It was the day of departure. Anortha was quite excited and didn’t sleep well last night, which also kept me up too. Anortha ended up waking up at the crack of dawn, nervously checking her baggage to see if there was anything she missed. I decided to go and cook breakfast, only to find that it’s already been done, with Anortha’s parents sitting around the dining table.

I reached out to grab a piece of chalk to ask them a question, only for Anortha’s father to hand me a rectangular object.

“Since you’ll be traveling, it’ll be hard to replenish chalk or ink all the time to write, so we bought this writing board for you. You can write using the special attached pen, and then erase by using the other side of the pen. It’s infinitely reusable.”

I decided to try it out, and wrote, “Thanks. How does it work?”

“The board reacts to a certain material on the pen, changing to black when the pen tip touches the surface, and changing to white when another material on the other side of the pen touches the surface. I’m not sure exactly what materials they are though.”

This will definitely be useful. The size was also small enough that I could shove it in my backpack.

I wrote, “So why are you up so early?”

“Lots of reasons. My wife is still worrying if there’s anything she forgot to put in the cart or if we gave you enough food or money. Also, we’re pretty sure that our daughter would wake up early, and would like to spend more time before she leaves for who knows how long.”

That made sense. I decided to enjoy my last meal before I left. Anortha joined soon after, which meant her parents fussed over her and gave her plenty of advice and warnings. When we were all done, her parents wanted to have a private conversation with her, so I went to my room, which looked rather empty now.

 

A few minutes later, Anortha came in looking quite happy, so I asked, “What happened?”

“Oh, my parents gave me my birthday gift.”

“What did they give you?”

“My parents said that there’s going to be a lot of stuff that I’d be interested in at Lengmun so they just gave me a whole bunch of money and told me to buy them.”

“That’s nice. Why did it have to be private?”

“Oh, well, they did talk about some other matters too. Such as well, um, if I find someone I’m, uh, interested in, and stuff along those lines.”

Now I wonder, did they go all the way and talk about making babies, or was it just about dating or something?

Anortha abruptly changed the topic and said, “Well now that we are already packed and ready to go, we should start our journey right now,” and left the room.

Her parents gave her a final goodbye hug at the front door, and off we went. Anortha was enthusiastically pushing the rather large cart with our supplies, and rushed to the gate.

The gatekeeper remarked, “Oh, you’re finally leaving for good. Good riddance!” and happily opened the gate for us.

I made sure to give him my usual “greeting,” but unlike usual, he didn’t seem to get upset and just waved at us as we walked past.

After walking a few minutes, Anortha asked, “So what direction are we supposed to go again?”

I wrote, “Wait, I assumed you knew and was just following you. Let me get out the map.”

I also dug out the rudimentary “compass” which really was just a magnetic rock attached to some wood and a dish, and had the elf add water to it. I waited for the rock to stop spinning and then I pointed in the direction of our destination.

 

It turns out her enthusiasm died out fairly quickly after a few hours of pushing the cart. I wasn’t surprised because the forest floor wasn’t exactly smooth, and the cart had quite a bit of our stuff in it. I would help, except the handles were too high up for me to comfortably hold onto.

By the time night fell, Anortha was complaining about all the physical exertion she had to do. I decided to let her rest and pitch the tent myself. Luckily, there was no danger in this stretch of the forest, so there was no need to have someone on lookout duty.

 

The next day we set out again. Midway through, I noticed that the scenery looked rather familiar, and after double checking with the map, I realized that my family’s village was on the way. When I told the elf about dropping by, she was quite happy to make a short visit. Thus, we took a slight detour and made our way over.

I conveniently forgot that lupoy are nocturnal, and it was currently in the afternoon. That being said, we weren’t exactly being stealthy or quiet, which also meant that a village lookout spotted us.

“Who are you, and why is there an elf following you?”

“I’m just briefly visiting my family,” I replied.

“Who are they, and you still haven’t told me why there is an elf there.”

