Chapter 38: Departure
The morning arrived without drama.
Two weeks had passed.
Arthur stood in front of his open bag and stared at its contents. Maria appeared at the door, looked at the bag, and came inside.
"Arthur," Maria said.
"It’s a system," Arthur said.
"It’s one sock."
"I was going to add the other."
"When?"
"Before I left."
"You were about to close the bag."
Arthur looked at the bag. Then at the sock. "I would have noticed."
"You have never noticed," Maria said.
She moved him gently aside with one hand and began unpacking with the efficiency of someone who had been correcting this specific situation for sixteen years. She added socks in pairs. She added a second jacket he had forgotten. She added several other items that he realized, as they emerged from her hands, that he had not thought about packing at all.
"How did you know I’d forget those?" he asked.
"You forget them every time you go anywhere."
"I’ve never gone anywhere long enough to matter."
"You forgot them for the overnight Hunt last spring."
"That was different."
"You were cold for three days."
"I managed."
"You borrowed Karn’s extra shirt, and it was too small."
Arthur opened his mouth.
"He told me," Maria said.
Arthur turned to Mithra and Vedas in the doorway with the expression of someone who had been outmaneuvered on multiple fronts and needed support. Mithra raised her eyebrows.
Vedas looked at a point slightly above Arthur’s head.
"Traitors," Arthur said.
Melo had claimed the top of Arthur’s finished luggage at some point and was asleep on it, arranged with complete comfort and absolute lack of concern for the morning’s agenda.
Arthur pointed at her. "She’s not helping."
"She’s helping emotionally," Maria said.
"That doesn’t count."
"It does."
Melo did not open her eyes. She had apparently decided this debate was settled.
...
Breakfast was exactly like every other breakfast of the two weeks, which was exactly why it wasn’t.
Maria made eggs. Arthur ate considerably more than was reasonable. Melo appeared beneath the table with something. Vedas was offered seconds twice and accepted both times with the quiet appreciation of someone who had learned that Maria’s cooking was worth prioritizing.
Mithra watched Arthur pile food onto his plate and said: "You’re going to regret that on the carriage."
"The carriage will take two hours," Arthur said. "I’ll be fine."
"You said that after the third piece of bread yesterday."
"Yesterday was different."
"How?"
Arthur thought about it. "I was more confident yesterday."
Mithra turned to Maria. "Is he always like this?"
"Since he could talk," Maria said, entirely without regret.
Vedas took another piece of bread.
Eventually the plates emptied in the natural progression of meals that had gone on as long as they could, and the conversation slowed. The kitchen became quiet in a way that had nothing to do with the absence of noise.
Maria stood up and started clearing dishes.
Arthur watched her for a moment. Then he stood up and helped.
Neither of them said anything about it.
He stopped in his room before they left.
The desk where he had done schoolwork. The window with the view of the road. The height marks on the wall from when he was younger, each one dated in Maria’s handwriting, the last one from three years ago when he had stopped fitting on the scale she was measuring against.
He stood there for a moment and looked at all of it. The next time he came back, he would be different. He reached out and touched the desk once. Then turned away and closed the door.
...
They stepped outside to find half of Greenleaf already there. Arthur opened his mouth and then closed it. Because somehow "thank you" didn’t feel big enough.
The baker. The blacksmith. The old woman. Teachers and shopkeepers and workers and children and people whose names Arthur had known since before he could remember knowing names.
Arthur stopped walking. "Oh," he said.
Maria appeared beside him. "You look surprised."
"I thought everyone would be working."
"They are. They came anyway."
Arthur looked at the crowd. Then at his mother. Something settled in his chest that he didn’t have a name for and didn’t need one.
The baker spotted him first and, without any preamble, launched a loaf of bread through the air. Arthur caught it without turning his head. This was not something they had practiced; it was simply something that had happened enough times that it no longer required coordination.
"For the road," the baker called.
"Thanks," Arthur called back.
"Visit when you return."
"I live here."
"Exactly. Don’t forget."
The blacksmith was next, and his version of farewell was to grab Arthur’s hand and compress it with the force of a man who had been working his hands for thirty years and had no intention of moderating.
"Ow," Arthur said.
"Get stronger."
"My hand is currently becoming narrower."
"Good."
"That seems medically concerning."
The blacksmith grinned. "When you come back, the boxes will still be there."
"Looking forward to it," Arthur said, and meant it, which the blacksmith seemed to recognize.
The old woman arrived third. She looked Arthur up and down with the comprehensive assessment she applied to everything, and then pronounced her judgment.
"Too skinny."
"I’ve been eating well for two weeks," Arthur said.
"You’re leaving. You’ll get worse."
"I’ll try not to."
She looked at him. "Try harder."
Arthur had no rebuttal for this either. She nodded at him with the satisfaction of someone who had said what needed saying, and then turned toward Vedas.
The Goblin Commander straightened instinctively. She reached into her coat, produced another piece of candy, and placed it in his hand.
"Don’t let anything eat him," she said, gesturing at Arthur. "After all, this one loves to stir up trouble."
Vedas looked at the candy. Then at Arthur. "I’ll do my best."
"Good enough," she said, and walked back through the crowd.
Vedas put the candy somewhere safe.
Then the children found him.
They came from the edges of the crowd with the organized chaos of children who had agreed on a target and were converging with purpose. One small boy got there first, grabbed Vedas’s hand with both of his, and looked up with the complete seriousness of a nine-year-old delivering an important message.
"Come back stronger," the boy said.
"And come back and teach us," said the girl beside him.
Several more nodded. The requests were specific: teach us to hold a spear like you, tell us how you defeated those monsters, come back and tell us everything.
Vedas looked around at all of them.
