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Chapter 164: Interview
🕑 Added 2024-07-21 15:26:44 +0000 UTCIt was hours on the road before Talca was able to talk normally. Until then, it was a combination of grunts, various hand gestures, and a patient, almost obsessive refusal to look directly at Hune. She humored it for a little while, mostly talking to Arthur over tea and dried fish until she gave up, rolled her eyes, and climbed from the back of the wagon to Talca on the driver’s bench.
He almost fell off of the wagon and the whole trip would have gone off-road if Littal hadn’t known his business and kept everything going in the right direction. After Hune caught the transporter and straightened him up in his seat, she said something to him that Arthur couldn’t quite hear that seemed to bring him around to looking directly at her. But it did the trick. They were off to the races, their conversation continued until it reached a volume where Arthur could make out the contents.
“....he does look like a shaved bear!” Talca slapped his leg. “Only a lot flatter. I stopped telling him that. He doesn’t react, anyway.”
“Yeah, it was disappointing,” Hune laughed with Talca. “I guess it’s normal enough once you realize he came here knowing he looked weird.”
“Ah, you get used to it. And he’s pretty good with tea.”
Arthur believed, on a deeply spiritual level, that he needed to help Talca out in any way he could. The man had lived the majority of his life on the road, and built up a social life made entirely of short-term, occasional connections. And as much as he said he was fine with that, Arthur worried about him. Talca now lived in a town filled with people much younger than him, without much chance for romantic connections besides occasional meet-ups with other transporters. This probably wouldn’t be his only chance at love, but it was a chance, and not one Arthur was going to allow him to let slip by.
“So, Hune. Where do you want to live?” Arthur said. “There’s the ocean side of the town, and the gate side. The ocean side is nice, but it’s getting pretty crowded recently.”
“Oh, not there, then,” Hune said. “Where’s the mine?”
“Outside of the gate, then a pretty good walk,” Arthur answered.
“Any problem setting up some furnaces right by the mine? My plan is to make as much metal as I can, as long as the ore holds out.”
“No problem except the monster wave. It’s all outside the gate, so…”
“Huh. Yeah. And it takes me a while to make one of those furnaces. I’m not the best with clay.”
“Oh!” Talca almost shouted. “Rhodia! We have a ceramics-maker. Pretty good at general stuff too. She should be able to slap several of them up, as soon as we get back.”
“Really? That’s good. And I can put one behind the gate, for good measure. Your iron problems are solved, so long as we have a bit of time,” Hune said.
“We should,” Arthur said. “Oh, dang. I just realized.”
“What?”
“Well, by the time the night hits, we will be on the cold side of the mountain. And we just have Talca’s tent. It’s gonna be a tight fit.”
Hune gave him an odd look. “Why wouldn’t I have my own tent? I work camp to camp, Arthur. I own a tent.”
“And you brought it?”
Hune nodded towards her bags, which were a few big, almost-duffel sort of bags. “I remembered to bring everything I own. Tongs, crucibles, a bit of food, a few changes of clothes, a tent, and a sleeping bag.”
“And that’s it?” Arthur asked.
“And that’s it. It’s more than you’d think, when you have to carry everything on your back.”
Dinner that night was a smattering of fresh ingredients they were able to buy from the cook over plenty of grain. It was more than plenty, Arthur thought, until Hune demolished multiple heaped bowls in mere minutes.
“How?” Arthur gaped at the tiny rabbit-woman in awe.
“I missed lunch. Because of you,” Hune said as if that explained everything.
“No, I mean this literally. You are tiny. Where’s it going?”
“Physical class, Arthur. I spend all day lifting ore into fire. You burn off a lot of energy that way.”
With Littal giving the group dirty looks for not leaving any leftovers for two nights running, everyone went to bed. After a full day of avoiding anything that might embarrass Talca, Arthur was almost twitchy with a need to talk about what was going on. As soon as the tent flap closed, he was on the job.
“You love that demon,” Arthur said.
“No I don’t,” Talca tried.
“Liar.”
“I just find her impressive. She’s very good at her job.”
“And?”
