The Lives of Mortals

"Night is bad. Return earlier!"

By the time Tau found her way back to the Bentley house, night had fallen. As she opened the door, she found herself face to face with a displeased Mrs. Bentley, who wasted no time in expressing her displeasure. But since Tau was still quite new to their language, she was trying to express her displeasure with simple words.

"Give it a rest, mom. There's no problem if she's back now."

Jacob, Mrs. Bentley's son and the person who had first approached Tau when she stumbled out of the woods on day one, interrupted.

"But she could have gotten lost… and it's dark..."

"But she got back, right?" Jacob led his mother away from the front door, letting Tau in, "Come on, let's just have dinner first. I'm sure she must be hungry."

As if on cue, Tau's stomach growled. Exploring the village for the entire afternoon had indeed taken its toll on her energy reserves.

"Oh, alright then," Mrs. Bentley was convinced.

Dinner was the same as lunch, more chicken soup and bread. It was still good, but Tau was quickly getting a feel for how limited the food options were. The three of them ate in silence for a while. Then Mrs. Bentley turned her attention to her son.

"Say, do you still have no plans for getting married?"

Jacob winced. Mrs. Bentley continued, ignoring his discomfort.

"Hasn't Mia been bringing you lunch lately? Now there's a nice girl."

"Mother, how many times have I said I'm not interested?"

"Why not? You're at the best age for it now. Find a nice girl and settle down."

The two of them continued down this conversation, with Jacob increasingly exasperated with each response he had to make. From the sounds of it, it was a conversation they had many times already. Tau didn't know how she should feel about it: it was both awkward and amusing to just sit there and listen. They probably didn't even think that she would be able to understand them.

By the time dinner was over, Mrs. Bentley had completely forgotten about Tau returning late. Jacob was tired, so he went straight to bed; he did have a long day of work ahead of him tomorrow, after all.

Tau helped Mrs. Bentley with the dishes, and was taught how to wash them properly; Mrs. Bentley had noticed Tau's failed attempt with the lunch dishes. Without anything else to do, Tau turned in as well, lying down on the other side of the bed, as far from Jacob as possible. She wasn't aware of any reason she should avoid him; it was just an unconscious urge to distance herself in general.

[It's so strange having to reorient this sword when we lie down.]

{I'll leave it to you.}

[Of course you would...]

Tau let her mortal body drift off into sleep. Mrs. Bentley stayed up for a while longer to weave before joining them in bed, lying down in the obvious space between Tau and Jacob.

[Well then, let's get on to the next order of business.]

{Next order of business?}

[It's only a matter of time before we are expected to be fluent in their language. When that time comes, won't there be a lot of things they will want to ask us?]

{I see… even with the backstory Phi derived, there are still several loopholes that need to be patched.}

[Yeah, there are several things we can't explain well, like our supposed former language and our possession of this sword thing.]

{And our supposed past experiences in general: our family and how we traveled as merchants.}

[True… and that's much harder to account for. We don't know enough about the world to even recognize if the story we fabricate is believable or not.]

{Hold on. Let's take a step back for a moment. We only need to be able to explain things that they will both expect us to know and know to ask.}

[So...]

{Well, we haven't exactly talked about ourselves to anyone yet, right? So, what they would know to ask about would be limited only to questions raised by my appearance and such.}

[Which means, the sword, our clothes, and our actual body would be the main points.]

{We probably don't need to consider how to answer questions about our physical body. I mean, there isn't really much to say about that.}

[Right, but with the other two, depending on what answer we give, we may invite more questions. That goes for questions about our former language too, which we should also consider.]

{Hmm… but about that former language, we haven't used it at all since we came to the village.}

[What do you mean? Of course we haven't used it! We don't actually have a former language!]

{So, can't we just say that then?}

[No way. Given the age of our avatar, we would be expected to be able to converse with others by now if those others exist. And the fact that we had that dress suggests that we indeed had others to converse with. So, we can't just pretend that we didn't know any previous language.]

{Hmm…}

[In hindsight, we could have pretended to be mute or something. But you already talked, so that's a no go now. Ahh, we really should have discussed this sooner!]

It was clear that Neu didn't understand where Tau was going with this, but Tau needed a while to work out her solution anyway. After checking it against all the things that Neu said needed to be considered, Tau still could see no problem.

{You know… I've been wondering for a while now, can't we just say that we don't know anything? Like pretending that we forgot everything?}

[Huh? Are you sure that's even possible? I don't know if such a story would be believable.]

{Well, either way, I don't think they will be able to flat-out say that it is impossible. Besides, this would solve all our other problems and handle the possibility of our fabricated answers prompting new questions.}

[I guess… you're right...yeah. That's a perfect solution.]

{Isn't it?}

[Hmm… Let me think about this some more and I'll get back to you.]

{Sure, anything else you want me to work through tonight?}

[Using this sword efficiently is still an issue. Try to brainstorm several control schemes, and we'll review them in the morning.]

The rest of the night passed in silence. As much as Tau tried, she couldn't come up with any complete methods for controlling the sword. Although to be fair, she didn't try all that hard; every time she started to analyze a particular idea, she would quickly grow bored and lose track of it. After this repeated several times, she just gave up. She decided that she would just figure it out together with Neu some other time.

