“This is so good~!” Iris squealed in delight taking a bite from some grilled corn bought from a street vendor after their shrine visit, having a light lunch in one of the Sentorayan street gardens.

“I’ve had grilled corn before, but this is different,” Arylos commented, enjoying his own cob. “The contrasting sweetness of the corn and the savouriness of the sauce is a delight. I normally take mine with butter and salt but this different approach has a more unique flavour to it.”

“I would have begged my parents to take me here if I knew how good the festival food was,” Iris exclaimed with a big smile on her face.

“Don’t get greedy, girl,” Arylos cut in. “You remember how long it took for us to get here by carriage.

“I know,” Iris admitted while taking another bite. “But we never had anything like this.”

“Your village didn’t have corn?” Arylos asked, deeply confused.

Iris shook her head. “We had grain and vegetables with some fruits. I don’t think we ever had corn.”

Arylos stroked his beard. “Makes sense; corn needs a large flat plane and doesn’t grow well in the cold and has shallow roots. It likely would have been too difficult to grow near Nageki, at least compared to wheat.”

“Do you get off on dissecting our people like that?” Iris asked in a teasing voice. “How would you feel if I did that to the Titans.”

“I’m just trying to understand, that’s all,” Arylos explained with a laugh. “I wouldn’t mind if you did the same to my people trying to understand them.”

Iris thought for a moment, trying to come up with a comeback. “You say your people are eternal and beyond time, but you still have a concept of age and children growing up from what I saw. Which tells me your people are just full of themselves and want to sound cool.”

Arylos stared at Iris with wide eyes as he processed her summarisation. Iris felt a little anxiety come to her and she raised her voice to take it back, only for Arylos to let out a full belly laugh like he had heard the funniest joke in his life.

“What?!” Iris called out, growing frustrated. “What’s so funny?”

Arylos wiped away tears as he tried to quell his laughter. “You have no idea how funny that is to me! I would never hear something like that coming from Templarius or another culture; they’re too busy heralding us as the ‘peak of existence’ and ‘gods of perfection’ or some crap like that.”

“So?” Iris asked.

Arylos lost control of his laughter briefly as he tried to explain. “To hear a mortal girl like you say that we were full of ourselves is just hilarious. That’s the first time someone ever called out my kind like that.”

Iris felt blood rush to her cheeks. She technically belittled his race and he thinks it’s funny. What was with him? “But why is that so funny?” she asked.

“Because I’ve been telling them that for a long time,” Arylos replied, finally in control of himself. “So hearing you say the same thing I was trying to tell them vindicates me.”

“But you said the same crap!” Iris exclaimed while lightly punching Arylos’s arm.

“Only because your language doesn’t have a way for me to explain it all,” Arylos admitted with a light smile. “We have those words in our language, but you don't, so it's difficult to explain something that exists outside of your reality. Like trying to explain your infinite reality is really a finite piece of a greater whole, but still retains its infinite nature. It’s like trying to describe the colour ‘red’ to someone who has been blind from birth.”

Iris thought about it for a moment while taking the last bite of her corn. “You have a point,” she admitted after swallowing and standing up. “It would be like explaining our culture and our emotions to you. You don’t really understand any of it, do you?”

“Only bits and pieces,” Arylos explained. “The hardest part is your emotions. I know what you’re afraid of and things like that, but not what that’s like for you. Things like love, hope, fear, they’re mostly beyond me and I don’t have the understanding.”

“Because you don’t feel those emotions?” Iris asked in concern.

Arylos stared at the ground as he tried to ponder an answer. “Not quite in the same way, I don’t think. It’s not like I don’t experience those emotions at all, I just don’t experience them in quite the same way as you.”

Iris thought about Arylos’s perspective for a time. Emotions like those are second nature to her but she also couldn’t find the right words to explain it to him. His analogy was spot on; it would be like trying to describe a song to a person who can’t hear or a sunrise to a person who can’t see. It moves you deeply, but they do not have the ability to understand it, not the same way you do.

She realised this is what Arylos meant. He’s beyond time, but that’s not entirely true. He just lacks the words and the ability to help her understand because she has never experienced it.

