Chapter 94: Culture Shock

“Last of the day!” Minos said. “And not a bad pick, if I do say so myself. Although this does make things a bit more complicated.”

“You think it’s more complicated for you?” Ella said. “I just got all you knuckleheads back in the same place. I was going to spend the next week cooking. Now I have to think. And pack. Gods.”

Arthur looked back and forth from Minos to Ella like they had lost their minds.

“Just like that? Your son is moving to the ends of the Earth and it’s just… okay?” Arthur realized that he was awfully close to yelling, thought about toning it down, and then changed his mind. “He’s going to be days from here! At his age. Alone.”

“Not alone, Arthur. I’ll have a whole town around me,” Milo said as he retracted his arm. “There’s going to be handpicked people with potential. And supplies.”

“This is normal for you, too?”

Arthur threw his hands up. He knew he was being unreasonable. The drawing had been announced a couple of days ago and he knew that there was a chance that his friend group would split up. But it was a different thing entirely when that chance became reality.

“Well, no, it’s really sudden and weird, Arthur. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking about it. I told you before, remember? Even before the expansion, I was thinking about what I could do with mechanics if I had an entire town to work with from scratch. It’s not exactly what I planned, but… that’s the whole point of being our age, Arthur. A bunch of weird stuff happens and you see where you end up.”

“I just…” Arthur found himself walking off before he was really aware of what was happening. “I just need a bit.”

To their credit, everyone let him go. He wondered what it would take to get a standard-issue demon to follow someone who didn’t want to be followed, but he either didn’t appear distraught or self-destructive enough to cross that line.

Spiky was leaving. Milo was leaving, which meant a better than decent chance that Ella was thinking about leaving. And that was just the people who he knew about. He hadn’t seen Ern or Chuck that day, and he hadn’t been paying close attention to Onna. All of them had a potential place out on the frontier, and any of them might go.

Except for him.

After all the camping and frontier town exploring, he had been excited about just running his shop and enjoying time with his friends. He thought that he had a good grasp on what his life was going to be, and things had just been yanked away from him. It was just too much at one time.

Every single person he knew had marinated in the mythos of the demon empire. They understood what it meant for there to be an expansion and had been mentally preparing for such a thing for their entire lives. It was levels and opportunity and the process in which normal people grew to be giants.

Arthur hadn’t thought of culture shock as an actual kind of shock before, but he was feeling as if he had broken bones in a fall from a roof. He was reeling. He needed somewhere quiet to sit down for a while. As the owner of a small business, he had just enough resources to make that happen.

He unlocked the door to his shop and hit the latch just as a mild dizziness hit him. He closed the door and pressed his back to it, breathing hard and trying his hardest to get his bearings back.

“Knew it.”

His eyes flicked open to see the tiniest of owl-people looking at him while sitting on his shop’s counter, dangling her legs.

“How?” Arthur asked.

“This is where the tea is. And that’s the only thing you like besides people. If you were running from people, you’d end up at tea. It’s math,” Lily said.

“Is it?” A smile rose to Arthur’s lips.

“Close enough.” She hopped off the counter. “Want some tea, then?”

“I can’t make tea right now, Lily.”

“Nobody said you should. Sit down, Earth man. I’m buying.”

Lily started working in the kitchen as Arthur staggered over to a table, pulled out a chair, and took a seat. She was something to watch, really. There was nothing to correct. She was acing absolutely all the important parts Arthur usually did because he thought she couldn’t handle them. She had no class and, as a result, couldn’t juice the tea with Majicka. The final result was great anyway. The first sip of it shocked Arthur out of his funk a little.

“This is really good,” Arthur said.

“Well, I watch you enough. And I’ve done most of the parts.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. That tea you used has a really precise brew time. How did you know it?”

Lily laughed.

“You mumble while you work.”

“I don’t.”

“You absolutely do. It’s quiet. And it’s only when you have trouble with the thing you’re doing.”

Arthur sat and drank his tea silently for a bit. Lily let him.

“So were people mad?” Arthur asked.

“At you? For being weirded out about something that they don’t understand? Never. Nobody has that much time,” Lily said. “I don’t think they really understand, though. I do.”

“You do?” Arthur blinked. “I thought this was more an Earth problem.”

“Earth and orphan, I guess. I hadn’t really heard that much about this territory thing before. And now everyone is leaving. Entire lives are changing with pretty short warning. And… yeah. It’s weird,” Lily said.

