Chapter 48: A Moment to Herself
After that, Freya set out alone, rid of Laïa, who had nonetheless tried everything to follow her, and to whom she’d finally entrusted a top-secret mission, namely to see through Aldric’s true intentions and keep an eye on him.
"You can count on me!" the little one had called out, already off to rejoin Mei and the puppy alongside Naïa.
He’ll be fine, won’t he, of course he’ll be fine.
Yet, against all that fine confidence, the scene came back to her of when she’d found Mei after her famous encounter with the girls, that little welcoming session that had left the giant flat on the ground, flipped over like a turtle.
One of his first real jobs on the road to heroism, and it’s up to him to survive it, after all.
On that last thought, she banished the dungeon from her mind and turned toward the forest opening up before her, breathing in great lungfuls of that crisp air that had nothing in common anymore with the stuffy atmosphere of the cave.
And she set off walking.
With no goal, no plan, for the first time in a long while. She let her steps carry her at random through the underbrush, between the trunks draped in luminous moss and the sunbeams falling from between the treetops, and little by little, she felt something come loose inside her.
The calm of a forest was a thing apart. That steady rustle of leaves, that distant crack of a branch, that birdsong answering another, all of it formed a silence far more soothing than silence itself. Her shoulders dropped. Her breathing slowed. And her mind, for once, went quiet.
These past few days had worn her down to the very end. Watching her own death replay hundreds of times had been nothing but the cherry on a cake already far too heavy to stomach.
So she forgot. The dungeon, the girls, Aldric, and even Aria. She kept only what she saw, what she heard, what she touched, and the sudden urge to discover what this new body was really capable of.
A bird took flight from a bush, to her left, and her gaze followed it with a sharpness that caught her off guard. She could make out every feather, the precise beat of the wings, the veins of the leaves three trees away, right down to the smallest grain of pollen suspended in a sunbeam. Her mana body refined itself with every level the system gained, and she was only really noticing it now, in this calm, far from any fight.
She spotted a nest, right up top, wedged in the fork of a thick branch a good five meters off the ground.
She bent her knees, almost just to see, and jumped.
The leap carried her straight up to the branch, on which she landed without a moment’s hesitation, in perfect balance, as if her body knew by instinct exactly where to place her foot. She stayed frozen a moment, a smile rising to her lips.
Oh, all right, I could definitely get used to this.
Inside the nest, three chicks with down of a deep gold-veined blue chirped their little lungs out, beaks wide open toward the sky, calling for a mother who wouldn’t be long. Their cries were part warble, part chime, a bright little music that existed nowhere on Earth.
She watched them a moment, without touching them, then let herself drop back to the ground, just as nimbly.
Further off, a rustle of ferns, and an imposing mass darted between the trees. An elk, or something close to it, its antlers dotted with tiny glimmers, like so many fireflies clinging to its head. It shot across the clearing at a mad speed.
Freya smiled, and launched after it.
She ran level with it, right beside it, effortlessly, the wind whipping at her face, and the animal turned its head toward her for an instant, eyes round, as startled as one can be to see a human keep pace. She burst out laughing, a laugh so open and light she no longer recognized it in herself, before letting it go and slowing down, barely more out of breath.
Incredible... once again, I surprise even myself with just how incredible I am~~!
She resumed her walk, strolling, her eye everywhere at once. A doe with a pale pink coat grazing without fear, a butterfly with stained-glass wings that landed on her shoulder for a second before flitting off, flowers that gently turned their heads toward her as she passed, as if to see her on her way. She no longer tried to make sense of the impossible mix of it all, these species that should never have crossed paths, these plants from opposite climates growing side by side. She simply looked, and found it beautiful.
Then the trees parted, and she came out onto a river.
The water ran there, clear, over a bed of polished pebbles, and the late-afternoon sun caught a thousand shifting reflections on it. Freya stopped at the edge, gazed at the surface a moment, then, without really thinking, began removing her shoes, her socks, her jacket, her trousers, until she kept nothing but her shirt and her underwear.
And she dove in.
The cold of the water gripped her all at once, biting, invigorating, and it was delicious. She surfaced with a gasp, pushed her soaked hair back, then let herself float on her back, arms spread wide, carried by the lazy current.
Above her stretched a sky like she hadn’t seen in an eternity. Clear from end to end, without the slightest gray streak, it turned slowly toward shades of orange and pink of a purity that took her breath away, without a trace of that dirty haze that used to veil the sunsets of her old world.
A world like this really is cheating.
The thought came back, quietly, as she drifted. Here, mana did everything. It fed, it built, it healed, without ever draining the land, without gnawing at it the way men had gnawed at their own. A world that flourished without destroying itself.
The dream of any environmentalist, honestly.
Then a doubt ran through her.
But deep down... is mana really infinite?
She knew it returned to the world upon the death of each being, that much she’d grasped. But if the number of creatures on a planet built of mana ended up absorbing more than the world produced, what would happen? And all that mana spent creating things, casting spells, did it even regenerate, or did it get lost somewhere? And if one day the scales tipped for good, if—
No, no, Freya, this isn’t the time.
She let the thought dissolve into the current.
Let’s just enjoy it for once, nothing but the moment.
So she stayed there, floating, her eyes lost in the gradient of the sky, for a few minutes, her mind finally empty.
Until.
"OW! Ow, ow, ow!"
She sat bolt upright in a great splash, and discovered three big fish clamped onto her feet, a ridiculous little horn atop their heads, fins beating furiously, nibbling at her toes with a determination that was utterly out of proportion.
"You little bastards!"
She leaned forward, hands out, and set about prying them off one by one, which, in the water, with fish wriggling for all they were worth, proved decidedly less simple than she’d hoped. She grabbed one, flung it onto the bank, grabbed a second at the cost of an ungraceful contortion, while the third broke free with a flick of its tail and shot off into the depths.
Thanks a million, my new body, because even like this it wasn’t a sure thing.
She climbed back onto the bank, shook herself off, and glanced at her feet, where a few drops of blood beaded where the little beasts had latched on.
Other devotees of my pretty little feet?
At that thought, her mind drifted to ShoeSize, to her faction, and to the chat she hadn’t checked in a while. It’d do her good to swing back by there, actually, just to see what was being said~~!
Then she lowered her hand to her feet, heart light.
"Minor Heal."
A soft green light wrapped around her palm, and the bites closed up at once, leaving not the slightest trace, as if nothing had happened.
It was the skill she’d drawn a little earlier at her Skill Gacha, and hadn’t had the chance to try out, for lack of an opponent worthy of the name.
[ Minor Heal — Rank E: consumes mana to heal scratches and light wounds. ]
Pleased, all the same. Pleased to have finally taken a bit of time for herself, to have two fine fish to share for the evening meal, and to have at least gotten to test her new skill, even if it was on three horned fish instead of some fearsome enemy.
So she got dressed, gathered her meager wriggling loot, and calmly set off back toward the dungeon, her heart lighter than it had been in a long while.