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Chapter 197: Learning
🕑 Added 2024-08-18 17:54:06 +0000 UTCThe weather broke a few hours before midnight. As everyone else picked up their things, stole leftovers, and made their way home, Arthur lifted up Lily and carried her to her little place down the road. Of all the houses in town, Lily’s was the simplest that Arthur had seen. She had a small living area, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a few rooms meant to be used for storage that were still mostly empty besides a few boxes. Outside of those unused rooms, it reminded Arthur of a small apartment back on Earth.
When the town’s first houses were being built, it was an open question of where Lily would stay. Almost all children her age in the Demon World would stay with someone, living with a guardian until they got their system classes and usually a year or so beyond that. Lily didn’t fit cleanly into normal categories, though. She was a full class-holder with her own work, and a streak of independence to back it up.
Even so, Arthur had offered. Building another room on his house wouldn’t have been difficult and she could have come and gone as she pleased. In the end, it was Lily who made the decision to live on her own. She pointed out that she’d be just down the road, with access to Arthur any time she needed him. And, as sad as it was, she reminded them that she had lived on her own more than any of them had. She’d be fine, she said, and she’d hardly spent much time doing anything but sleeping in her house anyway.
All those things were true, but Arthur had another room added to his house anyway, just in case. He kept a spare bed in there. Any time she needed to, she could have slept over. Instead, things turned out just as she had predicted they would. Lily spent plenty of time over at Arthur’s, used her time at her own house sleeping, and enjoyed having a space she could be alone in when she needed time to cool down.
It was all fine, but Arthur still felt a pang of guilt as he unlatched Lily’s door, laid her in her bed, and then left. It was what she wanted, and things were working out fine. He was still going to buy a better bed and some more furniture for his just-in-case Lily-room. She was a smart kid and would understand. She would always have a home with him if she wanted one.
Back in his own house, Arthur built up the fire in the fireplace, letting the house fill with warmth as he showered, changed into his magical pajamas, and finally climbed into his own bed. He found he couldn’t sleep, at least not right away. It was a healthy kind of insomnia, as such things went. He had slept a lot in the past week or so, and today he had hardly worked at all. If he couldn’t sleep, it was because he was finally rested up.
After a long period building the town and a shorter, harder one defending it, Arthur had finally reached the point he had dreamt about when they had first come here. He had his own town, surrounded by his own friends. He had his shop and his purpose. He had been a leader in the town, though that was seeing its own sunset to some extent.
Arthur could imagine a reality where all that bothered him. He had been important in ways he wasn’t going to be important anymore, and he had possessed a purpose that was now evaporating away. He had been a settler, a frontier-living trailblazer who worked hard to carve civilization out of the wild. Now, he was turning back into plain old Arthur, a tea shop owner who laughed with his friends, slung drinks, and did little besides that.
He didn’t mind at all, and for a couple reasons. The first was that something about being part of Coldbrook’s building had changed how he looked at who he was. He had started in this place at an even footing with all his friends. He might not be a native of the Demon World, but he was one in Coldbrook. That had helped a few of the harder-to-assimilate lessons of this place sink in.
It’s okay to just be happy. It probably always was. Arthur had taken a long time to get used to that. Here, he didn’t have to change the whole world, or scrabble for any tiny bit of advancement he could get. It just wasn’t necessary. There was plenty to go around here, both in terms of resources and happiness. If he wanted to spend his life making better and better tea, the world would be more than glad to reward him for that. He could try to change the world, sure. It would even come with different rewards if he succeeded. But those prizes were different, not necessarily better. The only thing that would make them worth going for was if he felt he needed them to have a fulfilling life. And I don’t. I just need my friends and my purpose. That’s more than enough.
The second lesson was that he knew, deep down, that things would get shaken up soon enough. Somewhere in his bones, he could feel the differences that everyone else could see.
Arthur is wrapped up in something weird again was a personal trope at this point, and one he wasn’t trying to cause at all. The system had given him far more than it wanted back, but something about coming here from another place had put him in a position where the universe just felt more comfortable asking him to put his weight on local problems that needed solving, to set things right where they were slightly wrong.
