Chapter 60: The Talk

Between Milo’s friendliness, Rhodia’s quasi-pushiness, and Onna’s near limitless ability to generate low-grade fear-based authority, several other people signed on to the camping trip experiment. Spiky came, saying that observing other-world customs first hand meant a good chance for knowledge-gain that would push his class forward. In a rare voluntary destealthing, Corbin came out to say he’d go, and that he was bringing a friend along that nobody seemed to know.

Chuck was coming too, which turned out to be a vital part of getting Eito, Ella, and other adults to feel comfortable with the trip. There weren’t any signs of a monster wave or similar dangers, but the wilds always had a few beasts wandering here and there. A beginner or intermediate combat class went a long way in keeping a group of crafters out of danger.

When Chuck’s bear-demon combat-class friend Ern signed on as well, it put the entire issue to rest. Unless something really weird happened, everyone would be safe. Which complicated things again, in a different way.

“But I want to go, and Arthur doesn’t mind.” Lily was on the fourth round of the back-and-forth argument between herself and Ella, and she didn’t even seem tired. “Nobody minds. I’m fun. And I’ve never been camping before.”

“Nobody has ever been camping before.”

“That’s not the point. It’s safe. Chuck is going. That big bear is going.”

“Ers,” Arthur said, helpfully. “He’s a dexterity fighter and scout, apparently.”

“Thanks. See? It’s safe,” Lily exclaimed.

“It’s cold out there,” Ella said. “And you might fall and hurt yourself.”

“Then Arthur can carry me, in my new clothes he bought me. I’m a little cute warm puffy cloud in them, remember? And I’m not going to fall. If anyone did fall, it would be Arthur, and you know it.”

Somehow, that argument seemed to work. Arthur tried not to be too insulted by it as Ella searched for more objections and failed to find any.

“Fine.”

“Really?” Lily flapped her arms and jumped in place a little. “I would have gone anyway, you couldn’t have stopped me, but really?”

Ella ignored the false challenge to her mom powers and sighed.

“Yes, really. Just be careful. And do whatever Arthur says.”

“I always do what Arthur says,” Lily said. “Unless he doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

“That’s going to have to be good enough, I suppose. But I want you to pack. You have to carry everything you need yourself. Do you understand?”

“Yes! I’ll do it now. Don’t leave without me, Arthur!”

Lily raced off to her room to jam some things in a pack as Arthur put another tray of brown-sugar infused crackers into the oven to bake. When it was all done, he sat down on one of the stools and leaned his arms against the table.

“Odd of you to object to her going on the trip this late in the planning,” Arthur said.

“Oh?” Ella paused in her task.

“Yeah. You could have said no before I even bought her winter clothes. Why now?”

“She’s small. And I worry about her,” Ella said. “That doesn’t always happen on a schedule that makes sense.”

“Is it really that dangerous out there?” Arthur drummed his fingers on the table. “I’d hate to find out it is and have someone get hurt because they were humoring me.”

“Oh, not this close to the city. I wouldn’t let Lily go at all, otherwise. I think it’s just…” Ella stopped, looking around the kitchen and listening as if trying to hear if anyone was coming. “You’ve never really known Milo’s father, have you?”

“Not exactly. When I got here, I didn’t understand enough about this world to know if him not being around was even something worth being concerned about. And then as time passed, there were just fewer and fewer opportunities where it seemed right to ask about something like that.”

“That makes sense, I suppose. Well, since he left us, the dangers of the world have hung very heavily on my head.”

“He… died out there?” Arthur asked carefully.

“Oh, heavens no.” Ella laughed. “You thought he was dead?”

“He isn’t? But neither of you talk about him. Ever.”

“It makes us sad, Arthur. And worried. But we do talk about him sometimes. I just don’t think you’ve ever been there for it,” Ella said.

“Wait, but… you said ‘left us.’. And I’ve been here for months. So where is he?”

“He’s an explorer, Arthur. It’s a rare class, but it does exist. He goes places where no demon goes and sees things they’ve never seen before. It’s just that unexplored places are far away. He left… oh, I don’t know. I suppose around six months before you showed up on my doorstep begging for cookies.”

“I never begged.”

Ella plowed right on. “And, gods willing, he should be back in the next few months. Unless, Arthur, he isn’t. Because it’s not entirely safe out there, even for a high-level explorer. And that’s why I worry. I should apologize to Lily for letting that worry spill over to her.”

Arthur suddenly had to consider a new perspective he had never thought much about before. The spouses of explorers, ships captains, and pirates who just had to wait and wonder when their people would come home, if they ever did.

“And he can’t call home somehow? Send a message?” Arthur asked. “Seems like there’s definitely a class that can do something like that.”

“No. The whole point of his class is to go out further than where that’s possible. As far as he can go, really, before he runs out of supplies or gets stopped by some unpassable obstacle.”

“That seems hard.”

“Well, it’s not without its perks. I have to wait for the intrepid explorer to make his way home, but I also get to be married to an intrepid explorer. It’s a give and take sort of thing.”

“Gotcha. Well, I look forward to meeting him when he comes. Yet another bird demon friend to eat your food with sounds nice.”

“Goat demon.”

“What?” Arthur’s mind reeled. “But… Milo… he really takes after his mother.”

