Chapter 143: Ready

Rhodia’s parents were refreshingly normal. Ella was like ten moms compressed into one, and Maar was a whole different kind of intimidating. Rhodia’s parents, in contrast, were a lot like what Arthur expected from nice and normal Earth parents. They were proud of their daughter, pleasant to her friends, and happy to be there.

For the most part, they were happy watching everyone talk, eat, and have a good time. And a good time it was, too. The sheer volume of moms had given the town a sort of maternal festival atmosphere. Luckily, the cooks under Ella’s direction were sufficient to cover all the cooking, and the town had long since outstripped its food supply issues. Vegetables flowed like rivers. Grains rained into pans as if from a storm. And once Skal had Karbo drag in a full net of fish bigger than some compact cars, protein was covered too.

Some of the moms had noticed the stage, compared notes, and realized they had enough instruments and talent to put together an impromptu band. They were pretty good too. The town’s residents danced with each other and middle aged ladies everywhere, many of them slightly affected by the significant amount of not-quite-right alcoholic grain water Ella and Itela made.

“It’s fun,” Mizu said. She wasn’t much for dancing. It wasn’t that she hated it, Arthur knew, but she only wanted a few minutes of it at any given event. He was glad about that. He wasn’t much for dancing either. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many mothers in one place before.”

“You probably have, but not in so much density per capita,” Arthur said. “It’s the statistical mix being off that makes it seem weird, I think.”

“That’s a nerd thing to say.” Mizu snuggled in a little closer. “Which makes you a nerd.”

“I wonder if that word means the same thing translated that it means on Earth. Is nerd a problem?”

“No. Nothing is a problem today. It’s just nice.”

And it really was. The weather was good, the food was good, nobody was having a crisis except Arthur, and maybe not even him.

“It is.” Arthur felt the tension melt away as it finally sank in that he probably wasn’t on the brink of any serious catastrophes for once. Except for the one he had planned, of course, and that one he could rely on Karbo to keep under control. “We haven’t really had a chance to catch up since all this wedding stuff started happening. What have you been up to?”

“Oh, helping Rhodia. To the extent she needs help, which isn’t much. We spent some time today going through her dresses, looking for something nice,” Mizu said.

“Is that typical here? To wear something nice you already have?” Arthur asked.

“Of course. What else would she do, get new clothes? Is that what you did on your world?”

“For women, yes. There was a special kind of dress, almost always white. At least in the part of the world I was from. If it wasn’t new, it was usually something inherited. Their mother’s wedding dress, or something like that.”

“There’s that word again. Stop saying it. You sound like all the wells in the world at once.” Mizu shook off her translation-shock grimace and considered the rest of the sentence for a moment. “Rhodia would look terrible in white. We’ve talked about it before. The men wore white, too?”

“No. They wore suits. A bit like coldfall garb. And a lot of the time those were rented,” Arthur said.

“They didn’t want to keep them for the rest of the season?” Mizu asked.

“Some did if they went to a lot of events. But not usually. The women never really wore the dresses either, I think,” Arthur said. “Sometimes they’d try them on years later to see if they still fit.”

“Did I waste my time? I’ll go tell Rhodia about this. I’m pretty sure she’d go along with it if it was the Earth thing to do,” Mizu said in alarm.

“No, don’t.” Arthur shook his head. “Just wearing something nice that you already own seems good. Better than tradition in some ways.”

That particular night at the plaza went later than most, driven by the wild excesses of a dozen or so middle-aged demons on vacation and their relief at seeing their children safe, happy, and thriving. Arthur went along with it. Even after Mizu drifted off on his shoulder, he sat and soaked in the cool night air while watching everyone else have fun and drift away towards their homes and beds. Only when nearly everyone was gone did Mizu suddenly inhale, sit up, and open her eyes.

“Over already?” Mizu asked. “I didn’t feel like I was asleep that long.”

“Over already. Honestly, I’m surprised it went as long as it did. A lot of those moms traveled today,” Arthur said.

“Oh, high levels are like that. They always have a little more in them than you’d imagine.”

Arthur sat silently for a bit, contemplating the implications of a world where all the adults had just a little more staying power than their kids, if not the actual sensation of being energetic. He had seen it, he supposed. Ella certainly had more energy than him.

There, in the quiet, he decided to ask a question that had been gnawing at him from a couple of angles.

“What do you think about the timing of all this?” Arthur said. “I don’t mean in terms of how normal it is for the demon world. I mean for Milo and Rhodia.”

“For them?” Mizu picked up her last tea of the night, long since finished and now slightly refilled by melted ice. She took a drink of the cold, clouded water to whet her sleep-dry mouth. “I think it’s fine. It feels early, in some ways. But they were always going to end up together. The time they’ve spent not being married has been for their class development and to make extra sure that they were meant together.”

