“Hollyhope came up with that, not me!” she insisted, deeply embarrassed. “I don’t know how to change it!”
His eyes flicked upward briefly, but then he shrugged and sat back in his chair again.
“It is what it is,” he said flatly.
Demi pointedly looked away. She still found the “alias” that Hollyhope had prepared for her to be deeply embarrassing.
But thinking about it made her recall something else.
“Didn’t I have wings before?” she asked, giving herself a hug in an attempt to feel her back. “Or am I just remembering that completely wrong?”
“You did,” he agreed. “But they seemed to dissolve when you lost consciousness.”
“Oh,” Demi said, her curiosity curiously satisfied. “Well, I suppose that’s convenient. It’s nice to look divine in the moment, but what would I do with them the rest of the time? Actually having wings like that all of the time would probably be a big nuisance. I’d have to sleep on my stomach and wouldn’t be able to wear normal clothes, and I bet that feathers would get everywhere.”
“That’s one way of looking at things,” Aelfric answered incredulously.
“I bet I looked lovely though,” Demi said decisively, with a delighted wriggle in place. “Wings look so cool! The perfect final form for any magical girl.”
Aelfric was not sure what to say in response to this observation, and so wisely remained silent.
The talk of wings and feathers brought someone else immediately to her mind.
“Where’s Glimmer?” Demi asked, looking around the room. She was surprised to see that her faithful chicken companion was not roosting on the footboard of the bed. Her familiar living hot-water bottle was also absent. “And Dollop? I hope they’re all right. I’m really glad I made Dollop stay at the farm when I walked you to the road. Otherwise they might have been badly hurt.”
Aelfric’s eyes flicked heavenward at that statement, but he again chose to remain silent.
It was probably a good thing that Glimmer hadn’t been roosting on the footboard, she decided. If he had been, then if Aelfric’s light had not awoken him, then their conversation surely would have, and he could be...extravagant in his reactions. She could easily imagine him dashing about in circles, making quite a lot of noise, stopping only to pose artistically as he loudly celebrated her miraculous revival.
“They’re both sleeping downstairs with Tata,” he said shortly. “I had to sedate the chicken. He’s been in a state since I brought you back to the farm.”
“Oh, poor Glimmer,” Demi murmured guiltily. She hated to think that she had been the cause of anyone’s distress and anxiety.
“He’s fine,” Aelfric confirmed. “He was just exhausted and anxious. He wasn’t doing anyone any good pacing around in circles up here.” He shook his head. “That little slime has been with you almost the entire time. I finally got them to go downstairs and eat, and they ended up passing out on the sofa next to Tata.”
I have a sofa? Demi wondered. But it was the mention of the sick dryad that caused her to sit up abruptly in bed.
“Is Tata all right?” Demi asked in concern, and he raised his hand to gently ease her back against the pillows.
“I had her come to the house so I could monitor her condition more easily and administer treatment,” he explained. “She isn’t completely better, but she has improved considerably, perhaps due to the sudden influx of healthy chestnut trees in the vicinity,” he said, then paused before adding, “But even with the blightwood gone, she will relapse in time unless the disease is destroyed entirely.”
Demi leaned back against the pillows behind her and looked up at the ceiling. “Nothing is ever simple, is it?” she asked.
“No,” he agreed quietly. “It is not.”
Watching her staring pensively at the ceiling apparently motivated Aelfric.
“Here,” he said. “You’ve been out for a long time. I’m sure you’re hungry and thirsty, but we should start slowly.”
From under his hand, a mug appeared on the small bedside table. From the gentle steam wafting up from it, she could tell that it was warm. It smelled very nice.
He passed it to her. She took it in both hands and raised it to breathe in the aroma before tentatively taking a sip.
It was an aromatic chicken broth, and it was the perfect temperature for drinking, not too hot and not too tepid.
As she sipped on it, she looked over at him, tilting her head.
“You can access the inventory system too?” she confirmed. That was absolutely in line with what she had seen from him in the battle with the horrible bear-elk. He had pulled a seemingly endless supply of long guns from out of nowhere and discarded the empty ones to a similar place.
“Mm,” he answered in affirmative. “I have a feeling that it doesn’t function in quite the same way that yours does, but yes.”
Since they were laying all of their cards on the table now, she nodded.
“That makes sense, I suppose,” she said mildly. “You are a Hero, after all.”
“Mm.” He again answered with one of his nonverbal noises. He seemed to be thinking about something.
Oh, she thought to herself as she watched him silently think. I suppose I ought to check on things. Who knows what it’ll say now.
She had done something...extreme after all.
(Although it had not seemed extreme at the time. At the time, it had felt like an absolutely ordinary thing to do, the obvious thing to do, which was honestly bonkers all by itself, now that she thought about it.)
She opened her status screen.
Her level was now 385. She had stopped being amazed by it. Every time she checked her status, the number was different, although now it was growing more slowly than it had before, presumably due to the amount of experience required to level even a single time post level three hundred.
At the top of her titles section was “Goddess of Life from Another World.”
“Oh,” Demi said in faint surprise. “I guess she was right.”
Well, I did unravel an entire forest before weaving the whole thing into something different, she reflected to herself. I guess that falls into the Goddess of Life portfolio more than the Harvest Goddess portfolio.
Oh, this was really a golden opportunity, wasn’t it? She currently had Aelfric as a captive audience. She could badger him all she wanted with all of the questions that she had been building up since her unexpected arrival.
Since he knows I’m a goddess, I should really ask him about the things related to my status screen that I don’t understand, like the fifteen pages of skills, she thought weakly. He is an Archmage after all. If anyone can understand all of that, then it’s him.
She had decided to trust him with everything. She needed him as an ally.