The day I first met her, Ashley had told me hardship was an essential part of travel. But after she left home, her journey was an endless series of hardships.
Though she called herself an adventurer, she was also a country bumpkin who knew nothing of the world. And of course she had also never once in her life embarked on something like a solo journey. What little she did know came from the adventure stories she had occasionally heard from her father. The only skill she could boast of was her facility with the bow she carried on her back.
To state it plainly, she was an adventurer who was fairly easy to manipulate. She had a friendly face, and she was young, and she looked kind. And so in the countries she visited, all sorts of people turned to her for help.
“Say, you’re an adventurer, right? Actually, I’m in a bit of a bind, you know—”
In a certain country, she met an old woman who came to her to ask her to exterminate a pack of wild animals that was laying waste to her fields night after night.
“Certainly! Just leave it to me!”
Ashley readily accepted the old woman’s request. In her mind, adventurers were people who granted others’ wishes. Doing a good deed was, to her, a natural course of action.
“All finished!” Though it was a natural course of action, exterminating the pack of wild animals required substantial labor. By the time the work was done, she was exhausted, but even so, she still made sure to wear a smile. Her reasoning was that adventurers were people who granted wishes.
“Oh, thank you. It isn’t much, but here you go.”
“No, no, I couldn’t. I just did what was right, so…”
Ashley waved her hand and insisted that she didn’t need compensation. The old woman said, “It’s all right. Go on, please take it,” and pressed the money into her hand.
“Oh, I don’t know what to say. Is it really all right? Thank you so much!” As uncertain as she sounded, in the end, she accepted the money. She of course needed money to pay for her travel expenses, but for Ashley, who considered the task a good deed, it was important for her not to worry about receiving any money.
After parting from the old woman, Ashley stealthily checked how much money she had received.
It was three copper coins.
Allow me to give one example of what she could buy there with three copper coins:
Three pieces of bread.
That’s it.
—Seriously? That’s so little.
Suddenly, her real opinion flashed through her mind.
No, no, that won’t do. That’s not right. She kindly paid me money, even though I accepted her request without mentioning anything about a fee, so I should actually be grateful for the old woman’s generosity.
That’s what she told herself.
Adventurers had to do good things for other people.
But she also wanted money.
Ashley continued her adventure, carrying this contradiction with her. In the end, well, people were always taking advantage of her. Ashley was the kind of person who made an easy target for the unsavory types.
“Oh, Miss Adventurer? Did you say you’re hunting for birds called goddesses? Come to think of it, I feel like I might’ve seen birds like that before.”
In a certain country, an insincere-seeming man said that to her. He added, “If you want me to tell you about them, come help me out a little with a job.”
Ashley didn’t so much as question the man’s words, even though it was obvious that he didn’t know anything, and instead helped him with his job.
She hunted down beasts and carried bags. After she’d helped him with no small amount of work, the man told Ashley, “Thanks a ton! Here, this is the whereabouts of the goddesses!” and handed her a slip of paper, and then he left.
“Thanks, mister!”
She opened up the paper.
—It was blank.
“Hey, wait a second, this paper’s blank. What’s the deal? Hang on! Mister! Wait up!”
To make a long story short, he had used the promise of information about the goddesses as bait. In the end, the only result was that the man escaped, Ashley got nothing in reward for her work, and she wasted several days.
She wasn’t just easy to trick; she was also extremely eager to please other people and had the type of personality that led her to rush headlong into trouble.
If she came across a lost child, she would immediately offer to help. To Ashley’s mind, it was only natural for adventurers to do such things.
“It’s an adventurer’s duty to help people in trouble.”
One day, after running into her for the umpteenth time, I asked her, “What are you doing in a place like this?” and that was what she said.
After looking around, I repeated my question.
I’d come across her in a remote mountainous region, where everything was bare rock as far as the eye could see. She had animal flesh dangling from one hand, and there in front of her were some newly hatched bird chicks, crying out for want of food.
