The smell of the wind, the color of the greenery... Things I assumed would be the same anywhere you went revealed differences when I really stopped to take them in. Even the landscape, which looked like a generic verdant mélange from a distance, turned out to be full of unfamiliar trees and other plants upon close inspection. By the same token, I hadn’t yet seen any of the herbs commonly used for making magic items in the inner lands where I was from. I would have liked to do some research on what I was finding instead, but we had bigger fish to fry at the moment.
It was now the following day, and Gourry and I had left the city of Maricida en route to the capital, Palbathos. As we stopped at a fork in the road, I pulled out the documents Captain Bronco had prepared for us. He’d given me a map he’d drawn (that was more like a diagram of roads scrawled on a scrap of parchment) as well as the aforementioned letter of introduction—plus a courtesy fee for vanquishing the bandits.
“I gotta say...” Gourry said, peering at the map from the side. “That guy was nice, but he’s got pretty bad handwriting.”
Notes were written on the map at various points, but they were damned hard to parse. That said...
“It’s not bad handwriting. It’s a different alphabet.”
“A different alphabet?!” Gourry’s voice cracked.
“Yup. After all, the inner and outer lands have had zero cultural exchange for a thousand years. Of course they’ve diverged in that time. I’d chalked the slight quirks in the locals’ speech up to a regional dialect or something, but we’re honestly lucky their language is even comprehensible to us. If things had diverged too much, we wouldn’t be able to communicate at all. Point is, I suspect this is hard to make out because of the difference in written language—not because Captain Bronco’s handwriting is bad.”
I’d originally taken the sign at the inn back in Latka for badly written too, but apparently I was wrong about that. The writing was just divergent from the script I knew. Perhaps it was even our language in the inner lands that had shifted over the past millennium—not theirs.
“I guess that means you can’t read it, huh?” Gourry mused.
“I can, actually,” I informed him.
“The alphabet’s different but you can read it? How?”
“The script is different from what we use, sure, but it’s not that different. Which makes sense, given how little the spoken language has changed. Basically, the letters aren’t the same, but they have similar forms. And since this is a map, you can kinda already tell what words are supposed to mean north, south, east, west, left, right, mountain, river, and other geography-related stuff. So, from that, we can infer what the writing says, right?”
“Oh! Incredible!”
“That’s not to say I can make out all of this, though. Here, for instance...” I pointed to a particular place on the map. “It says to go left at this fork and we’ll end up at what looks like a ‘bas stop.’ I dunno what a ‘bas’ is, though. Maybe some kind of boat or shared carriage.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.”
“Guess so.” I nodded, stuck the map back into my pocket, and dutifully followed the leftward path.
“Say, Lina, you think things will work out once we get to this capital place?”
“Dunno. But they sure won’t if we don’t go.” I kept walking as we chatted. To our left were trees. To the right, grassland. There was nobody else on the road. Maybe because it wasn’t a major road, or maybe because there just weren’t many travelers and peddlers in the outer lands, I noticed that it was fairly overgrown with weeds. “Ideally we’ll find out exactly where we are and what direction home’s in, but money is also an issue.”
“We don’t have enough?”
“We have no idea how much it’ll take to get back, and while I have gold coins that seem easily convertible into local currency, I’m not sure I’ve got us totally covered. Most of my assets are in the form of magic items... but there’s no sorcerers’ council here in the outer lands. If I try to sell them off at a local shop that doesn’t know what they are, they’re liable to treat them like junk. So another reason I want to go to the capital is to find somewhere that’ll give me decent—or at least not awful—prices. Of course, I’d also like to pin down some real directions sooner rather than later too.”
In simple terms, the Desert of Destruction that divided the inner and outer lands was to the south of Elemekia. So, also in simple terms, going north would get us home. Down in the nitty-gritty, however, there were bound to be geographical features we needed to maneuver around that would make our journey somewhat less than a straight shot. I would’ve loved to get my hands on a proper world map, but that was as good as out of the question. Even if such a thing existed, it’d be treated like a state secret. No way was a layman like me getting their mitts on it.
Now, I bet you’re wondering, “Why would a map be a state secret?” Well, lots of reasons. War, for one. Let’s say a neighboring kingdom wanted to invade. Which do you think would make it easier for them: access to a map detailing the local roads, towns, mountains, and rivers, or the total lack thereof? Keeping your geography hush-hush makes it harder for your enemy to advance, and easier for you to set terrain-based traps and ambushes. You could take a huge chunk out of their forces without fighting a single battle.
In other words, while countries generally did desire accurate maps of their own lands, they also had to be careful not to let them fall into enemy hands. Ergo, such things weren’t available to ordinary citizens or travelers. That was the case back home, and I was certain it was true here. Granted, how the major roads joined together and such was something that your average peddlers and travelers would know. So I figured hitting up the capital would let us chat up the right folks.
As I pondered all this while walking...
“Lina,” Gourry called to me suddenly. For a moment, I assumed there were more bandits—but I saw no sign of any. Gourry didn’t stop walking either.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Are you all right?”
The question felt totally out of the blue. “What do you mean?” I asked.
Gourry stared at me. “Seriously, are you all right?” he repeated.
“Dude, I seriously don’t know what you’re getting at. Why are you asking if I’m...” I started, stopping myself before I could finish. I let out a deep sigh and ran my fingers through my hair. “I guess I can’t hide it from you, Gourry,” I whispered, gazing up at the sky, the white clouds, and the birds that seemed so familiar at a distance. “Ever since we were sent here to the outer lands, I’ve felt... not quite depressed, but more sedate than usual. And it’s building up on me, little by little by little.”
“Homesick?” he asked simply.
I waved my hand dismissively. “No. I don’t think it’s that, anyway. After all, I was traveling solo before I met you. I was even more adrift then, you know? But now that we can’t get back—” I stopped, feeling a catch in my throat. This is... I mussed my hair. “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am homesick, as unlike me as that is.”
Saying the words “can’t get back” had clearly affected me.
“I think it’s the difference between ‘won’t go home’ and ‘can’t go home,’” I tried to explain.
“What do you mean?”
“Before... I could always backtrack if I ever felt like it. Staying away was a choice. But now, I don’t know if going back’s even still an option. And even if it is, who knows how long it’ll take? That’s been getting to me. What about you, Gourry? How are you holding up?” I recalled he’d once mentioned that home for him was somewhere in the Elemekia Empire.
He smiled easily at me in response. “I’m feeling pretty good myself.”
“Really?”
“I forgot about most things, after all.”
“Don’t forget home, dude!”
“Hey, I’m just kidding. Just kidding.”
“It didn’t sound like it to me!”
Maybe it was because I was yelling at Gourry, or maybe it was because I’d finally put my finger on the source of my melancholy...