Chapter Text
There were many places in Selphia that one would say were good to have a picnic. The lake in the middle of town. The castle farm on occasions that it was more than a glorified vegetable garden. Near the waterfall in Yokmir Forest.
Frey and Forte were not eating their lunch in any of those places.
No, the two of them were sitting in a corner of the central chamber of the Water Ruins, listening to the storm raging just outside and trusting their hastily set up array of metal shields and ropes to divert any electricity thrown their way by the nearby horse monster.
This had not been how Frey was planning to spend her day, but Venti was getting testy about her lack of any visible progress and she figured that, lack of any dignity or not, braving the storm was a better idea than dealing with an annoyed dragon. And, okay, maybe she was almost enjoying herself. Just... it'd be better if she'd remembered to bring food that wasn't pickles. Even if half of them were turnips.
"The Bean Toss Contest is tomorrow," Forte spoke up, ignoring the flash of blue lightning that their system safely diverted. Frey knew that. She'd arranged for the contest to take place, after all. And it wasn't like anyone in town was shutting up about it.
...On second thought, maybe that was the real reason she'd gone to the ruins.
"I know," She stated, leaving her more... uncharitable thoughts unsaid. "How do you think you'll do, Forte?"
"...Not very well. For some reason, I always find myself reaching for my blade. The beans don't last very long after that." Frey couldn't really imagine that. Honestly, she didn't think Forte had actually attacked a single thing in these ruins. Yes, long swords were heavy, but it was like the knight didn't possess a single shred of aggression towards the monsters here.
Given their excellent run of Yokmir Forest- on her first day in town, no less- Frey felt she had the right to be a little bit annoyed by that. Or maybe the ease of wielding her broadsword, a piece of muscle memory she'd thankfully kept, had made her overly-critical of the faults of other weapons.
Not that she was planning on turning this into a habit. It was just an observation.
"It sounds like one of those things where your reflexes just work against you."
"Perhaps. But I've heard stories of towns where people threw the beans as far away from the 'demon' as they could, just to see them lunge for it."
"Who'd you hear that from?"
"An ore merchant from Sharance. She hasn't been here since the fourth, but..."
"...Oh, you mean Raven!" Frey realized. If there was one thing about amnesia that she didn't really mind, it was the fact that she didn't have much to sift through to remember the faces of people she'd passed on the street. "But... I didn't think any airships left on the fourth." She'd seen the schedule. And a map. Sharance was much too far away to get to on foot.
Forte just shrugged. "She said that she was leaving, and she did not stay at the inn that night. I do not know any more than that." Okay, so ignoring the mysteriously disappearing merchant...
"...Do you think we'll still be able to use these?" She asked, glancing at the pair of shields that were currently glowing blue, and hadn't stopped for the past minute or so.
"I believe a distraction would be in our best interests," The other woman replied. "Frey, do you have anything that we could use?"
"Let me see..." Frey began to dig through her bag. Honestly, she just picked up whatever she found lying around, she didn't even know what was in there most of the time... which was probably why she found an untouched plate of sashimi at the bottom. Honestly, how did that even get there?
And, more importantly, how did she not notice that until she and her sort-of friend had finished eating a meal of nothing but vegetables?
She decided that this was the horse's fault. After all, if it hadn't been there, she wouldn't have had to set up an elaborate contraption for the sake of eating lunch to begin with, and she might have been calm enough to notice the sashimi.
Just out of spite, if this one turned into a person, too, she'd throw the plate at them later. See how much they liked that.
(...A lot, apparently. But Frey couldn't bring herself to get upset about that. Randomly throwing plates of sliced pike at people wasn't behavior expected of a princess, anyway.)