The bustle of the festival gradually dwindled. This might have been why a shred of loneliness caught in Lacey’s chest and stirred up a fleeting thought within her.
Meeting people and getting involved with them. What a terribly strange thing this was. It made her feel happy.
But at the same time, it made her all the more frightened.
“Miss Lacey, is there any more corn?” Cedric asked.
“Huh? Ah, there might be some more at the mansion. I’ll go check!”
“It’s fine. It’s getting late, might as well wrap things up.”
“But there are still people here! I won’t be long, Mr. Cedric!”
She promptly started running. Maybe she was afraid of it ending. With every step she took, the people’s voices grew quieter.
Instead, the chirping of bugs grew louder. She could hear their clear trills. She continued straight on and reached the river. If she kept walking alongside it, she would reach the mansion. She had forgotten to bring a lantern, so after checking to see that nobody was around, she lit sparks at her fingertip. When she flicked them, they dotted the sides of the path in little spots like fireflies.
She glanced up ahead and saw Wayne quietly standing on the riverbank.
Something large alighted on his outstretched arm. It was a postal dragon. They could deliver letters anywhere, even in the dark.
“Wayne?”
When Lacey called out, the mini-dragon quickly took off. It tore through the night sky, relying only on the faint starlight to guide it.
“Did you get mail?”
“Yeah, sorta.”
Lacey had thought that Wayne was still at the festival.
Wayne quickly flipped the envelope over and checked the sender. Lacey wasn’t sure if she should ask who it was from. He put the letter into his pocket.
“Anyway,” Wayne began, his eyebrows raised upward, “what are you doing out here by yourself?”
She was still a little curious about the letter, but it was more important to respond to Wayne right now. “Huh? Well, I was going to go get the last of the corn...”
“It’s night. I’ll go. Go back to where all the people are.”
“Even if there were monsters or bandits along here, they wouldn’t really make a difference to me.”
“True enough. All right. We can go back to Sasanqua together, and then I’ll go get the corn by myself.”
“Isn’t that worse?”
“Don’t nitpick,” Wayne grumbled. He suddenly made a sharp whistle through his fingers. Startled, Lacey made a right-about-face and stepped forward. Wayne caught up to her with long strides. Laughing in unison, they returned down the path they had come from.
“You know, this is a good village.”
“Yeah.”
Lacey’s magic hadn’t worn off yet, so the path was still dotted with faint lights as the pair walked along it.
Every so often, they turned around and looked up at the sky. Tiny stars quietly fell, leaving trails in their wake.
∗ ∗ ∗
When Lacey had first come to Plume Village, the cold was just starting to set in. The seasons had shifted into spring and summer, and now cold autumn was coming around once more.
As the trees and the smell of the air gradually changed, making the world feel chilly and nostalgic, the girl who had once hunched up, clutched her staff, and hid her face at every little thing had at some point begun to face forward and steadily walk down her own wide path.
Of course, that was one big difference, but actually, Lacey wasn’t the only person who was changing.
The boy with orange hair who formerly had prominent freckles had grown much taller and gained strength since meeting Lacey.
Allen had turned thirteen.
“Dad, I have a request.”
The flame of the lamp set on the table flickered. Allen was sitting in a chair, his fists clenched tight. He lifted his face, mustered his resolve, and spoke to his father in front of him.
The other members of the household had already gone to sleep. Kargo’s gaze focused on Allen.
“It’s not like I hate working in the fields. But I think I want to do something else, something that only I can do...”
This was a momentous confession for Allen, but all Kargo did was fold his arms and exhale quietly.
Allen had been thinking about this for a long time now.
Allen was a responsible eldest child. He helped out on his father’s farm often and saw it as his job to take care of his younger siblings.
However, was this really the life for him? Of course, these were all important tasks, but his younger brothers were able to help out with their father’s work more than before. Both Reeve and Yorma were as rowdy as ever and often gave everyone else headaches, but they knew where to draw the line.
Thus, Allen had started to wonder what his own role was. This little feeling in the back of his mind had swelled in size before he knew it, and he’d been thinking about it for longer and longer periods, but he still swung his farming hoe. Because that was his job.
The catalyst that changed this was meeting Lacey.
“With this method, I think you can give your body a good rest and get yourself back into your best condition!”
Allen kept remembering how Lacey had spoken to him and Dana with glimmering eyes.
Inventing things was similar to farmwork. It was an unflagging, persistent effort of trial and error to make something satisfying.
When Plume had been flourishing as the feather-decoration village, Allen had only been eight years old. Everyone always seemed busy making lots of decorations. In time, all this was forgotten as a new “normal” took over, and even the feelings of loneliness were driven into a corner of his memories.
I want to do something that only I can do, he thought. But that just wasn’t possible. Anyone could do what Allen could. And he believed from the bottom of his heart that doing physical labor for his family was something important. But little by little, that smoldering feeling grew more intense.
That was why he finally spit it out. He immediately regretted telling his father. He didn’t even know what he specifically wanted to do. He felt like he wanted to invent things along with Lacey, but he also felt that that wasn’t exactly it.
His emotions were like a jumbled mess of yarn all tangled up.
When he tried unraveling one string, the first thing he figured out was that he was embarrassed. He was trying to grab onto something bigger than he could hold, screaming out without a plan. He felt like a toddler. He wanted to retract what he’d said to his father immediately.
What am I even saying?
The backs of Allen’s ears became painfully hot. He wished that he could be forgiven for his own words. He wanted his father to laugh and say that this was ridiculous. He wanted this conversation to end right now so he could just go back to his ordinary life.
But Kargo calmly acknowledged him. “All right.”
Allen’s tightened fists trembled.
“Tell me, Allen. You want to help Miss Lacey, right? You don’t want to do something on your own. You want to assist her however you can.”
Hearing someone else say it made it sound so right. The words sank into his heart.
“I...could help big sis Lacey?”
“Yes. And that’s not a bad thing by any means. But you can’t become like Miss Lacey.”
Allen knew that. He couldn’t use magic, and the only advantage he had was that he was a bit taller than his peers. Everything else about him was average.
“If that’s how you really feel, then I...honestly do feel really embarrassed at myself.”
“You don’t have to be. Reeve and Yorma have gotten bigger. The two of them together can manage your portion of the work. We owe Miss Lacey a lot, and she’ll be an immense boost to the village. Allen, if you want to help her, then I’ll support you both as your dad and as a resident of Plume.”
“Okay,” Allen managed after a pause.