After opening up to Hyraj, I felt lighter. It was easier to smile and easier to laugh. I hadn’t realised how, all these years, keeping that to myself had… burdened me. Funny, because I’d thought Hyraj was shaped by her parents’ heavy expectations. I was shaped by my own heavy expectations. By my own burdens.

Still, I’d picked up another burden after putting my old ones down. Hyraj’s confession wasn’t something I could forget. It was easy to tell her that I trusted her, but was that fair to her? Those moments where I felt like she was being more than a friend and didn’t push back, enjoying the attention—wasn’t I sending the wrong message?

It was the kind of thing that happened a lot at school. Well, not to me, but there were boys who’d get the wrong idea from girls just acting polite. I didn’t know of any girls taking advantage of boys who had crushes on them, but it wasn’t impossible that happened too. Not like I was involved in gossiping.

Anyway, it wasn’t quite the same, but I didn’t want to mislead her. I didn’t want to take advantage of her feelings. Well, more than I was already. Despite what she’d said about the goddess and giving strangers sanctity, I didn’t think she would have treated me this well if she didn’t like me, so….

So what?

I looked up, sun hovering around the horizon and dying the sky in the beautiful colours of dawn. Something I’d never really looked at it in my old world. We were in the city, so not really the best views, and the days were always getting longer or shorter, so my alarm would have only woken me up at sunrise for a few weeks or something. Here, the days seemed about the same length? Somewhere near the equator?

Thoughts drifting, unwilling to focus on the difficult situation I was in. Ignoring it like everything would be fine. After all, I didn’t know how to solve problems. Not ones like this.

Emotions crashing against thoughts, I let out a breath, settling myself before I knocked on the door. Like most mornings, my knock was closely followed by the pitter-patter of Sisi’s feet. She didn’t crash into the door today.

Once inside, I was back to normal, focused on my job. Sisi really was such a good girl. The little ones back at the orphanage were good too, but it was different. They were different, I was different, the world was different.

I never had enough time before, under pressure to get the important stuff done. Every day was a list of things for them to do: brush teeth, eat, dress for school, get to school, homework…. Anything else cut into the little time I had spare. Not that I used it for myself, usually talking to them about school, comforting them….

Was I satisfied? When the goddess—Alnaya?—had asked me that, I was in the middle of one of those days. It was easy to say I wasn’t. Even now, I know I wasn’t back then. But I didn’t hate that life.

Or rather, I loved some parts and hated some parts, and those were sometimes the same parts. Like how a child could do the same thing a million times and still make you laugh, except when they did it at the wrong time.

With Sisi, like, I didn’t have to hate her. If she wasn’t listening or messing around, that was fine. Not like we’d be late. Not like I’d get in trouble. Not like she’d get seriously hurt. Poking her finger with a needle hurt, but it wasn’t going to kill her like, well, a runaway truck would.

Was it the same with Hyraj? I kept my thoughts from drifting too far, still focused on helping Sisi practice knitting, but that thought lingered at the back of my head, waiting.

Still there even when Mr Arl returned. After he greeted Sisi, I gave him the quick run-down of her day, then excused myself, already pulling out all the thoughts I’d put away during the day.

But he stopped me. “That is it, there was one thing I forgot to mention yesterday. Rather than ‘proud’, it is ‘prideful’,” he said with a little smile.

Panicking a bit, I quickly said, “Oh, I am so sorry—”

He waved me off, shooing his hand. “It is understandable. Miss Hyraj says they have only been learning our language for a few months?”

“Well, yes,” I said, fighting the urge to fidget.

“Then they are doing rather well, I would say. Proud is an oddity of writing. Truth spoken, it is quite common for children to misuse prideful when writing, so it is very much a common mistake.”

His patient explanation was different to how Hyraj would do it, but it still had the same touch of care. A father’s lesson. “Their thanks, I shall remember it,” I said.

