For all his bravado in the battlefield, Nero nervously peered inside with the steaming bowl placed in front of him with trepidation. It seemed that the older woman greatly unnerved him as well. An impressive feat in itself, as far as Joe was concerned.

Mathilda caught him staring and slapped on his back. Hard.

“It ain’t poison, lass!” She guffawed, and Joe used the noise to cover her own snort of amusement. “This stuff is important if you want to recover from your condition. You don’t want to pass out every five seconds of your journey back, hmm?”

“What is this stuff anyway?” Niel pulled back his hood by an inch and tried sniffing the bowl curiosly. “Wait – ! Chicken stew?!”

“Bubblebird stew.” Mathilda corrected. “You’re lucky that there was some fresh bubblebird meat in the kitchen from the hunt this morning. Come tomorrow, there’re wouldn’t be any left.”

Niel visibly blanched and scrambled away from the bowl in haste. His face had turned a ghastly white. Joe raised a fine eyebrow at the boy. Did he perhaps dislike this dish? But then again, she wouldn’t want to eat something made out of the strawberry pink abomination either.

Poor Nero. She didn’t envy him, but Joe made a secret note to ask him about the taste of bubblebirds later. She hoped that they did not literally taste like cooked bubblegums. The thought almost made her gag.

Niel actually looked like he was about to gag.

“He’s got err – a darling pet bubblebird back in his home.” Explained Wicksie. “Although tonight it ditched us near the devil’s dew and flew away somewhere. All the affection is probably one-sided, y’know?”

His younger brother (?) turned to him with a glare, mouth still clamped shut in muted horror.

“No time to be nitpicky now.” Mathilda said matter-of-factly. But she pulled Niel by his arms and ushered him to a seat away from the bowl. “I hear from Ted that Oren here is suffering from magical imbalance; the after-effects of his own magic. The symptoms are rare, but not impossible. Bubblebird meat is one of the quickest ways to restore the balance of the adult body. Otherwise you’d be stuck in the bed for the next 48 hours, moaning in delirium.”

Joe frowned at the words. “But why?”

The older woman turned curiously. “Hmm? Why what, Joey dear?”

“I mean,” Joe fidgeted under her stare. “Why does specifically bubblebird meat cure the ma-magical imbalance? What’s so special about that bird?”

“Well, the bubblebirds have existed since the beginning of time, really.” Mathilda tapped her chin. “As for the reason, our ancestors have used this remedy for ages. Not much is known about the source, but what we know that it is surprisingly effective.”

Nero frowned at the words. “I have traveled far and seen a lot of places, but even I haven’t heard of this remedy before.”

“Ah, of course you wouldn’t.” The older woman shrugged, unconcerned. “This is something like a Hawkins family recipe. We only know it from the records of one of our ancestors, who was a miner in the northern Casterwing Mountain. Apparently, he had learnt of this particular treatment from a fellow villager and written it down without much thought. That was over 400 years ago. Who knew that it would actually work!”

She paused dramatically and laughed at her own private joke.

Joe wasn’t convinced. There was a strange nagging feeling itching at the back of her mind.

“But why does it work in the first place? Isn’t there supposed to be some connection between the bird and the so-called magical imbalance?” She insisted. “Don’t tell me that you people have been using this remedy without understanding the reason behind it?”

Now the people in the room all turned towards her in confusion. Except Niel. The boy had already been staring at her for a while, blue eyes wide and listening in rapt attention.

“What reason are you talking about?” Ted asked, his brows scrunched, “Magic is always magic. There is no reason or logic behind magic, is there? It exists just because it exists, like the sky and the sun and the moon and the stars.”

Joe stared. It couldn’t be this strange. “Surely, some of you had wondered at some point about the origins of magic? Surely, there must be some physical, concrete reason for this phenomenon called magic and its connection to the bubblebird? Haven’t you ever wondered how and why it exists?”

The adults in the room were eyeing her like she had gone mad. Even Wicksie was staring with confusion writ on his face. Joe grew puzzled, and then a sliver of alarm wormed its way into her heart. Did she say something she wasn’t supposed to?

Nero was uncharacteristically silent. But there was a calculating look in his eyes and a tiny hint of relief. Joe wondered if she was imagining it.

