Tsaimath
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Chapter 452
🕑 Added 2021-07-16 16:01:05 +0000 UTCWith my own video posted and a comment made under the thread from Kerrin, one of the Crusaders of Light, I was reasonably certain that nobody would think to connect me with the troubles the Crusaders had run into. It was unlikely to happen in the first place, with nothing but general vicinity, with me being confirmed within a few hundred kilometers of their location, and somewhat similar traits, as in, female, associated with birds, darkness and mind-magic, pointing at me, but there could always be someone who just threw out random ideas. Which, in this case, would have been a case of a broken clock being right twice a day, something I hopefully had headed off before the idea could ever take hold.
After considering my options for a moment, and checking the clock, I decided to head out for a bit, to take care of my chores, just to wait out the somewhat weakened state using my Avatar had left me in.
As always, there was a momentary disconnect when leaving the capsule, a short moment that I needed to adjust to my actual body and the slow-moving world around me. By now, after over half a year of using the capsule, I had mostly gotten used to it, but I had a feeling it would always feel a little weird.
Yawning, I stepped out of the capsule, smiling when I realised that winter had left me an early present, in the form of a load of snow, almost glowing in the reflected sunlight. It would soon melt, but for now, the world was covered in a white blanket. I quickly grabbed a sweater and stepped out onto my balcony, grabbing a handful of snow, feeling the cold seep into my palms. There was a smile on my face, as a small part of my mind wanted to reach out, to grab hold of the snow with Ice-Magic, to let it flutter in the wind and float across the world. Alas, there was no Astral Power within my body, or the world I was in, there was no magic. At least no magic I could wield, the picture of the city’s roofs, covered in pristine white, was magical in its own way. Just not in the same way it would be on Mundus.
A gust of wind reminded me that, while Morgana was nigh invulnerable to cold, Samantha was most certainly not, and the comfortable soft-pants I wore while within the capsule provided little protection against the freezing wind. Shivering a little, I brushed off the snow from my hands, letting it join the still lightly falling snow outside, and stepped back into my apartment, closing the door behind me. Maybe going for a walk would be a good idea, once I had finished my shopping.
It was always fun to walk around during the winter, when snow was on the ground, and the city descended into chaos. We didn’t get enough snow to force everyone to get used to it, instead we got a few days, sometimes a week or three, of snow each year, turning the road and sidewalks into ice-skating rinks, just without the skates.
While I had managed to carefully make my way to the supermarket, I had been quite amused, watching a middle-aged man trying to clear the snow on his sidewalk with, of all things, a dustpan. He managed to get rid of most of the snow, leaving the frozen ice beneath, nicely polished and ready to trip up the first person who stepped on it. Namely, him.
Not that motorists had any better cards, I was easily able to outpace the cars that pretended to be snails, at least as long as I treated things like an intense exercise in balance. Mrs Wu would be proud of me, using even the weather as training for the essential skills, as she called it.
Once my shopping was done, I went back out, towards a nearby park. After a short look at the large, open space within, and hearing the commotion caused by a horde of children, I decided not to go there, instead walking along the path around an artificial lake. It was a lot more serene and comfortable, allowing me to enjoy the quiet. The stillness, a city slowed to a crawl by ice and snow. Stretching out my hand, I watched as a few snowflakes landed on my fingers, only to quickly melt away.
“Sam?” A questioning voice called out, startling me out of my reverie, “Samantha, is that you?” It took me a moment to recognise the voice, it was a familiar one, even if I hadn’t heard it in a while. Mentally switching to a polite, social mode took me a moment, but my mother had taken quite a bit of effort to make the switch a conditioned one. With a friendly smile on my face, I turned around, towards the voice of an old friend.
“Chris, hello.” I politely greeted the male coming towards me. He hadn’t changed a whole lot since we had met the last time, a little older but that was to be expected after three years.
“It’s been a while.” I added, my smile straining a little as I remembered our last meeting, shortly after he had announced his decision to permanently retire from his role as Team-Captain of Amaranthine, to fully focus on his schooling. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms, mostly because I hadn’t been able to handle the negative feelings that had come with my best friend, the one who had been the driving force behind the dream we had lived for years, had decided to quit. He had been the one providing comfort and sympathies after my parents had passed, making what I perceived as him abandoning me extra hard.
Curiously, there was a visibly pregnant female next to him, their hands interlocked in what I could only describe in an intimate manner. Just as curious as her proximity to him was the look on her face, a look I could only describe as thinly veiled hostility.
“Sam, let me introduce you to my wife, Jenn.” he told me, looking at the woman next to him with a warm gaze. She looked… average, like one of the countless women who filled the coffee-shops, sitting around and gossiping. Neither obese nor muscular, mouse brown hair and eyes, in a simple, shoulder-length cut. Next to Chris’ and his rather large, both in height and weight, frame she seemed small, but when compared to me, she was both a lot taller and certainly carrying more weight, some of it in places where females were supposed to have that fat. Not that I could be sure it was innate or due to her advanced pregnancy, not that it truly mattered to me.
“Jenn, that’s Sam, I’m sure I told you about her. We used to be together, on the same Team, years ago. You know, you could say that she paid for my schooling.” Chris introduced her, the smile on his face wide and appearing genuinely happy, while the smile on her face twisted a little further.
“Hello, I’ve heard so much about you.” She greeted me, her voice carefully controlled.
“Hello.” I replied, not quite sure how to continue a conversation. I was about to politely excuse myself and get on with my walk, when Chris spoke up again.
“If you don’t need to be somewhere, why don’t we go, get a coffee? It’s been years, I’d love to catch up.” he suggested, his eyes sparkling. He still looked like an overgrown labrador, his blonde hair in desperate need of a comb and his smile looking almost manic. Knowing him, he had decided that coffee was a good idea and there was little any force in the universe could convince him that he was wrong. It was that energy that had driven Amaranthine forward, following paths I had planned. He had been the energy, the leadership and heart, while I had liked to think of myself as the brain of the operation.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to disturb the two of you.” I tried to get out of it, using a polite refusal I had read in some book. “You look like you are on a date.” I added, hoping to get out of the situation without being impolite. For a moment, I considered abandoning my mother’s teachings of decorum and to simply walk away, but they were ingrained too deeply into me.
“Oh, no, please, join us.” Jenn agreed with her husband, “You know, I’ve heard your name so often, but I always thought Sam was a guy. How did you get that nick-name?” she asked, looking down on me, both literally and metaphorically.
“My name is Samantha, that is where I got the name.” I replied, before letting out a long-drawn out breath, resigning myself to my fate. “Alright, there’s a good coffee-shop over there, near the tram-station. Why don’t we go there?” I asked, knowing that Chris most likely had no idea where to get a semi-decent cup of coffee or tea around here. If he had even an idea where to get anything like that nearby.