“He looks a bit like his father. You’ll see it once you meet him,” Ella corrected, then shot a strange glance at Arthur. “You’re confused. I can see it. Milo’s a bird demon. But I’m not sure what the point of confusion here is, you’re going to have to help me.”

“No, I mean… I don’t know what I mean. Okay, so, on my planet, there are lions and tigers. Not demons. But if you breed them, you get ligers.”

“Half of each?”

“Sort of, yeah. If you breed two dogs that look very different, the puppies end up looking like a mix between them, some more like one, and some more like the other.”

“And what did you expect here? That Milo would have horns?”

“Or be a goat with feathers? I don’t know. This doesn’t…” Arthur could feel his face burning with a type of embarrassment he couldn’t even get close to understanding. “It doesn’t come up in conversation a lot, Ella. And it’s not the kind of book I’ve had time to get to.”

“I guess that’s understandable, now that I think about it. Most demon-children get this explained to them when they’re first starting to grow into adults. I’ll do my best, I suppose.” Ella tapped her fingers on her cheek. “So, a female bird demon and a male goat have a child. Some features, like the size of the nose or the shape of their eyes, tend to be more like one parent’s or another’s.”

“So… hm. I tend to think of those as the ‘human’ parts of demons, if that makes sense. The parts that aren’t different from how I look.”

“Yes, you’re right. We call those base features. As in basic, as in simple. Those are a mix of both parents. But species features are different. Feathers. Horns. The color of one’s skin, if visible. Bark, if Eito. Those come as a set. A child is one or the other.”

“And every demon is… compatible? With all the others?” Arthur’s face was essentially a mass of fire now, threatening to burn his ears clean off with the mighty flame of embarrassment. But he preserved in his search for knowledge. This concerned him too. Him and Mizu both.

“Yes. At least in the way that you’re thinking of. Personality is another thing. Two turtle demons can have completely different temperaments. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. And thanks, Ella. I don’t really have anyone else to ask this kind of question.”

“Oh, you do. Eito would have told you the same thing. Or Itela. Or I suppose even Karbo, if you wanted to go for a much broader style of explanation.”

“I think this is fine. And now I’m suddenly glad I won’t see you much for a few days.”

“I understand. Go pack, and I’ll make myself scarce until after you leave. Enjoy your trip. Don’t forget to get all these sausages out of my kitchen storage when you go.”

—

The next morning, the entire group of teenagers was assembled at the gates. Mizu and Onna saw the ball of fluff known as Lily and claimed her almost immediately, fussing over her cuteness. That left Arthur free to plot a general course with Spiky, Milo, and the two combat classes.

“So it’s mountains, forest, or river?”

“Yes.” Spiky drew a large circle around the map he had scribbled into the ground. “At least if I’ve done the math right, those are the destinations we can get to in two or three hours, if everyone works pretty hard at keeping up.”

“He’s right,” Ern said. “I could get further, but honestly, there’s nothing much more interesting than those places outside the radius we can reach.”

“The river’s pretty nice,” Spiky said. “But it’s also colder there than most other places we’d go.”

“It’s colder near rivers?” Milo asked. “That’s new information for me.”

“Not generally, no. But this particular river is in the area of a chill wind current, so it will be a bit colder. The forest would be the warmest, but most of us have already been there recently,” Spiky said.

“And we might accidentally burn it down with all the campfires,” Arthur said. He thought of the bug that bit Mizu and tried to steer the group away the forest.

“That too,” Spiky said. “So I think that leaves the mountains. There’s some pretty terrain near the bottom of them and some flat places to make camp.”

“I’m fine with that if everyone else is.” Arthur raised his voice a bit to draw in the group. “Is everyone okay with the base of the mountains?”

Nobody had any objections. Arthur motioned for Spiky and Ers to take the lead, and they were off.

The walk, despite being advertised as hard, was much easier than Arthur expected. He still was nowhere near the equal of the combat classes in terms of body-enhancing stats, but he didn’t need to be. Most crafters didn’t put their points in physical stats and Arthur had leveled enough that he was no longer the level 1 human trying to chase after a group of stat-enhanced demons. The only concern was about Lily keeping up but she rode Onna and Mizu’s shoulders almost the whole way there.

Despite the relative ease of the trip, nobody really talked. It felt more like a march to get to their destination than a leisurely hike. There were a few breaks, mostly spent letting the slower members of the party catch their breath, but otherwise everyone just focused on walking, making the best time they could.

They got to the base of the mountains in a bit over two hours, leaving plenty of time to find a suitable campground.

“What about here?” Arthur said. “It’s flat.”

“It’s flat and boring, though.”

“Any better ideas, Milo? It’s mostly like this,” Rhodia said. Despite all her work getting others on board, she was still a counter-intuitive hard-sell for the whole camping concept. Arthur wanted to get camp set up as quickly as possible so the fun could start, in large part so that the Rhodia-minded members of the group could be convinced.

“Not me. I’m not a great explorer type, all things considered.”

They wandered on for about twenty minutes, finding sites that all failed to be cool in one way or another. As a group, they had just about given up when the solution finally found them.

“What,” Lily said, her eyes wide as she pointed forward, “Is that?”