Arthur didn’t mind. If that was the price of his new life in the Demon World, it was very cheap. But calm times had never, ever lasted long for him. There was always something just around the corner waiting to make things interesting again. The trick to getting through those times, whatever they ended up being, was to take the rest where he could get it.
And if the old man between places was telling the truth, the rest was the point. The work had its place, but the system wanted him to be happy. If weirder times were coming, he at least had comfort in the fact that so was the next period of normal, and it’d be in a world just a little bit better tailored to fit him.
—
Arthur finally fell asleep. When he woke up, it was still too early to go out. He dressed, walked to his kitchen, and made himself some tea to help himself wake up. Taking it back to his couch, he settled in to drink it with a book that Spiky had left him.
“Just flip through it,” Spiky had said. “You don’t need to know everything about elections, but you need to know a little. I’ve marked the pages that will be most useful for you. If you read those, you’ll know as much as the average person does.”
He said it like he just marked out a few paragraphs, Arthur thought, looking at the paper bookmarks sticking out of the pages. He must have highlighted a quarter of the book here.
If nothing else, Spiky had worked hard to make sure Arthur had a chance to learn the things he’d need to know to feel normal over the next day. Arthur flipped through the bookmarks, picking up little facts here and there that really did clarify things for him.
Elections didn’t have a specific timing in the Demon World, for one. This one little choice by the people of Coldbrook might be good for a year, or for the rest of Spiky’s life. They played it by ear. If a mayor wanted to quit, as Arthur had, it would trigger an election. If they weren’t doing their job well or if someone else had relevant skills that would serve the town better, someone would gently tell the mayor that the time to step aside would come.
The book seemed to take it as a given that they would step aside too. The idea that someone would cling to power that other people didn’t want them to have was entirely alien to the author, to the point where they didn’t even consider it worth mentioning.
The real pay dirt in Arthur’s learnings came mostly in the form of familiarizing himself with procedure. Like Earth, the Demon World favored secret elections. Unlike Earth, this was for reasons entirely unrelated to the idea of being punished for a vote.
Our custom of secret ballots comes from a desire to eliminate awkwardness for the voter themselves. If they have a friend who is running for a particular position, the idea of a secret vote makes it possible for them to choose a better candidate without damaging their relationship.
Moreover, sometimes the best choice for a leadership position will be the voter themselves. The use of secret ballots allows them to cast that vote, knowing that they are the best choice for a particular job, and without creating worries that they will be viewed as arrogant about their own skills or capabilities.
Satisfied, Arthur slapped the book shut and began his day in earnest. It was the last day of campaigning before the election and he wanted to get some work in while he still could. In the near-dark of the predawn hours, he slipped out of his house and towards his shop. It was time to make the tea.
The speeches would come at night and Arthur’s first few customers of the day set the tone that nobody in town intended on losing another day of work. If anything, they seemed dead-set on making sure more got done, not less. His stat-enhancing drinks flew off the shelves, so to speak, loaded with as much pep as he could fit in around the other enhancements.
“Hey, Arthur. Is business good today?”
“Surprisingly so.” Arthur had seen Sett coming, and already had his drink ready. “I would have thought people would start slow after a big storm like that, especially since it’s a busy day. Doesn’t look like that’s the case, though.”
“It sure doesn’t. I just came from the wall construction projects. Have you looked at those lately?”
“Not closely.”
“Do, if you get the chance. There’s deceptively little visible above the ground but I had Karra explain to me why.”
“And?”
“They are improving the foundations. It’s not the same walls at all, at least under the ground. She’s a gem. I almost wish she’d get elected.”
“No chance of her joining the race?” Arthur knew there probably wasn’t, but wanted Sett’s take. “None at all?”
“A newspaper man isn’t really supposed to say, but no. She doesn’t want the job. And, frankly, that librarian of yours will be pretty hard to beat.”
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SnowingPine Update: Made some UI changes and added Dark Mode plus a text editor demo. It will soon have at least two skins (in both light and dark mode) to choose from.
If you want, try installing it onto your Home Screen and tell me what you think!
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The notification system should work, so give it a try as well. (It's in the Settings tab)
For anyone confused, I am first building the building blocks of the building blocks of the site before I move on to separate pages and so on.
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Lyncher98
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