Vol.6 Ch.12.1 – Sight-Seeing I
Chapter 12: Sight-Seeing
“Taking us to your room already?” Alisha asked, her tone suggestive.
I expected Melinoe to get flustered but she kept her poise. “It's not even noon yet,” she said, “and I did actually come here to do a few things.”
“Not just to grab your stuff?” Alisha asked, her tone back to normal.
“No,” Meli said. “Heinrich will take care of most things but there are a few people I need to talk to in person, especially the council. And also...” Now the blush crept onto her cheeks. “I wanted to show you two the town. I doubt you had much time for sight-seeing the last time you were here.”
I carefully didn't mention that we'd spent some time perusing the market, especially because I hadn't really seen much of it. Unlike some people I won't name I had been locked up in an inn room with Athena the one night I could have spent familiarizing myself with this place. I smiled at myself at that, then caught myself, then paused as I did. Breaking through Athena's shell that night had been a good thing. As much as I enjoyed giving her a hard time and as sore as I still was about the way she'd treated me, I enjoyed having her in my life. And getting a tour of Melinoe's Rest by the demigoddess it was named after was a nice side benefit of not having had much of a chance to explore the town yet.
“He's off in his own little world, huh?” Meli muttered.
“I bet I know what he's thinking of,” Alisha said smugly, then let out a “Yip!” as I flicked one of her long ears.
**
Melinoe's bedroom, unlike Anna's and Alisha's, did not feel like a stage prop.
Where their rooms had conformed to expectation rather than to the spectacular people they'd housed, Melinoe's room was clearly all her own. This room, too, had sunstones as light fixtures and the floor was half slate tiles and half packed dirt. Packed dirt was normally only used by the poorest of peasants, to the point that even Selene's childhood home had had wooden floorboards instead, and therefore it seemed wholly out of place in a demigoddess' bedroom. Or it would have, if there hadn't been a very good reason for it.
Half of the large room was taken up by an enormous apple tree. The room had a very high ceiling, easily taking up floor space on both the first and second floor of the mansion, but even so the tree had to hunch over and extend into all corners to find space. I almost felt bad for a damn plant but that evaporated as soon as Melinoe stepped close to it.
The tree's leaves began to rustle and a few under-ripe apples grew into full, red ripe fruit right before our eyes.
“Did you tell it to do that?” I asked as I saw it.
“No, she's just happy to see me,” Melinoe said, plucking one of the apples and then giving one of the branches a gentle pat. In response the tree's leaves rustled again.
“Is it... wagging its tail?” Alisha asked as she saw it.
“Something like that,” Meli said. “Plants are alive, you know? Though admittedly, they're not all as affectionate as her.”
“Do you want to take it with you?” I asked.
She paused. “Can I?”
I shrugged. “I mean, I doubt Anna will mind. It's not a mystic fruit tree but nobody said the garden can't have a real apple tree.”
Meli turned towards her tree. “Would you like that? To come live on the surface, in a real garden? I won't be able to share a room with you but you'll be around me more.”
The tree shook its leaves and more and more apples began to grow.
“Of course,” she said. “We'll take you with us when we leave, alright?”
One of the apples fell down right into Meli's waiting hand in answer.
She turned toward me and said: “Thank you.”
“I'm not asking you to leave your old life behind for us,” I said gently, “only just enough to come live with us.”
“And I appreciate that,” she said, then considered. “Alisha? Would you help me gather my things?”
“Sure,” the little elf said.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You don't need to see all the smallclothes I'm packing until I wear them for you,” Meli said with a smug little smile.
I did not point out that Alisha was getting to see them all but honestly I was glad she was finding her confidence around us. And, truthfully, I did not mind being excluded while the two of them gathered all of Meli's toiletries and clothes. Alisha actually enjoyed that kind of thing while I only endured it.
And while they busied themselves I scanned the room once more. Aside from the apple tree the room held a large bed, the kind that was just slightly too small for group activities like the ones we got up to and yet so big that a single person would get lost sleeping on it alone. Near that was a small dressing table with a mirror holding all kinds of brushes and perfume bottles. The perfume was abjectly ridiculous given that Meli naturally smelled of apples. They would smell a little overripe if she didn't bathe for too long but so long as she could take frequent baths she had absolutely no need for perfume. I wondered if this was just vanity or if, after centuries, the scent of apples had simply stopped registering with her and she thought she needed the perfume.
Speaking of baths, one door on the far side of the room led to a bathroom. It was a nice room, once again laid out with slate tiles. Once again that would have seemed cheap but it served the important function of being far less slippery than marble when wet. Hades and Persephone had had to specially enchant the marble floors in their bathrooms to not be slippery and evidently Melinoe considered that pointless decadence.
Another thing worth noting was a large shelf of magical tomes next to a desk for studying. Judging by a few crumpled parchments stuffed here and there I had to assume that Melinoe spent a lot of time with it, to the point of frustration. I had never really talked to her about being taught magic by Hecate herself but evidently the goddess of crossroads, magic and blood sacrifice was a stern and demanding teacher, even to a demigoddess. But, given how Meli bragged about it, Hecate had to also be pretty impressive.
I couldn't really judge that though. I was blessed with the ability to see mana even when it wasn't being used to cast, something that, while not rare or anything, wasn't universal among people without magic potential. But just because I could see mana didn't mean I knew much about magic. I knew Alisha, Yume and Melinoe were all good at it. I knew that, offensively, Alisha and Meli left Yume in the dirt. I even knew what each of their magics were good at. But that was just about it. I didn't understand the minutiae of casting or how weaving mana into spells worked. I was acutely aware of the mystic fruit still weighing down my bag of holding, the one that might possibly give someone like me, someone who couldn't manipulate mana, his own magical potential, but I still didn't quite know what to do with it.
If what Athena had said about my Luck was even remotely true then all it would take would be an off chance of me gaining magic potential from eating that fruit and I would have a pretty good shot at becoming a mage. However, according to my appraiser's loupe the elemental affinity one would gain from this would be dependent on where it was used and I had yet to find an area with interesting enough mana to try. But again, I knew very little about magic. Maybe it was time to rectify that. Maybe I had to talk to Melinoe, maybe even Hecate, about where to use it.
I couldn't afford to study magic the way Melinoe was clearly doing but according to Alisha magic was supposed to come naturally, almost on instinct, so maybe I could gain something out of it even with minimal training.
I shook myself out of it when I noticed the two of them coming out of the final spot of note: One door led into a walk-in closet, which was where the two of them had been. Meli's face was a little red and I assumed Alisha had made a couple lewd suggestions. Or rather, that's what I had assumed until I noticed Meli shifting like she was adjusting herself. If I had to guess, I would get to see some of those smallclothes she'd teased me with tonight.
