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SOME swimming wasn’t enough to wear down Lushera’s current endurance, but it was still pleasant to rest in the evening after returning from a day out.
Timm and Weyne were at the Guild. They’d been requested to report what they knew about the events on the mountain and Kaphal in advance of the meeting between the King and her.
The two men came to meet the ladies at the beach once they were done swimming, but the report meeting that started in the afternoon turned into a strategy meeting, dragging on, and pulling Viola into it as well, leaving Kaphal and Lushera to return to their lodging alone.
Once back, Mira forced her way in to prepare dinner, like she had every day.
“How are you liking Alhyura, Ms. Dragon?” she asked, holding out chilled glasses filled with iced tea to the two of them. A pot simmered gently in the kitchen.
“Many people. Many parents and many children,” said Kaphal.
“Ahaha, I suppose you’re right.”
Kaphal’s impression might be as simple as a child’s, but there were far fewer dragons in the world than humans. She must have been surprised at how different it was from dragon society, with all the people and how it seemed so normal for people to have children.
Mira laughed cheerfully. She was quite brave to be able to interact with a dragon this casually.
“You parent,” said Kaphal.
“Hm? Oh, yes. I am.”
“Anything you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Humans die fast. Many parents let child fight?”
“Mom…” said Lushera. “I’m not sure that’s a good way to ask…”
Mira was taken aback by Kaphal’s question, which she still lacked the skill with the language to express properly. Lushera winced.
She could guess what Kaphal was trying to say based on her blunt question and the events that took place on their way to the capital.
“Um, adding on to what Mom said, I imagine it’s not really that dangerous for a dragon parent to let their child fight. Just being alive makes a dragon one of the most powerful things in the world, other than when they’re new hatchlings. But humans are weaker than dragons. They can easily die if they fight. I think Mom wants to know what it feels like to be a human parent whose child has a job that involves fighting….”
“That. Ask that,” said Kaphal.
“I see…” hummed Mira.
It looked like Lushera’s guess was on the mark. Kaphal must wonder about that because she sensed the fragility of a human life, as easy to die as a newly hatched dragon.
“I can’t speak for everyone,” said Mira. “There are some parents who just swallow back the tears because they can’t stop their children. There are some who are proud of their children. There are some who worry, there are some who brush it off, certain that nothing would happen to their child. There are even some who don’t care at all that their child died. So…I’ll just tell you about me and Timm.”
She poured herself a cup of tea, settled into a chair, and got ready to tell their story.
To be honest, Lushera had wondered about this too. There were many adventurers who either didn’t have parents or whose parents were unreliable. Adventurers who did have normal, stable parents had to have some other abnormal situation to spur them into the business.
“Timm told us he was going to become an adventurer when my husband lost a lot of money after being conned by an old friend. That friend was arrested, but we never got the money back… Timm said he’d help make money for the family. It was quite popular at the time amongst the youngsters of Alhyura to take the adventurers exam to try and get their skills noticed. I think people told Timm good things.”
“Were you opposed?” asked Lushera.
“Of course I was! Both me and my husband were completely against it. We told him, if he wanted to help, he just needed to lend us a hand in the shop, he didn’t need to gamble on a dangerous and unstable job like adventuring!”
There were many people who talked about adventuring with a certain sort of adoration, and there were many people who yearned for adventure. It was the name of the job, after all. The best of the adventurers did earn riches. They were heroes.
But it was also said to be a job for those who had nothing to offer beyond their strength, a job where you took disproportionate risks for some cash in hand now, a job that had no future once you grew old and your skills faded. There was some truth to all of that. Many parents would be against their child making a career of that if they were aware.
“Timm brought all sorts of things to convince us,” said Mira. “He told us the average income for a fully established, full-time adventurer, told us that there was a low death rate for adventurers who did jobs that aligned with the Guild’s threat level system… In the end, he even brought his adventuring director to come and convince us. He wore us down.”
She didn’t sound worn down though. There was admiration in her voice.
“You thought of Timm die?” asked Kaphal.
“Of course I thought about that! Even now, there’ll be moments where it just hits me, and I worry about him… Even if no one else is worrying, a parent has to worry about their son. The fact that he chose adventuring for his job means that if something goes wrong…he dies. I can never know what’ll happen.”
Timm was the leader of the top party in Kugut’hulm. The simple phrase, “the strongest adventurer,” could mean a lot of different things, but he was without a doubt one of the strongest adventurers in the kingdom of Setrayu. Just like with any master of martial arts, long years of training and battle experience had strengthened the flow of magic through his body, giving him superhuman power.
But even so. Mira said it wasn’t just before he became an adventurer that she worried about him, she still did even now. This wasn’t a matter of worrying before because he had been weak or not needing to worry now because he was strong.
“If Timm had listened to me and given up on becoming an adventurer…nothing would have happened,” said Mira. “He’s saved so many people. As much as I hate to admit it, he saved us too.”
Worry. Mira spoke of her worry for him, but how even with that worry, she approved of Timm walking the path of an adventurer.
“You know,” she continued, “when your child talks about their crazy dreams, it’s a normal part of parental love to grieve. But there’s hope in the fact that children want to do what their parents never even imagined for them. It’s normal for parents and children to have different ways of thinking, to be able to do different things. You don’t always just dote on them… Haha, actually, I want to tell him how good a job he did making his case back then,” she said happily then drained the glass of iced tea she hadn’t touched yet.
Mira had the composed dignity of a mother. Lushera and Kaphal couldn’t help admiring her. Lushera had never been a parent, and Mira was far more experienced in that department than Kaphal, despite Kaphal’s 200 years of life.
At one point, Timm stood up and promised to save the family he loved. He convinced Mira, who was opposed. Children… They weren’t just copies of their parents. They sometimes disagreed.
Lushera would be surprised if Kaphal developed the sort of understanding Mira had. Timm was able to convince his mother because he’d won over her faith in him. Lushera wanted that trust from Kaphal. When there was trouble, she didn’t want Kaphal to do all the protecting. She wanted them to stand side by side. But if their opponents were dragons far more powerful than Kaphal herself…then Lushera didn’t know what could possibly convince Kaphal to give Lushera that level of trust.
“That’s…incredible. I have no other words. It’s just incredible,” said Lushera, expressing her honest emotions without going into the details of her own situation. Both Timm and Mira were incredible.
“You think so? …I’ll make some more tea,” said Mira. Just as she stood up, a chime rang at the door. “Oh, what’s that?”
“I’ll get it!” Lushera waved Mira back and ran to the door. Anyone coming to visit them would almost certainly have business with the party itself, meaning this was a job for their manager.
Lushera looked through the peephole (needing to stand on her tiptoes to do so) and saw a messenger boy in uniform.
“I have a message addressed to a Miss Lushera at this address,” he announced.
“For me…?”
She opened the door, and he passed her a folded message card. This wasn’t something sent through a communication office, it had been left directly with the hotel’s management.
“I wish to speak with you, if you would do me the pleasure of joining me in the café on the first floor. Signed, Julian Angus.”
Lushera’s blood went cold the moment she read the name.