Gun Girl from Another World

Pragmatic

Ayre groans.

"It's been an entire day," I object. "You can't possibly still be hung over."

It's the morning of the second day since the signing of the treaty with the Huohi and their big celebration over the conclusion of the talks. Ayre and I are on the ground floor of the inn we've been staying in, nearly the entirety of which is the common area. We're at the table for breakfast, which is at least an improvement for Ayre, who spent yesterday in bed.

On the other hand, while being out of bed may be progress, he's still slumped over on the table like a wilted plant.

"At least the headache's gone," he grumbles as the waitress comes over and puts a pair of steaming mugs in front of us. "Now, it's just feeling like I got run over by that pirate ship."

The waitress gives Ayre a sympathetic gaze. "Wild night?"

"Yeah," I tattle, crossing my arms, "the night before last."

She tries and only half succeeds at suppressing a disbelieving laugh. "Wow, you two really know how to party, then. Call me next time you decide to throw one." She nudges Ayre's mug closer to the elf. "In the meantime, coffee cures a lot of ails. Freshly ground, so drink up. Breakfast will be out in a few minutes."

I speak up since Ayre only gives a groan of acknowledgement. "Pretty sure that's hungover elf for, Thanks. By the way, can we get some milk, too? Just one will be plenty." I give my coffee mug a little slosh. "I don't think I'm in the mood for it black today. Might make it easier on Ayre's stomach, too."

She gets an expression on her face when I say that, somewhere between confusion and revulsion. "You would mix coffee and milk?"

"It's gotten really popular back in Dabun," I offer, avoiding mentioning that I was the one that introduced it there, too. "The cream helps smooth out the acidity and brings out the nuttiness of the beans."

The waitress's expression shifts again. "Huh. If you say so. Sounds like a way to make an expensive drink even pricier, but it's your money. I'll bring another mug around."

"Thanks," I reply as she heads off, then I turn my attention to Ayre again. "Really, are you doing that badly? We can put everything off another day if you need it."

Ayre makes a great effort and pulls himself semi-upright with a deep breath, then exhales. A moment later, he makes an effort to square his shoulders. "No, I can't keep laying in bed. I've already spent an entire day doing nothing. I have to get up and start moving. It's just shopping. The fresh air will do me good."

"You sound more like you're convincing yourself of that," I observe sympathetically.

Ayre sighs again, then takes a sip of coffee and recoils a bit. "Are you planning on making one of those kappa-shinos?"

I shake my head. "Wrong kind of coffee for that. But a little milk will make it more tolerable for you."

"I think I'd have just preferred tea," he grumbles.

"You need the caffeine," I counter. "You'll feel better when you get some food in you, too."

"Ugh," the elf groans, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand. "I thought oni weren't supposed to be heavy drinkers …"

I suppress a smirk at the thought that maybe it's more just that elves can't hold their liquor. Now isn't the time to poke at poor Ayre, he's miserable enough as it is.

"I actually asked Ronolo about that while you were off dancing with the ladies," I go with in its place.

Surprisingly, instead of asking about it, Ayre wrinkles his nose, clearly casting his mind back to that night. "I didn't go dancing," he corrects me. "They asked, but I turned them down."

But I just scoff. "Maybe the first time, when you were still sober enough to second-guess yourself. I wish I had a camera, you were having a blast."

Ayre frowns across the table at me, clearly trying to figure out if I'm messing with him or not. "What's a camera?"

"It's a tool we have back home," I answer, entertaining the segue. "It makes a picture of whatever scene is in front of it, like a perfect, instant painting."

The frown remains on his face. Maybe it even deepens a bit. "And what chain of processes do you start from fire to end up with the picture?"

I chuckle at the doubt. "It depends on the mechanism, there's several different ways to do it. Some of them don't even use fire!"

I ignore the disbelieving expression my friend is giving me and continue with my explanation. "Most of the methods come down to chemically treating the film or paper so that it changes when exposed to light. That's what captures the image, the change in the film. In its natural state, it's actually reversed and in negative colors, so it's got to be flipped around and converted in development."

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"Sounds like an involved process," Ayre observes.

"It used to be, yeah," I confirm. "It took days of development time and whole chemical baths in special dark rooms to avoid ruining the film, but it was considered a small price to pay for a perfect recreation of important life moments and dear family members."

"Used to be?"

I nod. "Like most things, we got better at it. Eventually, we had devices that could snap thousands of pictures from the palm of our hand, or even record whole things instead of just individual pictures, and the device would store them for later viewing, either right on the device or by printing them off as physical copies."

The elf across from me sighs. "And you say your world has no magic …"

"None at all," I chirp with a beaming smile. "Just artifice and alchemy!"

Ayre just shakes his head. "I'd tell you that takes magic, too, but I've seen what you fiddle with without using so much as a drop of it."