“You watch closely, don’t you?”

“Always. Especially back then, when they met. Everyone else was so busy in those classes, and I had nothing to do. You couldn’t dig new wells in the park. There was a rule against it,” Mizu laughed.

“Ah.” Arthur stole Mizu’s leftover water and took a drink of it from her straw. “But it seems early to you?”

“All marriages do,” Mizu said.

“Too long of a commitment?” Arhur asked.

She shook her head.

“There is a bit of that. I think about it. I’m just one person. I can only say so many things. And another person has to spend their entire life with me, just me, moving where I go, doing a lot of the things I do, and not get bored of it. For their entire lives.” Mizu shook her head. “It’s hard to be enough.”

Arthur let the silence settle for a while before he found the words to say the next part.

“You are, you know.” He felt himself blushing. “Enough.”

“Ah.” Mizu tensed up a bit on his shoulder. “Thanks.”

A few seconds passed.

“Mizu…”

“Arthur…”

They spoke at the same moment, then scrambled to figure out who was going to go first like two awkward office workers in a hallway before Mizu finally won out.

“I’m not ready for it. For a while. Not because of you, please don’t think it’s because of you, but…”

Arthur let out a sigh of relief as Mizu continued on in a sort of data-sparse panic-babble. Eventually, he got just enough of his wits back to sit up straight, put his hands on her shoulders, and bonk her lightly with his forehead, letting the shock of it give her a chance to get a breath and leaving his head on hers as she finally paused to hear what he was thinking.

“It’s okay. I’m not asking. I’m not ready yet, either,” Arthur said.

“Oh.” Mizu blinked. “Not because of me, I hope?”

“No, not at all. I think… I’ve only been here a little while. For a while, I lived in the city, and now I live here. I didn’t have a class, now I do. And a shop. And a new family.” Arthur closed his eyes. “The only thing that hasn’t really changed that whole time was you. Like an anchor.”

“Hmm.” Mizu hummed in his arms a bit. “Arthur’s anchor. I like that.”

“Good. Because I like you, a lot. I don’t want this to end. I just also don’t want it to change. Not yet,” Arthur said.

“Me either.” The last few people in the plaza had cleared out now, and the last of the fire was burning down. It was pretty dark. They sat for a while, calming back down from what had felt like a near-miss catastrophe for both of them. It was Mizu that finally broke the silence. “How long do you think? Before you’re ready, I mean.”

“I don’t know.” Arthur really didn’t have a clue. “I’ve never felt that way before. I guess when it feels right, I’ll know.”

“When it’s right,” Mizu repeated. “I like that.”

—

Somewhere up above, the system was watching everyone. If asked, which she never was, she would have said that she was watching all of them equally. It would have been a lie, of course, but she considered herself to be a mother of sorts, and a mother really shouldn’t let her kids know about her favorites.

Tonight, two of her favorites were not only together, but were also being especially cute. They were both the type of people who eventually got very good at what they did, for reasons that were entirely different. The visitor-boy was the type who sometimes forgot his tasks and class completely, but who did what felt right and found himself in fantastic places because of it. The water-demon girl was different. She just flowed into every aspect of her class, and let it flow into her in turn. She’d be a higher level than the boy, likely, when all was said and done. But neither of them would be the type to notice.

If the criteria for attention was just around how many levels they would get, there were thousands in the world that qualified. But for all the people who treated their classes in ways she liked, there were only a few who managed to succeed at their relationships in the same ways. Neither of her two favorites tried to force things. Neither tried to move forward just for the sake of moving forward. When they were together, they tried to be together well. That was it.

They would, she thought, be just fine.

She watched as they worked through a tiny, adorable misunderstanding for the thousandth time, and just like always, they came away closer and liking each other better. She watched as the girl taught the boy silence, and as the boy occasionally taught her about the music of conversation. And she watched as, eventually, they managed to tear away from each other, which they could easily do so long as they knew the other would be there the next morning.

And in her watching, the system saw something they did not see, something neither of them would realize for a while but would savor and treasure once they did. Both of them had said, honestly enough, that they were not ready to be joined. They were wise to say so. And both had said that they didn’t know when they would be ready, which was again a true enough thing to say.

That had been the loud part. And the quiet part underneath was, like so many things of value, hidden beneath the obvious part. They’d later realize that they had both assumed that the other wide would be there, waiting for the right time as long as was necessary. And to each of them, that had seemed as natural and true as breathing, as safe a guess as the idea that the sun would come up the next day.

The system thought that was very nice.