Aryennos threw a wary look at the river, but this one was flowing zily, broad and shallow and cking the steep banks of the one where we’d found him. There wasn’t even a bridge, just a ford that we waded through without difficulty, Aryennos riding because I wasn’t taking a chance on him slipping and re-injuring himself.
On the far side, where trees suddenly became more of a presence than I’d seen since Brightspring Wood, there was a shelter. This one was all wood. Posts had been driven into the ground less than a meter apart and ft strips of wood had been woven between them with care and precision to make it extremely even and regur. The wood was of several colours and shaded from dark to reddish to reddish-gold to gold to near-white, and the wooden shingles of the roof did the same gradient in reverse order, dark at the top down to near-white at the edge. Insution wasn’t really much of a concern for any shelter, with a rge offset door in each of the four walls, and it was a really pretty effect. Outside, there was the usual mini-garden of red berry bushes and a couple of more-or-less-apple fruit trees, with a stone fountain. This one had a central pilr carved to look like a rather dense bush with singing birds perching in it, and the water fell from the open beaks of the birds down into the basin.
We were in the middle of nowhere. A purely utilitarian building and fountain would have served to provide shelter and water, if anyone was going to go to the effort of making those avaible for free to any random passerby. It would have taken less time and probably fewer resources. But people here just didn’t think like that, even though they didn’t do anything by industrial mass production. Someone had taken the time to choose the wood and do all the complicated stuff I was vaguely sure would be required to shape it and get it ready to bend like that and then assemble it all in the right order without a single visual distraction. Someone had taken the time to think about this fountain and design it to not only work but to be attractive and fit its setting and then carved stone into that shape.
And Aryennos admired it, and Serru agreed that it was a pleasant pce to stay. They didn’t exactly take it for granted, they did appreciate it, but neither found anything at all striking about its simple existence or the form of it. Of course it was here, and of course it had been built to be artistic.
While Aryennos and I took care of starting a fire and filling pot and kettle with water to heat, Serru produced her fishing gear again; this time, she successfully returned with two substantial fish in her basket. I was expecting them to need to be cleaned, and wasn’t quite sure how I could help but braced myself to learn.
This world threw me another curve ball. Serru simply slit them along the underside and peeled off the scaled skin, then tossed the rest into the pot with some of the gathered green stuff and roots and mushrooms. Simmered with occasional stirring, it transformed into a delicious thick savory stew, from which she simply spooned out complete clean fish skeletons. With a little of the bread from Iguana Meadows to wipe the bowl clean, it made a meal as good as we’d had in the tavern, as far as I was concerned.
Well, why not? I was already in a world where I only had any need to urinate once or twice a day, pass more solid waste every three or so and not much then, shave never, bathe only when it was convenient, and chew on minty leaves instead of brushing my teeth. This might look like my own familiar body, at least sometimes, but some aspects of basic biology, like basic physics, ran differently here, making it a very hygienic sort of pce. Pusibly, food was processed with insane levels of efficiency; after all, a pint of berries provided a full meal. Why shouldn’t fish be essentially just moving food waiting to be eaten, if they weren’t considered to be alive the way animals and people were?
“Do all fish taste this good?” I asked Serru.
She smiled and shook her head. “No. Some taste better but they’re less common or aren’t found in this area. I threw back some that were smaller, when they’re that size they have a bitter-sour taste that most people find unpleasant.”
“There are fish that are kept in gardens or indoors because they’re pretty,” Aryennos chimed in. “Those ones wouldn’t taste good.”
Serru nodded. “And the fish out in the ocean are of other kinds altogether. There are many kinds of fish, just as there are many kinds of pnts, and like pnts they vary between regions.”
That pretty much fit the pattern. There was diversity, but it was finite.
We lingered over tea, and I told them about the time my father had decided that he needed to take my sister and I fishing so we could experience it. The problem was, he wasn’t a particurly adept fisherman himself. My sister had fallen in the ke, but that wasn’t the only thing that had gone wrong, only the crowning bit of bad luck. Our father had looked at the situation, ughed, packed my dripping sister and me and the borrowed fishing gear back into the car, and took us out to get fish and chips that we ate in a keside park.
I missed them. I hated knowing that they must be frantic, wondering what had happened to me.
“You’re sad all of a sudden,” Serru said gently.
