The room is in a silence for a long time. But the silence isn’t eery, it isn’t nice, it is sharp like a knife.
Nari is breathing heavily as she looks down at the floor. She can feel all the glares at her ears and collar as Lina states themselves Heretics.
Nari looks over to Ashen who is just quietly looking around the room like always.
How can he be so calm? she wonders.
She hears whispers around the room from other adventurers,
”They can’t call themselves that.”
”They should be arrested.”
”Disgusting admitting themselves Heretics like it’s a good thing.”
Nari’s breathing becomes heavy and she reaches out to clutch Lina’s cloak hoping to steal some of her courage before faltering and lowering her arm from the cloth.
Shaky arms raise as Nari covers her sensitive ears trying not to hear the disgust in their voices.
Ashen starts calmly walking away as Lina grabs their identification tags, Nari is frozen with her eyes closed and ears covered as terrible thoughts bounce around in her head.
Lina crouches down to the shivering pup and gently pats her head saying,
”Want to get out of here?”
A shaky mouth opens to speak but nothing emerges, instead she gets herself to nod slightly almost missable to her shaking.
Lina takes Nari’s hand and leads her out of the adventurer’s hall as the silence with occasional whispers ring around the hall but to Nari it might as well be as loud as a Dragon’s wail.
The group of Heretics leave the adventurer’s hall as they now stand on the streets with not many people around as the few who are back away from the dangerous group.
Lina is helping calm Nari down by petting her head which seems to soothe her as Lina speaks gently,
”Sorry about that, I should have asked for your opinion before saying that.”
Nari looks up at Lina feeling better but she is confused, why would anyone care for her opinion? She’s just a slave. Nari can’t bring herself to speak though.
Lina sees Nari still upset and blames herself. She steps away from the girl and quietly asks Ashen,
”I didn’t think this would happen from that.”
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Ashen looks over from the onlooker watching them from afar to Lina as he says,
”I quite enjoyed it, I’m already a monster so it can’t get much worse, though Nari doesn’t seem to share my mind, but it doesn’t matter, we need to keep heading south.”
Ashen starts walking ahead but Lina gets annoyed by his attitude, she forcefully grabs his cloak and says with a raised voice,
”We can’t just leave Nari like this.”
Ashen looks back, not caring about much besides living or dying as he says,
”She was spying on us for who knows how long for who the hell knows why? Keeping her around will only put us in more danger.”
Lina doesn’t back down, in her eyes Nari and Ashen are similar, both hurt by the world, she looks Ashen dead in the eyes and says,
”We are not leaving her like this, now you’re smart, what can help her cheer up?”
Ashen is quiet a long moment, Nari has yet to tell them anything about herself besides her first name, but Ashen has had to distinguish friend from foe for his whole life.
But Ashen doesn’t see why this is his problem, his thoughts are less focused on what would make Nari happy and more towards just surviving.
Lina seeing Ashen unwilling to help turns away from him and back towards Nari.
Ashen’s thoughts pause, seeing his only comrade turn their back on him, he sighs as he simply says,
”She is probably just overwhelmed from the noise, let’s head out of town and give her time to calm down.”
Lina stutters at Ashen’s words, before she shifts her priority to Nari.
They leave the village without staying the night as planned, it is dark as they enter the woods once more filled with dangers unseen but Nari seems to be doing better.
Hours pass as Lina sits by the campfire keeping watch. She busies herself by butchering a rabbit Ashen caught earlier with a hunting bow.
She is doing this as Nari walks up to her, Lina sets down the kill and gives her attention to Nari saying,
”I’m sorry about earlier, I should have asked for your thoughts on it before dragging you into that situation.”
Nari is quiet for a long moment before quietly asking with hesitation,
”Why… Why are you apologizing to me? My opinion doesn’t matter.”
Fire crackles as tension builds, Nari stands shaking while looking down at the floor, while Lina sits on a log with bloodied hands.
After what feels like eternity to Nari, Lina says softly,
”You’re opinion does matter to me, you’re just as human as the rest of us.”
Lina wonders how Nari will react but as water drops start spilling from her lowered face, Lina worries she might have offended her till Nari speaks again,
”No one has ever cared about my opinion before.”
Lina is saddened to hear that but steps forward nonetheless, she kneels down and hugs the young girl.
Bloodied hands envelop Nari then Nari returns the hug, Nari is bawling her eyes out while Lina just accepts her feelings.
After a while to calm down, Lina backs off a little but Nari still clutches her cloak, Nari gathers her courage and says,
”Thanks Lina.”
Lina is overjoyed as Nari seems to open up towards her a little.
The next morning Ashen wakes up to the smell of meat, he sits up and sees Lina grilling quite a few rabbit scraps.
Ashen walks over as Lina hands out a skewered piece of grilled meat, Ashen takes it then asks,
”Where did you get all this meat? I barely caught one rabbit yesterday.”
Lina smiles as she turns to Ashen saying,
”Well Nari has a better knack for the bow than you do.”
Ashen’s gaze hardens slightly as he pauses in his eating,
”You’re saying you gave Nari our hunting bow? Didn’t we agree not to give the spy weapons?”
Lina looks over towards the edge of the clearing as Nari runs over with a new rabbit and an empty quiver.
Lina smiles and says,
”She isn’t a spy, she’s our new friend, and I’m happy with what I did.”
Lina is happy and confident as she sees Nari because for the first ever time,
Nari is smiling.