“It is, right?”

“It is. Although weirder for you than me.”

“I don’t even know why. I haven’t had time to actually sit down with it yet.”

“Well, there’s time now. Nobody knows where we are. Drink your tea.”

He did just that as Lily made her own tea and found a small bin full of cookies that they proceeded to raid. Arthur found himself a great deal more calmed down after a few minutes, yet still drawing a blank on his own introspection.

“I honestly don’t know,” Arthur said with a sigh.

“Really? It seems obvious,” Lily said as she took a big sip of her drink. “You just got settled in. It’s the same as if someone made you run around when you just wanted to lie down. The expansion means you’ll have to get up just as you started to get calmed down.”

“Kind of.” Arthur could hear the echoes of himself in Lily’s words.

Lily took a big bite of cookie, not bothering to chew much before she started talking again.

“I’ve been following you around a while. And when I started doing that, you were tense. Like all of the time. It’s part of how I knew the job was real. You acted like you were getting stalked by a beast. And then you sort of… stopped. It took a while. Getting the shop helped. Mizu helped. But you got calmer. And now things are going to change again.”

“Hmm,” Arthur said. “It’s… something like that.”

“But I’m thinking about that. Milo is going, Spiky doesn’t care that much where he goes. They’ll probably end up going to the same place no matter what. If Rhodia goes, and I bet she does…”

Arthur winced a little. “You think?”

“How is that a surprise? Like she wouldn’t follow Milo.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, she’d be there too. You could follow. There’s nothing keeping you.”

There was something keeping him. It had feathers, needed him and the shop, and apparently hadn’t considered that aspect of things at all yet. He couldn’t imagine a world without Lily next to him. The tiny owl had become among those he cared deeply about. More than that, he felt a sense of duty to her. He couldn’t just leave her in the city alone.

“Lily. There’s the shop. And my class not fitting well with that kind of life. And a lot of things holding me to the city. I’ve barely started to pay them back for all the help they gave me.”

“Oh, that. The city doesn’t care. They’ll just be proud they helped someone who’s making a difference out there. And you know your class will be fine. The buffs you can give alone would be worth it.” She sniffed. “Plus, people like having food. And drinks. You’d make the bummer parts of being on the frontier less of a bother.”

“There’s still the shop.”

“And you could build another one. That’s not hard.” Lily peered hard at him. “But you kind of knew that, right? You spent a whole week in that other town. Bored. Even you would have thought about things if you were bored. So what is it?”

Arthur wilted a little under her inspecting glare. He was fresh out of excuses, too. It didn’t take her long to figure out why.

“It’s me,” she said, quietly. “Oh, gods, it’s me. But I could go too, couldn’t I? There’s no reason I couldn’t go.”

“They won’t let you.” Arthur didn’t think it was worth hiding things at this point. The owl had a long history of digging. She’d find out eventually. “The whole no-stats thing makes it too dangerous.”

“What about families that want to go? Whole families. With kids.”

“I don’t know that they can stop them. And maybe for some families, that’s a good idea. But Lily, I can’t protect you out there. There’s only so many problems I can throw tea at. Ella didn’t seem to think this would be the kind of thing I could force. But even if I could…”

“You wouldn’t put me in danger. And there’s no way you’d just leave me.”

“I’m glad you know that.”

“I’m not. Gods, Arthur!” Lily was yelling now. “I’m holding you back. All you do is help me and I’m ruining everything.” Lily was pacing the store, flapping her arms. “Was I holding you back before? You could have got a real assistant. You could have progressed faster. You could have…”

Arthur knelt and grabbed her, making a quick motion towards her forehead. “No. Shush.”

“You flicked me!”

“I flicked you. Blame Milo for that. He taught me the trick.” Arthur hugged her a little tighter. “You aren’t a problem for me, Lily. At all. I’m not going to pretend that I’m okay with how circumstances are. We have a problem right now. But you aren’t the problem.”

“It sure seems like I am.”

“Nope,” Arthur said. “You’re a friend. And even if everyone else leaves, that means I have one good friend left here. Do you think I even want a tea shop without you? Because I can’t even imagine that.”

“That’s stupid.”

“You’re stupid.”

“Gods, Arthur.” Lily pulled away and wiped her eyes. “You know, the worst part? I was never worried you’d leave me here alone. It just isn’t an Arthur thing to do. I didn’t even think about what would happen if you decided to go with everyone else.”