"Why aren't we staying to supper?" Kyoka asked, once they had gone farther from the house, "It would be a hot meal."
"Look how many people are still living there. They can't afford to feed two more," Denki said, "That's why I left the village, for goodness sake. Remember? I told you they wouldn't notice if I was gone."
"I don't know how things like this are supposed to go," Kyoka allowed, "but in the tribe we act pleased to see people after they come back from a mission, and we give them a feast.... Is that not the way here?"
"Nope, it's more like, 'oh, you're home, huh?'" Denki said, a bit dejected, "It's not really a big deal, though. Some families just aren't tight knit like that. And when it's that big, what do you expect? You know? Not everyone can get coddled. I'm fine with it. I like being a bard. And I can visit any time I want."
He didn't seem as fine with it as he said, but Kyoka didn't pry into it further. Instead she focused on the problem at hand-- the blight.
Sure enough, they found it. It was as ugly as ever.
Denki and Kyoka stared at the blighted area and where they could see signs of the spell restraining it. Kyoka had gotten used to seeing this on the quest, and it didn't faze her much, but Denki turned pale. "What?" she said, "We've seen blight before."
"Never this close to my home town," Denki said.
Kyoka pictured it coming close to her tribe and started to understand what he meant. "I see."
"This is not good," Denki said, "Is there anyone we know who could get rid of this?"
"It's small," Kyoka said, "just a few farms affected. I think Momo could eradicate it."
"She can do that?" Denki said.
"Of course. The blight is dark magic. You saw how she used the staff against that Dark Mage," Kyoka said, "but she couldn't reverse a lot on her own without the tribe backing her up. But this is not much. She probably could handle this."
"Right, as long as it doesn't get any bigger," Denki said, sounding more hopeful, "We just need to hurry."
"But, Denki..." Kyoka didn't like to say it, but she was a blunt person, "Momo is pretty far away, and we could spend weeks looking for her and not find her. Even if we left right now."
"What are you saying?" Denki frowned. "That we shouldn't try to do something?"
"No no, but maybe there's a better way," Kyoka said, "The tribe itself. Collectively, they might have the power to do it also. It's not as good as a paladin, but it's faster."
"Aren't you forgetting something, Kyoka?" Denki said a bit peevishly, "Your tribe hates men! That's 50% of this village! They aren't going to come help us, not for a small blight like this."
That was a possibility.
"We could ask," Kyoka said.
Denki scowled and started walking away. She followed uncertainly.
"It's just easier for you to go home than to patch things up with Princess Momo," Denki finally said, bitterly.
Kyoka frowned. "That's not true!"
"Yes, it is," Denki said, "You're running away from it, just admit it. You want to go home, and I get it, but just... don't pretend like that's just better for both of us. It's better for you."
"Uh--" Kyoka hesitated. No one had ever made such an accusation to her. She wasn't sure what to say.
"Don't worry, you can go home first. It's not that far from here," Denki went on, sounding a bit defeated, "I'll just look for Momo afterward. I might as well. I've never been that far West before. It'll be a good chance to gather more stories."
Kyoka still didn't know what to say.
"We might as well stop by and see my father, though," Denki said, "It's not worth getting back on the road just for the afternoon."
"All right..." Kyoka agreed. She was a little afraid if she didn't agree, Denki was just going to stop walking altogether. She'd never seen him this down before.
But he seemed to perk up once they went back down his street and found his three siblings again and Tibult, who was giving alpaca rides to them (perhaps unsolicited, but she put up with it like a saint).
Trixie pointed them toward where they could find his father. Burnt Oak Farm wasn't too far from the village. They were able to get there in under 30 minutes.
Kyoka had never seen a harvest before, and the crops and tools and laborers would have been enough to grasp her attention. But Denki wasn't interested in that. He found his family-- two brothers who were close to him in age, and his father, who looked a lot like him.
Kyoka hung back more this time; she was tired of people assuming they were involved. It probably didn't really help, but at least she could act like she didn't hear them.