"There's nothing magical about how a blacksmith forges steel," I counter, "and I'll bet we could ask any apothecary how much of their job involves knowing what plants and minerals do what. We just kept working with those things and getting better with them instead of cheating with magic."

"Okay, I'm calling you on that bet," the elf comes back, some fire returning to his features. "I want to see you make a healing draught without magic, and no cheating with Essence crops!"

I laugh and shake my head. "We don't have healing draughts, nothing that creates an immediate effect like that. I can come up with something to treat individual symptoms and ways to patch you up, but then it's pretty much up to your body to heal the rest of the way on its own."

"Sounds like medicine is one field you're way behind in, then," Ayre barbs back.

But I hold up my finger with a smile. "On the contrary, we had to understand what we were doing and why it worked to get the most out of it. We mapped things about the body you don't even know exist, all to get better at understanding it. We didn't have the luxury of marking stuff up to magic."

I lean back to give an example. "Why does willow bark make the pain go away? Innate herbal magic? No, because it contains a compound called salicin that we extracted and improved upon into a common pill for treating pain, fevers and inflammation."

Ayre furrows his eyebrows at me. "Why do you know that?"

I shrug with a cheeky grin. "Just something I picked up from some biology class, probably."

He shakes his head. "I'm beginning to think there's such a thing as too much education …"

I chuckle, and definitely do not giggle, at my friend's exasperation. "Anyway, the chief! Seeing how they partied, I remembered Captain Anara telling me that the oni weren't any more prone to drinking than any other race, so I mentioned it to Ronolo."

"He probably just laughed," my still-surly companion deduces.

I immediately nod. "He sure did! But he also backed up what she said. Oni are extremely socially-focused, according to him, and there's a lot of emphasis placed on being able to carry your weight and not making a fool of the community."

It's Ayre's turn to nod at that. "It's similar to the mindset of most Imperials, though Oni don't have as strict a hierarchy about things."

"That's pretty much what he said, too," I confirm. "Anyway, they're responsible about drinking most of the time, but they're the type to work hard and play hard, as they say."

Ayre's head is moving toward the table again. "Remmi, no one says that."

"Well, they do back home," I huff at the interruption. "The point being, when it comes time to celebrate, they go all out. Even then, though, the stigma against being useless the next day encourages them to drink responsibly."

The elf's frown is back. "I'm pretty sure they were drinking way harder than I was."

"The most waifish of them also had a foot and fifty pounds on you," I point out. It's only a slight exaggeration. "And, apparently, they hold their liquor exceedingly well even for their size."

Ayre wraps his hands around his mug as he works his brain around his words. "So what you're saying is that they're not actually heavy drinkers by their own metric, they just have a higher tolerance than everyone else?"

"Or at least higher than yours," I agree, smirking openly at him now. "You seem to have very low tolerance."

That earns me a dirty look over the top of his mug, so I make my smile sweeter in reply.

"At least I wasn't cheating with the magic you're so quick to turn your nose up at," he counters.

The waitress is coming back around with the milk and our breakfast - platters of fresh eggs, smoked meat and day-old bread under a simple gravy. The heavy meal will stick to our ribs longer and help keep us - or, more accurately, me - from making impulse purchases of snacks and food throughout the day, while the lack of spices and richer foods will set better on Ayre's stomach.

I thank her for the food and make a mental note to tip well as she heads off again to see to another table. I then pour some of the milk into my coffee and stir it a bit before answering Ayre's accusation.

"Don't get me wrong, if we had magic, we would have absolutely made use of it," I pick the conversation back up. "We're nothing if not pragmatic. If there's a way to do something easier, cheaper and better, we'll figure out how to do it en masse or kill ourselves trying."

"You're exaggerating," the elf accuses me with a stare.

But I just grin back. "Remember that rock with the deadly energy I told you and Yorin about? The death toll for mastering its power came in the hundreds of thousands."

Ayre seems to pale a bit at that. "Remmi, that's not something anybody should say with a smile."

"Ah, but the smile is because of the outcome. Now, it's our favorite way to power pretty much anything, and the safest form of mass energy production we have."

"I'm not sure that makes it better …"

We make mostly small talk as we eat after that, primarily planning our day and laying out what we want to make sure we get. It's when we're wrapping up our meal that the door to the inn opens and a messenger steps into the interior, looking around.

After a moment of being unable to pick out whoever he's looking for, he raises his voice. "Remmi Lee?"

I stand up and raise my hand. "That's me!"

He comes over and passes me an envelope. "Letter for you, miss."

"Thank you."

With the delivery done, he tips his head and heads off again.

Ayre watches me as I return to my seat and flip the envelope open. "What is it this time?"

I take a moment to scan over the short missive before answering. "It's from Chief Ronolo, actually. He wants to speak with us about something before we head to Ogre's Grotto."