NOVEL NEXT LXXIII – A Bit of Rest and Relaxation
“Exalted One,” greeted Val-Kas’j when the rest of the group, including the young children, were led down to Agur-Bas through a cleverly hidden route that was easier to traverse by the locals.
“Welcome, Val, though I guess it should be the host’s part to welcome the visitors,” said Esperanza with a smile as she waved her hand. She and Tiesya were still accompanied by Belug-ur’ani and many of the elders of Agur-Bas, the latter of which had their eyes widen as they saw the other [Progenies of Yore] and looked as if they were about to prostrate themselves once again before them.
“Welcome to the humble town of Agur-Bas, Honored ones,” intoned Belug-ur’ani respectfully as she gave a bow to the group. The elders also followed her bow and gave their own respective greetings, all in flowery words that made Esperanza think of stage plays and other cases of overexaggerated dialogue. To be fair, for them, it was likely an occasion where to use simpler words would just be wrong to them.
In fact, the “welcoming party” was only so few people because Esperanza explicitly asked them not to cause too much of a commotion as it was. Otherwise, chances were that a good portion of the population of the town would have been present to welcome the remaining seven [Progenies of Yore] at the entrance to the town itself.
“These are the children that had been mentioned, Exalted One?” asked one of the elders, an old Tesh’ka lady who was bent with age and looked smaller than even some of the older children in height, though she otherwise gave a vibe that reminded Esperanza of the kind elderly lady that used to live next door in her childhood. “Would you like us to find families to take them in, or would you rather they stay together as a group?”
“There will be many families willing to take them in even if we do not reveal their background, Exalted One,” explained Belug-ur’ani politely. “Our society here is primarily built from outcasts that were unwanted or driven away and hunted by the worshipers of the new god. Many came here with missing parts of their families only to form new families later on. They will be cared for, this we promise.”
“Some of them are siblings, I would like to see those kept together even if they found new parents,” mentioned Esperanza with a nod. “Otherwise, it’s fine to fine families to take them in. Getting them a more normal childhood is the least we could do to them, I feel.”
“I shall see to it that everything shall be arranged to your satisfaction, Exalted One,” replied another of the town elders with a deep bow before they left the group, likely to give instructions to others. The other elders clamored for a while around the other Progenies while they led them back towards the temple, where apparently the priests had prepared a celebratory feast to welcome them.
“I… Have never seen anything so lavish,” commented Mel-Ivas at the massive spread on the long table before them. Due to her matured look – which at times look even more like an adult than most of the other Progenies, despite her being one of the youngest amongst them in actual age – it was often easy to forget that beneath that guise was the mind of a nine year old little girl. “Is… it all right for us to have this to ourselves?”
Spread on the surface of the long table – which looked as if it was made from a solid slab of polished dark green gem – was a lavish feast. Probably owing to the town’s location near the coast, the majority of the food present were various kinds of seafoods, from fish to shellfish to crustaceans of all sorts, all present in quantities on the table. It was more than enough food for the twenty-one of them to stuff themself bloated, to say the least.
Whole fish were served in several different ways. Some simply had their flesh cut into slices, raw and unadorned, served on a stone platter with the slices placed in an artistic arrangement. Others were steamed whole with a thick, savory-smelling sauce, while yet another fish was scored and cleaned, then placed in a heated shallow bowl made from stone before it had hot spiced oil poured over it on the table.
Large snails were served with their meat chopped up and then stuffed back into their shells along with the sauce they had been cooked in. Similarly, a large crab – one as large as a human head just with its body alone – was served in a way that made it look like it was still alive, though in actuality it had already been cut into pieces which were merely rearranged to make it look that way.
Big shrimps and prawns – many the size of the children’s forearms – were set on skewers, their shells bearing scorch marks from the grill where they must have been cooked, while larger lobsters and river prawns were cut into halves, their shells serving as a natural container for the succulent flesh inside. Beside them, platters of clams and oysters cooked several ways were also present.
The extravagant feast – especially after months of surviving mostly off monster meat in the wilderness – was enough to allow the children to take their minds off the hardship and losses they had suffered to reach Agur-Bas and simply enjoy the moment, and Esperanza let them do just that. Anything that would help lift the mood of the children was something they needed greatly at this point, so she cheerfully dined along with the rest.
