Anyone could tell you, Vancy Tarcelle is a very exuberant and outgoing young lady. But when she's on her home turf she is exhausting. She kept up a running patter of conversation the whole time, and she never seemed to stop moving. Somehow there was enough of her for every one of us. I did not realize how restrained and repressed she was when she was feeling isolated at the school.

  The perfumeries were interesting, and were just as good as she had claimed- certainly superior to any similar shops anywhere in Meadowtam. Where my home duchy is the agricultural center of Hearstwhile, Anquarry is the manufacturing and industrial centerpiece. The stereotype for the people here is industrious, no-nonsense, and a bit austere. I have not met many Anquarrians to verify that stereotype.

  I'm much more familiar with their ruling class: I've only just arrived in Anquarry but previously I've met plenty of people from House Skyback, the extended family of the duke ruling over Anquarry. The general perception of House Skyback, which I've learned to credit, is that they are secretive, inquisitive, patient, cunning, and cautious. They like secrets, especially the ones that belong to other people. This puts them often at odds against Aumerje, Grennick, and Nhullit, who all have far too many secrets they would prefer nobody was interested in.

  I take interest in this because Skyback, Aumerje and Ebonder are all allied in the Independent faction and sworn to back each other. But Skyback's interest in other people's secrets could be the wedge to break up that coalition.

  But Tarcelle is not Skyback, nor even a cadet house, a minor house under its umbrella. Vancy's family line is most related to Eyellon, but even then only tenuously. She's one of those absolute gems: a landed noble without complicating ties. She does her own thing, an independent countess in an independent county, with only a vassal's loyalty to the duchy and no familial ties to worry about. And I had occasionally dreamed of how carefree that could be, without all the tangles enwrapping every relationship. Seeing Vancy showed me that I was exactly right and it really was just that easygoing.

  She technically owned all of this but everyone just treated her like a favorite niece, to be offered a treat or a favor and a kind word. She moved constantly, and treated the whole town like a candy store. Last week I spent half a day in an actual candy store and she seemed to have this much fun all the time. She left them to their businesses, they left her to her fun, and somehow it all just worked.

  I know she's rich, but everywhere we went she just got things and nobody even mentioned prices or money. For the rest of us, we got steep discounts as friends of the countess, but she was clearly in "your money's no good here" territory, nobody would let her pay for anything and she was happy not to fight them on that.

  I had thought that the Harigold family had a good relationship with the villagers in the area, but Vancy Tarcelle taught me how stiff-necked, unapproachable and cold my family really was to the community. Somehow Vancy was just the gold child of a family that encompassed her entire county. The Harigolds were generous, well-loved, and they were strident populists but they did not have this wide-open familiarity that Tarcelle had.

  The closest parallel was the way that the people of Zhudten reacted to me. I could only spare them a couple of hours per week, at odd times fitted into my schedule, but I still lit up every time I heard the "hi princess!" calls that rang out from everyone that saw me. I've got a great relationship with the people of Skydown Crossing, where I go for church. That's family, that's where I was raised. But they know me as the daughter of the duke. The protectorate of Zhudten, in a nearly-uninhabitable corner of the duchy, had never seen the duke. They did not know my family. They never saw me in finery and they never watched the gold-trimmed carriage roll by. They saw me show up with my work boots on, always in a hurry, clearing a spot of land or leveling a road or fixing the pilings of the dock.

  They knew me as the absentee landlord that would sweep in, catch up the list of repairs and improvements, and then dash off. When Zhudten citizens called me "Princess", it doesn't feel like a title. It feels like a nickname.

  Of the two, I prefer having a nickname.

  Visiting Skydown brought me a combination of warmth and respect that is deeply healing to me. But when I drop by Zhudten, it's casual. And Vancy has something very much like that. I am glad to see that for her. I find it really suits her.

  On the other hand Nunxio and Larianne looked surprised and unsettled, like they just did not know how to react to this at all. Elica looked pained, seeing Vancy in her native environment was threatening everything that Elica knew about being an aristocrat- and the only thing that Elica knows in the world is how to be an aristocrat.

  But Trazom was enchanted. Enamored. Ecstatic. He was seeing a new life that he had not imagined, where people just like each other and nobody seems to need anything from each other. Here in the outskirts, nobody recognized him or wanted anything from him. A few times, Vancy started to introduce him and give his name, but each time Larianne was quick enough to put a hand on her shoulder or arm and those small gestures were enough to cool her off and give her pause, remind her that we're not here to parade our celebrity around.

  I feel like she keeps wanting to brag about her association, but his anonymity today means more to him than his fame means to her, so she just brings him around as "one of my friends".

