Reciprocity

A sudden jolt threw me back to wakefulness, and I felt the back of my head resting on something soft. Fogs still drifted about in my mind, muddying my thoughts, and my eyelids were heavy from the weight of drowsiness. The soft material felt like a pillow, but I wanted confirmation.

I stretched out to the side, and my hand hit a wall of some kind, so it seemed like the bed was smaller than I thought. Tracing my fingers along the wall, I grabbed onto a curvy, plump object that must have been part of the pillow, even though the shape and texture felt a little weird.

A scream and a hard slap on the face pried me away from any residual sleep state. My eyes snapped open to Lyla’s flushed face. She started throwing what I thought were insults at me, though I could not be sure, because her language had become incomprehensible to me again. It seemed like the mental link I had with another would vanish upon death.

That wasn’t my primary concern at the moment, since judging from Lyla’s reaction, I had touched somewhere I shouldn’t have. Once this realization hit, I swiftly retracted my arm before she thought of chopping it off (I wouldn’t put it past this girl). There certainly was something strange about the situation, as what I groped didn’t resemble a body part. The position of that object was also weird, contrasted with where her lap was, which I was resting my head on…

Our proximity might make her more uncomfortable, so I sat up to give her space to recover. I wanted to apologize, but our language and cultural barriers would likely make things worse through a stupid misunderstanding. Once I turned to face her, the image wasn’t quite what I expected. The glare was a given, as were the pursed lips that held in the desire to kill me, but she was also clutching her quiver in her arms.

Wait, her quiver? That completely matched the texture and shape of the tactile sensation I felt, so maybe that was what I accidentally grabbed. Before celebrating how I retained my status as the champion of consent, her expression told me otherwise, that what I did was worse than touching her.

Tired from my pointless attempts to decode the nuances of her culture and/or personal beliefs, I turned my attention to our surroundings. We were in a wagon traveling along a lonely path that cut through the grass field, accompanied by bags of what seemed to be merchandise.

Then, the person commanding the horse at the front should be a merchant. Decent clothes but not luxurious enough to attract bandits, a skinny build, and the scene was complete with a bodyguard staring at us the whole time across from the other side of the wagon.

The guard had a scimitar sheathed at his side, his muscular arm crossed to signal how uninterested he was in our squabble. He was almost twice as tall as I was, and probably three times as heavy. He kept his body steady despite the constant shaking of the wagon.

I opted not to gawk at him for too long because with every moment his neutral gaze at me intensified like a laser building up heat, giving me an ominous impression that this would all culminate in an inevitable explosion. Better for me to deal with my immediate problem, so I turned back at Lyla and raised my hands, trying to appear harmless.

Lyla’s eyes widened, then she gritted her teeth. When I realized she might not understand my gesture, she had already drawn her bow and aimed the tip of the arrow at my nose; her face still red with either anger or embarrassment. I didn’t know which one would be better for my survival chances.

As my whole body froze to avoid another blunder, the bodyguard kept his role as a spectator. He hadn’t moved an inch for so long that I started to suspect he might be asleep with his eyes open.

Lucky for me, we were approaching an enormous stone wall, at least five stories in height. That must be the entrance to a city, where sane people might pop up and stop this crazy elf from killing an unarmed kid.

Two city guards rushed forth from the gate. The merchant stopped his horse, gave the guards some gold coins, and showed them a shiny silver card. One guard pointed at Lyla and me and asked the merchant something. Finally, a sensible person was in sight. After a back-and-forth of incomprehensible gibberish, the city guards trotted towards the wagon and… shook hands with the bodyguard.

The bodyguard started conversing with the city guards. What an asshole! He was awake the whole time! They chuckled and laughed. If I were socially anxious, I might have interpreted this as them making fun of me… until they actually pointed at me directly and snickered in my face. No amount of appraisal could twist this into something positive.