Then he did something new. He crouched down to their level, which changed the conversation immediately, from a large armored figure receiving requests to something that felt more like a promise.
"What do you want to learn?" he asked.
The answers came fast.
"How to hold a spear right."
"How to stand so things don’t knock you over."
"How to not be scared when something big is coming."
That last one came from the smallest child in the group. She looked down with a nervous look while her hands trembled. Everyone went slightly still, and Vedas looked at the child for a moment.
"I’ll teach you that one first," he said with a smile.
The little girl smiled for the first time.
"When I come back," Vedas said. "That one first."
The girl nodded very seriously as Vedas stood.
The children cheered while Arthur watched, saying nothing. Vedas came over with his head down, and he patted him on the shoulder.
"Don’t worry, we will be back in no time. The best thing you can do is grow even more so that you can show them more things and help them better."
"...you think I can really do that so quickly?"
Arthur didn’t hesitate. "I know you can. You always surprise people, and you are my partner who has never let me down."
"..."
Vedas walked away, but he could feel Vedas’ reluctance to leave and happiness.
[Synchronization Increased]
[47%]
Arthur’s smile grew just a bit.
...
Mithra had positioned herself toward the edge of the crowd, near enough to watch but aware that the moment belonged to Arthur and Greenleaf. Then someone found her.
A shopkeeper whose window she had sat by one afternoon during the two weeks, just talking. A teacher who had asked her one morning what the examination had been like and had listened properly to the answer. The woman who had given her pastries on departure day now appeared with a small wrapped package and held it out.
"For the road," the woman said.
Mithra blinked. "You don’t need to."
"We wanted to."
It was the same sentence she had heard from Arthur’s town in a dozen small variations over two weeks, and she understood it now in a way she hadn’t the first time. It wasn’t about obligation or impressive credentials or what her family name meant in the larger world.
She had stayed. She had eaten at a small table and laughed at breakfast and walked through someone else’s town as though she was allowed to belong there.
Apparently she had been.
Mithra took the package. "Thank you," she said, and meant it more than the words could hold.
...
The Wyvern arrived while the crowd was still dispersing, descending in a wide banking arc above Greenleaf before coming to rest on the road outside the town. The carriage it pulled was elegant in the way Academy transportation was elegant: functional and well-made without being ostentatious.
Arthur looked at it. Then at Vedas.
"Ready?"
"Ready," Vedas said. He glanced at Melo, who had transferred herself to his shoulder for the walk and was now regarding the Wyvern with the careful attention of an experienced traveler assessing transport.
Arthur touched Vedas’s shoulder.
Golden light shimmered, and the Goblin Commander vanished, settling into the Mana Realm with the ease of something that had been practiced daily for two weeks.
Then Arthur touched Melo gently.
She disappeared too, tucked away in the same warm space.
Arthur stared at his hand.
"It’s still cool," he said.
"You say that every time," Mithra said.
"Because it’s true every time."
"You’re never going to get used to it."
"No," Arthur said.
Mithra laughed and shook her head and walked toward the carriage. Maria appeared beside him.
...
The crowd had gone. The road was quiet. Just the two of them and the sound of the Wyvern shifting its weight ahead.
Arthur rubbed the back of his neck. "I’ll come back."
"I know," Maria said.
"Probably before the year’s out."
"Probably."
He looked at the carriage. "What if the Academy is harder than the exam?"
"Then you’ll figure it out."
"What if I can’t?"
"Then you’ll figure out the thing before that," Maria said.
Arthur thought about this. "That’s pretty silly."
"It’s worked so far."
He smiled a little. "What if I get lost in a different Realm?"
Maria looked at him before stepping forward and straightening his collar. The motion was exactly what it had been on the morning of the Awakening Ceremony. The same quick fingers. The same efficient adjustment. The same check at the end to confirm it was right.
Arthur went still.
Maria noticed him noticing.
Neither said anything about it.
Then she stepped back and looked at him.
"You were born in this town," she said. "You’ll leave it, and you’ll come back, and it’ll be the same town, and you’ll be different. That’s what’s supposed to happen."
"What if I change too much?"
Maria smiled. "The things that matter don’t change when you travel," she said. "They just get clearer." She looked at him steadily. "You know who you are."
Arthur looked at his mother. At her long blonde hair and gold eyes and the callused hands that had fixed a hundred things in the sixteen years since his father died and had never once stopped working toward the day when they wouldn’t need to. "It’s because you always remind me."
She brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead. "You silly boy. "
"I love you, Mom."
Maria smiled. "I know. So go make another story worth telling me."
"I promise to get even better ones."
Maria laughed.
He turned and walked toward the carriage.
...
Arthur sat at the window as the Wyvern pulled forward and Greenleaf began the slow process of becoming smaller.
He found Maria still standing near the road, and she found him through the window. The distance was already too large for either to see each other’s faces. But as if they both knew what to do, each raised their hands.
And waved at each other one final time as the carriage curved around the first bend and Greenleaf slipped behind the treeline and was gone. Mithra sat beside him without speaking. Arthur was grateful for that.
After a while she said, quietly. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Arthur said.
She waited.
"I’ve never left before," he said.
"I know."
"It’s strange. Nothing happened. I just walked to the carriage." He looked at the road unreeling ahead of them. "It doesn’t feel like nothing."
"It’s nothing," Mithra said.
"No," he agreed.
A pause.
"She’ll be fine," Mithra said.
"I know," Arthur said. "She’s been fine through harder things."
He did not say what the harder things were, and Mithra did not ask. Some things were understood without being spoken.
Maria’s last words found him through the memory of her voice, clear enough that he could almost hear her saying them now.
"Go make another story worth telling me."
Arthur smiled. "...I will."
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