Demon Queened - Chapter 21 (rough draft) - Part 2/3 (Patreon)

Author's Note: Wrote way more than I expected, today! Specifically 3,083 words. Discounting anything I erased. The second half of that sort of hit stream of consciousness mode, so some of this is going to be rougher than the rest - but it's mostly just a matter of polishing, even there

There's maybe another couple thousand words worth of writing to go? Maybe. And editing! Lots of editing, and proof reading....

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“You’re really sensitive about this, aren’t you?” Lucy asked me, her voice betraying not concern, but curiosity. “I didn’t think you would be, considering how you are with… Other stuff…”

“Other stuff, as you put it, is purely physical in nature,” I pointed out to her, turning my head away, and tilting it forward a little, in hopes of hiding my blush behind a wall of temporarily brunette hair. “Kisses are romantic. Particularly so when separated from ‘other stuff.’”

“I guess…” Lucy conceded, with a slow now. “But you didn’t seem all that embarrassed when Wilhoon called you my girlfriend.”

“Because I knew he meant it platonically…” Little as I might have deserved the term, in either of its forms.

“Platonically? Why would it be platonic? That doesn’t even make sense!”

“And assuming we’re dating does?” I retorted.

“I mean, we were holding hands,” Lucy pointed out. “Ordering food together. You even used my name!”

“That’s… I’m not entirely sure why that last one made the list, but… Still! Surely that’s a bit of a stretch?”

“Not as much of a stretch as calling girlfriends platonic,” Lucy countered. “I mean, why would anyone even use it that way? It seems like it would get really confusing!”

“That’s…” Accurate. Actually. Of course, it had been misleading on Earth, too, and everyone had used it there… But then again, girls dating girls seemed to be far more widely accepted on Solla, even amidst humans, than it had ever been in Jacob's world. Nobody had batted an eye at Lissera’s interest in me, even in such a small village, and Lucy certainly showed no sign of shame for her preferences. “Wait. If you knew he meant it romantically, then why didn’t you protest it? We’re hardly dating, as of yet.”

“Because you didn’t, of course! I mean, it made me really happy that we looked like a couple, you know? So I’ll back you up if you ever want to stop it, but I’m not going to go out of my way to end something that makes me so happy!”

I said nothing. Or rather, I didn’t know what to say to that. Lucy’s infatuation with me was obvious, but the path through it much less so. I could only hope she’d come to realize her mistake in crushing on me, as time passed, and she grew to know me more.

My silence did nothing to dampen Lucy’s mood, though, as she happily consumed the skewer I had given her, along with the remainder of her original, swapping back and forth between using the hot sauce and eating it plain. For my part, I ate at a much more sedate pace, savoring the flavor of each bite. I daresay I might have enjoyed it just as much as Lucy, despite being far less vocal about it.

“We’re here!” Lucy declared, after a minute or two more, chewing through the last of her skewer and turning the wooden sticks to ash with a quick burst of magic. I followed suit, putting away the bottle of hot sauce as I looked over the building she had brought me to.

It was a small thing. Squat, made of brown bricks, with a garish yellow roof that drew the eye and a sign that I struggled to make sense of. It depicted what looked to be a spyglass, a wheel, a vase, and… A fork? There were words as well, thankfully, written in a flowing script that circled about the mishmash of items. “Carrie’s Curiosities.”

“This place has all sorts of interesting things, from all sorts of places!” Lucy excitedly informed me, pulling open the door.  “I used to come here all the time, growing up.”

“Growing up?” I questioned, following after the eager girl. “Does that make this your home town?”

A quick glance around the shop showed me two things, one of which demanded far more attention than the other. The first, and less important matter, was a hulking man, with an unruly mop of blonde hair, who stood upright by one of the door. He was easily over six feet - six foot two, if I were pressed - with bulky muscles that seemed more fit for intimidation than lifting. He was likely present as an anti-theft measure, but considering the unlikelihood of us partaking in such activities, combined with the simple fact that either me or Lucy could take him with a hand tied behind our back, he wasn’t worth more than a cursory glance.

More noteworthy, to me, were the messy shelves, which rose to just a little below my head’s height. They contained a multitude of items, such as small metal balls, fishing hooks, thick coils of rope, and - of course - the forks I’d noticed upon the sign. All scattered across the wooden racks with no rhyme or reason I could detect.

What’s more, the shelves themselves had been arranged to form a spiral labyrinth of sorts. One would have to walk their entire length, passing each and every item on display, just to reach the counter on the other end. An underhanded selling technique if ever there was one. One that likely would have had me turning back around immediately, if not for the bright smile upon Lucy’s face.