“I... might not have been spending enough time with them, or appreciating them properly, for a while. I’ve been working a lot. It’s a hard job even under good conditions, and with the pandemic, it got a lot worse. It’s been getting harder for Grace and I to find time to actually talk even online, instead of writing messages back and forth, and I haven’t actually seen her in person in... I think three weeks. I haven’t seen my family very much either. My job puts me at a high risk of getting sick and I don’t think my mom would survive it even after vaccination, and I’m not willing to take chances with her life. The vet clinic where Grace works is already short-handed and they need her.”
“That disease, it has cost you a lot.”
“It has, yeah, but... things were already a mess before it. I knew that and I knew I needed to do something about it, make more time for myself to rex and do something that isn’t work-reted, take better care of myself. I was trying to spend time with Grace, I like being with her and I feel good when I am and I think that goes both ways, but she works a lot too, so... I’m not sure. A lot of people I know are from messed-up families. Either their dad would never think of doing something like that fishing trip, or he would have kept pushing it even if my sister and I were both miserable and getting nothing out of it, or... something, there are lots of variants and lots of ways to learn bad things from parents. I didn’t really understand how special they are until I got older, and by then I was out on my own working, and... I don’t know. I guess... I hope time is moving at a different speed or something, so they aren’t spending a month scared and hurting with no idea where I am.”
“I see no reason why not. They are, after all, different worlds.”
“I don’t see how we could ever get evidence of that either way,” Aryennos said thoughtfully. “We definitely can’t say that it doesn’t move at a different speed. It’s at least as probable as the opposite.”
“I think I’ll just keep telling myself that,” I said. “I can’t do anything about it, regardless, and it’s a less horrible thought. I really hope, no matter what, that they have some idea how much I love them. I’m not sure when I st told them that.”
“From what I’ve heard about your family,” Serru said, ying a hand over mine, “they know. And you are going to have a singur story to tell them when you get home.”
“I wonder if they’ll believe me. My sister probably will. She’ll be annoyed that she wasn’t the one to come here.” I shook my head, trying to drive away the longing to see her. “Sorry. You must have families too. You’ve mentioned having a big family before, Serru.”
Serru’s forehead was still creased as she moved her hand, but she smiled. “Yes. Five sisters and half-sisters and one half-brother. One is a brilliant baker, one is a clever and creative tailor, one crafts beautiful jewellery, one has a thriving farm with sheep and chickens and an orchard and vegetable fields, one works in the local council administration, and one has a shop that specializes in small clothing accessories but also a partner who styles hair. Our parents are a carpenter, a farmer of wheat and sheep and culinary herbs, and a potter. It gets even more mad when you consider all their respective spouses and several children, and if you begin to include cousins, because all three parents have siblings, I think one could run a settlement of fair size with no one but my retives and cover the essentials.”
“Mine is much smaller,” Aryennos said. “I don’t have any siblings. My father has one sibling and my mother has two, so cousins are a short list, and they live in different settlements. My mother is a teacher and my father is a musician. Although the other four in my father’s band and their partners are my aunts and uncles for any practical purpose, really, and I grew up knowing their children, they’re effectively my cousins and much closer to home.”
“Are there holidays here when families get together?” I asked.
Serru nodded. “The next isn’t for some time, otherwise I’d introduce you.” She chuckled. “One sister would be appalled at how little clothing you have and would decide to correct that. And you’d never escape without hair and tail styled in a complementary way, possibly with decorative touches. I love them but there are reasons I enjoy the peace and quiet of being on the road alone much of the time.”
With the tea gone and the fire dying down, the conversation eventually wound down as well, and we retired to our respective tents.
I jolted sharply awake from restless dreams of fshing lights and screaming in the night, with a sense that I’d been struggling half-aware to either see something clearly or escape it entirely. Serru had called my name from right outside, I realized. I rolled over and hastily ran a hand along the front fp of the tent, unsealing it.
“What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard something and got up to check,” she said. “Aryennos’ tent is empty, I don’t see him anywhere, and he didn’t respond when I called his name.”
“I suppose, technically, he’s an independent adult who might have a valid reason.”
“He fell in a high-water river trying to see a loon. We’re on the edge of a forest in which people can get lost for days or weeks if they leave the road.”
“Yeah, you’re absolutely right. We’d better find him. I wasn’t sleeping very well anyway.” I yawned, stretched, and switched to my centaur form so I could cast my light spell.
A very bright point of light appeared; as far as I’d been able to tell, it had no substance or mass, but when I closed a hand loosely around it and moved it, it stayed wherever I put it retive to my body. That meant I could position it at arm’s length over my head and then ignore it, and it would stay there.
“Where do we start?” I asked her.