“She’s really smart.” Arthur watched as Talca forgot he was supposed to be denying his obvious affection for the woman in real-time. “She’s been almost as many places as I have, but she’s spent more time in them. And she’s… oh, this won’t make sense to you, but she’s an adult. You and your friends are figuring stuff out. She has it figured out already. So do I. And she’s pretty. And…” Arthur raised his eyebrows at Talca. Finally, the transported cracked. “Dammit, okay. I like her. She’s neat. Are you happy?”
“I really actually am. This is good, Talca,” Arthur said.
“It’s a mixed bag. I have to figure out how to actually tell her I like her.”
Arthur laughed. “You think she doesn’t know?”
“How would she know?”
“Talca, you stood back and gaped at her for the better part of the day. I think some of the trees know.”
“Well, damn.” Talca flopped onto his back hard, pulling the top of his sleeping bag over his head. “I guess I’m not sleeping. You couldn’t have told me that in the morning, when it wasn’t going to keep me awake from embarrassment all night? Leave me alone. I’ll figure it out in the morning.”
Despite saying that he would be up all night, Talca was snoring within minutes. Arthur laid there laughing for a bit before getting thoughtful. Talca had been a lot of places he hadn’t, and seen a lot of things he hadn’t, and had to handle a whole bushel of different kinds of problems that Arthur couldn’t even imagine. And yet here he was, young in love. Not only young, but younger than Arthur by years.
Arthur didn’t think that it was his Earth-life history bleeding into the matter and making it more complex. He could remember his past, but only in a filtered way. Even if he had a ton of experience with romance in his last life, and he didn’t, it wouldn’t have influenced who he was now or how he felt about things that much.
Talca really was ten years Arthur’s senior, but love seemed to be an untouched territory for the older guy. Arthur would have worried about him, if it wasn’t for the fact that Hune seemed to have the entire matter entirely in hand. Talca was probably worried he’d mess it up, but the only failure mode Arthur could see was if he just never calmed down enough to have normal conversations with the woman. Besides that, he was a decent guy. He figured Hune could see that too.
—
They had covered less ground than Arthur would have hoped yesterday. It wasn’t Talca’s fault. As love struck as he was, the man was still a professional. It was simply physics. The trip from Coldbrook to the mining town was about a day and a half, which mean that spending a few hours in the town ate into trip time.
It meant they had a miserable morning ahead of them in the cold, followed by a longer-than-a-day dash towards home if they wanted to make it that night.
Arthur wondered if Talca could even do it.
“Oh, I can do it. That’s the tricky bit about the end of a journey. We couldn’t push through much farther last night because it was cold and dark and we were far from home. Tonight, we’re going to be close enough to the town to hear the call of our own beds. That will guide us in alright,” Talca proclaimed.
Instead of taking Hune aside for a very serious talk, as Arthur had half feared he might, Talca seemed content to talk to her throughout the day much as he had the day before. Arthur wasn’t excluded, especially by Hune, who made sure she asked him questions to keep him in the conversation. He was still a third wheel and everyone there knew it, even if nobody there really had a problem with it. By midday, he was slinging tea and hastily prepared meals-on-the-go and just listening in to their talk.
“That was you?” Hune stared slack jawed at Talca. “I knew there was a driver who took the two inventors on a trip, but I had no idea it was you who first tested shocks. And believe me, I heard about it. All our iron supplies went to making those damn things for months after they came out. Do they really work all that well?”
“I mean.” Talca gestured his hand palm-up at the trees as they whizzed by. “You can see.”
“Yeah, but you seem fast anyway. I can tell when someone’s good at their class. I’m not a kid. How much faster are we talking?” Hune asked.
“Ten percent, probably, on this kind of road. When it gets rougher, maybe two or three times that.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true. It’s a much larger effect than you’d think. Especially with passengers. The ride gets a lot rougher when it’s just cargo. Stuff that doesn’t mind the bumps.”
“I don’t think I would either.”
“Well, I’ll take you out sometime. We can see.”
Arthur looked around him. Everything was going just fine for Talca now, but there was no place Arthur could really escape to. He decided to stay as busy as he could with his tea, which really wasn’t that busy. It did give him an excuse to be on the other end of the wagon though.