  He's really enjoying himself. Vancy asks his opinions on perfumes and he's having a hard time phrasing opinions about something non-auditory, like he does not easily find adjectives for sights or smells or textures. And though he's floundering with unfamiliar situations, he's loving every minute of it. The novelty is dazzling him. The only sounds around are conversation and footsteps and hooves and carts, banging from the cooper down the street and sawing from the joinery next door. The hawkers are laughing and bantering in the square, a child is crying. No music anywhere, except for the music that is everywhere, lives being lived. He is glowing. He's just living his life as if he had never touched strings or reeds.

  I feel like he needed a day off as much as I needed gratuitous violence. I could still feel the rush of power as I released those singularities last night, the satiation of devastation. I am many-faceted: I enjoy wanton cataclysm directed at my enemies, and I like a simple hour of gossiping with the citizens of my old hometown, and I like small jars of things that smell nice.

  And it wasn't even just one top-of-the-line perfume shop. Vancy, true to her word, could take us to four bottlers that had better scents than I could have found anywhere in Meadowtam, anywhere in Anquarry, or anywhere that I knew to look in Hearstcliff. There might be better shops with better products, but if so they're so exclusive and specialized that the princess of Meadowtam can't ever seem to find them.

  And in between the perfume shops? The square that they held festivals in. The giant pigeon coop that had some obscure religious significance. A winding stair up a stone tower that led to a really spectacular vista overlooking the town. A fountain that ran intermittently to make a fun little guessing game that she showed us how to play. A spot where the brick pavement was mixed with quartz so that vivid murals would emerge when the sunlight hit from certain angles during the summer months.

  And that's the highlights, because in between all of that we've got "this is the alley that's best for sledding when it snows" and "here's the park everyone goes to propose marriage" and "I fell out of that tree once". I feel like if I spend a whole day with Vancy I'll end up knowing Tarcelle as well as I know Skydown. And while the rest of us are just trying to keep up?

  Trazom is asking her questions. He wants to know more than she's already telling us. It's frankly amazing.

  I'm not the only one that thinks so, the more he interacts with her the more giddy and giggly she gets, and she still has not gotten over the habit of using Enefiat Trazom's full name every chance she gets. He does not seem to mind at all.

  And every so often he starts getting jittery, overexcited, and he grabs my hand. It is to my surprise to realize that I don't mind this. He's holding my hand, not holding me by the hand, and that's a difference I never realized existed until I compared him to Yheta. With Yheta, he's tethering himself to me with his grip. Trazom wants to feel a hand in his hand, and mine is that hand.

  It's nice.

  It's an interesting day for learning things that I thought would cause trouble but instead are... perfectly okay. Sure, every so often he says something breathtakingly condescending. Especially if anything about music is being mentioned. And I don't think he respects me at a fundamental level. But he does like me, in a simple and familiar way. And a lot of people don't.

  So, I'm going to say this has potential. I'm a lot better at teaching people to respect me, than to like me. Not ideal, but about half of my "love interests" list doesn't like me or respect me. Honestly, a lot of them really make me question why they're labeled that way. I don't think I would ever pursue Licard-

  But what if it's not about me?

  I pursued this train of thought. When I played the game, controlling Nathan, I would never go after all twelve beaus in one playthrough. Pragmatically impossible, and silly to try. There's no harem endings; the story concludes with him getting married and he is a faithful husband, no mistresses.

  And more than that- everyone's got their favorites. I hardly ever play through Sicimmi's endings. I think I've gotten each of Lyric Vainting's endings once each, just to get the achievement for getting all those cutscenes. And Kiri Sizomaji kind of annoys me. It's a dating sim, right, and every player has preferences. Which means, for all intents and purposes, that the character living out those choices has preferences.

  If someone else, with a different life and experiences and preferences than I have, had been brought here as Nathan's twin sister, could she have been swooning over Licard? Entranced by Rabert Frantlin? Amused by Professor Ryichsur? Were those characters listed as love interests just out of potential, not because I, personally, would find them attractive? Did they actually follow the same mechanics as Nathan's love interests?

  What a fucking idea. But, weirdly? It took a lot of pressure off of me. There's nothing wrong if I blow off one suggested character or another. I don't need to feel obligated to everyone that just happened to have a love interest tag floating in their status indicator. Well, aside from the obvious. Other than what it could mean for our eventual ending. Because I do still need to navigate a good ending.

  Whoop. There's the pressure again. Dammit. I told myself to lose the introspection and focus on my friends.

