Seeing everyone back and smiling makes me happy, especially when I touch their hands. It really brings home the fact that they’re alive.
“The village has changed a lot, Lerunda.”
“Yes, little by little.”
Mister Nirushi sounds surprised as he looks around. I haven’t left this village much, so it probably looks a lot different to them compared to me, but I also realize it’s been changing slowly.
“What’s the story with that dragon?”
“Doanea, is the separate body of Mister Villa’s god.”
I try to explain it in a simple way, but I don’t think what I said is enough.
I’m better at talking than I was when we first met, but I’m still not good at explaining things like this. It’s at times like these that I realize how incredible it is that Miss Lan is so good at explaining things.
“A lot has changed since you left. We can explain everything, and you can tell us what you learned and saw out there.”
Says Miss Lan, who is suddenly here too.
Now that I think about it, I’m so happy that they’re back that I didn’t think about that.
They look a little surprised about what Miss Lan said, but they must be tired, so we bring them in to rest.
We decide to give them a good welcome, so we go to the well to bring them some water. They try to help, but we tell them to sit and let everyone else take care of everything.
We cook too, and I’m happy to see them enjoy the food.
They say they had some trouble finding food outside the village. Thankfully they didn’t actually have to go without food, but what they had was more bland than what we eat here.
Mister Nirushi says that maybe they managed to find food because of me. If my prayers made their exploration any easier, I’m happy.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about my power, but if my power can influence people like this even a little bit, I’ll keep praying even if it doesn’t.
“Can you tell us about what is out there first? We can explain how the village changed afterwards.”
We’re all gathered in the square near the spirit tree.
Mister Villa and Mister Sadda are here too, and Mister Nirushi looks like he’s suspicious of them.
Mister Nirushi and the others left before I met Mister Douroean, the god of the winged people, and Mister Sadda wasn’t so familiar with the village either.
The knights from Migha are walking around the village too, even if there are conditions attached. That must be very surprising for the people that just came back, especially for Mister Nirushi, because knights from Migha killed and captured his friends.
“I see. First of all, when we left the village our aim was to leave the forest. We explored the thick forest and… Oh, right. We found what looked like ruins in the forest, and when we made it out of the forest we found a kingdom we didn’t know about.”
Says Mister Nirushi.
This forest where we live is very vast. We live here, but we don’t know everything about it. There are a lot of monsters and it’s rich in nature, so there are a lot of dangerous places.
But that’s exactly why the Kingdom of Fairytrof and the Kingdom of Migha haven’t come this far.
Ruins in the forest…
Does that mean someone was living here? Mister Nirushi says the ruins are in decay. Like a lot of time has passed since anyone lived there.
Doanea has Mister Douroean’s knowledge, so do they know about it? I peek over to the basket where Doanea is quietly sitting.
“Pikiiiii. (I know about it.)”
“Then tell us later.”
Right now we’re hearing Mister Nirushi’s report, so we’ll listen to what Doanea has to say when he’s done.
“Ruins!!?”
Miss Lan is very excited, and her eyes are shining.
“Yes. Those ruins look like they’ve been abandoned for over a hundred years, maybe more. We looked around to see if anyone was living there, but we didn’t see anyone. There were pretty big buildings too. We explored them for a while, but then moved on to look for places where people live.”
Explains Mister Nirushi.
“It took us quite a while, but we managed to leave the forest. Then we saw a vast grassy field with a small village nearby.”
The forest is a dangerous place with a lot of monsters, but they managed to advance while being very careful, and made it out.
—Girl and people returning – Part two
(The miko listens to the people that came back.)
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