“Now what are you talking about, Joey dear?” Mathilda sighed exaggeratedly. “Just what is there to wonder in the first place? Have you ever wondered how your medicine works when you need to take it? Do you ever question why you have two hands and not four? Or why we have ten fingers and ten toes? Or why we have legs and not wings, hmm?”

Joe clamped her mouth shut at the unexpected words. ‘That’s how human beings have evolved!’ She wanted to say, but the older woman was having none of it.

“That is the same as magic, is it not, hmm? There is no what and how and why about it! It has existed in this world forever. I don’t see why you need to concern yourself with trivial, obvious matters like this. It is not our place to question about it, dear.”

Joe was suddenly reminded of her own words to Lucia and Nero back in the Winsten manor. Anyone who would attempt to question the ways of life in this world, would undoubtedly be labeled as crazy. ‘Mad’, as she had put it. Now that same madness was staring at her in the face.

Joe cleared her throat and averted her eyes. There was no arguing about it now. The moment Joe had landed in this world, she was forever doomed to be the odd one out.

It shouldn’t have surprised Joe that Niel and Wicksie had nearly the same destination that she and Nero did. Of course everything just had to be a bizarre amalgamation of coincidences tonight. Niel had conspiratorially shared that they would go all the way to the Western outpost, walk along the perimeter of Sandora and reach the endless plains of Whitemare. Joe had asked him in good faith what he intended to do when he reached there.

The boy had the gall to wink at her with a particularly obnoxious laugh. “It’s a secret~!” He crowed delightedly.

Joe resisted the urge to clobber him again. Patience. Patience. She repeated the mantra inside her head. She sure was feeling extremely generous these days!

As lady luck would have it, none of them had their horses at the moment. Joe did not really want to return back empty handed after all the shit she (and Nero) had waded through tonight. Taking Merlin along was a risky proposition, so Joe had nervously marched up to Ted Hawkins, intending to ask him if he would lend her the other horse from their stable.

Frustratingly enough, Niel and Wicksie had had the same idea. Of fucking course they had.

“I asked first!” Niel glared at her, hands on his hips.

It failed to intimidate Joe. She scoffed and waved her hands dismissively. “He hasn’t said yes to you, has he?”

“He said ‘Hmm, let’s see…’ but he did not say yes.” Wicksie agreed serenely. Niel squawked with indignation, whipping his head towards his older brother. “Don’t agree with her! Whose side are you on?!”

Fortunately, Ted interrupted before Wicksie could answer. He graciously offered to take them all in his horse cart instead. Joe thought that she would gladly cry rivers of gratitude in his honor. “I can carry you all the way till the Western outpost of Triciella, and no more. We have only one horse, so the four of you can come along together in the cart. It’s older but no less sturdy than before, I assure you. It lies straight to the south, and it would only take about an hour from Mirlock to reach there. ”

And that was that.

Joe squinted up at the cloudless night sky once again. The chilly wind had settled into a soothing breeze, with the moon dipping steadily and gracefully down by the passing minutes. There was a faint reddening of the eastern horizon against inky blue sky. The girl guessed that it was sometime between four and five in the morning.

All she’d wished for is a measly hour of peace and quiet after the entire heart-stopping, gut-heaving bloodbath she experienced tonight. But because this universe would always conspire to work against her, she found her herself sitting through an hour of Niel’s obnoxious chatter instead. The boy chattered like a runaway freight train, or like one of those gossiping aunties next door in her old world. Joe couldn’t decide which was more accurate, because both descriptions fit him to a T.

Wicksie had long since tuned out the chatter. Nero was smiling amusingly at intermittent intervals. And because Joe was incapable of doing either, she sighed and resigned herself to her fate. Niel must have noticed, because he stopped his chatter and nudged the girl with his elbow. Joe wondered if he’d finally begun the read the atmosphere.

“Tell me about your encounter with the bandits.” He said, eyes shining in curiosity.

Zero tact, as expected. Joe should have known better.

The entire attack of the bandits had been gingerly pushed back into the remote corners of her mind, and digging out the memories scraped at her nerves and sent her heartbeat spiraling out of control. Joe swallowed the nausea down forcefully, and focused her gaze into the blue of the idiot’s eyes who sat expectantly in front of her.

