Given the hassle of dealing with potential racism, I decided to stay in the inn room until the caravan arrived. I used this opportunity to teach Mirefa elven customs as much as possible. That of course, led to some difficult questions of “why?” which mostly was answered by “I don’t know, that’s the way they do things.”

 

Teaching the elven language required Anortha to pronounce things. This also ended up being a way for Anortha to also learn the lupo language too, but she unfortunately could not tell the difference too well. Mirefa also complained that Anortha’s “squealing” was all rather similar, although eventually could get some basic words down.

 

Mirefa was still not used to being diurnal, and was tired by the afternoon.

She said, “Oh right, while your bed is extra comfy, I should probably bring my bed over.”

“Well, it’s like at least a few days from your home even by your standards. It’s fine. There’s enough room for all of us.”

“Oh not that. While I was following you, I brought over a few things, including my bed. I hid them somewhere outside of the walls and jumped over.”

“Wait, you brought over your bed? Oh whatever, we should probably retrieve your stuff before someone finds them. Although I’m not sure if you can bring your bed on board. There probably won’t be enough room. How important is the bed to you anyways?”

“Not that important. It’s just I had plenty of spare room and our family has no one that could use the bed, so I brought it.”

 

The three of us headed out of Pellat Town the normal way, although I noticed the guards giving us funny looks, probably because last time, there was only me, and now suddenly there’s two of us. Anortha and I followed Mirefa to where she hid her belongings.

 

“You carried that the entire way?” Anortha asked. “When you said bed, I thought you meant like a sleeping bag, not an actual bed.”

Since Mirefa couldn’t understand, I answered in her stead, “I’m not surprised at all. When we were moving from one place to another, everyone brought everything with them, and that included beds. Not to mention that my sister is rather athletic. Anyways, do you think it’d be a problem if we just leave the bed here? There’s no way it’d fit on the caravan without massive charges.”

“Dumping trash out in the forest is frowned upon, but if it’s just a bed, it’s probably fine?”

“Well, we’d be out of town long before anyone notices, so it’ll do.”

 

Anortha took a look at the other things Mirefa brought, and was very interested in the waterskin. “What’s that for?”

I wrote, “That’s for storing water.”

“Huh? What’s the point? Couldn’t you just — oh right, no magic. Actually where do you get your drinking water without magic?”

“Rivers or a lake? Rainwater works too.”

“How do you purify that without any magic though?”
“You boil it? Although in general, we just drink it straight. The water around here at least isn’t polluted.”

Anortha was horrified at the information and said, “I guess that’s why you don’t live as long?”

“Who knows. By the way, even if you can generate water whenever you need it, don’t you still need to store other liquids like wine? You can still use that, so it wouldn’t be useless.”

“Maybe, but I’ve only ever seen wine stored in glass bottles.”

 

Surprisingly, Anortha didn’t comment at all about the spear. When we walked back into town, the guards also just took a glance at it and didn’t say anything about it, which struck me as odd. They gave me such a hard time because they didn’t recognize what I was, but they let in an object that is meant to stab things without any questions asked?

When I brought this up with Anortha, she replied that if someone really wanted to harm others, magic could do it so much better than a spear, so it would be meaningless to not let it in.

 

We all stayed in the inn, teaching Mirefa most of the while, until the caravan was ready to depart. Anortha did have to go and buy food for our trip, but otherwise rarely left the room.

 

We decided to just try to board the caravan normally at first, and only if they weren’t okay with that, then we would go with cages and leashes.

When we got there, we were greeted by the caravan driver, who was a very muscular elven man. I was wondering if he maybe was some other species but the ears were long and pointy, and there were no other distinguishing features.

He was quite intimidating, but we still had to get a ride from him so Anortha stepped up and timidly said, “I, I’d like a ride to Glosgaw with these two,” while pointing at Mirefa and me.

“Sure,” the man said, while giving a glance at our cart. “Are you planning for them to count as part of the baggage or passengers?”

“Uh, probably passengers, although what difference would it make?”