As the sun rose, Jacob got up to cut firewood for breakfast. Mrs. Bentley and Tau got up soon after to make the actual breakfast: porridge again, simple and plain. But food was food, so she had no reason to complain.

Tau ate quickly and hurried off to Father Dawson's clinic for her language and sword lessons. Although, thinking about it, calling them lessons was a bit of a stretch; mainly it was just Rebecca spreading gossip and Father Dawson knocking her around.

It was morning, and the roads were crowded with people heading out to do their work for the day. However, people tended to avoid Tau, everyone sneaking glances at the sword floating behind her. It was unpleasant, but at least it let her move through the crowd easier.

[So, I've fabricated a short story where the only thing we vaguely remember is wandering through the woods and stumbling across this village. Looking back, since we were excessively hungry and tired at the time, this claim is probably believable.]

{Sounds good.}

[We should probably also forget about using Camilia Hart as our mortal name and just wait for them to assign us a name.]

{Hmm… but Phi wouldn't like that.}

[But keeping it would be strange. Remembering nothing but a name is less believable than remembering nothing at all.]

{Let's keep it anyway, though. Since it's something Phi gave us.}

[Whatever... Anyway, how did coming up with control schemes go? Knowing you, you probably got bored of all the thinking and just gave up.]

{Ha. Ha. You got me there.}

"Morning," Tau called out as she opened the door to the clinic. The main treatment room was still as messy as ever. Rebecca stood by the entrance to Father Dawson's office, holding the door open just a crack and peeking through at whatever was inside. Hearing Tau, she put a finger to her lips and motioned for her to come closer.

Looking through the opening, she saw Father Dawson asleep at his desk with mountains of documents around him. Several letters and recently sealed packages lay stacked neatly in the center of the room. Rebecca shut the door and led Tau outside.

"He's been working late again, I guess. A lot has been happening with you showing up and all."

The two of them sat down on the steps in front of the clinic, watching girls and women travel up and down the road, going to and returning from getting water from the river nearby. Rebecca sighed.

"I'm sorry. I know I'm doing a lousy job teaching you our language. I just don't know how. As far as I know, everyone learns on their own just by listening and watching others."

"No. Mind."

"Well, I guess you're learning after all. It's nice, you know, being able to talk to you like this. Usually, I'm always busy helping out at the clinic, so it's been ages since I've had the opportunity to talk to a girl around my age. Such a shame too, given my work, I always find the juiciest stories to tell. Although I do also forget them fast."

"Why. do work. Clinic?"

"Hmm… why do I work here…? Well, Father Dawson is awesome! You know, when I was younger, our village was hit by a terrible plague. At the time, Father Dawson had only been with us for about a year, and this clinic wasn't even built yet. He was supposed to be the village priest, which was strange since our village didn't have a church; in fact, it still doesn't. But, that's how it was supposed to be, which is why we all call him Father."

Rebecca's tone was completely different from a moment ago. She was talking faster too, which meant Tau had to put in more effort to use her domain to grasp the rapidly shifting ideas.

"Anyway, this plague was bad. But the story starts a little bit before that. You see, earlier that month, a group of hunters went out and never returned. We had search parties, but no trace of them was found; it was like they had just disappeared. Sometime later, everyone started having hallucinations and nausea, and chickens started disappearing from their coops. People started saying how there was a demon in the woods nearby that was causing all of this."

This piqued Tau's interest. The term "demon" was something unfamiliar to her. All she knew was that it felt rather sinister and potentially dangerous.

"Well, in the middle of all this, Father Dawson was rushing around every day treating people. In hindsight, it's kinda strange how he was the only one who was able to avoid the illness, but I'll never forget the image of him going through the streets, from door to door, doing what he could to make things easier for the sick."

"Heh, you're telling her that story? You sure she can even understand you, talking so fast?"

Father Dawson stood in the doorway, eyes still half-open from having just woken up.

"She can understand," Rebecca responded defiantly, then turning to Tau she muttered, "You can understand, right?"

"Ah… Yes. Understand."

"See!" Rebecca turned back to Father Dawson, beaming.

"Sure sure," Dawson responded mid-yawn, "let's get on to sword practice now."

He picked up several sticks from behind the door and started walking to the backyard.

"You sure you don't want to rest some more? We can wait until the afternoon, you know."

"It's fine," Father Dawson replied amid another yawn, "We need to restock herbs for next week anyway. It would be good to get that done today."

Arriving at the backyard, he added, "Besides, it's not like I need to be fully awake to beat her anyway."

Tau was a little displeased by this.

"Um, Father, you're supposed to be teaching her, not beating her..."

"Not much of a difference, is there? This was how I learned anyway."

Father Dawson threw a stick to Tau, who caught it.

"How nice it is that you can learn our language in just two days. Thanks to that, I can now explain to you just how weak you are."

Tau readied herself, holding the stick out in front of her.

"Okay, let's start."

[What's the plan?]

{Full defense!}

In a quick series of steps, Father Dawson closed the distance between them. Neu brought the sword around to intercept.

With another three steps, Father Dawson circled behind her.

[As fast as ever...]

{I got it!}

Tau, anticipating these movements with her domain, turned to face him as he was about to deliver the attacking strike. She blocked it but was nevertheless still knocked off her feet.

"Good job on your reaction speed. But your form needs work," Father Dawson commented, tapping his stick on his shoulder, "Let's see if you can work out a good blocking technique by noon."

Long story short, she did not.