4 – First Contact

The villager was watching her.

Who was she?

The cold air of the night caressed her face.

“My name is Alexandra, and…” she hesitated. “I’m lost.”

Hiding a wince, her mind churned to find a plausible explanation.

“Lost?” the man asked, cutting off her thoughts. “Where do you come from?”

Claiming to have been summoned from another world was a bold move. One that she wasn’t ready to make. He wouldn’t believe her.

“I… Don’t remember.”

Alexandra immediately regretted playing the amnesia card. It was too cliche. The only silver lining was that she was trying to enter a random village. They wouldn’t immediately suspect her of harboring nefarious intentions. Probably not.

She should be able to show her sincerity over time.

“You don’t remember… Right.”

This time, she wasn’t able to hide her grimace. Yeah, of course he didn’t believe her. “The last thing I remember was opening my eyes on top of a cliff by the sea. I walked in a random direction and ended up here. Please help me.”

A sigh. “I don’t fully buy it, but whatever. Come with me.”

“Thank you. I know it sounds—”

“We’ll talk to the priest tomorrow,” the man cut her off. “He’s a member of the Hands, maybe he can help you remember.”

“Oh.” Should she pretend to know what it meant? “I’m glad. Thank you.”

“My name is Therion, by the way.”

Therion’s home was the first house on the left, set slightly back from the road with a low fence of its own enclosing a dark patch of garden. The building itself was small, about the same size as her old apartment. The stone walls supported a thatched roof with a chimney on the side. He pushed the gate open without ceremony and led her up a short path to the door, which opened before he reached it.

The woman in the doorway was wiping her hands on a cloth. She took one look at Alexandra and then looked at her husband.

“Found a lost one,” Therion said, by way of explanation.

“I can see that.” Her voice was dry. She stepped aside. “Come in, then. You’re letting the heat out.”

The inside of the house was one main room with a low ceiling crossed by dark beams. A fire burned in a hearth on the far wall, a proper fire with a pot suspended over it. The smell that came off that pot hit Alexandra right in the stomach. She couldn’t identify what was in it. She didn’t care. It smelled like something hot, made from real ingredients and she had to actively stop herself from walking directly toward it.

A table occupied the center of the room, two chairs, a bench along one wall. Dried bundles of herbs hung from the beams, clay jars lined up along a shelf near the hearth, stoppered and labeled. A second door, closed, led to what she assumed was the sleeping area. The floor was packed earth, swept clean. Cleaner than her apartment, though it wasn’t a challenge.

It was small, warm, and the most welcoming thing she’d seen since arriving in Laika.

“Sit,” Lara said, gesturing at the bench. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

Alexandra sat. She did not argue.

Lara was perhaps a year or two older than Therion, with dark hair pulled back from her face and the same weathered practicality that her husband wore. Her hands, when she passed Alexandra a cup of water, were calloused and faintly stained, a persistent blue-green pigment worked into the creases of her knuckles that soap had clearly given up on removing.

Alexandra drank the water in one go, barely managing to remember her manners. “Thank you.”

Lara refilled the cup without being asked.

“She’s seeing the priest tomorrow,” Therion said, settling into one of the chairs and pulling off his boots. “Memory trouble.”

Lara glanced at Alexandra. “Is that so?”

“I know how it sounds,” Alexandra offered.

“Mm.” Lara ladled something into a bowl and set it in front of her. Thick, broth-based, with pale roots and dark leafy things she couldn’t name. “Eat first.”

She ate. Nobody spoke for a little while, which suited her fine. She needed it. For the record, it tasted fine. Not exceptional, but she was past the point of caring. It was better than the microwaved food she was used to, anyway.

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It was Therion who broke the silence, and not in the direction she expected. He nodded toward the closed jars on the shelf. “We were up before dawn sorting the last of the harvest. Forgive us if we’re short.”

“You’re farmers?” she asked, mostly to have something to say.

“Floriculture.” Lara sat down across from her with her own bowl. “Aetherveil, mostly.”

The names meant nothing to Alexandra, and it seemed that her expression made it obvious.

“Aetherveil is a base ingredient in many alchemical brews.” She paused. “It’s fussy work. The flowers have to be processed within a day of cutting or they lose potency. This time of year we work every day.”

“Hence the early morning,” Therion said.

“Hence the early morning,” Lara agreed.

Alexandra looked at the jars on the shelf. The stain on Lara’s knuckles. “Does it pay well?”

Lara blinked. “Erm… It’s fine.”

A beat of silence. Therion was looking at his bowl.

Alexandra became aware, on a slight delay, that one did not typically ask near-strangers about their income within the first ten minutes of meeting them. She picked up her spoon.