It was the first truly good meal the group had in the past two months and they all cherished it dearly, some even tearing up as they ate, whether it was because the food was good – which it certainly was – or due to memories of the struggles they faced along the way, nobody knew. None of them talked much other than to praise the food while they ate, until their stomachs were content.
After the meal, the group was brought towards the temple’s bath, one that was usually used by the priests and other inhabitants of the temple. Several younger attendants of the temple helped the younger children clean their bodies before they took a dip in the bath, which took the form of a large pool, apparently filled with filtered water directly tapped from a nearby river, which in turn flowed out into the ocean.
The water was just the right amount of warmth – apparently the tunnel which carried the water from the river to the bath passed by a geothermal vent which warmed the liquid as it passed by – and Esperanza sighed as she dipped into the water, allowing her form to go free for a bit under the water. The younger children who were too young were being held in the laps of the Progenies to keep them from sinking beneath the surface.
After two months where they only had the chance to clean themselves when they run into a river where it was safe to bathe – which was not always the case – it was just nice to be able to relax in a warm, comfortable bath in peace with no worry of some horrible beast lurking around waiting to get the drop on them. The last time the group took a bath was quite recent, but it was with sea water, which left their skins slightly itching with the salt that were left behind, so the chance to properly cleanse themselves was much appreciated.
Esperanza also appreciated the privacy the locals gave them. The temple attendants only helped with the younger children before they left, and had not disturbed them since, which allowed the group some time to themselves in the bath.
“I had thought of all sorts of things that I expected to find at our destination, but I never even dreamed of this sort of thing,” admitted Eda-Zil, who sat in the water with Tiesya next to her to help hold her steady when needed. The injury Eda-Zil took in the dungeon made her unable to move her legs, though she could still feel them, which Esperanza hoped meant that there was hope for recovery. “Father had told many stories about the Deities of Yore… but only after seeing this place do I get what he meant…”
“You never really had the chance to experience something similar in Navef, I take it? I did recall that there were only a few carvings at the elders’ place there,” asked Esperanza to the young woman. Another pang of guilt ran through her mind as she found it hard to think that just two months ago, most everyone with her were just living in peace in their little village, most of them being children.
Too bad there was no such thing as turning back time.
“Yeah, apologies, Exalted One. The elders told us stories, but we never had the leeway to build another temple after our last move,” replied Eda-Zil with a slightly embarrassed nod, not that Esperanza would have found fault with her over that, but the young woman felt slightly ashamed regardless. “We lost a lot when our previous villages were overrun by beasts, perhaps part of what made us, us as well. Maybe for Navef to eventually perish was already writ in stone from the first time we had to abandon our village.”
“Do not think of it that way. It’s the fault of this damned world that things come to this point… this damned world and its new gods,” spat out Esperanza with some vehemence. She knew that all the information she had received so far might be rather biased, since she mostly had Oldies and their worshipers as her sources of information, but having seen what those that worship the new gods had done with her own eyes, she couldn’t help but start having some resentment towards them. “Even if they disagree with the way you view things, was it too much to ask to live in peace?”
“It is just how the world worked, Exalted One. Those who worshiped the new gods did not like seeing remnants of the old deities they replaced and sought to get rid of it, or at least that was what father used to tell me,” replied Eda-Zil with a wistful sigh, probably reminded of her late father. “Funny how I never thought about such matters… until reality rears its ugly head… Heh.”
“It’s how most people would have reacted under the same circumstances,” consoled Esperanza. “All too often, we thought some things were not our problem even though we heard of it, until it happened to us. I was the same… back in my previous world.”
Since it was already quite late in the day after the group finished their bath, an Elder led them towards a room that had been prepared for them to rest in. Perhaps the elder saw how the young children looked very attached and dependent on the “adults” of the group earlier, so they had arranged a large chamber to accommodate the whole group at once.
The chamber itself had no beds, but there were stacks of bedrolls and soft pillows piled all over the floor, with more than enough room for the whole group to rest themselves on it and then some. It was more than they could have ever asked for, and within a few moments of laying their heads on the pillows, most of the group had fallen into a deep, comfortable sleep. The first time they could sleep without worry since their escape.
Only Esperanza kept an eye open, staying on guard discreetly, just in case, but to her relief, the locals of Agur-Bas were exactly as they had shown themselves, and the group slept in peace until the next day, when they started waking up one after another, probably already quite late in the day.
