Aeric lay in the grass for another minute or two before he turned to Aliami, “Sorry about dumping all that on you. I’ve been getting by on banter and workaholism, I suppose.”

Aliami sighed, “Everyone has their own method of processing trauma. You worked through it amazingly well. I hope this will help you feel like one of us, if not today, then eventually.”

“I’ll have you guys help me out if I need it. But we really should get going, we have an appointment. Do my eyes look red?”

She looked over at him and smiled, “A little but it’s not noticeable. I also doubt the man we are going to visit will notice. He tends to miss these kinds of things.”

He stood up and dusted off his pants, the grass stains wouldn’t just disappear, however. But he could live with that, he really did feel like a weight had been lifted. His heart still ached for the missing members of his family. He still felt that small nugget of guilt and that sneaky part of his brain wondering if he was somehow trying to replace Sharon and his Dad.

Logically he knew that finding new people to care about and who care about you isn’t replacing. People need contact, they need other people in their lives. At least, most do. He liked having some noise around his everyday life. The little passion projects, how everyone was always trying to improve something or learn something. The city sang with that ‘we are doing new things’ energy, it really was a new start for him. An unasked-for new start, but that wasn’t a reason to throw the chance away.

He stretched and shook out his limbs, “You know that it's been nearly fifteen years since I last cried. Sad shows and books and the like notwithstanding. Last time I cried was when I fell off a bike and I got blamed for breaking it by a friend. Even that memory feels nostalgic now.”

“Tears can be liberating. Some things must be processed and bottling up emotions will lead to an explosion of them eventually. I could find you a professional to talk to, should you need it.”

“Nah, I think I’m good. It’s one of those ‘time will heal it’ things. Just got to see it different, even if I did make it back. I’d miss all the people I’ve met here, I’d probably cry about losing Xii. I’d miss the skills and all the hard work I did. I’d miss the store and working as a tailor, here I can make things happen. Setting up a fashion event, even if it's in a couple of months, unthinkable back home. It’d be a lot harder to do, here I am already more of a somebody than I ever was back home.”

“Is fame that important to you?”

“Not fame, renown. I want people to know about my work. I want to be mentioned in high-class circles when they talk about the best works of fashion. I want teens to follow my lead in what to wear. I want to influence people by simply being who I am and doing what I do.”

“And that is different from fame?”

“It is to me because it means not getting recognized on your face alone. Nobody looking to get your autographs but instead looking to get some of your work. There’s a difference.”

They fell into a comfortable silence as they walked the last bit of the way to the cotton processors. The building looked somewhat like an oversized barn, with several smaller buildings attached. This included one that seemed focused on receiving guests and potential customers. It was more like a modern factory complex than the medieval assortment Aeric had expected.

As he walked into the building he looked at the nearest desk, where a small woman with messy curls smiled as he entered. “Welcome!”

Aeric blinked upon closer inspection. It wasn’t just a smaller woman but a halfling, or perhaps a hobbit. Unless those were the same thing? He was blanking on the details, but the button nose and the messy curls and bare feet brought memories of the shire to the front of his mind. He smiled at the woman, “Good morning, I think we have an appointment.”

Aliami stepped in behind him and the hobbit’s eyes flicked towards the leonid before they widened slightly in recognition. “I’ve been notified of your arrival, follow me and I’ll lead you to the boss.”

She stepped from behind her warmly coloured wooden receptionist desk and motioned for them to follow. She stepped through a door leading them out of the building and over a stretch of grass, leading them towards another building. She opened the door and Aeric blinked as a cacophony of noise greeted him. The familiar sound of machinery greeted him, except these machines were not powered by technology and gears but by magic and elemental energies.

He watched wide-eyed as a machine braided thin strands of cotton together into thread, they came out of the glowing and heavily runed machine and landed onto a conveyor belt. Multiple hobbits wearing goggles and overalls were monitoring the machines and adjusting settings. They were led past the machines and the production line and up the stairs to an office on the second floor that oversaw the work floor.

The hobbit woman leading them knocked and after a deep voice answered, she opened the door and motioned for them to enter. Behind a richly decorated tropical wood-colored desk sat a giant of a man with a thick dark chestnut beard and long curly locks of hair. The man looked up as they entered and a smile appeared on his face as he stood to greet them, and Aeric realized he was not simply a giant of man but most likely a descendant of actual giants. The man had to be nearly eleven feet tall! He smiled at Aliami. “Ah, Aliami, my favourite client. I heard you had new proposals in mind for us. A new kind of product?”