“Well your cart is quite oversized as it is, and if you’re having those two join in, you’d be taking quite a bit of baggage space, which also means I’m charging you accordingly, which would be a significant amount unless you mistreat them and have itty-bitty cages. On the other hand, as passengers, I’ll have to treat them as I would any other elf, which means I won’t be able to beat them into submission if they become a nuisance. Of course, then you’d be paying for three elves’ share.”

Anortha replied, “Um, I can always take part of my baggage and bring it with me in the passenger cabin, right?”

“Of course.”

“So, is it possible for me to just pay for the baggage space of the cart and have them with me, but not pay for them as passengers?”

“Well, we’ll see. There shouldn’t be too many customers at this time of the year, so if that’s the case, then sure. I help transport goods on the side anyways, so cargo space is more valuable to me. Plus, that also means I can threaten and beat those two up if they get too out of line.”

I was somewhat worried about this muscular man talking about beating us up, although it should be fine, since I wasn’t planning on misbehaving.

 

We waited around for a few hours, until the caravan was ready to depart.

“Looks like you got lucky, missy. Is six gold in total fine?”

“Yes,” Anortha said as she handed over the money.

“Alrighty then, welcome aboard!” he said, as we followed him to the caravan.

 

The caravan in question was a whole bunch of wheeled wooden boxes connected together. At least it looked like there was some suspension, otherwise it would be a rough ride. Pulling the entire thing were two large blue and white birds that reminded me of ferinas.

Anortha said to the man, “I was imagining something else for a caravan ride. Like what are the animals that are pulling the entire caravan?”

“Oh those are fericas, which are the ferina's distant cousin. They aren’t too common since unlike ferinas, they can’t fly, and like ferinas, they are quite hard to raise. They are also normally quite aggressive, although these ones aren’t because when they do, I accept the fight and beat them until they give up. Oh come on, don’t give me that look. It’s more like a friendly spar than anything else, and I make sure I heal them fully after every bout. Also, I know they like it, since they even fetch me my boxing gloves when they’re in the mood to fight.

Anyways, the first wagon here is where you’ll be at, and make sure those two behave!”

 

We climbed in the passenger cabin. There were only a few other elves, so it was quite easy to find seats for all three of us. The seats themselves were quite comfortable, and Mirefa was happily bouncing on them until I noticed and remembered what the caravan driver said about behaving.

“Mirefa, stop it!”

“Oh sorry. Is that not allowed?”

“Not sure if it’s actually banned or anything, but it would be considered disruptive or impolite.”

 

Since we were the last passengers on board, the caravan was ready to move soon after. It moved at roughly 20 kmh (12 mph), which was decently fast all things considered.

 

Mirefa was not as impressed, and complained, “What do you mean that this thing goes really fast and I can’t keep up with it? I can definitely run as fast as this, if not faster.”

“I was referring to what we’ll be riding on after this. Unlike this wagon being pulled by those birds, the thing is run by magic so it goes really fast. Not to mention that because it runs on magic it doesn’t need to stop to rest and can continue moving all day.”

“Oh, okay. But that also means for this part of the trip, I could have just run alongside the birds and not fall behind.”

“Well, maybe, but luckily we didn’t have to pay much extra for you to join us on board anyways, so it doesn’t matter.”

“So how long are we going to be on this thing?”

“About a week? It was supposed to be longer, but these birds are supposed to be faster, so it should be around a week.”

“And I have to sit quietly on this and not move around for the entire time?” Mirefa asked.

“Well not really the entire time. When night comes around, we either sleep here, or pitch a tent nearby, and given the situation, we’ll probably be choosing the tent option.”

“But for the rest of the day, we’ll have to be sitting here quietly.”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Would it be a problem to run alongside the caravan? I don’t think I could sit still for that long.”

“Ummm, probably not? Let me double check.”

I got out my writing board and wrote, “Would it be a problem for my sister to get out of the cabin and run with the caravan?”

Anortha gave me this look and asked, “What?”

I looked at what I wrote and didn’t see anything wrong.

When Anortha realized I was serious, she said, “As long as she can keep up and is fine with it? The caravan is moving fast and I doubt they’d slow down to let her get in or out.”

I translated what Anortha said to Mirefa, and she slid open the glass window and jumped out. Well at least she wouldn’t be a nuisance to the other passengers this way.