The Conflicted Man

The discovery had left me speechless for a while, my mind struggling to draw a conclusion. More thinking wouldn’t get me out of this, so I spoke up. “Lady Primavere, have the nobles here ever thought of reviving the human race?”

“Why?”

“Just a thought. Since the book has really clear instructions on how you can do it.”

She leaned towards me, possibly closer than what their customs deemed acceptable, with unblinking eyes. “No. You misunderstood. I meant why would we do that? When we have everything we need here.”

“But the human race-”

“We are the human race. We are here. Is that right?” For once, the smile had vanished from her face, replaced by an expression that could only be described as irritation. I knew about irritation from the days in my village. My mother used to wear it when I forgot to turn off the stove and caused the food to overcook. Preston used to have it when he lost to me in whipping top battles many times in a row.

The expression on the lady before me though, her eyebrows seemed too stiff, and the position of her lips too deliberate. This was like someone acting out an emotion after reading a description of it. I swallowed the saliva that suddenly flooded my mouth, and thoughts came to her defense. After seeing Hallie’s constant smile for so long, of course I would misremember what irritation looked like.

How I felt about her might also have warped what I saw. How I felt about her… “Lady Primavere. Sorry if this is too forward but… are you with anyone?”

She sat back straight, and her face returned to a light smile, even though her previous expression lingered in my mind after refusing to fade. “I am with you right now.”

Those words tensed the muscles in my body, with my heart starting to race against my thoughts. I had to hold back this floaty feeling and remind myself that she didn’t mean it that way. “I was asking if you are in l… lo… in love with anyone?”

“Oh, so that was what you meant. No. Unfortunately, there is no suitable marriage candidate for me yet.”

I could almost soar to the sky, but held my emotions back so that I would maintain a cool composure and wouldn’t accidentally embody the feeling by actually levitating. “And who counts as a suitable candidate?”

She gave me a scrutinizing look. “Correct me if I am wrong, but do you want to have a tea party with me tomorrow morning? We can talk more and get to know each other better.”

A wave of excitement consumed my rational thoughts and dragged them into the abyss. For the rest of our time together, we each supposedly sank into our own reading, because I couldn’t focus on a single word. My mind had already leapt forward in time to the date, leaving my clueless body to fend for itself.

“It is time for you to retreat to your room.” I vaguely heard Lady Primavere say it. Did I mishear? She said something, for sure.

By the time my head calmed down, she had already brought me back to my room. I tried to give her an elegant adieu up to noble standards, but she met it with neither praise nor criticism. Only a standard gesture that I could now name as a curtsy. “I will see you tomorrow.”

I watched her graceful steps until she turned a corner, while she never once gave back a single look. With stillness returning to the bright corridor, I turned to open the door to my room, with the expectation that I had to face Hallie’s grin again. The painting of Emperor Vandemar still hung proudly on the wall, watching over the room devoid of any golems.

Hallie was nowhere to be seen, though our traveling sack still loomed in the corner.

I waited on the bed, flipping open the book I’d borrowed from the library. She must have left on an errand. More time passed. So she must have gone out for a walk. Even more time slipped by, not staring at the written words but at the drawn figure of the Emperor.

She would be back at any moment now. Any moment.

The light in the room dimmed. Lady Primavere might have mentioned something about a darker surrounding helping with sleep, but the memory subsisted as a blur.

I should have started preparing for sleep, so as to recharge my energy for tomorrow’s date. Yet I stared at the door, hoping my desire would be embodied by someone pushing it open. Would this be within the realm of possibility for magic?

A creak snapped my drifting mind back into focus. The door handle turned, and as an urge to celebrate flashed within me, through the open doors entered… Minerva.

“Oh, it’s you. Why are you here?”

She closed the door behind her and rested against it. “I want to ask you something.”

“Can you wait until tomorrow?”

“It is a short one.”

“Then you should have asked it instead of asking for permission.”

“Are they really humans?”

That same inquiry had been repeated since I arrived in the city, punching harder every time. But even if our suspicions matched in their colors and shapes, what could I do to tell what the truth was? Hallie would know. Hallie knew everything. So, all I had to do was… “Is there a way to know where Hallie is right now? Some kind of magic? What emotions should I use? Curiosity?”

Minerva went quiet for a moment, perhaps thinking or simply forgetting to show an expression on her face. It might very well have been the latter because she said, “You did not have any problem using magic before to burn me.”

“That was because… Hallie was with me. Maybe I should wait for her to come back.”

“You can do it now.”

“Stop trying to be nice. You aren’t good at it.”

“Because I am literally incapable of what you humans call ‘sweet talk’. I said it because that is the truth. Magic is just the embodiment of your actions. As long as your entire body and mind work together, directing towards a single intention, reality will follow. Usually, emotions are the easiest way to integrate your body state, so see if you can use that.”

I finally chuckled. She was merely repeating, almost word for word even, the confusing phrases in the magic books that I had read in my village. “You aren’t good at any talk at all.”

“Because of circumstances I could not demonstrate it, but know that-”

“Tell me what to do. More specifically.”

“Think about her. Feel yourself wanting to find Sis and reach out to the world to seek her.”

Wanting to find her… If I thought about it more, the library here should contain everything I needed to know, more than what my village had taught me. A golem with no inner mental life, powered only by its Ethereal Library, could not compare to real humans I could bond with. Maybe she had even left me to search for the human essence. That thought, more than anger, felt like it had scratched open one of the wounds in my heart that had been healing well. “I don’t want to find her that badly.”

Minerva scrunched up her face, which failed to convey anything to me again. At least, she thought to speak up. “As bad as I am at reading facial expressions, even I know you are lying.”

“I’m not. Now leave. Good night.” I lay on the bed, facing away from Minerva. Out of my notice, instead of a drift towards the blissfully unconscious state of sleep, my hands had clutched against each other, fingers interlocked so tightly that pain started to surface. “She doesn’t have a soul. She could barely be qualified as alive. Only a set of moving stones.” Words intended for myself leaked to the outside world instead.

The mattress shook, presumably from Minerva sitting down beside me. “When I learned about Frescia and what little my people knew about human culture and human nature, I had always been fascinated by how hyper-social your kind are. How much you care for one another. Even when the one you care about might not even extend your lineage. Or, even if the one you care about might not even be human.”

“How do you know this much about us?”

“I might be an exception among the Tanterins too. I have probably read every piece of record about humans since we first found your realm hundreds of years ago. It started because I had the mystery of my vanishing ancestor to solve. But now I am simply glad to have learned about your people.”

She was pouring her heart out, but all I wanted to do was vomit. “And you said you didn’t know flattery. There is nothing great about me. Nothing admirable like the human heroes of the past. And I could only hope to be even a fraction as elegant as the nobles here. So, I’m sorry to be the first human you’ve met. I’m sorry to ruin your impression of my people.”

Clenching my fists and holding back the fluid in my eyes, emotions took their turn to use me like a puppet, conveying no unified front on my face, but it wasn’t as if Minerva could understand anyway.

“But I have noticed you trying to improve. And I think that is plenty admirable.” Her hand touched my shoulder and it was all over. The tears leaked out, and so did a barely audible whimper.