Epilogue: Encoding

“Are you sure you don’t want to sell a product here?” Lyla asked. Thomas had ordered a renovation of the ground floor of the shop, removing all the shelves. And he ended up dividing the room into two: a waiting area and the service room.

Lyla had no clue what Thomas wanted to offer in the shop. There wasn’t a massage table, or even a bed for… special services. What was this “therapy” that Thomas suggested, if not those two?

Even with no knowledge of what business he was going to run, Lyla had volunteered to stay with him to help with the store’s operations. And Coyote had done the same.

From the beginning, when she met Thomas in that cave, she knew he was older and stronger than he looked, being able to take out an iron-skinned boar on his own. She just didn’t know yet whether he was a friend or a foe.

She never would have expected him to become special to her, in a different way than Nephrite was. Thomas reminded her of Cyrus. They were remarkably similar, always giving her the same look of what she interpreted to be exasperation.

She knew she wasn’t the brightest, but Thomas, like her brother, never abandoned her. When she failed the exam, she spent the rest of the day casting Heal and Clarity on herself, which didn’t work in the slightest. When he stepped into her room, just him being there with her, she already felt much better, even feeling a warmth lighting up in her chest.

The intense betrayal she felt when he denied her request to flee; the bitter happiness when she saw Thomas again, with a new companion. Those feelings had never risen in her before, but Thomas had brought them to her. And that was why she had a hunch: Thomas would help her ascend higher in archery.

In a turn of events, the person whom Lyla thought was a bodyguard was actually the real Topaz. He didn’t bother hiding his identity anymore after the city recovered. The newly informed knights, courtesy of Topaz’s explanation, arrested all the soldiers. Incredibly, there was one soldier called Werly Gould who never got brainwashed, and thus escaped punishment. Thomas confirmed that the knights were clean, but he spent quite a long time clearing the soldiers’ brainwashing. And they ended up being sent to other cities and placed under strict monitoring. Even though she didn’t know much about them, Lyla was glad that the soldiers at least got to live.

And Res, she had been transported to the capital, her fate resting in the royal family’s hands. During the drug craze, hundreds had perished from overdose, disease, and malnutrition; as the perpetrator, she wouldn’t get off easy.

Topaz soon had to depart for another investigation, trying to trace the food supply of the city. The underground food-distributing operation brought food into the city through the tunnels, but the food had to come from somewhere. Thomas said that Res’s mind didn’t have an answer to this; there could be more people involved in this plan to destroy the city.

“Here you go. Your gift of departure.” Thomas whacked a Topaz necklace onto Topaz’s (the merchant) hand. It was the one Lyla had seen before in the charm shop.

Topaz clicked his tongue, but still put on the necklace. “You are really something: using my money to buy me a necklace. Do you think I will forgive you for burning down my priceless plant collection after this?”

“I don’t know anything about the fire. The soldiers must have done it out of spite.” Thomas hurried to defend himself, but Lyla could tell that he was lying. She tried hard to suppress her chuckle, and felt a pleasant tingle from knowing that she understood him, as he understood her.

She was uncomfortable knowing that Thomas had access to her thoughts, but after making him promise not to peek, and testing him a few times, she now didn’t even think about the connection that much.

“What are you smiling about?” Her brother asked her. Oh, she was in the middle of sending off her brother and the warriors under his command. And she was so deep in her thoughts that a dumb smirk arose on its own.

“Nothing,” she replied.

Cyrus shook his head, disappointed that she didn’t have a better answer. “What do you want me to tell Lord Nephrite?” It was a given she had something to say, since she had abandoned him at their wedding to run away with another man, even if that man had the appearance of a ten-year-old human child.

Lyla removed her arrow necklace. This was the first time she had separated the pair. Maybe she was bitten by the necklace-giving bug. “Give him this. Ask him to give it back to me if he doesn’t want to marry me anymore.”

“Are you seriously asking him to wait? You are so greedy.” Of course, her brother would criticize her, but Lyla didn’t mind. She had come to expect this from him.

That didn’t mean Lyla couldn’t pout a little to send a wave of guilt into her brother’s head. Call this revenge. “He is a good marriage candidate.”

“I thought you would say that you love him.”

“That is a given. Why do I have to repeat it? It’s embarrassing.” Lyla said this, but in truth, giving away her arrow necklace, leaving her with only the bow one, was much more awkward. Still, she could handle this level of incompleteness, because a sense of “good enough” was no longer important to her. She knew she might never be good enough by elf standards.

Surprisingly, this thought didn’t bum her out like it would have before. All that came to her mind was that sight at the archery proposal match: Thomas pulling back his bow, his expression reminding her of her past, when she had stood at the same mage training field, alone at sunset, aiming for the other end of the field. The anger she felt about him ruining the wedding vanished right after. She had realized the wedding was just for her to run away, to choose a stable, easy life.

But if that came to fruition, there wouldn’t be new memories of struggle, a legacy, no matter how insignificant, to leave behind.

“Hey, what are you still standing there for? Come back in,” Thomas called her from behind. The city streets were revitalized with at least some activities, so she could block someone’s path if she stayed in place.

Lyla turned back into the store, and suddenly chuckled. “You were right.”

“About what?”

Lyla didn’t answer. She wondered if he would be curious enough to read her mind. And what would he think if he realized how thankful she was to him?

She knew that, even if she kept being awful at archery, she had made the right choice back on her wedding day, because the memories to come would definitely be meaningful ones.