  We had lunch in town. Sort of all over town, appetizers at a small quaint bakery, warm beverages from the old-growth pub, entree at the delicatessen, fruits from the market square, desserts from the patisserie. It was a picnic in that every thing we ate, we ate at a park, but it was a different park for each course. Effectively five different picnics. And all the walking, talking, sights, distractions and snacks kept clearing our palates between one perfumery and the next, so we did not burn out or go numb. Vancy was, hands down, the best local tour guide I've ever known.

  If I ever take these folks to Skydown Crossing I'm gonna need to study and plan extensively to live up to this standard.

  While we were walking along, I found I just could not stop smiling. I get like that on most weekends. I think it's because I get like that when I'm away from Hearstcliff. I can walk through the streets of Tarcelle and feel like these people are still alive. They never showed up in the game. They don't live in Hearstcliff. I've never seen their buildings on fire and I've never watched monsters rampage through their streets. In Tarcelle, I can see a town that I can't remember destroyed.

  Hearstcliff doesn't give me that. I have seen it burn in the Rapier Revolt, the Houses squabbling for control of a throne and instigating their followers to rise up for power they would never get to share. I saw Hearstcliff in mourning, houses smashed, in the wake of the Upheaval, their misery compounded by the recent dead. And then I saw the waves of hungry things that came pouring down the aqueducts and shredding children in their jaws. The seat of power destroyed, the people- long abused- rose up in a civil war that sought to destroy all enemies, all outsiders, all nonbelievers. Not once or twice. Dozens of times. Hearstcliff was a tomb to me. I've seen it destroyed so many times it has become boring to me.

  I watched Vancy and the people of her domain as they danced. She threw flowers to children. These children would probably grow up. I could get attached here. I could enjoy people being happy. I could think of things being fixed. I could look at all of this and it's not so bleak.

  On the other hand, sometimes the bleakness helped me. When things were ugly, when some society maven was shredding at my sense of decency, sometimes I could look them right in the eye and smile, because I could think quietly to myself 'I know how you die. And it is soon. And it is bloody'.

  This was probably why I stayed out of the city any time I had the chance. Free periods, weekends, snippets of minutes here and there, any excuse at all. For me the world was Tarcelle, and Skydown, and Zhudten, and every little pocket of people living lives. For me The End was Hearstcliff.

  Today I tried not to dwell. I laughed with them, and I enjoyed the city. I thrived here, like I thrive in Skydown Crossing and in Zhudten and even in Broghton. My dark moments happened, my bitter thoughts would come, but they were few. They were fleeting. They were nearly drowned out by Vancy's laughter and the games. I relished that, and I was grateful to her for this.

  Out of respect for Trazom, she took us nowhere that had music, so we had parks and pubs and fountain squares, street performers with feats of balance or daring or magic. A walk-through art gallery where Enefiat bought a painting as a souvenir, a cityscape of Tarcelle. And, teasing good-naturedly, she took us to a candy store where I again bought more than I had any right to, and sampled enough to draw laughter from my friends, which I would join in. I don't mind a little teasing about my most harmless vice.

  Nowhere did we linger, nowhere did we bide. From one welcome place and cheerful face to another, over and over. The time stretched long, we put so much into each hour that it was hard to countenance it later. I thought surely that if I lived at this pace for more than a day, maybe my mind would hold no more thoughts than Vancy's does. And if I lived this pace, I very well may sleep as long as she does, as well. Surely her life is exhausting for her, else she would not be so hard to rouse in the mornings.

  We were all startled when we noticed the local bells were chiming out fourteen, and it was time to head in for dinner. It was like a spell broke. I shook off my thoughts.

  "Oh," I said, staring off into the distance towards the bell tower, and disappointment was thick in my voice. "Oh. I need to get us back to Hearstcliff. I've got dinner plans." I was holding a basket of perfumes and I was surprised that it was so many bottles, because I felt like I had done a marvelous job of restraining my impulses. Rather than buying everything that caught my attention, I was able to muster my self-control and willpower to - holy shit, thirteen bottles?!

  Trazom stepped in front of Vancy. "Countess Tarcelle, thank you ever so much for this day. This has meant a lot to me, and I've come to see why you love this place as much as you do. I hope that soon my schedule and affairs will allow me leave to return and to sample every part of this town that we have not seen already."

  She giggled, charmed and captivated. Ah, celebrity. She had overcome some of the hero-worship but she was still easily flustered by his words. One by one we followed suit to thank her, but none of us had the same impact, and her eyes kept stealing his way.

  Probably for the best that she would not be following with us to the Auditioneer's Hall and the dinner concert, either the sparkle would wear off for her, or she would finally be overwhelmed by her reverence for the celebrity. I would not want either of those for her.

  No sense delaying, I thought, and I opened the doorway into light, handing out the goggles.