A second passing, I went to leave again, only to again be stopped by him speaking. “Miss Hyraj… I feel I do owe them both an apology.” Seeing my confusion, he added, “For the unreasonable request I made.”

Realising he meant the “proposal”, I shooed my hand. “It is, uh, nothing.”

Only for him to shoo back. “It is a little more than nothing,” he said, his smile wry. “If I had not thought so selfishly, I would have noticed they are hesale.”

Hesale… it was almost familiar, close to other words, but what it meant eluded me right now. Not just that, it brought me back to what happened with Mrs Frinchen. A rush of anxiety, I didn’t want to ask him what it meant, but couldn’t just agree or disagree without knowing.

Trying to be clever, I came up with something to ask. “Why would Mr Arl say that?”

“That is it, for two women of no relation to travel together—and travel rather far at that—it is obvious, no?” he said, a little laughter in his voice.

I couldn’t be sure, maybe thinking of it because of what was going on with Hyraj, but was he calling us gay? Not sure what else his answer could mean…. But then, he didn’t seem to mind if we were?

Working myself into knots, I stopped there and awkwardly said, “I’ll make leave now.”

“Of course, good workings,” he said, still with that little smile.

Needless to say, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about it the whole way back. Hyraj hadn’t exactly said whether gay people were accepted here? She thought that, if her parents didn’t want her to become the krinjor, then they would have been fine with it. That wasn’t quite the same as being accepted by everyone else, though. Maybe Mr Arl was just an accepting person or maybe because he already knew us and thought we were “good ones”.

In the end, what stopped me agonising over it was that, after knocking on our door, there was no answer. I wasn’t worried, waiting a minute or two in case she went to the toilet. No sign of her.

The room only had one key. I could have gone to the kitchen, not like I needed anything from our room to help with the cooking. But I didn’t.

Back outside, some clouds floated across the sky, maybe dark enough for a drizzle, but no storm yet. Even if it was raining, it wasn’t exactly a far walk to her work. Even though it had been a while, the “receptionist” remembered me, telling me, “Ah, she hasn’t left yet,” and sort of ushering me through, like he didn’t want me to dawdle in his space.

That silly thought put a smile on my face, one that stayed when I walked through to find only Hyraj in the room. She didn’t seem to notice me, head down, lips pursed, papers neatly spread across her desk as she appeared to be deep in thought. After a while, she wrote something down, shuffled the pages around, and went back to thinking.

There was something nice about watching her work. Couldn’t say why, just that I was content to stand there and watch her. Not that I would have interrupted her anyway.

Seconds became minutes, only when she finally took a break to look up and sigh that she spotted me. It was almost instant: her pursed lips thinned into a soft smile, narrowed eyes opening wide—as if to see me better. Then she tapped either side of her head, a gesture of, like, admitting she made a mistake?

I understood why a moment later, her hand reaching into a pocket and taking out the key. “My apologies, it didn’t occur to me,” she said as she beckoned me over.

“No issue,” I said, smiling. Reaching out to take the key, she instead held my hand, just for a moment, then turned it over, leaving the key on my palm.

“I shan’t be much longer.”

Though I was tempted to say I’d wait, my hand still felt hot where she’d touched me. Since we’d gone through all that fuss to hand over the key, I couldn’t really say I’d stay, could I?

“Okay.”

I walked back to our room, confused. She’d held my hand before and it hadn’t felt like that. Did she do something different this time? Did I? Was it just that, now I knew, I was sensitive to it? It wasn’t like I hated it, though.

My thoughts drifted back to Mr Arl and I wondered if she had always touched me like that, but I hadn’t realised while everyone else had. Did Mrs Frinchen think we were a couple? Maybe she thought Hyraj was… taking advantage of me?

I didn’t know. Really, I didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t stop myself. Caring what other people thought about me was just so ingrained in who I was. I didn’t have a problem with gay people, but Mr Arl thinking I was gay when I wasn’t really triggered my anxiety. Like I was lying to him. Like I needed to correct him. The more I thought about, the guiltier I felt.

