Alice woke up from a vague and peaceful dream to find Aurum fiddling with her pack on the other bed, staring at her. She immediately looked away when Alice opened her eyes. It might’ve been the slight rosiness of the early dawn light but Alice thought she saw a dusting of pink on Aurum’s ears and cheeks.
“We should find Pollan and go. He said he had everything he would need yesterday.”
Alice blinked, still half asleep.
“Where are we going?”
Aurum opened her mouth, looking ready to make some sort of sharp retort, before closing it, looking frustrated and somewhat pointedly at Alice as though directing the question back at her. Alice shook herself awake. Beyond Alice and Pollan’s extended debate of magical theory – reading so much from the cottage’s library had really paid off, and it was nice to expand her understanding of things so vaguely explained in the book, like the nature of cold magic – they had not discussed the next steps. Alice knew roughly where the princess and the hero had tried to start their search for the crystal, but she was not confident about volunteering any of her information. For one thing, Aurum was so suspicious of any knowledge Alice claimed to have from the book. For another, the book was incredibly vague. She knew only that they had set off towards the mountains, intending to search for the caves where the crystal had been rumored in myths to be. Of course, they didn’t ever find it, instead facing monsters and obstacles and finding the sage who eventually awakened the princess to her innate powers with which she eventually confronted the witch.
What needed to happen was for them to find the sage, who was a wanderer and a recluse. Everything else was secondary. That meant that the exact path was vital, and the timing was too – and both were outside of Alice’s knowledge and control. There was also a terrible risk that they would encounter something dangerous that the princess and hero never did in the book, and there was no guarantee that they would all survive such a situation.
The best course of action, then, might be just to let Pollan decide, hopefully with Aurum’s input. Maybe that would push them onto the same path as they took in the book. After all, the plot had righted itself enough that they had still found Pollan. Alice was not sure if that was a coincidence or a sign of a greater power at work, but she hoped it was the latter.
“We should talk about it. All of us.” Alice spoke tentatively, not wanting to anger Aurum more. She knew this must be agonizing for her. Alice could scarcely remember any time before she lost her parents, but she still felt their loss deeply. Fearing that she might lose her family forever, or that they were hurt and suffering, must be more difficult than Aurum could truly imagine. Selfishly, though, a part of her ached for the almost-friendship, the companionship that they had begun to share at the cottage. It felt as though a fence of barbed wire had been raised between them, something Alice could not cross without damaging them both. Useless.
Aurum sat for a long while before nodding in agreement. They found Pollan shortly afterward, and after bidding farewell to his still almost apathetic family, they gathered themselves at the front of the house. Alice pulled out her maps eagerly as Pollan and Aurum started to debate their first move.
Unfortunately, it seemed as though Aurum was dead set on rejecting whatever plan Pollan proposed, something Alice was fairly sure would not have been the case in the original story. They both agreed they should go towards the mountains, but Aurum wanted to take the upper forest trails towards the northern edge of the mountain range, for no other reason Alice could tell other than that Pollan had suggested the middle route towards the foothills of Mount Aster, the highest peak in the range. After a while of watching their increasingly tense back and forth, Alice finally broke in.
“I think we should take the middle route too.” Her words were too quiet at first, drowned out by Pollan repeating his argument about how most stories mentioned a cavern at a majestic mountaintop and Aurum’s sharp rebuttal that most people looked there and no one had found anything there before, so why repeat a failing strategy.
“I think –” Aurum said louder, and was still cut off. “I think –” and this time she was almost shouting over them. They both stopped speaking and looked at her sharply. “I think we should head to Mount Aster,” she almost whispered, alarmed at their sudden attention. Aurum’s eyes widened with something like betrayal before narrowing in anger and resignation. Alice could almost hear her scoffing. The storybook again? Delusional.
Wincing, Alice tried to buttress her argument, even though really she thought Aurum’s point was valid. But the goal was not to find the crystal, after all. She held Aurum’s gaze, eyes somewhat pleading.
“I mean, the middle route is less traveled. And should maybe be safer from the witch since she has been mostly targeting the main routes toward the capital.”
Pollan nodded emphatically. “Yes! It will be safer. That’s true. I was just going to say that.”
Aurum’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “Or, it’s more remote so it’s more likely we could be ambushed without anyone there to help. It could be just what the witch is waiting for.”
Pollan looked confused. “But the witch has no reason to ambush us, not unless she thinks we have the crystal. We aren’t anyone she would know.”
That surprised Alice. Shouldn’t the hero have begun to suspect Aurum’s identity? Her hair was covered, but golden eyes were hardly common. Then again, in the book, the princess and the hero had bonded over time, and he had never explained when and how he learned she was a princess, only saying that he had thought she might be for a while once she finally told him.
Aurum, for her part, looked so suspicious of Pollan that Alice half expected him to put two-and-two together purely from Aurum’s wariness. After all, if they truly were nobodies, why would Aurum be so hesitant to trust him?
“You’re right. The witch has no reason to be after us. And if there are less of her minions around we should be safer for longer,” Alice finally said, trying to ease the tension before something snapped. Aurum looked at her, exasperation clear on her face, but she nodded.
“Alright. We will do as Pollan suggested, then.” She drew out Pollan’s name as she spoke, sounding so obviously dubious and sarcastic that Alice half expected a fight to break out. But Pollan simply gave one of his slightly fake, indulgent smiles and nodded.
“Well then. No time like the present to start, right? I can’t afford us horses, so we will have to go on foot.” His assumption that he would be the one to foot the bill felt a bit overbearing to Alice, but she shook off the feeling. It was only natural to assume Aurum and Alice would not be able to afford mounts either given their appearance. And anyway, she reminded herself, Alice had no reason to be annoyed by or resentful of Pollan. Hadn’t she just been feeling sympathy towards him the previous evening? But as they started walking, Pollan still seeming eager for Aurum’s attention and speaking in that overly solicitous way of his, and a part of Alice could not help but keep quietly grumbling about how little like the hero he really seemed. Aurum was not just ‘the princess’ to Alice anymore, but she was clearly a main character in Alice’s eyes. Pollan, on the other hand…they just did not seem to match.
Stop it. You aren’t even meant to be here. What right do you have to judge him? And for that matter, what right do you have to claim to understand Aurum, or who she needs beside her? Alice chided herself as they started walking, lost in her self-recrimination until Pollan turned to her to engage her in conversation. Evidently, Aurum had stonewalled all possibility of conversation with him, so he needed a different conversation partner. Plastering a smile on her face which she hoped was not too stiff, she tried to meet his eagerness. He didn’t deserve to be shunned by them. He was a good man, and if Aurum was not ready to open up to him, maybe Alice could try to bridge the gap for a little while until she was.
Pollan chattered away, and Alice eventually managed to find real interest in conversation once he started sharing what he knew about the history of the region around his hometown. Any information she could glean about this world not from the book could prove useful, after all, and Alice was fascinated by how complete and detailed this world truly was. Things that the book only hinted at or ignored entirely were all intricately woven, history and culture. Even the little insights she got into Pollan’s character were objectively interesting; he was frankly a bit of a nerd. It was, Alice could grudgingly admit, somewhat charming. And so they talked for hours, the time passing more easily for Alice as the conversation distracted her from the dread and guilt that lay just beneath the surface.
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