These Reincarnators Are Sus! Sleuthing in Another World

The sun was starting to set in Calum. Though there was still light in the day, Ciel and Bea often settled for bed early. Today, especially, Ciel needed the extra rest. She'd been pushing herself for days, and they still had a long journey home tomorrow.

A soft knock came at the door. After a moment's hesitation, Ciel cracked the door open. It was a maid—the one who had earlier shown Ciel and Bea to this room, at Ailn's discretion.

That had already put her on edge. But now she seemed even more anxious.

"I feel I should warn you, Miss Ciel—strange though it may sound, Duke eum-Creid is allegedly on the run," the maid whispered. "For crimes of lèse-majesté."

"What?" Ciel uttered, astonished.

"The staff of the estate are… just as confused as you are, miss," the maid said. Her eyes darted to Bea. "I do not know the nature of your relationship with him, but I would advise leaving Calum by the morrow." She leaned in slightly, and her voice softened. "Tonight, not a word will pass our lips. Please rest easy."

"I'm grateful…" Ciel said.

But it occurred to her she had not even considered how Bea would handle the ride back to Venlind. Ciel had traveled by horseback, paying for the services of a handler. Adding Bea as a passenger complicated matters.

Perhaps the horse could carry all their weight, but Ciel still didn't feel comfortable taking Bea on a full day's ride when Bea had never even ridden a horse before.

The maid, noticing the troubled look on Ciel's face, gave a knowing nod. "I can arrange carriage services to escort you wherever need be." Then her voice dropped to a full whisper. "We… are accustomed to helping protect a noble's reputation."

"Of course," Ciel said, simply accepting the maid's assumptions.

She glanced back at Bea, quietly lay in bed still looking drowsy. She'd been upset earlier—though never defiant—casting a sad gaze toward her stuffed animals who'd been placed on a shelf out of reach.

Wishing not to disturb Bea, who looked moments away from sleep, Ciel decided to step outside to finish her conversation with the maid.

But she hesitated at the threshold.

This door was the only exit, and yet Ciel couldn't help but feel a ripple of anxiety—the fear that she'd turn around and find that Bea had vanished.

"Miss Ciel?" the maid asked.

"...I'm sorry, I was momentarily lost in thought," Ciel said. "Let's make those carriage arrangements. Please."

And she stepped outside. The door shut.

Meanwhile Bea, lying in bed, was not quite as sleepy as she looked. Her mind was racing.

Bea was grounded.

Life wasn't very different, grounded. Her mother found a way to make a meal, after pleading with some of the servants in the kitchen.

She had her first bath in a few days.

Reunited with her mother for the first time—as it was the first time she'd ever been apart—Bea felt safe and warm.

More than that, she realized these past few days she'd been scared. Even when she found her uncle, even when her aunt helped out, everything had felt all wrong. But when something wrong stays for too long, it starts to feel normal.

That's how Bea learned that you can be sad without realizing it. You can be a lot of feelings without realizing it.

She felt a little lost, admittedly. Because this was a difficult lesson to learn, and her friends were gone.

That is to say, on a high shelf in the room.

Aristurtle, especially. He was her first friend. Her first teacher. And Bea wondered if she might have taken him for granted.

At first, she couldn't understand why her mother had taken away her friends. Now that they were gone, she had to remember how to keep her thinking critical, even without their input.

That's when Bea had a realization.

She thought about how you can feel things, without knowing what you were feeling. And Bea thought about how, all this time, she desperately wanted to see her father. How she wanted it more than anything else in the world.

How she said she was doing it all for her mother.

Bea started to think that, maybe, she'd thought she was doing something to make her mother happy… when she actually just wanted to make herself happy.

That was probably why her mother had taken her toys away.

Her friends always gave her advice. But if Bea only ever chose the advice she wanted, then their advice didn't matter. She wasn't treating them like friends, or like teachers.

"I wasn't… being a good friend," Bea said sadly. "Or a good student. Or… a good…"

She thought about her mother again, and how sad she looked.

