Chapter 14
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"So," the innkeeper, who had earlier revealed his name to be Phil, sighed sadly and just a trifle theatrically as he glanced surreptitiously about the dinner table to see if everyone were properly touched by his suffering. He was rather disappointed to find that they weren't. "You wish to know about the night that my livelihood was destroyed? Well, it is a tale that serves well to illustrate the unpredictable nature of life. One moment, a person may have everything, and the next, it may be ripped away in a single, cruel, blow."
"Oh, boy, he's mixing his metaphors," Zidane groaned quietly to Amarant. "This is going to be melodramatic."
"And it's probably going to go on forever," Amarant added disgustedly, swatting a cat off of the back of his head. "Why do these damn things always know who hates them the most and pester them?"
"Okay; let's make a deal," Zidane suggested after wincing at the frightened mewl of a cat who liked this whole 'flying' thing very little. "If he goes on for more than fifteen minutes, we jump at him and kill him."
"I was thinking ten minutes, myself," Amarant admitted with a smirk.
"Even better!"
"Actually, Phil," Dagger interjected gently, tossing a glare in Zidane and Amarant's direction for their insensitivity to this man, "we just wanted to ask you if you knew who that little redheaded girl was and where she is now."
"Oh," Phil said, rather put out by this. "Well, I don't know. I suggest you go to Lindblum."
"Why? Did she say she was going there?" Freya asked, feeling quite left out of this conversation. This, however, did not annoy her nearly as much as the twelve cats that had surrounded her chair and sat, staring up at her with unblinking eyes of jade green, apparently fascinated.
"No," Phil replied. "That's just where everyone goes eventually when they pass through our humble little town."
"Wonderful," Dagger sighed, exchanging pained glances with Freya across the table.
"Phil, are you SURE there's nothing more you know?" Zidane asked pleadingly.
"Why, no, I don't believe so," Phil replied in honest confusion.
"Are you REALLY sure?" Zidane pressed.
"Yes, I'm really sure," Phil replied, even more bemused.
Zidane stood up from the table, drawing in a deep breath.
"Would it jog your memory if...the royal house of Alexandria offered to rebuild your tavern for you?"
"Zidane!" Dagger exclaimed, horrified.
"No need to thank me for my great idea, Dagger," Zidane grinned at her. "Now, Phil, why don't you tell us what you need to know, and we can make arrangements to get your place built again?"
"Someone please choke him before he offers this man all the money in the city," Dagger requested with a pained groan. Steiner's expression suggested that he would be all too glad to take Dagger up on the request, but refrained for fear of those pesky murder laws that tended to haunt a man's future forever afterwards, cropping up at the most inconvenient times, completely erasing a man's chances of working his way higher up the ziggurat.
"Young man, I honestly don't know what you're talking about," Phil spoke up hesitantly. "I was being entirely truthful when I said I knew nothing about where that demonic redheaded woman-man was going next."
The clatter of a fork falling to a plate followed.
"D-d-demonic?" Vivi repeated nervously.
"Woman-man?" Amarant repeated, less nervous and more confused.
"Hey, you saw her, didn't you?" Zidane snickered. "There wasn't really much of a body there. Now, the shorter girl – the one in white – that's a figure! When she grows up, she's gonna have huge-"
"On behalf of all women everywhere, Zidane," Freya interrupted wearily, "shut up."
"What'd I say?" Zidane wondered in honest confusion.
"Well, judging a girl's looks completely based on her…size, for one thing," Dagger said angrily, shooting him as deathly a glare as she possibly could…which wasn't particularly deathly.
"I was just saying! I can see where the woman-man nickname came from," Zidane chuckled.
"Oh, never mind," Dagger exclaimed, quite exasperated. "So, Phil, you think that the sorceress is most likely going to Lindblum?"
"Sorceress?" Phil repeated, scratching his head, the motion causing light to reflect off of his watch just so, providing a good deal of amusement for one of the family cats who was rather fond of chasing light spots.
"Sorry," Dagger sighed. "You think the demonic redheaded woman-man will be going to Lindblum?"
"Oh, her! Well, it seems almost certain to me," Phil said with a shrug.
"My Queen, it seems to me that it is the only lead we have right now," Steiner spoke up, trying to ignore the canary perched on the top of his helm and the three cats leaping madly at it every now and again, but missing and simply crashing head-first into his back, which accounted for the clangs that sounded through the room every few minutes.
