Lucia and Celes Journey On

At the entrance of the village, Missus Romina called out to us, “Ye be careful on yer way!”

“Thank you so much for everything, Missus Romina,” I said, waving to her.

“I’m the one who should be thankin’ ye. Ca...Celestino, right? Keep her safe.”

“Of course. Thank you for everything.”

Seen off by the entire village of Sherezo, we set forth.

“Are we going straight to the temple? Um... Remora, was it?” I asked Sir Celes while trying to think back to what Missus Romina told us.

“Yeah. Everyone else should be stopping in Hirsch before going on to Foristarn, so we’re going to head to Remora before continuing there. We can send a letter ahead of us if we pass through a big enough town.” Sir Celes replied while spreading our map out. Sending a letter. Even if we’re too late to join them, we needed to at least let them know we’re alright.

“We can pick up work along the way. I can at least be a wagon guard.” He lightly slapped the longsword strapped to his hip. Mister Dario had given it to him, in case we ran into monsters. “I’m sorry that you have to walk, Lucia.”

“Oh, you didn’t know? Walking is my specialty. I can walk forever!”

Though he looked apologetic, I was much more used to walking than traveling by horse. Adjusting the bag on my shoulder, I set off walking in high spirits. Honestly, though, I was just trying to hide how awkward I felt.

“Let’s get going! We’re going to waste the daylight like this.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.”

And so, we restarted our journey.

◆ ◆ ◆

The awkwardness between us went away as we traveled together, and soon we were talking normally again. While I say normally, we touched a lot more and Sir Celes was...um... ‘sweeter’? He’d always been nice, but his smile and tone of voice seemed different.

I’d been embarrassed at the beginning, but, maybe because we were alone, I got used to it quickly. When I thought about Miss Maria, I knew it wasn’t the time to be getting caught up in this, but honestly, I was kind of really happy about it.

“It looks like we’re coming up to a town.”

“Really?”

Sir Celes checked the map as we walked beside each other. “Yeah. It’s called Iosca. Remora is east from there. See, here. And then you’d get to Hirsch from this road.”

“Where’s Foristarn?”

“Foristarn is, um... Ah, here. It’s closer to Hirsch than Remora is.” His finger glided over the map. Following it with my eyes, I saw the spot labeled Foristarn. “Iosca is closer to Remora than Hirsch. But it’ll still be a ways.”

“Do you think they’ll get our letter in time?”

We’d passed by nothing but villages so far. Since none of them were on any wagon paths, we wouldn’t be able send any letters from them.

“It’ll probably cost a lot to send a letter, so we’re going to have to work for some money first.”

“That’s true...”

Since monster attacks were becoming more frequent, people were traveling less. For merchants like Mister Dario, even if they had some skill in fighting, they’d still always need to carry an expensive barrier crystal from the Academy. Because of that, sending letters had become a rare thing. Because I’d been born after the monsters got bad, I’d never even seen one before.

“It’d be a lot cheaper if we were in an area where governmental wagons passed through. But we might find a private one too, so we should be ready for both.”

“We’ll need paper too. But who would we address them to? Would it really get to them?”

“It’ll probably be okay if I press my Knight’s seal on the wax. All of us knights have one as identification, and we can use them like signet rings.”

Sir Celes pulled out his pendant-shaped emblem from his shirt to show me. It was the one that he’d shown to Missus Romina back in Sherezo. The design was a longsword and crown on top of a shield — it was the same one that was embroidered onto all of the knight’s uniforms.

“Vatis might be a foreign country, but they’d know this emblem.”

“But how fast would it get there?”

“I’m not sure. We can send another letter ahead to the fort near Foristarn, just to be safe.”

If we were stopping in Remora first, I wanted to let everyone know that we were alright. But sending a letter was much harder than I thought.