“I don’t know what you’d want to know. They were already waiting for the ambush when we passed the Grimm Canyon.” She began, as the cart jumped up on a particularly bumpy part of the road. “The bandits had already swarmed around us from all sides before we knew, basically cutting off out escape path. They looked terrifying, ready to cut off a limb or two if we tried to escape or something.”

Joe shuddered. She’d remembered how those dark, menacing eyes had stared at her lifelessly from the ground by the end of the battle.

“But you fought them, didn’t you?” He pushed forward insistently, eyes glancing up at the longsword and back to her face again. “How did you fare? Did they fight dirty? Of course they did, right? This was your first fight, yes? How many did you manage to take down on your own?!”

Joe looked away from the barrage of question. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment reaction. I don’t know I fought them either. Just ask N — Uncle Oren. He is the more experienced fighter anyway.”

She did not miss the way Wicksie glanced up Nero meaningfully. She did not miss the way Nero humbly smiled back at him, as if he was waiting for that reaction all along. Obviously, the idiot Niel missed all of it and settled for slapping on her back with his endless, useless enthusiasm.

“Don’t sweat it, Joey! I’d bet they didn’t expect such a skinny girl to fight back either! Ahahaha!” Then he leaned in and whispered in all seriousness. “Although, I still think that Wicksie is a better fighter your uncle Oren, y’know?”

Why was that the only part he focused on?!

“Since when did the bandits return back to the canyon?” Nero asked Ted, who was resolutely staring at the sky and following a trail of bubblebirds up West. “Last I remember, all the bandits in this area were supposed to be apprehended by the Royal Army.”

There was a noticeable hardness in Ted’s voice when he answered. “The traveling merchants from Aveniya had seen the bandits last Thursday, late at night, around this time. The bastards have been prowling around this area ever since. No one knows why they’d returned after all this time.”

Last Thursday. Joe frowned, because it was the day she had gone to Riseindell with Nero and Lucia.

“You fellows haven’t got the slightest clue how lucky you are.” The man continued bitterly. “Commoners can rarely get away unscathed once the bandits have set their sight upon your trail. You’ve heard about it from elder sis, right? About what happened to our parents more than two decades ago?”

It took a while for the girl to realize that he was talking to her.

“I did.” Because what else could she say to this man who was still grieving after all these years? “I truly am sorry about what happened to them, although saying this doesn’t matter much right now.”

There was a dry chuckle from the man in the driver’s seat. “Elder brother Ryl was right all along. He had fought tooth and nail to get where he is, and even proved himself in the battlefield. He fulfilled his end of the promise, while I stayed back here in this rotting hamlet and kept being a burden to elder sis.”

“I thought I could do something, anything about it, but in the end I am all talk. Our parents would roll in their graves if they saw me like this. I couldn’t do a thing to avenge them.”

A soft sniffle escaped his mouth.

“Ehhh, how lame! What are you sitting and crying around for? Nothing’s going to come out of whining, Mister. It’s not like you can run back and fight the bandits yourself, yes?” Niel asked bluntly. Joe wanted to kick him off the bloody carriage. What the hell was he running his mouth for? Didn’t the idiot know how to read the room for once?!

“Hah. So true.” Ted Hawkins snorted. “They’d probably tear me from limb to limb. Make an example out of my corpse so that no one would dare to cross them. All I would ever do is make elder sis cry again, and throw all of brother’s hardwork down the drain. He has got plenty of reason to resent me already.”

Joe didn’t know what to say to him, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was going through. Surprisingly, it was Wicksie who spoke up instead.

“I do not know the details about your family, but I don’t think that your brother resents you so.” The hooded man said quietly. “If that man got where he is today, it was because he wanted strength to protect his family. It was responsibility he felt, not resentment. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have marched back to this village to get rid of the bandits himself. He wouldn’t have tried to return to his humble home year after year to be with his family again.”

Ted didn’t reply, but Joe could see the tightening of his shoulders and the knuckles turning white in his hands.

“He would never resent you, Ted Hawkins. After all, you two are his only family now. Say what you want, but an older brother will always, always do whatever it takes to protect his siblings till the end of the world.”