Aliami smiled, “Yes I managed to get my hands on a worldwalker product and my new hire and talented tailor had a decent idea on how to create a new product. One of which being that the main product was processed cotton. Naturally, I thought of you.”

The man turned his heavy gaze towards Aeric, “I’m always happy to hear of anything that will give us more to sell or new ideas to market. So, can I have a look at this product?”

Aeric glanced over at Aliami who nodded, he reached into his bag and grabbed his jeans from the purse with the dimensional shenanigans. He walked over to the giant and put the jeans on the desk. “From what we’ve learned these are called jeans, a primary piece of clothing that was mostly worn by working folk at the start. It’s durable and was favourable with farmers and miners and the like. Over the years it evolved and became one of the most worn clothing worldwide. If we can manage even a fraction of that popularity we will be making money hand over fist.”

The giant ran a finger gently over the jeans, he held up the pants and tested their stretch. He eyed it through the light and even sniffed it. Aeric suddenly felt glad the jeans had been washed as the giant closely inspected them. “This material does seem much stronger than most of the non-enchanted clothing that we generally handle. Do you know how it’s treated?”

Aeric tapped his chin and motioned to the jeans, “I think it’s been treated with corn starch but I’m not too sure about that. I also think they were painted yellow with something and then the oxidation of the dye being in contact with the air turned it indigo, which over time faded to create the colour that you see in the jeans. Its durability is one thing but the way it can shape or showcase the shape of the legs and butt is what I believe will help elevate it into popularity. I expect it to be more common with the less wealthy however. But that depends on how costly production would be.”

“Well with the skills of my top engineer we could reverse engineer quite a bit. As for how difficult and costly production will be, that will depend on what we discover. You seem pretty confident in their popularity.”

“They are going to be a mainstay in a show I plan to do centered around clothing in a couple of months. If things go as we expect there will be thousands of jean orders in the months thereafter. It might turn out to just be a fad, but I think it will become a mainstay in fashion. Things might turn out differently than in the world walkers’ world however. Magic and enchantments change things. Nor will this be suitable for all races, that’s what we think anyway.”

The giant nodded, “I’ll get my guy on it, next we will have to talk about funding. I’d be willing to invest in this myself but if you expect thousands of these to be sold or in demand. I won’t have the production to keep up with that.”

Aliami grinned and leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table, “Well it’s a good thing that I’m here to invest into your expansion isn’t it.”

The giant blinked and his eyes flicked from Aliami to Aeric, “You are that confident in a pay-off?”

Aliami sat back in her chair and folded her fingers. “I’m quite confident, yes, you know me Ormni. I tend to throw myself into things sometimes. This is one of them, I’m sure I will be able to make my money back at the least. At best? This will end up becoming the central hub for a worldwide product.”

He looked at Aliami while a finger the size of a banana tapped his biceps. “So you are hoping this will turn into something international, a true moneymaker?”

“Optimistically yes, realistically, we will have to see how it goes.”

Ormni smiled, “Well I do trust your opinion on making money, always have. Very well, let’s see how far we can take this. I suppose you’ll want to discuss the details at the usual place? Today was more of a product reveal and a tour for your employee no?”

“Yes, we didn’t want to get too deep into it.”

Aeric nodded and rubbed the back of his neck, “I’m not that much of a detail person when it comes to management and organization. Aliami is much more capable than I am at it so I tend to leave all that to her.”

Ormni snorted, “Well it’s not what she hired you for regardless, she tends to have a good eye for these kinds of things.”

Aliami patted his shoulder with a large paw, “Just keep doing what you’re doing and leave the rest to me. That was the plan when we went into this.”

Ormni and Aliami still ended up discussing a variety of details but the giant had called in one of his workers to show Aeric around the factory. The halfling that showed up had some steampunk-esque goggles on his head and was more than happy to show him each of the machines and explain how they worked. Most of the technical terminology went over his head but he was able to gather that the machines mostly ran on elemental crystals, although pure mana crystals worked on them as well. The machines themselves were highly expensive but they increased the amount they could produce per employee by a significant amount.

The workers themselves had various skills that boosted efficiency, durability and productivity of the machines. Skills that meant a machine needed less crystals to be used and could create more finished product from the same amount of raw material. It made Aeric wonder what a really high-level factory manager could do, could they make near-infinite products from a small number of raw materials? As far as he could tell, skills really threw the mass and energy conservation theory out of the window.

