Free Web NovelChapter 599: Chapter 599 — A Sort Of Welcome With Many Silver Linings, pt1
"There is an army outside, dear. Do you think your people are finally revolting from under your tyrannical rule?"
"What?"
A bead of dread fixed in Qatrand’s heart as the train eased to a stop. Her wife had not seemed serious, but tendrils of spirit had still gone out further than usual to check. Questing along the platform and reading the state of affairs outside of the building before her eyes could prove it. And before her ears had been hit by the wall of *sound* when a familiar adjutant waved and signaled someone to open the station doors.
Banked up against roped cordons along the road into the city were people, emitting the sort of roar that happened when many separate voices spoke, cheered, and laughed. The kind that a person felt in the cavity of their chest in a din of bass and against their temples in a migraine of treble. Qatrand gil Yecine had not needed the doors open to know what must have happened.
The responsible name just surfaced. Flat and resigned. The way a squad commander notes of their subordinates actions before taking appropriate responsibility for them.
’...Leysah. I said a small reception would be alright...’
Stacked along every roofline in view and out of it for now, in single file on a winding route so everyone in attendance could see clearly... were people. Not the courteous handful of necessary functionaries and major player well-wishers waiting at the Warden Patrician office she expected. The sort that the phrase by her First Adjutant, ’a little event’, had so gently painted in her mind, back on that fortuitous morning she left *early* to go to the Goltbred home region.
But she had approved of it in a hurry, without constraints. Even sent back a letter through Elua’s Skydancer that told them when their planned arrival was. And while her battle-sister was pretty much a straight-laced person, when it came to gifting or doing something for people she actually liked, she would go far out of her way - almost like a certain mintdrop that shared an ancient connection.
That comparison made it hard to be mad, but coincidentally easier to punish. Or so the swordswoman noted in herself as the four travelers stood before the waving crowd. Qatrand at the head of their group was followed by Elua, a quarter-step beside and a half-step back. Aurehl trailed directly behind the girl she came to care for, plenty of steps not to step on heels but also to lunge to help... and little Onya tried to be roughly horizontal with her sister, close enough to grab for her hand.
"All those people are just... waiting for you?"
"That does seem to be the case. Waiting for us in surprise. Right, dear?"
"They aren’t attackers, El."
"I know they all aren’t. But it pays to just be slightly wary of well-wishers you have never met and had *no idea* about."
Onya er Goltbred stood gripping her sister’s answering hand with wide brown eyes darting around, as the two women of the hour lightly bantered. She had seen large gatherings like the crowds in markets and had also been carried into the fortress during the Descent... when she was barely old enough for a mortal to remember well. Crowds of many thousands streaming into one giant structure was enough to alter anyone’s perception of great scale.
But so too did it provide valuable frame of reference. Even if she felt she needed some instruction on how a person was meant to feel about a thing like this! Feeling her sibling being overwhelmed, the reincarnator crouched more elegantly than a tight corset would comfortably allow. Sending the sheer white layers of her illusory costume pooling on the stone beneath them.
She put her mouth close to her small ear with a cupped hand. Then pitched her voice to not be too loud once the Gaseous barrier blocking the outside noise tightened to fully woven completion.
"Our father was also welcomed home like this, once upon a time... as Hero. He walked back through some of the same streets we visited recently of our home city, with the whole of the population screaming his name until they were hoarse with happiness."
"Really? He wasn’t fibbing to sound cool?"
"No. He really is... was... is? An important person."
A small nod, slowed in motion, the way one agrees to a fact that one is in the strugglesome process of revising against opinion. He had told her a lot of stories, but when she repeated them to others they mostly just responded politely or in a way that only seeded doubt in her little heart. After all, dad was great as he was but she snuck up on him all the time!
’Wait...’
...She was starting to think there were *lots* of little fibs she hadn’t ever chosen to recognize... for now that she thought about it, his startled face at those times always had a kind of smile in his eyes. A fact that she used to once just consider as him being happy it was her - and not a wild beast that got into his study. Instead of the reality of just being *happy it was her*, his second daughter, spending time playing with him. Even if through overused hide and roar pranks.
"Come on, no complicated faces. You’ll get stuck in that thinking one."
"Will not!"
A hand pat the top of her young head before the woman turned back to her position as a dutiful wife. The Goltbred heiress stepped after Qat, looking quite like a kind of dainty figure that a stiff wind might fold in two... at least next to the height, muscles, and presence of the heavy blade wielding swordswoman. That contrast wouldn’t really change in anyone’s eyes in the coming welcome-parade, no matter what realizations they gained about El - but the blonde *would* get rapidly tired of the show that her wife was putting on to the crowd.
And she fully intended, once she got a short discussion out of the way with the man in a blue suit... to raise her trophy up on her strong shoulders in this former competition ground. The prize that she had inexplicably won so long ago, before she even knew she would have competed for it dearly, had finally returned to her. That was where El belonged - in plain view to be *appreciated* - instead of drifting like a servile shadow added on behind her.
New Yecine Council Head-Elder Lirades had been right about one thing in their discussion at The Ironclad Order, the eldest of the siblings discussed that day strongly felt. And not only because her own wife had said what amounted to the same thing many times. People needed examples to follow and compare themselves against.
Yet, Elua considered Qatrand to be the only right, flawless choice to lead by example. What did that truly say when the ’precious gem’ herself had different thoughts? That a certain ’precious flower’ given her second life... had just as much to teach the world by example. An end could be a new beginning, but the blonde would never ignore the past. frёewebnoѵēl.com
She would accept it for their future. Just like she hoped her wife would accept the new family founding name she thought up. Without just agreeing because it was her who came up with it. In fact, she was hoping her cute wife *might* fight the idea a bit on her own. Or else she might order her to.
"...Seems more fun to convince her slowly..." fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
"Warden?"
"Thinking to myself, Hoolov. Walk me through... how this happened."