“Hi Rewdeen!” the redhead called, waving to the guard by the door, before turning back towards me. “And sort of? I mean, it’s the first city I ever lived in, anyway. Or even visited! I actually grew up in a small cabin, out in the woods! It was near a little village - about the same size as Derrin, actually! - and me and Mom would occasionally go there to stock up on supplies, and talk to people…” The smile slipped from her face. “I only came to the city after she died…”

“Lucy…” I whispered, reaching a hand towards hers. She didn’t protest. Didn’t pull away. And yet, as my hand gripped hers, it momentarily felt like she wasn’t aware of me at all.

Then her smile returned, as bright and joyful as ever, without even a hint of the fragility I had momentarily glimpsed in her eyes. “I’ve been here since I was thirteen, though! It’s where I learned how to control my strength better, and use my holy magic, and be the best Heroine I can be to the people! And this shop actually helped a lot with that!”

“Is that so?” I asked her, returning her smile with my own as she squeezed my hand and pulled me forward, towards the shelves. If Lucy wished to put forth a brave face for the sake of the public, then far be it from me to tear down that facade. I only hoped that she would be able to express herself more fully when we were alone.

“Uh-huh!” she gestured to the shelves with her free hand. “The owner - Carrie - buys her stock from adventurers. Everything on these shelves came from another city. Some of them are even from other countries! Which means even the little things we recognize could end up with big differences! Like…” She scanned the shelves, for a moment. “Like these skewers!”

I followed the trajectory of her pointing finger with my eyes, and landed upon a pair of skewers completely unlike the ones that we’d just burnt. Wrought of metal instead of carved from wood, their ends had been twisted and turned to form simplified versions of animals - a chicken, and a pig.

“I’ve only ever seen skewers used in street food around here,” Lucy continued, her smile brightening just a touch further. Becoming, in my eyes, just a touch more real. “But in other cities, they’re used in fancy restaurants! And it’s the same with other cooking instruments, too! Not to mention clothes, farming implements, smithing techniques, and so much more! Wherever you go, things will be different than where you were…”

Lucy’s gaze swept across the various items on the shelf as she spoke, lingering occasionally on a hat, or a hoe. “My whole world, back before I became an adventurer, was just the forest, the town, and this city… But when I came here, and looked at all the stuff on display, it made me realize that the world is so much bigger than that. That there are places, more different than I could ever imagine, out there… And that they’re filled with people who are different, too! People I wouldn’t be able to understand, if I just stayed in town, and trained like Father Tuffel wanted me to. That’s why I became an adventurer. So I could go out, and meet those people! So that I could find out what sort of people made this stuff, and work to become the sort of Heroine they needed me to be! And do you know what I discovered?”

“What?” The question wasn’t a perfunctory one. Curiosity laid laden in the single word, alongside a touch of amusement as the corners of my lips turned upwards. I was being pulled along by Lucy’s enthusiasm. And, much to my own surprise, I didn’t mind it.

“That people are just people! Which is sort of obvious, I guess, but… There’s more to it than that?” Lucy’s brow furrowed in thought, as for the first time I watched her actually pick her words before speaking them. “I mean, different people do need different things… The individual jobs I do change, from place to place, but the end results are usually the same? No matter how different people are, they all need to eat. They all have needs that need to be met. And they all need to be cared for… There’s so many differences, but there’s just as many similarities binding us all together between us all! And it’s not just that way with humans, either, but all living creatures! You know?”

I nodded, slowly, as her eyes met mine. It felt, for a moment, as if she were trying to say something beyond her words. As if she were trying to say that she knew I was different, and that it was okay… That no matter what I told her about myself, it would be okay.

Or perhaps that was simply wishful thinking. A desire, on my part, to come clean. A desire that could cost my people everything, if I was mistaken about the limits of her understanding. She could, after all, just as easily be reminding me about our talk on animals and monsters. Perhaps it was Bailey she was truly asking after.

“There’s another reason I wanted to bring you here, though!” Lucy added, offering a welcome distraction from my thoughts. “I was hoping you could pick an item to buy!”

“An item?” I queried her, arching an eyebrow as my gaze swept across the shelf. There were many things, even in this small section we had walked through. A sun hat, a pair of sandals, and a candle to name a few. But honestly, of them all, my mind turned back towards the skewers we had seen towards the entrance. Turning back around, without letting go of Lucy’s hands, I spied them still perched upon their shelf. A brief flaring of my arcane magic, reaching out towards and enveloping them with the energy under my command, and I had them floating back to my hand. “Would two work?”

“That’s fine!” Lucy confirmed. “They’re a set, after all! And I know where they’re from, too, which makes it even better!”

“Where they’re from…” I murmured, glancing between the items, and her. “Were you hoping to tell me about the place, then? To ignite my imagination?”

“Close!” Lucy’s smile shifted a little, taking on a nervous edge. “I was actually hoping we could go there, one day? So that I could show you, how things differ! And help you see the world how I see - full of people who were are different, but also still the same! Still just people, living under the goddess’s loving care!”