A knock on the door, a muffled voice saying, “I am here.”

The mess I’d lost myself in broke down until there was only silence in my head. Walking over, I opened the door for her. Out of habit, I almost said, “Pleased to be back,” but managed to catch myself in time to say, “Pleased you came back.”

“Pleased to be back,” she answered, a small smile on her lips.

It felt strange to be the one greeting her. Strange, but not bad. How, this time, I was the one who sat and watched as she took off her coat and shoes and slipped on her slippers, taking off her hat and fiddling with her hair.

I hadn’t been braiding her hair since I started looking after Sisi at Mr Arl’s house. Had to leave early, so not the time. But, watching her comb through it, I had the urge to braid it right now. I didn’t give in, though.

While I didn’t want to treat her differently because of her feelings, while I wanted everything to stay the same for ever and ever, I couldn’t do this. Some things were blurred with no clear answer, but I felt like braiding her hair was crossing a line, at least when there wasn’t a reason.

There was being selfish and there was being cruel.

“I’m going to go help cook,” I said, shuffling around her to leave the room.

“That is it.”

As distracted as I was by thoughts, I focused up while cooking. When it came to eating, I forced myself, not wanting to worry her again. In a better state today, I took our plates through to wash without a fuss.

Back in the room, there was the usual silence as she read, I sat on the bed. Not for long, though.

It took a moment to find my voice. “That is it… Mr Arl said something I don’t know. You maybe need to correct him tomorrow?” I said, trying to sound like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Well, what is it he said? Can you recall?”

I looked out the window, some distant hint of storm clouds, no clue if they were blowing our way. “He thinks we’re… hesale?”

A chuckle came from her. “Indeed, you wouldn’t have found that in my book. It is… you wish for the large answer?”

“Yes.”

“It is something of interest to me, so I have somewhat researched it. In Crisoa—the southern continent—a long time ago, there was much… countries fighting? That is, war. After the war, the men would be given land to farm for their service, and they would have children. Sons would build houses on the farm and live there with their family too. However, only the first son would inherit the farm, so the other sons would either leave for other jobs—or they would join wars for their own land.

“Of course, not every son lived. Their wives and children would be allowed to stay on the farm if she did not marry again. In the case that more than one son died, their wives often… joined families? It is written that it was easier for two people to raise a large family than one person raise a small family, but I wonder if it was not pressure to take up less space….”

She paused there, then gave a small shoo, sort of to herself.

“In those cases, it was said the wives are hesale.” It hit me then, hesch being wife. That was half of it and she explained the other half. “It seems to come from how a wife addresses her husband’s sisters. Their children call them fan, while she will call them fanale. Hesale, then, means little wives, or wives-by-marriage.

“That was common a long time ago, but the warring period of Crisoa is old history by now. Since then, it has usually meant women of no relation who live together, often still widows, but in their old age. In more recent times, it has seemed to mean women who are in a relationship together.”

So it did mean gay? Well, lesbian? My thoughts were cut off there by her, though, apparently not done with the lesson.

“There is something of a similar word for men, but that has a different history to it. Besides, we are discussing hesale, no? Honestly, I have some dissatisfaction with it. At least in the northern cities, it is common for women to live together with no relation nor relationship. They wish to avoid their parents arranging a partner for them, so they work, but it is a difficult thing to live alone—isn’t that right? Living with a man cannot be done, so another woman it is.

“Of course, some do have relationships, perhaps more than I think, but it is… I do not like confusing two women as friends and as lovers. ‘Hesale’ doesn’t help with that. That is it, even Mr Arl, otherwise sensible, has been mistaken by it.”

My heart sort of clenched at that, reminded of the anxiety. Glancing over, I caught her eye and it was like she could see how I felt, a soft smile coming to her lips.

“I shall correct Mr Arl tomorrow.”

It felt wrong to thank her for that, but nothing else made sense to say, so I said nothing. After a few seconds, she turned back to her book and left me with my thoughts.