesture. She massaged her chin with her fingers twice before answering.
"Mhhh... Not much, really. Things just happened, and that was that. I didn't question it much. Although, thinking about it now... yes, I did. It was only at the beginning, then I just forgot." She let out a few soft giggles at the end.
"But deep down, we love each other very much, and there haven't been any real clashes so far. Of course, nothing is perfect. You saw that scenes like the one you witnessed earlier happen sometimes, but I'm happy to say that such things don't get in the way of how we get along."
As Beth explained, Telle began to pay her more and more attention. As the explanation drew to a close, she slowly raised her head. It could have been interpreted as a movement of decision, but it was quite the opposite. She looked Beth steadily in the eyes, her expression reserved and serene, but with her eyes sparkling with emotion.
"Hm?" Beth tilted her head.
Telle held the firm gaze for a few more seconds. Inside, she was wavering, and her eyes showed it. After a couple of deep breaths, she parted her lips.
"I... uhm... could I...?"
She fidgeted with her fingers nervously, swallowed. Unable to maintain eye contact any longer, she ended up looking away.
She quickly fixed her gaze back on Beth when she suddenly felt a tug on one of her hands.
Beth had wrapped her own hands around Telle's.
"Breathe, come on, you can say it," she told her in a lower, vaguely maternal tone. The closeness she conveyed was calming.
Telle took one last long breath, calming her nervousness. "Could I join?" she murmured.
After stating her request, another wave of nerves washed over her, forcing her to avert her eyes again.
"Join? Well, that doesn't depend on me. Actually, I don't even know who it does depend on. Whoever I assume should manage this isn't doing a very good job, if you ask me. But I can tell you one thing: you're already more inside than out!"
The clarification soothed her nervousness but gave rise to another, more complex set of emotions. Uncertainty was one of them.
"And now?... What am I supposed to do?" she asked, sounding like the plea of a lost little girl.
Beth shrugged and tilted her head.
"That depends on you. I, just like you, am an intruder who found a place here. I just come around here and there, enjoying my man. I, at least, am happy like this," she said, pushing herself away from the table and standing up.
"Where are you going?" Telle jumped up, looking up to see her.
"I'm going to change. We might open late, but my shift is my shift."
She left, leaving Telle sitting there, watching her walk away down the hallway. The moment she lost sight of her, she was alone.
While all of Beth's explanations were indispensable for her to understand what the heck was going on, in a way they left her with more questions than answers. The sudden solitude only made those questions echo louder in her head.
A jumble of thoughts swirled in her mind. One thought resonated within her more strongly than the others.
She looked around, as if orienting herself, as if she had just come out of a daze or gotten out of bed too quickly.
She blinked a couple of times, staring into the void. 'What am I doing here?' she questioned herself, and then a wave of uncertainty and confusion washed through her, rising from her chest.
She froze in the chair. If before she seemed like a disoriented child, now it was more as if she were lost in the woods.
Her heart sped up and she began to sweat from her pores.
'I didn't think about anything at all while I was with him... But what about now? What do I do now? What am I doing here?' Each question she asked herself alarmed her more.
Panic began to assault her. It manifested as soft tremors in her legs, chills running down her spine. She now desperately darted her eyes around the empty dining room. She began to hyperventilate.
Her eyes finally settled on the exit. In the midst of her inexplicable anxiety, she almost jumped up and ran for the door, had it not been for the sound of a door opening.
It was Sunny emerging from a doorway. He looked more disheveled than when she had seen him moments before. His forehead was gleaming with sweat; he even looked dirty.
He looked directly at her, smiled, and walked in her direction.
Seeing him, her heart warmed, and the previous panic and nervousness quickly dissipated. The tension in her limbs ceased, and she ended up leaning back completely in the chair; she hadn't realized she had been so tense.
Sunny sat where Beth had been earlier. In his hands he held a wooden box with artisanal decorations, which he placed in the middle of the table.
"Open it," said Sunny, giving the box a final little nudge in her direction.
Telle gave Sunny a quick look and then looked at the box. She pulled it towards her with clear curiosity.
She opened the box by removing a simple latch that served more as decoration than a real lock. Inside was a golden-colored bracelet with black engravings. At first glance, she noticed the material was somewhat similar to leather.
She widened her eyes at the gift. "Is this for me?"
Sunny nodded his head. "Of course it is. It's your sword, the one you asked me for. Remember?"
She lowered her gaze to the bracelet and looked at it for a few seconds, puzzled.