Magic in itself was such an odd phenomenon, he remembered the saying that magic was merely science that was as of yet not understood. He wondered if that was what the system was, was it just so incredibly advanced that it created what appeared to be magic? If everything was run by zillions of nanobots in the air would anyone notice? It also made him wonder what the deal was with the decay of technology. Maybe anything above a certain level was a threat to the secrecy or stability of the system so it sent nanobots to devour the technology?

Kind of a scary concept but one that seemed plausible, in the end Aeric realized he didn’t really care. He kind of liked the magical technology people had managed, with the weaponry and the way it worked. He did always enjoy the knightly image, he shook his head as he left the factory for a bit and looked up at the blue sky. All this thinking about the bigger picture just hurt his brain and he wasn’t all that interested in doing anything about it.

He sat down on the grass and just dozed as he enjoyed the sunlight - it’d been a while since he’d just soaked it in. With the weather being as nice as it was there was no reason to rush back. Aliami appeared and blocked the sun, casting a shadow over his face. He opened his eyes lazily and blinked up at her.

“You know I was kind of relaxed in the sun, it’s nice and warm. Can I have it back?”

She snorted, “You do realize we left Jeorge waiting right? That’s kind of rude if we just leave him there.”

Aeric groaned, “Fine, let’s go then.”

She laughed, “You really do hate being rude like that don’t you.”

“Well yeah, it sucks. Especially when someone works for you, or is doing something for you. I make it a point to be good to the people that work for me.”

Aliami stuck out a hand and pulled him up, “Well I tend to treat my workers well simply because it’s good business sense. Plus it’s the decent thing to do, it keeps turnover low and people loyal. Taking advantage of your workers is shortsighted.”

“I wish everyone thought that way Ali. It would make the world a nicer place.”

“Yes well, heroes need their villains.”

Aeric snorted, “Or everyone could just be heroes, that sounds like something that would be interesting to behold.”

Aliami raised an eyebrow. “Can you just imagine a princess being kidnapped by goblins and then literally everyone in a hundred-mile radius coming to the rescue? It’d be horrible and chaotic and would probably cause even more deaths than it otherwise would.”

“Maybe in the beginning but then everyone would realize that kidnapping a princess is suicidal because of the human wave tactics.”

“Perhaps, it’s all hypothetical anyway.”

“Hypothetical talks are great though, you can think up all the crazy what-ifs.”

Aeric smiled as they walked up to Jeorge, “What do you think Jeorge, how would the world be if everyone was a hero.”

The old man tipped up his straw hat and sat up straighter from where he was lounging on the carriage, “Well for one I’d be out of a job, you ever see a hero ride carriages? They always have one of them fancy mounts.”

Aeric laughed, “That’s true enough, the poor moats would be out of a job. Who would make our food? A heroic chef? Wielding the legendary blade of Alduman as a kitchen knife?”

Joerge smiled at him, “T’would be a sight to see, that’s for sure. I think the state of the world as it is, ain't so bad. I could do with fewer criminals and more kindness but, life ain't bad.”

Aeric nodded and looked at the old man, properly taking him in. Jeorge had short-cut salt and pepper hair, his body was wiry and there was the telltale rough skin of a man used to working outdoors. He had a friendly ‘I have seen many things but still think life is good’ smile. “How would you like to just lay in the grass with us for a bit, the weather is fantastic and it feels like a good day to enjoy the sun.”

The old man smiled, his crows-feet deepening and adding a shadowed kindness to his face. “I would enjoy that, I do have some lunch from my old lady that I’d love to share.”

Alaimi chuckled, moving to the grass field and laying down, grabbing a blanket out of her dimensional purse. Then putting a basket on top and patting the blanket as she looked at the other two, “I also have some lunch that Xii gave me for the trip, I do believe you’d enjoy her cooking, Jeorge.”

“Some hand-made food from the battle-chef herself. I’d love to have a taste. I also have some fresh moat milk that you might enjoy, though it’s better when it’s been turned into a pudding. My wife can create miracles with it.”

Aeric grinned and plopped onto a blanket, “Good food and drink, a blanket on the grass, a warm sunny day and pleasant company. This is the life.”

The other two smiled but kept their silence as they prepared a plate and sat down on either side of him. Jeorge leaned back and rested his head on the blanket. “You know sleeping on the job would usually be an issue.”

“Well you're sleeping with your boss on the job! That should be fine.”

A heavy sigh answered the comment, “Phrasing.”

A hearty chuckle and a soft laugh answered her as the rest settled down and enjoyed the sun. Sipping on the fruit juice and nibbling on the assortment of food spread out on the blanket.