By the end of the day, even the two romantics were tapped out on conversation. The wagon blurred through the night as the unrelenting Littal pulled and pulled, almost like he knew Talca was working to impress their new friend. Arthur sat in the cold air, starting to recognize more landmarks and watching as the trees and rocks started to look familiar.
It was late beyond late when they made it through the gates of the town, which Arthur literally had the key to. They’d be replaced by iron soon enough, but once the wooden doors were unlocked, Littal was more than strong enough to nose them aside and work his way home towards his barn.
And on the ground outside the barn was a very asleep, very blue girl.
“Hey, you.” Now it was other people’s turn not to get in Arthur’s way, and he figured they owed him more than enough that he didn’t have to feel bad about taking advantage of that fact. He lifted Mizu chin as she opened her eyes so the first thing she’d see was his. “It’s cold outside. You should be in your bed.”
“I’m warm.” Mizu lifted up her coat sleeves to show Arthur why, then looped her arms around him. “Very warm now.”
“Still. I would have come to tell you.”
“Maybe. You forget things. I couldn’t take that chance.”
“My sweet innocent non-physical gods, Talca. You didn’t tell me about this.” Hune almost squeaked. “This is… absurd. It’s so sweet.”
“Oh, yeah, those two are always like this, unless they’re completely calm. It’s like a switch they throw.”
“You can’t make me feel bad. Arthur’s back,” Mizu said defiantly. Noticing Hune was a new person, Mizu nodded at her from Arthur’s shoulders. “The wells my people dug in recompense for our relentless attacks were slip-shod work, functional but with little artistry.”
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Hune said. “I’m Hune.”
“And what brings you here? We sent them for iron.”
“Oh, you’ll get iron. Just point me towards the mine tomorrow morning. I’ll melt all the iron out of however many rocks you bring me.” Hune flexed a tiny arm at Mizu and pointed at Talca. “But in answer to your question, besides the iron, I wanted to see what this one was all about.”
“Good choice.”
“I think so.”
Talca’s mouth dropped open and worked on unspoken words as Hune grabbed his wrist and dragged him towards his barn. “Come on, wagon man. Let Littal go home and then make me some dinner. You can give me a house later.”
Hune dragged the speechless Talca off as Mizu rose to her feet and hugged Arthur tighter.
“A smelter, Arthur? That’s so much better. And I like her. A lot,” Mizu said.
“She’s great. I want to have her and Onna arm wrestle,” Arthur joked.
“There’s not a table in town that could facilitate that match. Come on. I’ll feed you before you go to bed.”
Mizu took Arthur back to her house, where she pulled the kinds of foods she could serve cold from a box, making a plate of meat, bread, and cheese in the fastest way. Arthur hadn’t realized how hungry he was until all the food was gone, and barely noticed when a laughing Mizu took the plate back to the kitchen to refill it.
As soon as his brain caught up with his stomach’s signals about how much of Mizu’s food he had eaten, Arthur drooped. It had been a very, very long three days.
“Over here.” Mizu patted the couch next to her. Arthur staggered over, feeling like he weighed an extra hundred pounds all of a sudden. “Tell me about your trip.”
“It was fast, sort of. And slow. Nothing happened until everything did.” It was nonsense. Arthur pressed on, leaning back as Mizu settled into his side. “So I don’t have much to tell you, except it was a long time away.”
“It was. Hune really likes Talca,” Mizu said.
“Does she know that?” Arthur asked.
“Probably. Does Talca?”
“He knows he likes her. Even he couldn’t have missed that. He probably thinks he’s still in the interview phase with her though.”
“Interview phase?”
“An Earth thing where one person is still deciding how they feel about the other person. Like when you talk to someone about a job.”
“How horrible!”
“Actually, yeah, sort of. Not finding out about someone, But the phrasing, yeah.” Arthur felt his mouth going lazy as everything around him began to feel softer and warmer. He shifted his weight to stand up, afraid he’d fall asleep there.
“No.” Mizu held on. “Just a few minutes more.”
It didn’t even take a single minute. Arthur was asleep in the next ten seconds.
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Chapter 164 is also available on snowingpine.com for those able to log in. You can read it here.