"I think Steiner's right," Freya hastened to add, eyeing the twelve cats who were still watching her intently, and who now had a somewhat…hungry look about them. "We should at least try Lindblum. And honestly, the sooner, the better, right?"
"Well!" Dagger chirped, glancing across the table strangely when the canary perched atop Steiner's head chirped back. "It's all settled then! We'll leave for Lindblum this evening!"
At this, Margie looked up sharply.
"You most certainly will not! The sun has been down for nearly an hour, and you can't travel through strange country after dark! You'll all be our guests for the night."
"Margie!" Larry hissed. "Where exactly d'you think we're going to put them all?"
"Well," Margie replied, frowning, "I thought maybe we could have the boys sleep out in the hayloft-"
"All right!" the boys in question exclaimed, recalling that the barn was where their father tended to keep his whiskey supply.
"-so the young lady and the child can share Pete's room, and then the knight and the young fellow with the tail can share Randy's. As for the two in the handcuffs-"
"I don't want a girl in my bed!" Pete protested, looking askance at Dagger. "I might get girl-cooties!"
"And you wonder why you're a twenty-four year old virgin," Randy snickered, giving his older brother a poke in the ribs.
"Heh-heh-heh," Dagger laughed nervously. "Please, Margie, don't go to any trouble. The six of us will sleep in the hayloft, if that's all right with you."
"Oh, sure. They just want the booze," Pete muttered resentfully.
"I wouldn't hear of you spending the night in that drafty hayloft!" Margie exclaimed, alarmed. "We've more than enough room in the house for all of you, if a few of you don't mind taking a floor."
"Not at all," Steiner hastened to assure her.
"So, we get the hayloft?" Pete asked hopefully.
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Several minutes later, the group reached a state of agreement that Dagger and Vivi would take Pete's bed, much to the annoyance and chagrin of Zidane, that same Zidane would share Randy's bed with Steiner, and Freya and Amarant would sleep in the hayloft with Pete and Randy. The reason for this last decision was threefold. The first 'fold', as it were, was the insistence of both Amarant and Freya, who had learned earlier that week that sharing a bed with a person while chained to them isn't nearly so easy as one might imagine, and can in fact be quite hazardous, should one be particularly prone to tossing and turning. The second was due to Margie's insistence that a young lady (a description that provoked in Freya the indescribable urge to grit her teeth and a general dislike of farmers' wives everywhere) should not share a bed, unchaperoned, with a young gentleman (the description of which caused everyone around the table to snicker uncontrollably, minus Freya, who was too busy gritting her teeth over the implications of Margie's words, and Amarant, who was still trying to figure out who the hell this woman was talking about when she spoke of this 'gentleman'). The third was Larry's concern that his liquor supply might be gone by morning. And then how would he deal with the everyday doldrums of being a farmer?
Had Larry known what state of mind Amarant was in by this time, not to mention Freya, he might not have considered their presence in the hayloft to be quite the protection for his precious collection of beverages that he did.
Nevertheless, what was settled was settled, and the temporarily expanded family returned their attention to their meals.
For a time, at least.
"Hey, pass the potatoes, would you, Amarant?" Zidane requested, outwardly engrossed in devouring the meal set before them by Margie, but inwardly cackling with glee. The meal, he reflected, had been going altogether too well for everyone.
Amarant, being both inwardly and outwardly engrossed in devouring the meal once he had accustomed himself to doing so with only one hand, complied without a thought and lifted the large brown earthenware bowl toward Zidane.
The result of this manoeuvre proved that there is indeed justice in the universe for those who go out of there way to cause hardship, or at least irritation, to others for their own amusement.
Freya had chosen the precise moment that Amarant had lifted the bowl to pick up her mug of Margie's piping hot peppermint tea, and when Amarant began to pass the bowl to Zidane, the chain of the handcuffs stretched taut with such a force that the entire contents of Freya's mug shot past Amarant's nose and directly into the face of the unfortunate (but highly deserving) Zidane, who had turned slightly to watch the carnage unfold.
"ARGH! IT BURNS!" he howled, leaping from the table and upsetting his own mug in Steiner's lap.
"Oh, no! I must get the tea out of my armour before it rusts!" Steiner exclaimed in dismay, leaping from the table and darting past Zidane, who was by now running in crazy circles about the kitchen, into the other room.
"Why?" Dagger whimpered, gazing imploringly at the turnips on her plate.
The turnips had no answer for her, being turnips rather than people, or any other creature that possesses the ability to answer vague philosophical question. Elves, for example, or Qu's, dwarves, demihumans, Moogles, or enchanted rutabagas.