Loving care? I wondered how Lucy would take it, if she knew our goddess had abandoned this world long ago… What would it do to her, when she found out that everything she’d been taught was a lie? That the goddess she believed in was gone, and that her religion was nothing but cruelty and lies… Would she be able to believe it? Coming from me? Her supposed greatest enemy?

She claimed to have feelings for me. No - did have feelings for me. But could mere infatuation possibly stand against everything she believed? Just because she’d been willing to work alongside demons in the game, didn’t mean she’d be able to accept their queen in reality. Not when she knew so little of me.

“Um. We don’t have to stick to the skewers, if you don’t want to?” Lucy offered. “You could pick something else? Or we could just not do it… Though I really hope you’ll at least consider it!”

“No…” I shook my head, forcing a smile to come to my own lips. Reminding myself that I was here to grow closer to Lucy. So that when the time came, my words would at least have a fighting chance of reaching her. So that the truth could be revealed.

Even if it meant lying in the present.

“I quite like these,” I continued. “And there’d be a certain symmetry in it, besides. Assuming, that is, that you intend to ask me there on a proper date one day?”

My teasing tone and smile were ill matched to the feeling in my heart. I think Lucy must have noticed it, too, for she squeezed my hand tight and led me quickly towards the sales counter. Paying for the skewers without giving me so much as a chance to object, she proceeded to all but drag me out of the store, and then actually run towards the inn.

“Lucy?” I questioned, trying to catch her eye as she raced down the street.

“We’ll talk at the inn!” was all Lucy told me, shutting out further questioning with a burst of speed as she took me all the way to the Queen’s Crown. There, the scene from the shop repeated itself, with her hurriedly renting a room from an extremely flustered innkeeper and then pulling me up the stairs and into the chosen room.

“Lucy,” I began, as soon as the door was closed behind us. “What is going on?”

“We need to talk!” Lucy declared. “Or more like, we don’t need to talk! Or we need to talk about how we don’t need to talk? And it’s a talk that we need to have with absolute privacy, so… Veroon, Bellooosa mador!”

“Lucy?” I repeated, my tone a bit more cautious this time. I couldn’t imagine much that would demand this level of secrecy from her. My identity, to be sure, but… Surely she didn’t know that much?

“Eena,” Lucy began, taking a deep breath. “I know you have secrets!”

I froze.

“And I don’t want you to tell them to me!”

And unfroze. Or perhaps it would be better to say I ‘twitched,’ for that was about all the movement I managed before shock sealed my movements again.

“I’m really sorry, Eena! All that talk about acceptance and differences… It probably sounded like I was trying to pressure you into telling me something, right? Because I wanted you to know that I would accept you no matter what, you felt like you had to tell me what that ‘what’ was… Right?”

“That’s… not entirely inaccurate,” I admitted. “Though I’d say that I was more paralyzed by my own guilt than any pressure you were presenting… Are you saying you don’t want me to tell you anything? Because I find that rather hard to believe, coming from someone who so clearly wishes to get closer to me.”

My words came out a touch harsher than I’d intended them to. Lucy didn’t seem to mind, however, only shaking her head with a smile that actually felt sincere.

“Of course I want to know! I want to know everything about you! But I want to know it because you want to tell me it! If you tell me your secrets because you feel like you have to, then we aren’t really getting closer, right? You’re going to worry the entire time that I’ll reject you. And you’ll still worry, even when I try to reassure you after! That’s why I’d rather you not tell me anything just yet. Not until you can truly believe, with all your heart, that I’ll accept whatever you have to say!”

“Lucy… That’s…” Ridiculous? Incredibly optimistic and naive? She had no idea what I was keeping from her! No clue what world shattering secrets I was holding back from revealing. And yet, in her eyes, there was that same determination I saw after she’d accidentally asked me out in front of everyone. A look that said whatever secrets I held didn’t matter. Because whatever my secrets were, she would accept them anyway.

And yet…

“I… Can’t tell you yet…” I whispered, shame burning in my chest. “But perhaps one day…”

“One day is all that matters!” Lucy declared, her smile so wide you’d never think that I’d just rejected her trust.

“...Then… For now. I will at least trust you with this much.” I took a deep breath. “Eena isn’t my real name.”

I tensed, waiting for the reprimand. Waiting for her to demand that I go further, that I tell her at least that much.

What I received instead was a tight embrace.

“I hope you feel up to telling me, one day…” She squeezed tighter. “But there is one rule I want to set, okay? And one request!”

“A rule?” I questioned. She nodded, the movement felt rather than scene due to her head’s position against my shoulders.

“I need you not to lie to me!” She parted from me, her eyes meeting mine in a display of seriousness.  “That’s really important, okay? If there’s something you can’t tell me, just say so! I trust you, after all!”

I nodded, slowly, fighting down the urge to protest. The desire to say this made no sense. That she put too much faith in someone she barely knew. Someone she was merely infatuated with… And yet, the trust she showed me… I knew, in that moment, that I never ever wanted to betray it.

“And the request?”

“To have sex with me!”