Iris nodded and threw her cleaned cob into a nearby bin and reached her hand out for Arylos with a big smile. “Then just like how you showed me your memories, I’ll show you what it’s like to be one of us and show you how it feels.”

Arylos stared at her, processing her proposal and let out a laugh as he took her hand and stood up. “You’ve already shown me a lot, so what else is there?”

“Well, we still have the festival to go to,” Iris suggested.

“Wait, that wasn’t the festival?” Arylos asked with heavy confusion.

“No you big idiot,” Iris laughed. “That was just the shrine visit. There’s still a whole festival with food, crafts, charms, and everything!”

“You Kaiyumae and your parties,” Arylos laughed under his breath.

“That’s a part of life,” Iris teased while tugging on Arylos’s hand to get him to walk. “To love is to live. It’s how you counteract all of the bad things that happen.”

Arylos laughed as he walked forward, following Iris. “And to live is to suffer,” he whispered under his breath.

“Eh? What’s that?” Iris asked, not catching what he said.

Arylos waved her off. “Nothing, just an old Titanic proverb that I find funny.”

“What is it?” Iris asked, walking alongside and looking at Arylos intensely.

Arylos shook his head, realising that he shouldn’t have said anything. “Our question was ‘what is the meaning of life?’ When we discovered devolution, our answer became ‘to live is to suffer’ and that became a proverb we passed along, acknowledging that existence is to suffer but still move forward. That a life without pain is not life at all; merely existence.”

Iris thought about the meaning of the idea for a while. “Kind of like how you and I met, but what led to that being the destruction of my village and you having to fend off Odin?”

Arylos cracked a smile. “In a way, I believe. You have to give so you can get anything.”

“All the more reason to do what we can!” Iris cheered, seeing the festival in the street across from where they were, filled to the brim with stalls and crowds of people laughing and cheering.

Arylos chuckled to himself and followed the excited girl as she ran towards the festival. “Try not to get yourself lost,” he warned her in a teasing voice.

The two walked through, taking in the sights of the brightly coloured stalls and the smells of the street food and the sounds of cheering and laughter. Iris looked around like the giddy girl from a small village she is, taking in the entire experience. Stall runners shouting their goods, each one louder than the last and filling Iris with joy. Arylos found himself enjoying the sounds and the smells. He always enjoyed smaller taverns for this level of noise and merriment and this came close to his best experiences in a tavern. He couldn’t help but to smile as well, enjoying the experience.

“Where do you want to go first?” Arylos asked the overwhelmed Iris.

“I don’t know, maybe the charm stalls first?” Iris suggested.

“Charm stalls?” Arylos asked.

It didn’t take long for Iris to find a series of rustic stalls run by Yakutori shrine. Shrine maidens processed the sales of different charms, each one vibrantly coloured and painted with various symbols in the Kaiyumian language, each one representing an idea or ideal. Arylos admired the work as he examined some of the charms up close. He found they were small cloth bags made from smooth fabric and tied off in an elaborate and decorative knot with various markings and designs covering them. The one in his hand was a deep violet with white flower designs with Kaiyumian markings on the front.

“We call them ‘onakute’,” Iris jumped in while looking at some of the charms. “They contain relics with prayers and spells for various things.”

“Relics?” Arylos asked, intrigued by the idea. “Like gems and the like?”

Iris chuckled as she set one charm down and picked up another. “Sometimes, but most often they contain prayers written on paper or wood by a monk or priest.”

Arylos thought about it for a moment, processing this alien culture. “So it’s like an amulet enchanted with a prayer or spell,” he summarised.

“Exactly,” Iris added. “Some people wear them, others keep them around the house or hang them from windows. It’s also a good habit to get new charms each year and burn last year’s charms to ward off bad luck from the previous year, hence why we’re here today.”

Arylos liked the idea as he examined the charm closely. “I don’t understand this language,” he admitted.

“It’s Kaiyumian, aren’t you speaking it?” Iris asked in confusion.

