Chapter Four Hundred and Five - Social Networking

Cottage folded her letter up, then took a gob of wax the size of her fist and pressed it onto the seam of the letter. She focused, and with a bit of magic, melted the wax down.

Then she removed her belt, the buckle of which had a pattern on it, and she stepped onto the buckle while holding onto the belt’s strap, imprinting the symbol on it onto the wax. “There,” Cottage said as she tugged the loop free.

I was impressed by how casually Cottage was able to overcome the little inconveniences posed by her small stature. It must have been tricky living in a world mostly designed for people a dozen times taller than she was, and yet she managed it.

“Here you go,” Cottage said as she lifted up the letter and handed it to Amaryllis. “Make sure this makes it to Valerian in one piece, please.”

“We’ll deliver it, no worries,” Amaryllis said as she took the letter. The only thing written on the outside was ‘to Valerian’ where the dot on the I was replaced by a little heart. “If that’s all, then... well, I suppose we should go.”

“You know, this is very strange. Usually when we do something like this we get into a bunch of trouble, but this time nothing bad happened,” I said.

“Don’t jinx us, Broccoli,” Amaryllis said. “We haven’t even left the school yet.”

“I’ll escort you out,” Cottage said. Then she turned towards Laura, raised her arms, and made little ‘pick me up’ gestures with her hands. Laura placed her hand flat on the table and Cottage scurried on. “In the meantime, could you tell me more about how you know Valerian?”

“Is she jealous?” Awen muttered next to me.

“I’m not jealous,” Cottage said, and Awen flushed red. “Just because my ears are small doesn’t mean they don’t work.”

“S-sorry,” Awen said.

I patted Awen on the back. I could kinda see where she was coming from. Cottage had just learned that the boy she liked a lot knew... well, discounting Calamity, at least four other girls, and my friends were quite pretty on average. Mostly as a side-benefit of being young and having work that kept us all fit. I could kinda see where she was coming from, but still, it was a bit silly.

“I don’t think any of us want to steal your boyfriend away from you,” I said.

“We could do better,” Amaryllis added, and I gave her a small kick.

Cottage gave us both very flat looks. “And here I was thankful for your assistance thus far.”

Caprica, fortunately, came in with a bit of diplomacy to save the day. “So, you wanted to know how we met Valerian?” That caught Cottage’s attention neatly. “It was all rather coincidental, really. We only stopped in Inkwren to refuel our ship and maybe pick up some supplies. Broccoli decided to come to town to look for a gift as well. One of her friends is getting wed and she's quite fond of books.”

“Her name’s Booksie,” I said.

“Is that her actual name?” Cottage asked as an aside as we started a slow walk out of the library.

“I think it actually is, yeah,” I said. “She’s a bun... actually, I’m not sure how buns are named, usually. I’ve met a few and they all had cute names, like Buster or Carrot.”

Cottage glanced up at me. “Why wouldn’t you know how buns are named, aren’t you...” She gestured vaguely above her head in a bunny-ear-ish way.

“Oh, no, I was born a human,” I said. “I got the ears and the tail from a class change.”

“Hm, impressive,” she said with a nod. “In any case, do go on?” The last was aimed at Caprica who nodded regally.

“Of course. So, we decided to explore the city a little, and since we wished to stay the night, we went to a hotel to book some accommodations to reside in. Valerian was there, and he recognized Amaryllis here.”

Cottage looked over to Amaryllis with judging eyes. “Are you a relation of his?”

“Almost, but fortunately not,” Amaryllis said. “I was briefly and involuntarily engaged to his brother. If you ever do marry Valerian then... beware your new siblings. Francisco is a piece of work.”

“Vava--Valerian has mentioned as much, yes. He did say that he hoped that his brother would calm down somewhat as he grew older and more mature,” Cottage said.

Amaryllis shrugged. “I doubt it. Some people are hopeless.”

“Don’t be like that, Amaryllis,” I said. “There’s always hope... even if it’s not a very big hope, there’s still a little bit.”

“Anyway,” Caprica said with a shake of her head that dismissed our banter. “We met Valerian there. He and Amaryllis recognized each other, of course. He was quite courteous and polite, though he did seem somewhat desperate to have that message sent to you.” That last bit wasn’t a question. It didn’t have the inflection of a question. But still, somehow Caprica left the end dangling as if it could maybe be a question.

Cottage frowned, then crossed her arms. “Don’t go repeating this to just anyone. But Inkwren has been in a great deal of trouble recently. Valerian wants me to move out with him, leaving the city and returning to where he thinks we’ll be safe. I, of course, refuse to go.”

“Wait, why would Inkwren be in trouble?” I asked.

“There’s been talk of some big conflict between Sylphfree, the Harpy Mountains, and the Republic in the Trenten Flats for some time,” Cottage said, and I nodded along. We’d been through a whole adventure to try and stop that. “So the Trenten Flats have been preparing for that conflict for some time. But it suddenly seems as if it won’t materialise after all.”