Denki mostly just asked them for more details, but they couldn't tell him and more about the blight than his mother could and didn't seem inclined to believe he could help either. They told him what the were planning to do to make ends meet and asked if he was going to come back to the village for good. Hearing that he still intended to be a bard, his father said he wasn't making a living off of it.
Kyoka couldn't understand why Denki just wasn't explaining about the quest, and that they had met some important people, and he had connections. She was living proof of it, after all. But he never mentioned it.
They did persuade him to help a little with carrying food in, which he took off his hat and coat to do.
Kyoka didn't help. She would have if asked, but none of the men thought about asking a woman to help them do this. Women did help with harvest on occasion, but not carrying the heavy containers of food or using the large scythes to cut things with. Mostly they harvested fruits and vegetables, and that was not where they were working.
A few of the young men did look at her with interest. She was an exotic creature to them. But her stony-eyed gaze kept them from approaching.
After the end of the day came, there was a meal for the workers that the two of them joined in on. "If you stuck around a few more weeks, we'd have a corn husking party," one of Denki's brothers told him, "You never know-- you might find a red ear."
Denki shrugged. "I'm pretty sure all the pretty girls around here are taken by now, aren't they?"
"That's the truth," the other brother said, "We should do what you did and go off to other villages to find a fine looking girl."
"Heh... it's not as easy as you think..." Denki said nervously, praying Kyoka hadn't heard that. She chose to ignore it.
It seemed Denki's whole family could not be convinced that an escort for a lady was really a thing Denki would do without any other motives. If Kyoka had been more experienced, she might have found that telling, but as it was, she thought it was stupid.
His brothers did try to talk to her. His father didn't.
"So, how did you, ... uh, end up gettin' Denki to escort you? Fresh out of knights?" said the younger one, who looked about 14. The other was 15 to 16. Apparently that was marrying age around here, from the remarks people made. The young one's name was Duncan, and the older one was Duthbert (apparently, they had run out of D-names after the two oldest girls, who were Daisy and Deborah, according to Denki. Five in a row had exhausted his parents' imagination).
"Yeah, he's not exactly robust," Duthbert agreed.
Kyoka was really getting annoyed with this. "It was convenient," she said coolly, "I really don't see what concern it is of yours."
They looked at her askance.
"What she means is, you shouldn't ask a lady questions like that," Denki tried to smooth it over, "It's not polite."
"You sure put on airs now," Duncan said, but at least it was more good natured than his parents, "I guess that's because you're so fancy with the hat, the lute, and a llama."
"Alpaca!"
"I can't say that word, for crying out loud," Duncan complained, "Anyhoo, now that you're a gentlemen and all, you should get yourself a fancy house."
"And a horse," Duthbert said.
"I don't like horses, they're too tall," Denki said.
Kyoka choked on a laugh. For some reasons that struck her as funny.
"Horses are noble." Duncan seemed to share Denki's love of words. "You're just afraid you'd fall off of one."
"It'd be a long fall for him," Duthbert said.
Denki was shorter than both of them.
"At least I could tell a horse from a mule," he retorted.
"It was one time," Duncan said, "and how was I supposed to know?"
Kyoka picked up an item of food. "What is this?" she asked.
"That? It's a meat pie," Duthbert said, "Special treat for finishing the harvest of this field today. We're moving to a new one tomorrow."
"Don't ask what the meat in it is," Duncan added, "Trust me, you don't want to know."
Denki eyed his own pie. "Please tell me it's not a squirrel again?"
"What you don't know won't kill you," Duthbert said sagely.
Kyoka had no problem eating squirrel. It wasn't her first time. The pie was good.
After that, the brothers asked them where they were going to sleep.
"Outside," Denki said, "There's no room in the house, you know. I don't know how all you cram in there."
"Actually, sometimes we don't," they told him, "but you shouldn't make a girl asleep outside, she can take our section and you can join us on the roof."
That sounded dangerous.
"I don't like sleeping indoors, so don't worry about it," Kyoka said, "I always sleep outdoors unless it's raining. Then it's a tent."
