006: PEN AND PAPER

"The hell is that?" Satero asked, from out of nowhere as he always did. Corosa blinked in surprise, then looked up at the mastersmith hovering over his shoulder.

"Practice," he answered. He stopped writing, though, and slowly folded the paper up as best as he could. The only way he managed it was by substituting his teeth for his right hand.

"For what?" Satero snatched the paper away just as Corosa finished and unfolded it. The process took him much less than time than it had for Corosa to fold it up in the first place. Corosa was beginning to sorely miss the rest of his arm.

"Practice?" Satero repeated, eyes scanning the paper. "Don't look like it to me. Who's this to?"

"Practice, and a letter." Corosa considered trying to grab the paper back, but he felt too weak to make the effort. He scratched at his right shoulder. Phantom arm itching again. This was the best substitute he had, and it was not much of one.

"Eh? To who?" Satero flipped the paper over but was disappointed. It remained blank. He went back to the front side, going back to the start of the letter. "'Yara'? Huh. Girlfriend? Thought you said you didn't have any family."

"Not a girlfriend." Corosa pushed his hair out of his eyes, looking out towards the distance and frowning. "And she hardly counts as family."

"But she is." Satero plunked himself down in front of Corosa, blocking his view. It was a habit that Corosa was quickly coming to hate. Corosa didn't look at people when he was talking, but with Satero constantly getting in his way, there was little he could do about it. And unlike Corosa, the mastersmith insisted on staring straight at whoever he was conversing with. It was unnerving.

This time Corosa met his gaze and scowled. "My daughter. She hardly acknowledges her own existence."

"Why didn't you tell me before? When I asked?" Satero didn't sound angry, but perhaps that was only due to self-control. If that was the case, Satero certainly had more composure than Corosa could ever hope to attain. The mastersmith seemed just as relaxed as usual. Admittedly, he didn't have his usual grin plastered all over his face.

"It's not something I like talking about." That was the safest answer. Not many enjoyed gossiping about their child's mental disorders.

Apparently, Satero did. "Why? What'd she do?"

"She drove herself mad." One of the Pronteran priestesses had attempted to explain the cause of it, but Corosa personally thought she had been just as insane. The woman had been convinced that his daughter's breakdown stemmed from the sin of lust. Corosa had gotten himself away, quickly. His wife would have insisted that Yara was a child who did not know sin; Corosa was simply more worried that insanity was contagious.

Corosa put his pen away and waited as patiently as he could for Satero to return his letter. But the mastersmith was reading it again.

"You didn't say anything 'bout your arm," Satero said while pulling at his bottom lip.

"She wouldn't care." Or even notice. Corosa had been writing to her once a month for a year and a half, and she had yet to reply. Most of his letters he did not send himself, but passed on to willing strangers to deliver from whichever city they stopped at next. As such, he did not entirely trust all of them to have done exactly that. That, and messenger birds were not exactly reliable. But he still believed that at least a few would have reached Yara after such a long period of time.

He had never expected her to write back. The last time he had seen her, she simply repeated an old nursery rhyme over and over again and never seemed to register his presence. Corosa had not stayed long.

"You didn't mention me, either. I'm hurt." Satero flashed a smile and folded the letter up. "How're you gonna deliver it? If you won't go find a city or something, I don't think you can still send it off with any ol' bird."

Corosa hesitated before answering. "I was hoping you would send it for me."

"What's with you and the cities, anyway? Never quite figured that one out," said Satero. He slipped the letter into pocket as he did so.

Corosa started to reach with the stump of his right arm, thought better of it, and seized Satero's wrist with his left hand instead. "I'm not done writing," he said, feeling slightly irritable. His writing had only taken up half the page and, if he remembered correctly, stopped mid-sentence. Satero evidently wasn't thinking.

"Oh? Whoops. My bad." Satero scratched his head and handed the letter back. The paper had just left his fingertips when he added, "Sorry for grabbing it from you, too."

"Mm." Corosa did not say anything more, trying to pick up his last train of thought.

"…You sure you don't want me to write for you?" Satero asked.

"This is practice," Corosa said for at least the third time. He set the paper down on the case storing all his possessions and started writing again.

It took him forever and a day just to finish a single word. Aside from being right-handed, he also found it impossible to hold the paper down. Before Satero had arrived, Corosa had made more than one dash for it as the wind blew it away.

He looked down at it and sighed. This was going to be one of the shortest letters written. It was hard to resist the temptation of simply not writing; the only thing stopping him was his own conscience.

"Y'know, just watching you try to write is uncomfortable," said Satero, interrupting his thoughts. "'S really all that important to you?"

"Being able to use this hand is." They hadn't encountered any particularly aggressive monsters or people yet, but Corosa liked to believe that he still had a while to go before he died. Doubtless there would be a few more fights in between now and his death.

Fighting aside, simply making his way through life was hard now.

"Was thinking," Satero suddenly said. He tapped his fingers against Corosa's case to get his attention. "We should head for Einbroch."

"What for?" Corosa ignored Satero's hand and went on writing.

"That's where ya come from, right?"

"No." Corosa put the pen down and flexed his hand.

"So where?"

"Prontera." Corosa decided to give up on writing for the moment and picked at a hangnail instead.

"What?" This time, Satero knocked his knuckles against Corosa's case. "You're shitting me. We've already gone past Prontera."

As soon as Corosa looked up, Satero added, "I wasn't going to ask you to go in, anyway. Speaking of that, you never answered me."

Corosa tore hangnail off and watched a drop of blood squeeze itself out. "Had an encounter with some place. I'd rather not go through it again."

"That's all?" Satero stretched his arms out behind him. He arched an eyebrow at Corosa. Evidently he'd been hoping for more detail than that.

"Yes." Corosa felt no need to explain anymore.

He doubted that he'd be able to go into more detail than that, even if Satero had held a gun to his head.