"Huh? But..."
"Put it on."
Looking at Sunny one last time, almost arching an eyebrow, she touched the bracelet, and suddenly it flashed briefly before disappearing. She didn't have time to be impressed by that before the enchantment spoke to her.
Incredulous, she opened her runes, looked down at the memory section, and there it was.
[I hope this helps with the heat.]
Her cheeks warmed at the memory of the embarrassment she had suffered, and still suffered, in the forge. She shook her head, dispelling that recollection.
She invoked the memory, and after a few seconds, the same bracelet that was in the box appeared, but now in her right hand.
She stared at the bracelet, astonished. She had never seen anything like it with a memory; she was unaware that a memory could be acquired simply by touching it.
"Now put a little essence into it," Sunny pointed at the bracelet with his finger.
She obeyed and channeled a stream of soul essence into it. The instant she did, the bracelet glowed and slid down to her palm, transforming into a sword, which she caught by reflex.
The sword looked ceremonial, with the same colors as the bracelet gold and black but the blade was the silver color typical of swords.
She found it beautiful, but she was still stunned by the first impression of the peculiar bracelet. In an intuitive impulse, she channeled another tiny bit of essence, and the sword glowed and turned back into a bracelet.
Her eyes shone, marveling like a child with a new toy. When she touched the bracelet with the fingers of her other hand, her heart warmed.
In her runes, she saw there were other lines of text, but she decided to pay attention to them another time.
"I see you like it," Sunny noted.
She nodded silently, with a smile. With her mood restored, she looked him in the eyes.
"Make it a ring next time, okay?" she joked.
"I will," he smiled. After confirming, he slowly got up from the table.
"By the way, I wanted to ask you something..." he said as he walked away towards the kitchen door.
He pushed it open and crossed through, disappearing behind it. The moment she lost sight of him, Sunny reappeared with a different appearance, the same neat and clean one as before, but now dressed in what she assumed were his work clothes.
She tilted her head, confused. She decided to save her questions for another occasion.
"...it's just that if you still want the armor, I wanted to take this moment to talk about it properly," he continued where he had left off, sitting down in the same spot.
Telle subtly opened her eyes wider, remembering the original reason she had come.
After discussing the details of the armor and chatting a bit more, the first customers began to arrive, interrupting their conversation. Both Sunny and the girls reached the point where they focused on serving customers and the kitchen. Not wanting to disturb them while they worked, Telle decided to leave.
First, she said goodbye to Aiko, who couldn't say much to her because she was too busy serving.
Feeling somewhat disappointed about not being able to talk to her and also a bit puzzled about her, Telle didn't really know what to think of Aiko. Her first impression of her had been somewhat strange; she actually thought of her as a bit odd, but she didn't want to think that about her without really knowing her. Still, something told her she wasn't entirely off the mark in her thoughts.
After Aiko, she went over to Beth, who was at the cash register.
"I hope to see you around here soon. I still have things to talk to you about!" she announced. She approached, gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, which threw Telle off balance. Telle looked at her, confused, and Beth just winked at her before turning her focus back to her work as a customer arrived.
Telle took a step back. Guttural sounds of confusion tried to escape her mouth, but she suppressed them. She turned around, looking at the kitchen door. She approached it and, with a hint of hesitation, pushed it open and walked through, hoping she didn't seem intrusive.
She walked over to Sunny, who was busy mixing something in a bowl with his back to her. She walked towards him slowly, hesitating before gently touching his arm to get his attention.
Sunny had noticed her coming in, but decided to wait for her to approach and make a tender gesture, just like the one she had just made.
"I'm leaving..." Telle said quietly.
Sunny put the bowl down on a low shelf, turning towards her.
"Let me walk you to the door," he smiled. He stepped ahead of her and walked out of the kitchen.
She followed in Sunny's footsteps to the exit, both stopping right at the door.
They were supposed to say goodbye, but neither of them moved a single muscle once they reached their destination.
Neither of them knew exactly what to say. They looked at each other expectantly. After a few seconds of silence, Sunny coughed and scratched the back of his head. Despite all the confidence he had gained in Telle in such a short time and how good he felt around her, when this moment arrived, he didn't know how to act.
"See you soon, I sup—" Sunny tried to say whatever came to mind, but he was interrupted by arms wrapping around him affectionately.
Telle, who also didn't know what to say, decided to take another path: to follow what her heart was telling her. She hugged him tightly and buried her face in his neck, imprinting the warmth of his skin into her memory.
