Looking at the finger that small hand was gripping so tightly, Ollie’s lips loosened into a smile before he even realized it.
- Giocoso
Ollie decided to tell himself it was the egg of some race he simply didn’t know much about. It had somehow ended up inside his body, but it had hatched without incident, so there couldn’t be any real problem.
The thing that had come out of the egg showed absolutely no desire to be separated from Ollie. Like a duckling that imprints on the first living thing it sees and takes it for its mother. By the time a day had passed, he decided he ought to give it a name.
“Asel. What do you think of Asel?”
It tilted its head without answering and smiled. Ollie took that on his own as a clear sign it liked the name. He thought he’d just picked something at random, but the meaning held within it was anything but light.
“But what exactly are you?”
No matter how he looked at it, the child didn’t look any different from himself. Though of course, most beings that lived above the ground tended to look similar to one another.
“To think this came out of my belly……”
The child smiled brightly. His gaze suddenly caught on the golden hair and the eyes that matched it in color. He stared quietly at it, and in the child’s eyes his own reflection looked back at him. Dull, tree-bark-brown hair and green eyes.
In that instant he had the sensation of being shaken awake from a dream. The child that had felt so strangely familiar suddenly, without warning, became deeply unsettling. His change was alive and vivid in the reflection inside the child’s eyes.
“Ah……”
Ollie closed the mouth that had been chattering away happily. And took one step back. The child, sitting on the blanket-lined floor, didn’t take its eyes off him as he moved away.
That was when it happened. The child stood up. It wobbled toward him in that still-unsteady gait, closing the distance little by little.
Ollie’s retreating steps came to a halt. He kept his eyes fixed on the child. Slowly, ever so slowly, the child moved — and at last arrived before him. When he looked down at it, the child stretched out both arms at once, as though it had been waiting for exactly that.
In that moment, the golden eyes and hair that had been unsettling him to no end seemed to vanish from his sight entirely, and all that remained was that wide, bright smile and those plump little arms reaching toward him.
“……Asel.”
He murmured the name in a quiet voice. The child seemed to understand, and reached out to grip the hem of his shirt.
“Asel, Asel……”
He kept calling the name, as if casting a spell on himself. When Ollie still didn’t pick the child up despite how tightly it held on, Asel seemed to take offense — the bright smile dropped from its face and it burst immediately into tears.
“Hey…… hey…… don’t cry……”
He knelt down urgently and wiped the child’s tears. The unease that had struck him had somewhere slipped out of sight. He was simply a helpless adult who had no idea how to comfort a crying child, clumsily swiping at the tears running down Asel’s cheeks.
The child’s race was still entirely unknown to him. Not knowing what Asel was meant not knowing what to feed it either. He could go to Masa or George and perhaps get some answers, but they would obviously tell him to put the egg back where it had been. He didn’t want to do that.
“Asel. You’re still young, so you have to stay here with me for now. Understood?”
A bubbling laugh spilled out of the child. It was only natural given how young Asel was, but the child still couldn’t speak.
When he pulled Asel into his arms, the child wrapped its plump little arms around him in return. That soft, warm weight made Ollie smile quietly. Nothing had really changed, and yet the house somehow felt warmer.
But the joy didn’t last long. With no idea what to feed the child, Ollie had given Asel nothing, and whether from hunger or not, the child began to cry. The loud wailing that filled the small house left him flustered.
“Wh-what am I supposed to feed you? Hey, hey…… stop crying and just say something.”
He held Asel and rocked and soothed, but the crying wouldn’t stop easily.
“You haven’t eaten a thing and you’ve still got such a pair of lungs. Come on, stop crying.”
Not knowing what else to do, Ollie set a chicken egg down in front of the child. He himself had instinctively sought out eggs to eat the moment he was born. But Asel didn’t even glance at it.
Then he suddenly remembered the milk he’d bought at the market a while back. He’d been thinking of putting it in jam, found it didn’t suit his taste, and had shoved it away — he dug it out now in a hurry. He poured it into a cup and quickly tilted it into Asel’s mouth. Thankfully, the child accepted it without resistance. He let out a sigh of relief.
“Eating well.”
The child must have had a big appetite — the whole cup was drained clean. Once full, the crying stopped and Asel rested its head on Ollie’s shoulder. He wiped the milk from the corners of that little mouth with his hand and patted the child’s head.
“Going to have to buy more.”
Ollie had been walking slowly around the room with Asel in his arms, and he laid the sleeping child down on the bed. He made sure to wrap the blanket snugly around Asel so the child wouldn’t sink into the cotton-filled mattress.
“Sleep well.”
He looked at this being he had fed and put to sleep with a slightly unfamiliar gaze. It felt awkward, but not unpleasant. No — it was more than that. He liked it. Because it could only be him, the child had entrusted everything to him.
Looking down at the sleeping child, he thought he would have to go out and buy what was needed quickly. If Asel woke and he wasn’t there, the child wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.
A week passed. During that time, whenever the child was awake, Asel drank milk nestled in Ollie’s arms, and slept for the remainder.
And around that time, Ollie noticed something strange.
“Long time no see, Ollie.”
The old librarian offered his customary greeting to Ollie, who came rushing in out of breath. Contrary to the librarian’s expectation that Ollie would ignore him and walk straight in as usual, Ollie came right up to him.
“David. Do you happen to have any books about the races that live above the ground? It needs to cover all of them.”
The librarian hid his surprise and pushed his glasses up once.
“Hmm…… the races above the ground……”
He picked up a pen and wrote out a string of numbers and letters on a piece of paper. Then he held it out to Ollie.
“It should be in this section.”
“Thanks!”
He snatched the paper and moved off quickly. The old librarian watched that light, agile figure go, gave a small smile, and looked away.
“Hmm…… this one looks good. Beings of the Above-Ground. About as honest a title as you can get!”
The moment he found the book he’d had in mind, he picked it up and walked straight out of the library. The old librarian waved at his retreating back, but naturally Ollie paid it no notice.
The square was full of people. The sky was overcast and it looked as though rain could fall at any moment, and yet people wandered through the square with something simple to eat in one hand. The outdoor terrace of the café was packed too.
“What on earth is even happening?”
“Word is the delegation sets off north next year…… Either way, I just hope it gets sorted quickly. I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Something’s going to happen, I can feel it.”
“Ha! What kind of nonsense is that? What interest would those savages have in a quiet little place like this?”
“The northern savages are…… well, only the city nobles know anything about them — we know nothing at all. Country folk like us stumbling across them unprepared would definitely end up dragged off without a trace.”
He’d been ignoring the conversation at the next table over, but at the mention of city nobles his ears perked up.
“Pfft. Ridiculous. It’s safe here. If it weren’t, the humans of this land would have been wiped out long ago.”
“Whatever kind of negotiations they’re supposedly going for…… honestly. There’s never a quiet day on this land.”
“Well, at least it’s better than when the monsters were running rampant.”
“Mmm……”
Ollie let out a short laugh. Humans, honestly. He thought back to what he’d read in books about the northern savages.
The ones who ruled the northern lands. They preyed on most races, including humans, but the ones who most often became their quarry were the weaker humans. Having grown up at the far southern edge of these lands all his life, the beings of the north felt rather distant to him. Like the villains from a fairy tale. Imaginary figures that would never have any bearing on his own life.