“As far as I can see, there don’t seem to be any people here.”
“You’re so picky.”
I watched her offer the food to the demanding chicks, puffing out her cheeks angrily. Their bodies were black, and they came up to about my knees. They were fairly big for birds, but they seemed quite attached to Ashley and chirped at her from the nest, begging for food. They seemed to have mistaken her for their mother.
“What’s going on with these little ones?”
I approached the nest and peeked in. The chicks immediately started shrieking in a burst of rage, tossing little rocks at me and vomiting and excreting at my feet.
……
Apparently, they hated me.
“What did you do, Elaina?”
“Nothing…yet,” I said. Then I decided to ask again, “Just what is the deal with these rude little birds?”
“They only seem to be rude toward you, Elaina… A week ago, I happened upon them in the course of my adventures. It seems like their mother has stopped coming back to them, and when I found them, they were incredibly thin and on the verge of death.”
“Huh.”
So that must have meant she had taken on the burden of their care, in place of their parents. She must have been returning to them frequently. The peeping chicks seemed to rely on her completely.
As she tore up the meat and offered it to the black-feathered baby birds, Ashley told me, “I’m staying in a nearby city right now, and whenever I have time, I come out here to feed them.”
“A nearby city…?”
As far as I’ve seen, there aren’t any cities in this area…
“How long does it take you to get here and back?”
“On horseback, it takes two hours one way.”
“That’s your definition of ‘nearby’?”
“Well, but if someone doesn’t give these babies food, they’ll die… Even if it takes four hours round trip, I just have to come, don’t I?”
“You’re very dedicated.”
“I’m just doing what anyone would do. It must be hard for them to keep waiting at home for a parent who’s not coming back,” she mumbled quietly.
“……”
She really is much too easy of a mark.
“How long do you plan to continue?”
“Who knows? I guess I’ll keep coming until these little ones are able to fly.”
She giggled jokingly.
Based on what I could tell from her words and actions to date, I was sure she was not necessarily altogether joking.
It just so happened that the city where she was currently staying was the place I was thinking of going next, so after that, we didn’t really even have to say anything to each other—we just sort of headed off together toward that city. But as soon as we got there, she started making the rounds of the butcher shops, searching for food she could give to the bird chicks.
In the end, she was just too much of a nice person. In all the various travel stories her father had told her when she was little, there must never have been anything about calculating profit and loss.
That said, even if that was the case, I could hardly imagine how difficult it must surely have been for her to keep on acting like the ideal adventurer she had aspired to become when she was a child.
“……”
Watching Ashley as she went around choosing bird food, I suddenly had a thought. Two hours one way every day on a horse. If we flew on my broom, we could probably get there in less than half the time.
Adventurers are always helping people.
But living your life chasing an ideal is hard work. Whether it’s in a job, or school, or whatever. You often hear stories about people who run out into the big beautiful world with a dream, only to find there isn’t a single flower blooming when they arrive at their destination.
And most people get used to the idea and keep on living even though they’re disappointed by reality.
“Hey, Elaina, which of these meats do you think the babies will like best?”
In a world like that, someone like Ashley, who kept on endlessly dreaming, seemed like quite a radiant sight.
It makes sense. I can understand why strange people want to approach her, to manipulate her, and take advantage of her. It’s because someone like her stands out.
“I think they’ll be happy with either one. Either is fine, as long as they get it from you,” I answered.
“Well, that’s a lazy answer. Come on,” she said critically and puffed up her cheeks, then once again fell into deep thought. “Hmm…”
I wondered how the rest of the world looked in her eyes.
“Well, fine then! I can just buy both of them.”
In the end, she gave up thinking about it and came back to where I was standing with a joyful smile on her face, holding two pieces of meat.
“……”
I had thought weirdos were approaching her to try to trick her and take advantage of her, but perhaps she had the kind of character that summoned those people to her.