I rolled over on the bed my muscley companion had so kindly provided for me. Why couldn’t I sleep? I should have been able to fall asleep right away if I really wanted to go to bed, yes? Here I was in my most comfortable pajamas and everything, and it just wasn’t working. I contemplated my plight for a moment before arriving at the answer—yes, that had to be it. There was just something so curious about this level of…comfort.
I had been able to read minds for a long time. Over those years, I noticed something—everyone wears a mask in order to survive. In other words, people lie. They have their motives, of course: to protect themselves, to hurt other people. All kinds of reasons.
There were two things about Telepathy that weighed on me. One was that I could pick up every little prevarication, well-intentioned or not. Far from pleasant. The second was that my mind wasn’t strong enough to stop everything I knew, everything I could read, from wearing down my heart. Come now, do you think someone in a fine state of mental health would wander into an unfamiliar forest without thinking and get so dangerously lost? No. It all weighs.
And yet in that unfamiliar forest, I’d met Yuri. Quite frankly, I was on my guard when we first crossed paths. How odd to find a human living so deep in the forest. But now, several days later, things were different. When he lied, it was a clear lie—a joke and nothing more. He didn’t lie to put on appearances, or to hurt people.
He spoke his mind according to his heart. That was who he was. Perhaps Yuri would lie if he could, but I couldn’t imagine the awkward lug getting away with it. It was incredibly refreshing. Novel, even. And it was…nice.
I looked over to Yuri.
He stood a little ways away, his back to me. The man was probably training even now. He said it was his hobby, and indeed, there he was in the middle of the night doing quiet little excercises to avoid disturbing my sleep, which was a bit funny. Maybe it shouldn’t have been funny, but this level of conscientiousness didn’t suit my odd new partner at all.
Watching him, my lingering confusion and meandering thoughts melted into other things. Safety. Relief. When had I come to trust this person?
Honestly, he was a touch…oh, I don’t know. Yes, he was strange, but when I saw him looking at me, I knew he didn’t see me as some elf with an abundance of magical power, nor as a mind-reading freak. He was looking at me and seeing me. Filia Windia.
It was nice.
“Eh he he he.”
I felt the grin on my face and quickly buried it in my soft pillow.
✦ ✦ ✦
She was finally asleep, huh?
I noticed a change in Filia’s breathing behind me and turned around. Filia had fallen asleep with an expression that was, to be honest, happier than I’d ever seen her wear. It was…I guess “unguarded” is the word? She breathed kinda loudly, with her mouth hanging open a little sloppily as she slept. The prim and proper Filia she’d been since we’d met was just gone.
“Wow. I guess she really trusts me that much, huh?”
Something about saying it out loud made it real, and a bit embarrassing. The embarrassment passed pretty quick, though, and then I felt even happier than I had before.
“All right. Okay. Back to my special training.”
Back to the grind, making little flicks with my fingers into the open air, quietly breaking the speed of sound.