“That’s a funny and long story, but no and I can’t read this,” Arylos admitted as he lowered the charm for her to see, silently asking for help.

“Well, that one there is an ‘academics’ charm,” Iris answered while reading the characters. “It’s meant to bring you luck in your studies and help you with research that you’ve been struggling with.”

Arylos chuckled and returned the charm. “I would hope I don’t need help with research.”

“You still have to understand us humans, you idiot,” Iris teased and stuck her tongue out. “What kind of charm are you looking for?”

“I don’t really know,” Arylos admitted while stroking his beard, deep in thought. “I’m not one to look to charms for protection.”

“Why not this one?” Iris suggested, picking up a small green charm with red designs and gold lettering. “This one is ‘hyaku-tsui’, it’s meant to drive away evil and evil spirits.”

“You mean Odin?” Arylos added, to which Iris nodded and offered him the charm. Arylos held it in his hand and considered it heavily, but ultimately returned the charm to Iris. “You would have more use for this than me.”

“I mean, you are a bad luck magnet,” Iris teased as she returned the charm to the shelf. “Why not ‘kaiun’? It’s a general good luck charm.”

Arylos laughed at the idea. “That one sounds interesting,” he admitted while picking up a black and white charm with a pink string.

“That one there is ‘musubi-futsu-’,” Iris’s explanation was cut short with a blush as she looked up to Arylos to explain. “‘M-Musubi-futsui’. It’s meant for relationships, helps those who are single find someone special and for couples to remain together.”

Arylos looked to Iris and laughed. “Maybe you should get this one then,” he suggested with a big smile.

Iris gasped and slapped Arylos’s arm. “I don’t need relationship luck, thank you. I’ve had no problems getting a boyfriend.”

“Then how come you’re still single?” Arylos teased with a wicked smile.

Iris’s face went red hot after getting called out like this. “Don’t worry about it, you big idiot!” she shouted while snatching the charm from Arylos and returning it to its place on the shelf.

Arylos laughed at Iris’s expense and gave her a little pat on the head. “Don’t be like that, there’s plenty of fish in the sea.”

“I hate you, you know that?” Iris pouted, refusing to make eye contact.

“No you don’t,” Arylos teased as he reached for another charm. This one a deep ocean blue with white flowers and gold text and a red string. He liked how pretty the charm looked with the colours and how the design swirled around the charm. “What’s this one?” Arylos asked Iris.

Iris gave up on pouting and looked at the charm he selected and read the text. “‘Akamutsui’, I must admit, I don’t really know that one,” Iris admitted. “The markings mean ‘to chase off bad dreams’, but I didn’t know that was a charm.”

“Ah, ‘Dreamcatcher’,” one of the shrine maidens chimed in. “That’s an uncommon one but it’s one of my favourites.”

“‘Dreamcatcher’?” Arylos clarified, eyeing the small charm.

The shrine maiden nodded as she picked up another one of the same charm. “It’s meant to replace bad dreams and memories with good ones. We normally recommend it for those who had a traumatic history like a bad relationship or were outcasts of their villages. It helps ease the pain of those old memories and welcomes newer and happier ones.”

Arylos considered the charm as he stared at it, losing himself in the intricate writing and the idea of this ‘dreamcatcher’. He had heard of this concept before from another species, but he didn’t think this terminology would appear here.

He looked over to Iris and her warm smile as if telling him he should get the charm. “Akamutsui,” he whispered as he eyed both Iris and the charm, feeling foreign and strange emotion in him. He began to wonder if he already had his own dreamcatcher, a strange consideration he had never pondered before. He then held the charm tight in his hand and nodded.

“Alright, but the little girl gets the relationship charm,” he teased with a big smile.

Iris lost her temper at the suggestion. “And that’s how you don’t get a girlfriend!”

“And that’s how you get yourself a boyfriend?” Arylos returned, spitting back her insult as he picked up the charm he recognised as ‘kaiun’, for good luck, and gave it to Iris as his suggestion. “At the very least, you should be open to some good luck from this point,” he suggested with a smile.

Iris took the charm and held it to her chest with a smile, appreciating the gesture.