Chapter 78: Mother-in-law

AN: Second chapter of the day. If you haven't seen the tea drop (we're partnering with Dona for our first DWBS group buy), check it out! If you're in the market for tea, let us supply you!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/dwbs-tea-drop-1-103416237

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“Well, I’m glad Spiky’s having fun,” Arthur said.

The cow woman looked at Arthur again. “Good friend, aren’t you? Got out of the way very smoothly.”

“The same to you.” Arthur smiled. “What about you? You said that you were about to leave earlier. But now you’re standing around, talking to a stranger, trying to listen in to your daughter’s conversation.”

The cow woman laughed and slapped Arthur on the back. “You’re all right, you know that? I honestly thought I was calling her down to meet you. And I promise I’m not as pushy as I seem. It’s just that things are a little different all the way out here on the edge of nothing.”

“I’d imagine.”

“Oh, you couldn’t possibly. I’m Janam, by the way. Come on. I’ll buy you some lunch at the tavern and tell you about it.”

—

Arthur was glad to find that the tavern Janam mentioned was actually called The Tavern, or at least something near enough that the system’s translation just threw up its hands and gave up. Inside, it was a cross between an old-west tavern and a community center. There were plenty of tables and a bar, but also games, a dance floor, and a stage. It was a space that could be quickly converted to for at least a dozen different uses as the needs presented themselves.

It wasn’t anything like his boba shop, which was a place for community of a different kind. People went there to break off into a smaller group in a more intimate environment. Instead, this was a place where people came to be around others when the default option was isolation. It was where the whole town gathered to be an entire town together.

“You like it?” Janam asked.

“I do. Who owns it?” Arthur said.

“Oh, the town itself, I think. It’s a communal property, or something like that. The cooks rotate out so as not to give anyone an unfair advantage. There’s one demon, an infernal, who handles the calendar for social events and makes sure there’s always a reason to come down. I think tonight is music if you need something to do.”

“I just might. The other friend me and Spiky came with is here to help his father recuperate, and I’m not sure how long that is going to take. I might find myself soaking up a lot of the local entertainment.”

“Oh, and I’ve taken away Spiky. I did promise to explain that, I suppose. Let me get the food started first and I will.” She waved over the cook, ordered a few things, and then got down to business. “This is a small town, smaller than you probably understand. And my girl has always been very understanding about why I wanted to move here. She’s been a tremendous help. But there’s not much for her here, socially.”

“So when two people her age wandered through…”

“Exactly. I didn’t want her to miss it. Not a second of it. Although I didn’t exactly expect your friend to be a librarian. It’s what she wants to do, even if she hasn’t admitted it yet.”

“She doesn’t have a class yet? She seems old enough.”

“She was a stationer for a bit. It didn’t stick.”

Arthur tilted his head to the side, confused. “That’s a thing?”

“Of course it is.” Janam looked confused herself. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable when I met you, but… Oh, I have no idea how to phrase this, Arthur.”

“Let me guess. You want to ask why I look like a bald chimpanzee?”

The cook had just dropped off a few drinks, and Janam had unfortunately just enough time to take a drink when Arthur dropped that particular verbal bomb on her. She spat a mouthful of drink with the full force of a laugh behind it, wetting the table and covering Arthur in a fine mist.

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” Arthur wiped off his face with a napkin. “My fault. I should have waited until you swallowed. I’m an offworlder. Not a demon at all, although I think the System probably converted me when I came here. I am, or I was, something called a human.”

“Oh, really? I wonder if that’s a translation error. I’m hearing it as the same race that terrorized The Bear, before he came here.”

“Probably not the same thing. We didn’t really have demons back on Earth.”

“Well, no matter. But that explains why you don’t understand. Once in a while, not often but sometimes, a person takes up a class for the wrong reasons. It might be because they have to or think they should, but not because it’s what they want to do. I was very proud of my daughter when she became a stationer, and I think she would have been good at it. But after about six months it became clear to her that it wasn’t right, and she dropped the class.”

“How did you both take it?”

“I’m proud of her, honestly. I think it was frightening for her to have to tell me something like that, but the last thing I want is for her to be trapped doing something she doesn’t want to do.”

Some appetizers came out, a kind of fried vegetable dish somewhat similar to tempura. They both picked at it as they talked.

