This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

She did, however, find a quite nice umbrella, and on a whim, or perhaps because she was bored, she decided that she was going to venture out into the rain.

Verity did like the rain, but rain was better from the inside with a hot cup of tea, listening to the raindrops beat a staccato on the roof. There was something nice about the smell, though, and even the wetness in the air. It brought a vibrancy to the plants, a color that they didn’t normally have in the sun.

The walk took her into Pucklechurch, and from there it was a question of where to go next. It wasn’t a market day, the taverns held no appeal given that Verity still technically worked at one, and there was nothing she wanted to shop for, though she had brought her rings. That left the temple for a bit of prayer, never her favorite thing, or trying to get out of the rain by finding some kind of activity to take part in. On rainy days in Pucklechurch, people did some extra baking, the quilting circle gathered, and the woodworking space grew crowded with amateurs using the communal equipment. Verity idly wondered whether there was some kind of gardening group in Pucklechurch, but if there were, it seemed unlikely that they were meeting on a rainy day. Besides, while it was exciting to be back in a garden again, she was worried that the Pucklechurch Gardening Society, or whatever it might be called, would have all the same problems as the group she’d belonged to in Dondrian.

Verity was saved from having to make a choice when she saw the town cartier, with whom she ostensibly had some business.

Xy Longstride wasn’t, in a technical sense, the ‘town’ cartier, but she did service Pucklechurch, bringing in mail and goods from elsewhere, along with larger packages on occasion. She was a sprightly girl, not too much older than Verity, and yes, Verity did have some interest. Xy had a kind of rough-and-tumble way about her, and they hadn’t interacted all that much aside from a few pleasantries at the Fig and Gristle. The timings had been a little bit suspect in the past few weeks, made mostly in the evenings, when Verity was working. Xy had even stopped by for dinner a few times and listened to Verity play, but if the attraction was mutual, Xy had never acted on it.

Verity didn’t really understand girls. She’d had one brief flirtation at the conservatory that went nowhere and felt like it might have been imagined, save for the memory of a kiss being burned into her brain. The Church of Garos quoted one in ten women being interested in women, but that left nine in ten of them decidedly not, and it sometimes felt, to Verity, like finding a needle in a haystack. There were exceptions, of course, obvious signals like wearing a pin of Garos, but the number of girls who wore such a pin seemed to be far less than one in ten.

Xy wasn’t wearing such a pin, but there were other signals, like a particular haircut that seemed to be universally worn by that kind of woman and an outfit that was slightly boyish, overalls that stopped just below the knees. She was the kind of girl with a grin almost permanently plastered on her face, eager and ready for anything. Xy was the sort of girl who was like catnip to Verity, in the sense that around such a girl, Verity got nervous and started doing things that didn’t make a lot of sense.

“Hi!” said Verity as she came over to Xy. The cartier was standing out in the rain eyeing a package.

“Hi Verity,” said Xy. The rain didn’t seem to be touching her: the work of some kind of entad, Verity was pretty sure, but it was hard to see what was happening to the water as it fell. “I heard you joined a party to go raid dungeons?”

“Oh, right!” said Verity. Her voice felt like it was an octave too high. “Yes, a week ago. It’s really been pretty great.” There were too many superlatives, but it was the kind of problem that became apparent only once the words were out of her mouth, impossible to correct in the moment.

“I fought some monsters,” said Xy, nodding. She looked at Verity, taking her eyes off the package for the first time. “Ten dungeons, which is kind of a lot. It’s how I got this thing.” She pointed to a flask that hung on her hip. Verity had never seen it before. “Keeps me dry, but needs to be emptied every ten minutes or so when it’s raining, which is a pain when I’m on the move.”

“Yeah,” said Verity. She was nodding too much. “Exactly.”

“So you’re done at the Fig and Gristle?” asked Xy, who seemed to have abandoned whatever she’d been in the process of. “Aww. I’ll miss your music.”

“Well, I won’t be done done,” said Verity. “But I’m going to get replaced, and no one is clamoring for an encore. So.”

“Are you sure they’re not clamoring?” asked Xy. She smiled at Verity and cupped a hand to her ear. “I, for one, hear it. People like your music. I like your music.”

“Thanks!” chirped Verity. “But we might actually see some of each other, since there’s some dungeon work.”