Rubbing some of the tears out of her eyes, Bea blinked until they went away. She wasn't going to cry if she was the one who did something wrong.

To her, her mother was home. Even in this big city, a whole carriage ride away from Calum, she was home. And when it came down to it, her mother was all she needed.

She wanted to see her father, still. Badly. But you don't always get what you want. Doing your best even when you don't—that's what it meant to live good.

But…

She still needed to see if he would be okay.

When she'd last checked the future, all of its threads were tangling together. Fate got fuzzy. It seemed like all she could do was hope that her Uncle Ailn and Aunt Camille would be strong enough and smart enough to save her father.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Her eyes went out of focus.

And as she watched the threads of fate unravel and converge, what she saw made her little heart squeeze painfully.

They were about halfway to Amière, the gallop of their horses swift as they made their way through the seams of the mountains, always taking the passes with the gentlest slopes—same as any merchant returning from Calum would.

As they rode, Ailn had time to think through a question which had bugged him from the start. Why was Sigurd headed to Amière in the first place?

Discovering the involvement of the Blancs—and the high likelihood that Sigurd was caught in the cogs of a revenge plot—only made the man's unwavering march toward his own doom all the more baffling.

He'd prioritize his duty to Varant over his guilt. And even if his intention was to confront the past, he wouldn't do it like this. Not so recklessly.

The only thing that made sense was that Sigurd's hand was somehow forced. But how?

The simplest answer was that someone had threatened the life of a person he loved.

The problem was the timing didn't line up—Sigurd would have had to leave for Amière before Ailn had even met Ciel and Bea. Who else was worth dying for? How many secret lovers and children could the man possibly have?

Now that Ailn knew about the existence of a voice changer, though, things were starting to make sense.

"He looks like me, but angrier," Ailn said. "And he's all decked out in armor."

He'd called out to a sylph, after spotting her flying and singing a song about gales and galas.

'Got it, got it, got it!' the sylph replied. 'Silver hair, blue eyes, and mean like a hungry wolf! Rawr!'

The sylph did a somersault in the air.

"Could you see if he's carrying a stone that looks like this, maybe?" Ailn asked.

That was the big sticking point in Ailn's theory. It assumed Sigurd had somehow received an echo stone—Ailn wanted evidence of it.

'He likes to play with rocks! Got it! It's a very pretty rock!' the sylph whistled.

"Do you think you'd be able to read the resonance it's on for me?" Ailn asked.

'Reed?' the sylph asked, her contours fluttering. 'The kind that tickles to fly through?'

"...Nevermind. Whatever the case, I appreciate the help—er, could you tell me your name actually?" Ailn asked.

'Sorelle! You're the first human who ever talked to me you know,' Sorelle gusted. 'All the others just treat me like a ghost! Though sometimes they make a face like this!'

She clasped her hands together, and turned her eyes earnestly toward the sky, while her lips parted in faux-awe. Given her airy, effervescent nature, she looked quite splendid doing it—and Ailn almost wanted to crane his neck up to see what was so sublime.

"Well, Sorelle, they can't understand you. Just so you know, " Ailn said. Then he waved her off with a salute. "I'll be on the lookout for you."

Sorelle must have found the salute charming, because she gave one right back before flying off.

Both Camille and Alera gave him a look equal parts piteous and doubtful.

"I would be remiss not to mention, Duke eum-Creid," Alera said hesitantly, "that sylphs are known to pantomime conversations with humans, unlike other fae. What might appear to be understanding is simply an exchange of meaningless gestures…"

But Camille hushed her.

"I have heard from Sir Kylian that he 'spoke' with naiads in Sussuro," Camille said, in a voice that really wasn't that quiet. "What harm is it?"

Not annoyed enough to defend himself—yet still definitely annoyed—Ailn simply endured their pity, and found himself missing Renea.