“What happens for her now?” Arthur asked. “I assume she doesn’t stay classless forever.”

“Well, that’s the question. In a city, she’d walk into a library, fall in love with it, and get a class in about ten minutes flat. But here…” Janam grimaced. “Librarian is a class that comes from cities. It always has because it’s exceptionally hard to establish from scratch, without some guidance from other librarians and an established library. It would be like a combat class trying to level in a town without a dungeon to exploit. So she’s been doing this thing that we’ve decided to call, weighing her options.”

“Stalling?” Arthur asked.

“Exactly. And then your friend walked in, an actual librarian… poor thing didn’t stand a chance. And I mean your friend. My daughter was never going to let him get away,” Janam said.

“I’m sure he’s fine. I’ve known Spiky for almost as long as I’ve been here. He looked at her like… hm. Bear with me on this one but he looked at her like she was an interesting new idea.”

“Ouch. And he’s a librarian. I get it. Well, again, I’m very sorry to have stolen your friend for my own purposes and left you alone in an objectively boring town.”

“Don’t worry about it. Or the town. It hasn’t been boring yet.”

Janam was what Arthur had expected her to be. She was a strong personality and straightforward, half the kind of person who could survive as a stationary-maker in a frontier town and half the kind of person who felt no hesitation in buying lunch for a strange person she didn’t know to make sure he felt welcome.

Not everything was to stereotype, though. Some things were legitimately surprising as Arthur continued the conversation.

“It will be. But that’s what I like about the place. It doesn’t make me anxious,” Janam said.

“Anxiety? You? For real? You don’t seem the type.”

“Really. Not one on one, or in small groups. But the capital, where I used to live, it was crowded. And one day I was out in the street shoulder to shoulder with dozens of other people and just… flipped. Everything was wrong. And it got worse from there, until I could hardly walk from my home to the shop.”

“So you found a small town in the middle of nowhere,” Arthur said. “It makes sense. Except that you sell stationary.”

“You’d be surprised at how much of a good fit that is. All the shippers need manifests, receipts, they need to take and send orders… they go through a lot of paper. And pencils. And that’s before you get to how many people in this town send letters. There’s room for a stationer here. There’s just not room for two.” The bovine-demon woman sighed. “Which leaves me with the same problem as before. It’s not, however, your problem.”

Arthur nodded politely. He didn’t mind listening, but he couldn’t think of anything he could do to help.

“So what about you? You’ve had a big move too. From one world to another. How has that been going?” Janam asked.

“That’s a big question,” Arthur said as he took a sip of his drink and thought about things for a minute. “It’s been perfect. Even when it hasn’t. It’s hard to explain. You know how sometimes you go to sleep, and everything is perfect? You’ve had a great day, everything went fine, and it’s just been perfect.”

“I do know that feeling. It’s great.”

“Well, on Earth, the world I’m from? That meant everything was about to go wrong. That was how you knew you were going to have problems. It meant your car was going to break down, or you were getting fired from your job the next day.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“It wasn’t for everyone, I don’t think. And it didn’t always mean bad things to come. But it was often enough that every time a day went just a bit too well, it was hard not to be waiting for something bad to come. You got conditioned to it.”

“Huh. This might sound odd, but it’s hard for me to imagine that,” Janam said as she took another bite of her meal. “My fear isn’t really based on fact. I actually can’t imagine what it would feel like if it was.”

“I’m guessing pretty much the same feeling. Honestly. After I was here a few months, the weirdest thing happened. I went to bed, and it had been a really good day, and I realized the next one would probably be the same way. And then I relaxed.”

“Well, I’m glad for you. I really am.” Wiping her mouth with her napkin, Janam stood up from the table. “And I’ve had a wonderful time meeting you. But judging by the unfamiliar sparrow demon who just walked in, it seems like it’s time for me to get back to my shop and let you get back to business.”

“It’s been really nice meeting you too,” Arthur said in a hurry. “And thanks for lunch. I’ll see you around town?”

“You’d have to try to miss me. Too small of a place. Stay safe, Arthur.”

Janam left, and Milo quickly took her place once she was gone.

“Who in the world was that?” Milo asked.

“Spiky’s mother-in-law,” Arthur said with a smile.