Then, I saw a glimmer of hope as Lyla’s glare shifted its direction to the guards, and the receiving end of the potential skewered fate transferred to them as well. The guards’ faces whitened, and they reached for their swords, which was a more dramatic reaction than mine. Serve them right, assholes.

The bodyguard spoke up cheerfully and must have suddenly decided that he should play mediator, but from his light-hearted tone, he might be stoking the flames too. And the arrowhead changed its direction again, back to threatening my life. I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised that the danger had not subsided.

After this display of Lyla’s mental instability, we were still allowed entry into the city. I was amazed at the lax security at this place. Lyla refused to budge in her stance of murderous intent.

Her stamina was a point of concern because there was no telling if her tired muscles would lead her to release the bowstring by accident. Before that terrifying hypothetical could manifest as reality, I had to calm her down with words, but further action would probably invite more misunderstanding. The issue was that I could no longer speak her language.

My eyes cautiously roved along the sidewalk for someone to relate to, while finally getting a good look at the interior of the city. Most buildings were three-stories only, most commonly with a store on the ground floor. At least they looked like shops; lacking literacy meant I could only guess from the signage and decorations at the storefront. With so few people on the streets, I doubted that many of the businesses actually attracted customers.

A conspicuous gloom flowed in the atmosphere; the rare pedestrians kept their heads down, not a single one was admiring the shifting clouds. Singular buildings fused into complexes, but the occasional gaps festered into pitch-black spaces that were blocked from natural light. I could faintly trace the outline of children begging in the darkness, an unpleasant sight which I wanted to believe to be an optical illusion.

Children should not be forced to work, especially when the work in question is something as humiliating as begging. Sadly, human rights would not be a priority during periods of instability, when even staying alive was a demanding task. At those times, children might need to work because they did not have parents to provide for them.

I wondered if this practice was also common in this world, and how the children being exploited felt. Would they feel anger at their parents, or gratitude that they got a place to sleep in and a family to belong to, or even hollowness from the lack of affection and warmth? Thinking about it realistically, most of them might not get this far with their underdeveloped thoughts shrouded in malnutrition, with their sights set on the sole goal of survival. They would only want to live.

My gaze skimmed past alley after alley, blurs of murky figures barely registering in my vision, slowly converting from an intimate, personal view into an objective fact. I could feel a flame swirling inside me, an anger that wasn’t useful at this stage, because even my own survival was at risk.

Switching my focus to an unbiased analysis of the situation of the city should calm me down. On the bright side, Lyla was returning to her senses, winding down her tense bowstrings and whatever feelings she had. Though I still wouldn’t dare look at her directly yet.

I want to live.

A stray, alien thought popped up in my head. Perhaps a moment of dissociation had arisen from all the stress, but I could also have successfully connected with one of the kids in an alley when I was pitying them. The latter possibility would align with my suspicions that understanding or predicting the thoughts or feelings of a person might be the condition for a linkage to happen.

The noises that I ignored in the background became coherent; the melded murmurs of conversation converted into comprehensible paragraphs. A couple of words were still unintelligible, but the vocabulary should be enough for basic communication. An inexplicable sense of joy soared into a smile on my face, which must have seemed creepy to Lyla, because she stretched out the bowstring again.

“Hold on a second. Don’t shoot me! This is all a misunderstanding!” I plead.

“Huh? Now you can speak again? Convenient.” A chill crept onto my skin with each harsh word uttered from her lips.

“Would you believe me if I claimed that I only linked with someone just now?”

“Sure. I’ll play along with your lie.”

It was the truth though…

There’s no point in arguing for my honesty, so I changed the topic and dove right into my speculation about the reason behind her behavior. “Let me guess. Following the tradition, you have to either kill me or marry me.”

“No… You just earned the right to challenge me to an archery duel with marriage on the line.”

“Then, why did you try to kill me?”

Her answer almost knocked me back out. “The safest way to protect my chastity was to kill you…” This girl seriously thought she would lose to a ten-year-old kid at archery. Just how bad was she at it?