“We definitely need to catch up with international news,” Caprica said. “But that seems like a good thing overall, no?”

“Maybe for most of the world,” Cottage said with a nod. “But if the Trenten Flats won’t be fighting against the Harpy Mountains or Sylphfree, a conflict that they’d be hard pressed to win, then they will likely feel compelled to turn their attention elsewhere. They’ve been expanding outwards for decades. The expansion hit a hard wall with the Snowlands to the north--there’s no way they’d get past the dwarves or the elves there, but it’s been quite successful down here.”

“You think the cervid will be pushing into Inkwren soon?” Amaryllis asked.

“It’s possible. And don’t call the Trenten Flats the cervid. While there’s plenty of cervid that make up their population, they’re not a monospecies government,” Cottage said.

That was right, Calamity was from there, and he wasn’t a half-deer-half-human. I imagined that there were other species in the flats as well. I hadn’t spent too much time looking at it on a map, but they were, essentially, the largest nation on Dirt. Or at least in the corner of Dirt we were on.

“New Horizon was a small city to the north of here, settled by mousefolk like myself,” Cottage said. “As well as a number of humans. Not long ago the Trentan Flats pushed their way in, and now the city is theirs. They didn’t exactly prevent anyone from leaving, but... well, you hear stories. And now New Horizon is much larger, and the republic has been building up their army for a war that won’t happen.” She shook her head again. “It’s why so many in Inkwren are nervous about a possible war. Not that it would really be a war.”

“Inkwren has the academies,” Laura said.

“Which are well and good, but they’re not standing armies,” Caprica said. “Yes, I could see why there would be a lot of worry.”

Cottage sighed, then she turned and just sat down right there on Laura’s hand. “Well, I’m not going to go down without a fight. Valerian ought to know that much about me by now. And... I’m sorry for burdening you with my troubles. It’s been on my mind for some time now. All of my friends know, of course, and the news is slowly starting to circulate, but I want it to stay as a rumour before we cause any sort of panic to spread.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “We’ll keep it to ourselves for now, unless we think there’s something we can do to help.”

Cottage frowned. “This might affect you too. If you’re travelling by air, be careful of pirates. There’s been a sharp rise in those, and we suspect that it’s not just coincidence. Inkwren relies on air travel to ship our inks and papers across the world. Not to mention carrying students to and from the academies. So the skies being unsafe harms the city in a big way.”

I glanced at my friends. “We’ve dealt with pirates before, but I don’t know what I can do about all of this.”

“It’s fine,” Cottage said. “I appreciate you delivering Valerian's letter in any case. Is there... something I could do in exchange?”

I considered it for a moment, then grinned. “Do you know of a good bookstore in the city? We want to get Booksie something special as a wedding gift!”

Cottage paused for a moment, then laughed. “Yes, I can think of one or two decent shops. But the best is Pecorina’s place.”

“We’ve heard of her!” I said, remembering that mousefolk guy who’d poked around the Beaver. He’d mentioned the same name.

“She’s a distant relation, and something of a friend,” Cottage said. “Tell her you come with my recommendation. It might be worth a little discount if she’s feeling charitable.”

We crossed the school green without incident, only coming to a stop once we were by the gates. Cottage gave us some rather detailed directions, with Laura pitching in every so often.

I still had to ask for her to clarify, because a lot of her directions had things like ‘take a right at the street where the Westerson Academy boy passed out while drunk last semester’ and ‘walk on the side of the street opposite Old Miss Nomve’s, especially around sunset because she still empties her chamberpot on the road even if she gets fined for it all the time and has working plumbing.’

We thanked her, then I gave Laura a hug for being a good friend, and Cottage got a good luck hug, even if it was a little strange to hug someone so small (it was like hugging a plushie, really).

The guard looked a bit confused as we left. He reminded us that curfew started in about an hour, so we thanked him, then headed out deeper into the city, following the directions for Pecorina’s bookstore.

“That was fun,” I said as I skipped ahead. I had a lot I could say about the Mitytea Academy uniform, but one thing was certain, the skirt was fabulously bouncy.

“It was something,” Calamity said. “Think we can stop somewhere and buy pants?”

“They’d have to be white to match the top,” Caprica said teasingly.

“Ah, aren’t we more concerned about the, um, maybe war thing. And the pirates?” Awen asked.

“I don’t think we, personally, have to worry about war,” Amaryllis said. “Though we might be able to do something about it. We should be getting close enough to the Harpy Mountains that I’ll be able to send letters there and back without issue. I can inform my family, who can, in turn, spread the news around.”

I nodded. That felt like a good first step. I wanted to do more, of course, but part of me was also a little bit tired of trying to save the world all the time.

Maybe... maybe that was a bit wrong of me too, but sometimes a simple, fun day out with my friends was what I wanted more than anything else.

***