I didn’t want to waste too much time, and Anortha couldn’t actually understand what we were saying, so I decided to come up with a quick lie to hasten the process.

“Oh, I managed to tame this elf, so no need to worry,” I replied. Thinking about it, I have no idea what my parents' names are, so I said, “And I am here to visit Cabg and also Mirefa.”

“Cabg? I think I’ve worked with him a few times. And how are you going to prove that you tamed the elf? Make it, I dunno, go into a submissive position, like lying down with her belly up for proof.”

This might get awkward. Although I guess that’s literally just Anortha lying on her back which isn’t that odd actually, so maybe it’ll be fine?

I took out my board and wrote, “Hey, could you lie down on your back? It’ll make the lookout less suspicious.”

She replied, “Huh? How will that help?” but she still complied.

The lookout said, “Alright, well it’s a bit early so I won’t be making a fuss, but I’ll be verifying with Cabg that you are his family. What’s your name anyways.”

“Sofare.”

“Okay, now begone, and make sure that elf doesn’t do any funny business, you hear?”

“Of course.”

After the lookout left, I told Anortha that she could get back up again.

She asked, “So, mind filling me in on what happened there?”

“Nothing much, just verifying my identity and making sure we’ll behave.”

“So what does that have to do with me lying down?”

“That’s just what the lookout asked me to ask you. Anyways, because of what elves have done in the past, most of us will be quite suspicious of you, so you should probably just stick with me and visit my family instead of wandering off. At least they know about you since I’ve talked to them before.”

“Aww. Well that’s enough.”

As we approached the mass of tents, Anortha asked, “So where is everyone? It’s in the middle of the afternoon so I’d assume there should be some lupoy out and about besides the lookout. Or did they notice me from far away already and went into hiding?”

“Because it’s in the middle of the afternoon, everyone is sleeping,” I wrote.

“Huh? Do you all take naps around this time or something?”

“Did you know that we are normally nocturnal?”

“No. Wait, then why do you sleep during normal hours?”

“It’s to match up with yours really. It was quite uncomfortable early on, but I quickly got used to it.”

“I’m so sorry! You can go back to your usual sleeping schedule.”

“I told you I already got used to it. Besides, if I did, there won’t be much interaction between us. Not to mention if you asked me to go back to being nocturnal, it would be equally uncomfortable.”

Anortha tried to push the cart slower to make less noise, but the ground was too uneven, so it still rattled about. When we did arrive at my family’s tent, it was still quite early. I decided to wait in the living room while the elf curiously looked around.

 

The first to get up was Mirefa, who was glad to see me and went in for a hug. After Anortha improved her hugging technique ever since the first time, Mirefa also didn’t mind giving her one too.

“I was thinking of visiting you actually, so it’s nice you made the trip instead.”

I said, “Yeah, well we’re going somewhere really far away so I thought I should drop by and tell you all.”

“Oh, so when are you coming back?”

“Depends. It could be a month, or it could be never.”

“So when you said you were going to wait until I grew up before teaching me magic, that was just an excuse to avoid teaching me?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I didn’t even know that I would be going on this trip until two days ago.”

“Well in that case could just teach me now? I don’t care if I don’t grow up.”

“Uh, let’s wait for our parents to wake up. If they agree, then we’ll see, but if not, then sorry,” I said. I was basically throwing all responsibility to our parents at this point.

 

While waiting for them to wake up, I chatted with my sister, asking her how she was doing. I also talked about my planned journey and the sights I was expected to see. Anortha unfortunately couldn’t understand our conversation, and was just immersing herself in Mirefa’s fluff.

 

When my parents finally got up, the first thing they said when they walked through the doorway was, “Let go of my daughter!”

Right, I forgot about the fear of elves lupoy are supposed to have. Anortha also did not understand what they were saying, so she did nothing. Before I could take out my writing board to tell her, they dashed towards Mirefa and pried her away from the elf’s hands.

“Did the scary elf do anything to you?”

Mirefa was confused at her parent’s behavior, and said, “No? Or rather why do you seem so bothered?”