"That's so... impressive," they said admiringly, "You're pretty tough, huh? Are you a warrior or something? Is that why you have on armor?"
Finally someone noticed.
"Though with the lightning strikes around here, you probably shouldn't be wearing so much metal..." Duthbert said pragmatically.
"Does thinking of that at the last minute just run in your family?" Kyoka grumbled to Denki.
In the end, Duncan proposed they sleep by a haystack, like little boy blue. That was meant to be a joke, but it ended up there really wasn't anywhere more comfortable in the village, so that's what they did. At least neither of them had hay fever.
Tibult joined them, but Denki had to tie her up farther away, so she wouldn't eat the hay.
"Well, this turned out to be an exhausting day." He leaned back in the hay with a sigh and put his hat over his eyes.
Kyoka wasn't as sleepy, since she hadn't done much work. She was staring straight ahead.
"I have a question."
"If it's about my family, then I pass," Denki mumbled.
"It's just... why is your name different from all of theirs?" This had been bothering Kyoka all day.
"What?" Denki looked up. "Oh, you mean cause it's a different language? Well, that's actually a funny story. When my mom had me, the midwife in town was a foreigner, you know, and there was a lightning storm going on, but she came to the house to help anyway, because it was my mom's first baby, and she said that's the hardest one (I don't know if that's true or not, but my mom thought so). Anyway, so I guess right at the moment I was... born, you know, lightning went down the chimney and hit our stew pot, and the house almost lit on fire. But my father put it out in time. The midwife said they should name me Denki after it, and that I must have been born lucky, because under those circumstances, only good luck explained it. She said it was pretty lucky to survive being born during a lightning strike."
[As you can probably guess, Denki means electricity in Japanese, while Kyoka can mean different things, including permission, a kind of poem, and in the show's case "sound, reverberation" and "incense", and is a combination of parts of her parents' names.]
"Huh," Kyoka said, "Somehow, for you, that story makes perfect sense."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Denki said.
"It suits a bard, doesn't it?" Kyoka shrugged.
"I guess it kind of does." Denki smiled. "I didn't think of that before.... Huh.... Well, and being lucky helps with being a bard. I mean, after all," he shrugged, "I am probably the only person on our quest who didn't get hurt at least one time. I never get sick either. That's lucky."
"Dumb luck," Kyoka said.
"And there's that mockery. I was starting to think something was wrong with you," Denki sighed drolly.
Kyoka shrugged. "You wouldn't know it was me if I didn't add that at the end. It'd be like I was under a spell."
"Don't try to justify it. You just like picking on me," Denki grumbled.
"That is true," Kyoka said mercilessly. Then she sobered. "I have another question."
"Shoot." Denki expected a another harmless one.
"Why didn't you just tell your family about the quest?" Kyoka said, "Not the part about the 8th, but that is was important, and you met a lot of important people. They might have believed you could help that way."
"My parents?" Denki snorted, "They'd think I was making up a story. I always do."
"You mean you lied to them?"
"Nah, I'm no liar, but some people just cannot understand the difference between a story and a lie," Denki said, "I used to make 'em up for my siblings all the time. My parents thought it was a waste of time."
"It's not useful, but it's harmless, isn't it?" Kyoka said.
"I beg to differ. Stories are useful," Denki said, "When you think about stories, you think about stuff you haven't seen before. It makes you curious. Who wants to only ever experience one thing their whole life--? Oh right, forgot who I was talking to. Well, that's not for me. That's why I became a bard. I picked up the lute a little by watching a different bard play one."
"By ear? That's hard," Kyoka said.
"It took years for me to learn it really well," Denki said, "but now I'm okay. Easier to compose my own songs than copy other people's, though."
"How did you even know what a bard was?" Kyoka asked.
"One came through the village. I think he was lost or something," Denki said, "but he made a song about the thunderstorms. I guess it was like a sign from God for me. I thought it was such a neat idea. The rest is history, as they say."
"I suppose," Kyoka said.
"Why the sudden curiosity?" Denki said, "You've never asked me anything about myself before."