After a squeeze with her arms, she pulled away to steal a fleeting kiss from Sunny, which he received first with surprise, but quickly returned.
No empty words were needed to say goodbye; Telle understood that immediately, and Sunny followed suit.
Without saying another word, they separated and looked at each other one last time before Telle walked through the door with a smile.
She looked back a couple of times, seeing that he was still watching her from the doorway. That made her happy.
She walked down the quiet street. She could have summoned her echo and flown back to her residence, but the day was beautiful, with a clear sky and a sparkling sun. She decided to walk.
Shortly after starting her walk, she summoned her armor, which made her feel more comfortable in public.
As the minutes passed, her passionate heart grew calm. She walked more slowly. She took a deep breath of fresh air, closing her eyes as she stopped in the middle of the street. She pinched her arm; it definitely hurt. She tested to see if she was dreaming a silly thing, since she couldn't dream here anyway.
'It really happened... It feels like a dream, even though I don't remember what dreaming is like.'
She stroked the bracelet.
'I guess sometimes things don't go exactly as you want... You get some surprises,' she thought, letting out a sigh. 'But what pleasant surprises.' She smiled.
She resumed her walk. She kept turning over everything that had happened. Her heart would speed up against her will when she thought about Sunny and everything she had done with him. While walking, she was in the clouds, almost bumping into passersby several times.
She lost track of time until she was already at the gates of her clan's current residence.
With her mind still elsewhere, she entered robotically, not thinking much about her surroundings.
On the way to her quarters, she opened a door leading to the wing where her room was located, which was seldom visited; she was almost completely alone in this wing of the building.
The first thing she saw upon passing through her bedroom door was the figure of her mother, Saint Tyris, arms crossed, with an inscrutable expression, but whose eyes were looking at her piercingly.
"Where were you?" she said monotonously.
Telle's blood ran cold. She froze. Her mother wasn't particularly expressive in any way, but having lived her whole life with her, Telle had learned to understand small traces of emotion in her posture and attitude as a way to gauge her feelings, and her experience told her that her mother was not very pleased.
"Answer me," Tyris spoke again, her expression blank.
Telle felt a chill and her throat went dry. Today, she had completely forgotten about her mother. Not only that; in her mother's eyes, she had gone out on an errand that shouldn't have taken long, and had returned the next morning without saying a word.
"I-I went to commission the memory I told you about and... I ended up sleeping at a friend's house," she tried to excuse herself. Her trembling voice gave her away.
"You don't have any friends, Telle."
Those words hurt more than any wound, because they were true. She had no way to respond to that. Caught between the pain of the words and a lack of excuses to justify herself, she fell silent, looking at the floor.
Tyris took a step towards her daughter, already preparing her lecture. She opened her mouth to scold her, but froze mid-action. Taking that step allowed her to see something else: a trace of color on her skin, and she knew very well what it was.
She took another step, this time more firmly, and without even asking, she invaded her daughter's personal space. She grabbed the edge of her armor, specifically around the neck area, and pulled.
"M-mom! Wait!" Telle protested, grabbing the unstoppable arm pulling at her.
Tyris not only saw clothes that weren't hers; all around her neck and further down were telltale marks of hickeys and faint traces of bite marks, almost imperceptible as they were nearly healed, but they were there.
Telle felt a powerful pressure on her shoulder. Even if her mother could show an expression right now, she was absolutely certain that her natural inexpressiveness terrified her more than any look of rage.
She urgently needed to say something.
"I went to..." she hesitated to say the next part. Her words could condemn her if she didn't choose them correctly; her fate hung in the balance.
Even knowing that, in what could have been an impulse of courage or stupidity, she affirmed:
"I-I was with my boyfriend..."
The pressure on her shoulder vanished, and the expression on Tyris's face froze even more than it naturally was.
"I... I didn't want to tell you yet, I didn't want to... worry you, but-" she lied, being interrupted.
"Bring him tomorrow."
Now it was Telle's turn to freeze.
"If he doesn't come tomorrow, I will go look for him myself."
That statement was a threat; one didn't need to know Tyris well to understand that.
She snapped out of her stupor with a nervous tremor. "W-what are you going to do, Mom?"
She looked her mother in the eyes, awaiting her words expectantly, praying to the dead gods for mercy for herself and her newfound beloved.
"I'm inviting him to dinner, why else?" The monotony of her voice hid something dangerous. "I want to meet him. I need to have a few words with him."
IMPORTANT NOTICE IN THE NOTES.