Then, once it occurred to her that her dinner would be no help, she glanced up across the table at Freya, smiling to herself as she saw the other woman's mouth moving in a chant. She listened carefully.
"Just ignore them…just ignore them…just ignore them…"
And really, was this not the best advice to be offered when men were being…well, men?
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"Bye, Margie!" Vivi called in a fond farewell to his new friend standing on the front veranda of the trim, neatly kept, impeccably whitewashed farmhouse the next morning as the merry little band once again took to the road.
"...tired," Zidane muttered sadly.
"Stop your whining, monkey-boy," Steiner commanded, starting into a jaunty march and ignoring the strange looks and snickers of the farmers already out to work in the surrounding fields.
Zidane lifted his head from Dagger's shoulder with a mighty effort, and glared scathingly at Steiner, which was doubtlessly considerably less effort.
"Hey, man, it's your fault. You're the one who sang German folk-songs in your sleep all night."
"Did he go into 'Gehen Sie zu mir, meine liebe Socke zurück' again?" Vivi asked, his tone laced with such sympathy that he forgot to stutter.
Steiner looked rather hurt.
"Master Vivi, I thought you liked my singing!"
"I-it's not that," Vivi hastened to assure him, shrinking sheepishly into his cloak. "I just have bad memories of that song."
"Me, too," Dagger agreed emphatically.
"Yeah, so do I, after last night," Zidane added, shuddering. "Who'd have thought Steiner would like to spoon?"
"Eheh…yes, that thought alone has given me horrid memories of an already terrifying song," Freya announced, twitching slightly.
Amarant shrugged.
"I still like it."
"Good man!" Steiner beamed at him. "Surely, not everyone can appreciate the subtle charms of such a song!"
"They must be very subtle, indeed," Freya muttered to Dagger, who nodded so emphatically that she nearly flipped over.
"Hey," Vivi piped up tentatively. "If we're going to Lindblum, does that mean we'll get to see Eiko?"
"Oh! Yes it does, Vivi!" Dagger agreed, brightening. "Surely Uncle Cid will agree to let us stay with him while we search for that girl."
"Great," Amarant said flatly. "If the regent asks why we're like this, I'll kill him."
"I'm sure Uncle Cid and Aunt Hilda are diplomatic enough to mind their own business," Dagger assured him.
"Unfortunately, Eiko isn't," Zidane chuckled. "Have fun explaining what happened to a little girl who never quits asking questions, you two."
"She can't ask questions if I kill her, too," Amarant pointed out calmly.
"Oh, come on. Do you honestly think you're intimidating with your little "kill-everything-that-moves" routine?" Freya demanded, quite exasperated.
He blinked, too startled to answer. This seemed to be everyone else's case as well.
"Because you're not, you know," Freya continued airily. "You're coming across more as a spoilt little boy having temper tantrums than anything else."
"Alright," he growled. "That's it."
With that, Amarant proved that the past few days had, indeed, affected his brain adversely, picked his impromptu Siamese – oh, I apologize; conjoined – twin by the arm and hurled her through the air.
We have seen this manoeuvre enough by now to know the result.
Once Dagger was finished casting a hefty healing spell for both of them, the party took once again to the road.
"Do you feel better now?" Freya asked coolly as the two walked, side-by side naturally, several paces behind the rest of the group.
"Much," Amarant replied just as coolly.
"Good."
"Good."
A pause.
"I hate you, you know."
"Good."
She sputtered helplessly for a minute.
"Well, good!"
"Yeah. Good."
"I hate you."
"I know."
Up at the front of the procession, Dagger whimpered painfully.
"Why me?" she asked a dappled cow grazing in a nearby field, imploringly.
The cow, like her turnips the night before, had no answer for her, aside from "moo".
And, of course, a response of "moo" was of very little help to her. Thus did Dagger decide to "just ignore them" and enjoy the remainder of the walk, if such a feat should prove possible.
For the record, it wasn't.
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End Notes: Okay; first things first. I'd like to start out with my typical beg for forgiveness for having taken so bloody long to continue this. Also, this was another very filler-esque chapter, but fear not! We seem to be almost at the point where the story rejoins the plot…if that makes any sense at all. Being a Rhianwen-ism, of course it doesn't make sense, but we'll ignore that for now, okay? Okay. ^_^
Tune in next time to see Eiko and Quina join the party, and Amarant have a grump-a-thon with Zelgadis! Maybe. Or maybe not. ^_^