"Oh? Well, we're here. I can't help but wonder," Kyoka said a little defensively, "Why wouldn't? Anyway, I was just curious. It's not like I really care." She turned very purposely away and pretended to go to sleep.
They both were woken up later by the wind picking up and clouds covering the moon-- and thunder sounding.
"Ah, crud," Denki said, "I thought we'd be in the clear for one night!"
"We should find shelter!" Kyoka cried.
"You can't run out there wearing that" Denki declared, "You'd better get inside real fast."
They booked it for the nearest building, which was just a farm shed. Lightning struck not too far from where they were, but it hit a metal weathercock instead of them. Still, it was enough to scare Kyoka, and she ran faster.
They got inside. Denki glanced out the window. "Well, I think they'll understand why we trespassed this once.... Dang it, I told you to put on something else."
"I don't have---Oh, forget it." Kyoka sat down. "Of course your village just has to have lightning strikes.... Hey, wait a minute, why didn't you tell your family you're a mage? Don't they know about the lightning and the... mockery?"
"I think not telling them about the vicious mockery is kind of obvious," Denki said, "Can you imagine my mother's face? Eh, no.... And... I don't know, I guess I don't use the lightning much, so I never thought of it. I don't even know why I can do that. I just picked it up after a few lightning strikes around here got a little too close, and I realized I could do it."
"That seems kind of important," Kyoka said, "I bet it had something to do with the strike at birth. Magic happens at times like that."
"It may be, but I don't have good control over it, so why does it matter?" Denki said.
Kyoka shook her head. "It seems to be you could be a stronger mage if you took the time to learn how to use that right. Do you know how rare powerful lightning is? Even a little bit would be enough to make even warriors wary of you."
"But I don't want to be a mage. I like being a bard," Denki said, "The lightning does come in handy for dealing with mages who get a bit frisky with bards around, but, other than that, I don't really need it."
"You are a moron," Kyoka said incredulously.
"Not everyone has to be the same, Kyoka," Denki said testily. He seemed far more high strung since they arrived here. "I don't tell you how to use your magic, and we don't talk about how you have bard potential and bit my head off when I said so, so how about you leave me and my magic alone?"
There wasn't much she could say to that.... It was too true. So she fell silent.
After several awkward minutes, Denki seemed to regret being quite so harsh. "Uh... sorry, that was a low blow. I guess it's not the same exactly. I mean you had a fair question, since I do use it sometimes, so...uh... sorry for biting your head off."
Kyoka sniffed. "It's okay."
"Are you crying?" Denki was horrified.
"What? No?" Kyoka wiped her face. "I wasn't crying. I just got wind and dust in my eyes while we were outside, and they're stinging. You didn't notice before because you were talking, that's all."
"Oh," Denki said, "Well, yeah, that happens out here. Need a handkerchief?"
"No," Kyoka snapped, "Stop being so nice! It makes me uncomfortable."
"You have problems, Kyoka," Denki said.
"Shut up."
The storm blew over some time later the next morning, and they were going to get back on the road, but Denki's siblings (the older ones) came looking for them out of concern, thinking they had been blown away.
Then his sisters saw they had hay and straw all over them and said they had to come right home and take a bath and get a change of clothes. They wouldn't let up until they agreed. Denki's easy-goingness didn't run into the family, apparently.
Experiencing a bath in the homestyle was something new for Kyoka, and not entirely pleasant, as it was much colder and smaller to bathe in a tub than it is in a spring or pool. Though having hot water was a novelty for her. Warriors only used cold water.
And the clothes the sisters got her were rougher and more simply made than warrior's clothes, but lighter than armor, at least. They told her to keep them on till she got well away from the village, or she might get struck by lightning. They didn't seem to understand that a storm was necessary for that, or they were pulling her leg, but she had to humor them either way.
Denki just used his old clothes, but he did take the chance to polish some stuff and oil his lute.
Then Trixie informed him that he'd missed her birthday last month, and he owed her a song.
"And you owe Kate one, too," she added.
"Yeah, a song!" all the other siblings agreed, who were present.
"Denki probably is too tired for that," Sally tried to say.