“That’s an elf! For all we know, it plans to kidnap you and eat you for breakfast!”

“Oh don’t worry about that. Never Mind isn’t a stranger. She’s the one that I visit all the time when I go over to where Sofare is.”

That’s when my parents finally noticed me. “So that’s the elf that had been taking care of you?”

“Yes,” I responded. “I wanted to visit you all before I depart on a journey, and she was interested in meeting you too.”

My parents stopped being as wary, but I could tell they were still on edge.

“Welcome home. So you said you were going on a journey?”

“Yes. It’s very far away and I have no idea when I’d come back.”

Mirefa interrupted, “Since Sofare promised me that she’d teach me magic before, but then might not come back, I asked for her to teach me magic now, but then she said I had to get your permission first. Can I? Can I?”

“Slow down there.” My father turned to me and asked, “What exactly is this magic thing you said you’d teach her, and why would you want to ask us for permission?”

“The magic thing is what you called those ‘fancy tricks’ that I used in my last deer hunt.”

“So those useless stuff. Go on.”

“Uh, well ignoring how useful they actually are, the drawback of learning magic is apparently it makes you age very slowly, which is why I told her I’d only teach her after she was an adult.”

“Oh so that’s why you still look the same.” My father then turned to Mirefa and said, “Well the answer is obviously not.”

“Huh? But why!”

“If there were no drawbacks to this magic thing then I wouldn’t mind, but it does. Do you really want to be stuck at your size and strength? Think about how much stronger you’ll be when you become an adult. Also how would you ever get married if you still look like you’re five? No one would want you!”

“But I’ll still eventually grow up. Besides, I can already beat some of the weaker adults as I am now. Plus magic can do stuff that I’ll never be able to do simply by growing up. Like that knife I showed you for example. Mom? Some help here?”

“I agree with your father here. I know you are too young to be thinking about love and marriage right now, but give it a few years and you will. And when all your peers fall in love and get married, you will get completely left behind. Do you really want that? I’m sure you heard of the desperate young women who couldn’t get a boyfriend train so hard that they coughed up blood.”

“So if I could grow up normally, it wouldn’t be a problem if I learn magic?”

“Pretty much.”

“Sofare, is there a way to learn magic while being able to grow up normally?”

“Besides learning it when you’re already grown up? Uh, I doubt it, but let me ask.”

I wrote on the board, “My sister wants to ask, is there any way to learn magic without having the issue of growing slowly?”

Anortha replied, “That really only applies to using magic. If it’s strictly a theoretical lesson, it won’t have that problem. Although as you very well know from reading those spell books, the very basics pretty much require actually using them.

So is that what your family was talking about? I was surprised when they suddenly snatched your sister away and thought I might have done something impolite.”

“At least towards the end, yes. My parents apparently don’t quite trust elves like most of the other lupoy,” I wrote. I told Mirefa, “Nope, sorry. Unless you only want to learn the theory, which will not help you at all in actually using magic. Even I was confused until I actually tried it.”

“Oh,” Mirefa said, with her ears drooping. “Brother! I know you’re listening behind the leather flaps. Have anything to say?”

Cabg showed up and avoided looking at Mirefa as he said, “Well, I just want you to be happy, but um, you’re probably happier living a normal life. Yeah. Anyways, Sofare only specified our parents, and not me, so it’s not like my opinion matters.”

“Oh,” Mirefa said, with her tail flopping lifelessly toward the ground.

Trying to disperse the gloomy atmosphere, my father said, “Since it will be a while before Sofare will come visit, let's have a feast!”

However, that did little to cheer my sister up. I did feel bad, but it’s probably for the best.

 

After the feast, I said my farewells, and we departed. Now that it was sunset, there were a lot more lupoy milling around, which also meant that there were a lot of eyes on us, or rather on Anortha. We managed to leave the village without any problems. After confirming our path with the compass and map, we continued our journey to the town of Pellat, without noticing that midway through, we were being stalked by a determined predator…