
Having settled our transportation to the Southwestern continent, we prepared to explore! Blackie still had a firm grasp on my hand while dear Velris clung to my side. It brought back fond memories of shopping with my husband, though I was the one clinging to his hand...and the children's leashes. En and Kinley we didn't have to worry about as much but the other three were a nightmare to take anywhere with their father. Well, at least no one here knows us personally! ...and where we live. Let's just say there was more than one case of intentional arson on a personal home of mine. Most Some of which were not my fault.
Most of the buildings were low to the ground...at least where there was ground. The travel-ways connected the sea and suspended docks at the bottom of the cliff to the town itself, but there was a pretty sharp drop in places. Moss and even trees were stubbornly hanging to the sides, adding a lively green to the grey rocks.
As for the lovely people, cloaked angels were glaring at cloaked demons and vice versa. Meanwhile a triangle could be seen every few feet of humans glaring at wolf-folk, wolf-folk looking at mermaids, and mermaids in red looking at humans. 2 out of 3 were hungry, but for different reasons. Not one of them pulling a knife, starting a fight, luring someone to a dark alley, or even certain hand gestures! Relations really have improved since the last time I was in a multicultural town.
Blackie was talking to a demon who volunteered to willingly give us accurate and helpful directions, by looking at us, while Velris had wondered to a near by vendor of herbs and small medical supplies. That nostalgic feeling was even stronger, I even thought back to the time I first met my husband.
"Aena, why do I feel like I need to dig up a grave?" Blackie asked suspiciously narrowing his eyes at me, his gentle and polite conversation with the young demon done.
"I was just thinking about how I met my late dear husband, he didn't leave anything to bury so we save a lot on funerary costs!" I jokingly gave him a cocky look.
"...I plan on outliving you." Somehow, I didn't think he was as joking in his response.
"Did you kill him?" Velris asked, also not in a joking manner, having returned from the stall with a large bag of random things we probably didn't need.
Hurt, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the bunch of rude and crude men who don't understand the delicate feelings of a poor widow. A widow who lost a love, a life partner, the father of my children, the idiot who destroyed my hope in cooking, who didn't know how to clean, never helped with the kids when they started throwing a tantrum, who-
"She told me he got eaten by hellhounds, but now I'm starting to wonder..." Barbaris the traitor "whispered" to Vel-dear.
"...He died of natural causes." Accidents, when caused by one's own personal type of luck, are completely natural. "Though to be honest, if he had lived much longer without changing, which was likely," I'm sure my smile was still in place. My tone though may have been drier than normal, "it is not impossible that a different kind of accident would have occurred. Angels do not divorce after all."
This was of course true. We did not divorce. If a marriage should need to, split shall we say, it was common practice to mediate to find the issue. If there was, shall we say, an indiscretion, well, Heaven has ways of making things...fade when placed in direct sunlight. If they just didn't want to deal with each other, that was what we call a duel to see how things are divided. As long as one or more survived anyway. Those seemed to have an oddly high mortality rate. Unless they changed that law recently, it wasn't an option 1,000 or so years ago at least...
The two exchanged glances, showing how much closer they have grown to each other as I peacefully napped. Now that I think of it, how long did I sleep?
"We should find an inn." Blackie ignored my questioning eyes.
"How did you meet your husband?" Beloved Vel asked with a pure, childlike desire for knowledge.
"Morbid curiosity getting the better of you?" Barbaris the traitor never to be forgiven chimed in.
"And yours isn't?" Brave Vel retorted back to his father, the teenage rebellion strongly showing!
"My dear was an ordinary man," I sighed wistfully.
"Tell that to the lemonade"
"An Ordinary Man, with...questionable... taste."
"He did marry you-" A loud crack sounded, causing the good and various people around us to take a large step back and the people ahead to start walking faster. We kept going, the old familiar sound on something heavy being dragged behind me.
Having silenced the interruption, I continued. "And we met in an ordinary way. There I was, covered in the blood of my enemies with a mountain of corpses both decomposing in my wake and squishing under my feet, when I saw him. A lonely civilian in a sea of carnage, lost and confused. He asked for help finding his way back home, as I was soon to be the last one living on the field when the demon in my hand was done squeaking, he had gone out to the grocer 3 minutes from his house at a good pace, and found himself in a human realm battle zone" I sighed at the memory, and the old confusion of the "how" of the situation. Oddly, the few surrounding demons disappeared, along with most of the people in earshot.
"Mother, I think he's dead..." My naive boy poked the old corpse that was still firmly attached to my hand.
"Oh don't be dramatic, he's still breathing. Anyway, I brought him home with me and we got married within the day." My smile twitched at the memory of meeting his parents...and how quickly they ran after handing him over. I never saw them again, now that I think of it...
The cool hand tightened its grip as Blackie gave me a very exasperated look, not just by his standards but a really very exasperated look. I half though his face was going to split open again. I felt my shoulders and wings tense up from the memory.
"What are you looking at me like that for? If you're in a hurry, you propose. I think a woman as lovely and kind, innocent and wise, mature-" I smirked, hoping I was guessing the reason for the expression correctly. We were passing a jeweler, so it would just be a quick side trip.
But he failed to mention a word, just grew more grumpy and went even more limp than before. If I didn't know him so well I might have come to the conclusion that I really had killed him, that and the firm grip he still kept on my hand. I was beginning to wonder if the "leash" was just an excuse.
Vel-dear and I saw many lovely things, clothing stores, a jeweler I went into out of spite, little cafes, a full sized apothecary Velris dragged us into, a random fish market that was all alone in the center of town, the heavily guarded vegetable market, all the main sights!
"And did you see the designs on the fish market's door?" Vel excitedly went on.
"Yep. Yes, I did." I nodded, slightly annoyed that I had missed such a blatant disregard for a gag order when eradicating the evidence shortly before my temporary retirement into a desk job in after the wedding.
"What kind of angel enslaved an entire continent? Or was that just an artistic metaphor for how they forced worship on the masses?" Vel muttered, "They were depicted with such a holy air, but the visual of an angel with some kind of crown floating above their head while a landmass with tiny chained figures is rather hard to take differently."
"Good question, isn't it Gold-eye?" The Bast-baris chose this moment to chime in. Not any other time, like say, at the jeweler, but now. I leveled my gaze down to him, weighing the effort required to bind his wings and launch him off to sea ahead of time from this, the middle-abouts, of town.
"...artistic metaphor of course. To rule a continent, would require more than a single army. Not to mention the sheer amount of land one would end up acquiring, the people alone would be impossible to control without a massive amount of personnel, clear chain of command, and a common enemy to help reduce the infighting. Personal strength certainly helped, but structure and delegation was really the key to ensuring a web of control that could cover that large even for a short couple hundred years." I sighed, remembering the fun times when I could coerce entire kingdoms and empires to listen to orders and lectures on the goodness of humanity for hours and even days on end.
"There was even a point when I got enough of a super light material I never found again and with the right adjustment to the inner ring, as long as I sat still the heat from my head would create an air current to suspend it over my-"
...hm, I think I may have ousts myself. Vel's eyes were wide, but not much else was going on by way of expression. It reminded me of my dear who did not stop me and was in fact very obviously stifling a laugh. I yanked him up and made him start walking while dear Vel trailed unevenly behind.
Dear god, I had forgotten this existed