"Oh, it's fine," Denki said, "I've learned a bunch of new songs anyway. We should have a little concert."
The village didn't have much musical talent outside of a fellow with a hurdygurdy and another one with a jew's harp, so they might well be hankering for some entertainment.
Kyoka sat off to the side to pretend that all this was a waste of time to her, but she was still listening.
All the children in the neighborhood came out into the street and started doing make-shift dances, like kids will do. And a few people closer to her age joined them too, some rather shyly asking each other. Denki played quite a few of the songs he'd learned since leaving. Then Trixie, Sammy, and some of the middle siblings whose names Kyoka couldn't remember, if they'd ever told her to being with, started pestering Denki to play "their songs".
Denki didn't want to do it while the others were around, but they all said they didn't mind anyway. "It's a birthday tradition anyway," one young lady said.
Denki gave in and played a song with Trixie's name in it. It seemed to be about things she liked.
Kyoka would have died of embarrassment if someone did that for her, but apparently being self conscious was not a thing for these villagers. They all thought it was the best thing ever to have a personal song, and all Denki's sibling asked him to sing theirs, and he had one for each of them.
Daisy, the oldest girl, saw Kyoka's confusion and explained, "Back when Duncan was born, Denki was trying to come up with songs, and he made one up to amuse the new baby. It caught on. All of us wanted our own song, and then it turned into a birthday tradition. I mean, we don't know exactly what day we were born on, but we'll pick a time around when it happened and say it's our birthday. Usually it's just something like this."
"I see..." Kyoka said. It was kind of cute, she supposed.
"It may seem a little simple to a lady like yourself," Daisy said, "but we're a small village. This is fancy for us. It's a party when Denki comes back to town, the only time I ever get to hear anything about the outside world."
"So you never leave this village?" Kyoka said.
"Where would I go? I can't read maps," Daisy shrugged, "It's not a bad thing. But one likes to hear a bit more about what other people in other places do. You're the first outsider he's brought home with him though, so that's a new one. We haven't even heard your story yet. I really thought you were going to sneak out of the village without him telling it, but it looks like we know him too well. He never can resist a chance to play songs for us." She winked at Kyoka. "That's the way to get Denki to do anything, by the way. Turn it into a song."
Kyoka didn't know why she said that.
Upon more urging, Denki also composed a song for Kate the baby. Kate seemed to be in less pain today and didn't cry much.
Sally didn't mind all the ruckus, but she told them they needed to get to the temple. It was a Holy Day.
This was also new to Kyoka. The family then basically talked Denki into staying longer so he could tell them his story after the ceremony was over. And that he should come with them.
The ceremony was outside, due to there being only a small temple shrine used for special occasions, that not everyone could fit into. It was damp and chilly, but people sat on old blankets.
[A church in this time period would be more accurate, but I wanted to keep to the internal logic of the story being more like DnD with polytheism.]
Denki was surprised Kyoka even sat through it, but afterward she said she thought it was of interest to hear about a different god other than Creati.
"It's not weird at all?" Denki said.
"Some people think that all the gods may just be different faces of the same Divine Being," Kyoka said, "I don't know what I think about it, but, if it is true, then a true understanding requires understanding all the faces of it, wouldn't you think?"
"I guess that's one way to look at it," Denki mused.
After that, Denki did tell the story of his travels... omitting several detail about Deku and the SOL and the 8th. Mostly he just described fighting some monsters and thieves. He didn't scruple to include Kyoka's exploits also, making them think of her even more as some kind of high person.
Kyoka found it embarrassing but didn't interrupt because the audience was so captive.
After all that, they didn't even leave that day because Sally insisted it was wrong to travel on a Holy Day.
After another night, this one actually spent inside to avoid the dampness, they finally departed the next morning. All that, and it would only take them maybe a day or two more to get to the Tribal land. The delay really wasn't worth complaining about when they were so close, but Kyoka almost wished it hadn't happened, because she felt strange about all of it.
What was strange was that she hadn't hated every minute of being in a village. That was truly troublesome to her.