Chapter 11: Mourning

The long, wide roads made from gray cobblestones were deserted. Every street was empty forming an unusual sight for that time of the morning. The well-crafted and usually decorated wooden houses showed only simplicity. Closed doors and windows covered by black curtains.

The shopping center that always used to be full of life was as empty as a corpse's soul. The city of Alighieri was not a capital, however many saw it as just as important and therefore it was usually just as busy.

That day was really unique, the outskirts were empty, the housing centers, the bars, the squares. The city was not that big, but it contained such a large population that it came close to exceeding its limits. Still, there it was empty.

With the clear exception of Floriana, the woman stood out as the only living being in that deserted neighborhood. Which didn't matter much, as she usually drew attention wherever she went regardless of crowds. She was indeed beautiful, for whom of course she was attracted to members of her kind.

Demi-humans, a racist term created by the human race to define some specific people like hers. If Floriana herself had to say what she was, she would declare herself a "Homo Felidae of the Felis Catus branch". She was bipedal in appearance, upright in posture, obviously humanoid, but far from human.

The woman's skin was covered with black hair, her tail accompanied her slow walk with a calm sway. Her cat ears occasionally reacted to the wind as if she sensed danger. She didn't seem able to contain her adventurous instincts, even in complete safety.

"Meoooow." She yawned as she stretched away some of the weariness, her long black dress scraping her skin as she did so.

Her walk ended when she reached where she intended, the guild building.

The grand guild of adventurers stood in all its magnificence. The oak that supported that five-story building was opulent and had such a richness of detail that at times it brought tears to Floriana's feline eyes.

The woman climbed a few steps and stopped in front of the wooden gate with silver ornaments. She reached a hand into the black folds of her dress and withdrew a golden key with which she opened a lock.

She entered the building, remembering of course to lock everything once she was inside. The usually busy guild hall was empty that day like the entire city.

She didn't waste much time looking around and walked towards the stairs that would take her to the top floor and stayed up until the stairs ended, leaving her on the top floor.

That area was restricted, where only authorized people were allowed to enter. The guild administration hall where quests were reviewed and analyzed, where edicts were issued, where the lives of a people could be saved or lost with just one order.

An order from the only person in the room.

The desks were empty, without the usual stacks of papers, absent of running ink, free of their exhausted workers. Every piece of furniture except one.

"Why didn't you wear black?" Floriana asked as she approached with her soft steps.

The woman just stared at the visitor with her icy blue eyes behind her clear lenses. Unlike Homo Felidae, the one at the back of the room was Homo Sapiens.

The tall white-skinned woman stretched her arms tired from writing so much, her white dress shirt stretching with this action. Her big voluminous breasts followed the movement, pulled by the silk and Floriana thought that one day those huge balloons would burst the buttons of the woman's clothes.

She ran a hand through her gold-gold hair tied in a simple, messy bun. She sighed as she faced the adventurer and asked in a tired voice.

"What are you doing here Miss Flower?"

"And what are you doing here, Guild Master?"

"I am working." She replied in a dry voice and turned her attention to the papers on her desk.

"And I came because I knew you were going to do this, but, Nana, today is a..." The feline stopped mid-sentence with hesitation.

"Day of?" The other questioned raising a single eyebrow.

"I'm just worried, you shouldn't drown yourself in work on a day like this just because of the sadness." At that point the cat was already beside the table where the other one was working.

"I'm not sad, it's a day like any other." The Guild Master spoke knowing how stupid it was to say that on a day that it was a literal crime to work.

"Ahem, tell that to the empty streets, not a single person has left the house today, except for us." The adventurer mocked as she sat in a corner on top of the table "I just think that today, you should"

"Heavens! I don't want to think about it Floriana!! Will you for Athena's sake shut your mouth!?" The blonde exploded with rage, punching the table.

The cat flinched at that outburst of fury, fell silent and clasped her hands to her body, ashamed of herself. The Guild Master at that sight, she softened, was being unfair.

She raised her right hand and reached out to touch the other woman, but hesitated in mid-action and retracted her arm as she mumbled in embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, I just... This is a hard day for me, seeing all this going on..." The woman took off her square-lens glasses and rested her head in her hands "It hurts me in a way that you do not understand."

"I really don't understand, but I will support you, you are my friend." The feline said as she walked around the table and crouched down next to the blonde, with a smile on her face she said "I can only imagine how it hurts, but doesn't it move you that the whole country shares your grief? Share this pain?"

"What I feel is not how you imagine Flor, what thinking about the hero causes me." The blonde brought a hand to her right breast almost feeling the physical pain that wasn't really there.

"Yeah, it shouldn't be, after all you met him, fought alongside him against the Demon King. The admiration I feel for the great hero is probably nothing, but I don't want to talk about myself. I'm worried about you, like you OK?" Floriana looked fondly at the tired woman.

That was enough for the other one to crack from the inside. Salty tears tracing a line down her cheeks. The choked voice that was interrupted by sobs every time she tried to speak. Her face flushed with flowing blood.

"I feel horrible, that happens and the King's reaction is this? A decree of mourning?" The blonde moved her hands on her chest and raised her mouth as if that would help her breathe "I just want to sleep and not wake up again."

"Hey, okay, okay." The cat hugged her friend, her fur soft and furry, eliciting a comfort that could only be given by someone like her. "I'm here with you, you have me."

Usually the Guild Master didn't show such fragility. Not her, a woman who made a name for herself by finding the great Demon King and walking away with her life. An adventurer ranked among the ten strongest in the world. On a normal day, he would be unshakable as steel, but this wasn't a normal day.

The King had declared official mourning throughout the land under his sovereignty, after all, the Hero died.