The servants of the ark-Chelon estate took good care of Ciel and Bea—they even found Bea's favorite book of fairy tales in the estate's library. And that night, as they lay together in bed, Ciel read her daughter a bedtime story, just as she had nearly every night of Bea's life.

"That's why every night, the seamstress searched for thread which could not be cut," Ciel whispered, feeling Bea nestle closer for warmth. "For the huntsman doubted… doubted the seamstress's loom, and thought her needle best for… poking eyes."

"When she used the finest silk, it was all the more fragile. When she skillfully wove… a handkerchief…"

Ciel trailed off, and her eyes began to droop. Then she forced them open, and she took a deep breath to wake herself up.

"When she skillfully wove a handkerchief with threads of silver and cold—gold—still… still it could not resist the tip of his sharp, steel knife.

"The seamstress very nearly gave up. She… thought perhaps her craft…" Ciel once again trailed off. This time, her eyes stayed shut even as she kept trying to tell the story. "...Her craft needed… to make certain to recompense the handler tomorrow," she mumbled.

"Mama?" Bea asked softly, watching as her mother continued to nod off.

"The foolish… huntsman… ate snow… and sour berries for the rest of his life…" Ciel continued to mumble. "While the seamstress… tucked in her favorite honey bee…"

And finally, after three days of stress and worry, Ciel yielded. A storybook in hand, and her daughter tucked away in her arms, she fell asleep—trusting that her embrace alone was enough to keep Bea safe.

For a long time, Bea stayed there, wrapped up in it.

"I like this… the best…" Bea whispered. And she didn't want to leave.

She realized that good things, just like bad things, sometimes became normal. But being normal didn't make them any less precious.

Normal was good. Just like the stories her mother read to her every single night, sometimes normal could be your favorite thing in the world.

But slowly, carefully, Bea sidled out of her mother's embrace.

There was still a little sunlight left in the day. So, she pattered over to the suite's writing desk. Parchment and ink still rested on top—from when Ailn wrote a note for the courier.

Using the writing skills her mother had taught her, Bea left her a message.

"I'm sorry, mama…" Bea said. Her vision blurred. But she squeezed her eyes shut until the tears cleared. Then she bit her lip, holding back all the sad feelings.

She didn't want to do this to her mother again—not now that she understood how deeply it would hurt her.

But Bea saw something cruel when she'd glimpsed the future. She saw something which broke her heart. And she realized she was the only one in the world who could do anything about it.

Other people couldn't see the future. Other people couldn't affect it, couldn't push the world toward the things they wanted.

Bea could. And that meant she had a responsibility.

Convinced that trying to drag the future into her grasp had frayed fate's fickle threads, Bea believed it was up to her to make things right by tying everything back together. She'd left before, because of what she wanted. But now… she was leaving because of what she had to do.

"I'm still… grounded…" Bea frowned. She pulled up a chair to the shelf, grabbing Aristurtle, Cant, and Bent Ham.

Then she tiptoed over to the bed, and placed them all around her mother.

"They'll take care of you, mama…" Bea said, tucking her in. Then, just like her mother always did, she kissed her on the forehead to make sure she felt warm.

She wanted to crawl back into bed. But she didn't. Because Bea still lived in a world that responded to goodness and effort, even if it didn't always reward it. It was a world where you had to do the right thing, whether Cant and Aristurtle were there to scold you or not.

It was a fundamentally good world. One where everyone tried their best to live good.

Taking the storybook from Ciel's hand, Bea finished the bedtime story for the both of them.

"...And so… the seam…stress spun starlight from her loom…" Bea whispered quietly, so as to not wake her mother. "Weaving love and fable… through the const… constellashuns."

She turned the page. "Their stories never ended. Because there… were no goodbyes as eternal as stars. And no hearts that… couldn't be mended with starlight's… thread."

"The end," Bea said softly, as she closed the book.

She put it back on the shelf. And finally, taking one last longing look at her mother, Bea left the room to do the right thing, and save her father's life.