Chapter 15 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 15: Prisoner of Mirror Lake 01
On the first day, they hunted a young wild boar.
Wild boars were very fast, agile in body, and had strong attacking power. Lucita shot several arrows in succession, with only one hitting. In the end, it was still Mavis who harvested this prey with several arrows.
Even a juvenile wild boar weighed nearly a hundred pounds. They left the boar's body in place, carried dry rations deeper into the forest, and didn't return at lunchtime but directly enjoyed the dry bread Sophia carried on her back.
Sophia had actually just come along to play.
Elves in the forest were as happy as fish returning to water, darting here and looking there, not even noticing tree leaves stuck in her hair, not at all like someone whose life was running out.
Both Mavis and Lucita deliberately coddled and indulged her. They divided portions of everyone’s lunch into her small backpack and let her tag along to watch the hunt.
When the red sun sank in the west and tired birds returned to their nests, they each carried several rabbits on their backs and dragged the wild boar back to the cabin.
The three lit a bonfire. In front of the cabin, they cut off a leg, rubbed it with seasonings, and roasted it over the fire until fat dripped sizzling and a shiny brown crispy skin formed on the surface. Then they cut it into thin slices to share.
Since coming to the town, Lucita had also eaten roasted boar leg at several neighbors' homes, all of which were rare delicacies. By comparison, this leg was roasted over an open fire, inevitably heating unevenly. Some places were overcooked, and the seasoning wasn't as rich as at home. But whether it was the atmosphere or the exhaustion from a full day of hunting, sitting around the fire together, eating honey-glazed pork fresh from the flames, it tasted unexpectedly wonderful.
She picked up the hunting knife to cut a second slice when suddenly everything went black before her eyes. The world spun, and the plate in her hand fell to the ground with a "clap."
Fortunately it was a wooden plate, not ceramic.
Lucita braced her hands on the ground to steady herself and shook her head, but everything before her eyes was still pitch black.
She rubbed her eyes.
Sophia came over to support her: "What's wrong?"
Lucita didn't move. She was silent for quite a while before asking somewhat hesitantly: "Has it gotten dark?"
"No, the sun hasn't set yet."
"I see..." Lucita murmured. It was impossible to tell whether the note in her voice was disappointment or something else. “I think I’ve gone blind.”
Her voice seemed a bit too calm.
Mavis thought she was forcing herself to be strong, but Lucita really wasn't too worried.
When she first lost her sense of smell, she had panicked, but then her sense of smell inexplicably recovered, and she even gained the power to perceive the real.
She thought of Sophia's words: "This ability to directly perceive the real—only our clan's high priestess can do this when communing with the divine. But our high priestess can perceive the real with all five senses, while you only have smell."
The five senses...
It matched up.
Losing her sense of smell wasn't the endpoint. Now it was the turn of vision.
Her five senses were being lost in sequence, but her sense of smell had already been lost and regained. Then going through the same process, would vision be the same?
Compared to blindness, this suffocating feeling of knowing nothing was even worse.
Mavis and Sophia were likely reminded of what happened when she lost her sense of smell.
Sophia sighed: "I really don't know what's going on with you. We can only wait for the high priestess to come."
"It's all right," Lucita reassured them instead: "Like last time, there probably won't be any problem."
The two, one on each side, helped her into the cabin.
Although this made her feel somewhat helpless, Lucita still accepted their kindness.
This was Mavis's cabin. If Lucita fumbled around herself and knocked something over, that would only cause trouble.
The living conditions in the hunter's cabin were quite crude. They discussed it and decided to send Lucita back tomorrow.
The cabin had a large window by the bed. At night, you could see the stars outside through the window. In the deep black night sky, the stars were as numerous as grains of sand, twinkling above the distant forest. It felt different from the stars twinkling in the sky over town.
Lucita slept on the floor in the hunter's cabin, lying relatively low, so she always fell asleep with eyes full of stars.
Now she couldn't see, didn't know what time it was, so she lay in bed asking over and over: "Has it gotten dark?"
At first Mavis answered: "Almost sunset."
Later she said: "Can't see the sun anymore, but night still hasn't fallen."
The last time she finally said: "It's dark now."
But Lucita wasn't sleepy.
In a pitch-black world, other senses became more acute.
The crackling of the fire, the creaking of the door being pushed, the rustling of blankets moving, the thudding of boots on the wooden floor.
After saying goodnight to each other, Mavis and Sophia also lay down on the bed one after another.
As the environment quieted down, all she could hear was her own breathing. Her thoughts flew very far.
She thought: opening eyes and closing eyes are the same blackness, so why close your eyes?
Later she thought: Who am I really? Why did I lose my memory?
She slowly fell asleep.
Early the next morning, Mavis sent her back.
She was already quite familiar with her own home. Fumbling her way around went fairly smoothly. After entrusting Mavis to sell the two rabbits she'd hunted, the twenty silver coins earned were exchanged at Teresa's shop for ten loaves of white bread.
She couldn't see and was afraid of causing a fire, so she no longer dared rashly light the kitchen fire.
One loaf of bread weighed one pound. Paired with jam and cheese, it could last a day. Apart from the monotonous flavor, it had no shortcomings.
Ten loaves of bread were hard to preserve without a frost box. Fortunately, her spatial ability could basically be put to use.
Currently, creating a space required Lucita to consume the energy of about one whole loaf of bread. Additionally, her spirit needed to rest for two days. The space could currently hold five loaves of bread and would shatter after three days, then be reconstructed.
Although creating the space consumed quite a bit of energy, it was still cheaper than a frost box.
Losing one loaf of bread worth of energy each time in exchange for eight or nine leisurely days without having to fumble to the street to buy bread was very cost-effective.
She thought that after Mavis sent her back, she'd returned to the mountains. Unexpectedly, the next day she brought a blind cane.
"I don't know how long you'll be like this. I went to Skloot's carpentry shop and ordered one for you. Skloot heard about your situation and carved it overnight."
So Lucita got a blind cane.
This blind cane felt very smooth to the touch, was of moderate length, made of somewhat heavy wood, and felt substantial when hefted.
Lucita really needed it when going out on the street.
She contentedly stayed home for several days, but since she needed to make a living, she continued to water vegetables and go fishing, which didn't require much vision.
The radishes and potatoes had all sprouted. The pea field had been set up with a trellis before the first mountain trip. The fresh green pea vines had already become a sight in the yard.
Though the current Lucita couldn't see it.
She only needed to feel the soil's moisture every few days. If it was dry, she'd fumble to the well to draw water and directly pour bucket after bucket into the vegetable field.
Fishing was even simpler. The backyard pond had running water from the Valen River, with many common freshwater fish swimming about.
Teresa's white bread was slightly sweet. Taking a bit of leftover bread, rolling it into small balls and hanging them on the hook could serve as bait.
Fishing only required a feel. When the hook moved, pull it up and throw the caught fish into the bucket beside her. Lucita sat by the pond all day, and her state of mind became much more peaceful.
On a day like this, she could catch five or six fish at minimum, ten at most.
She kept the caught fish in a shallow bucket. After accumulating them for several days, she'd sell them to Sylvette. Sylvette's fish shop was the only place in town that sold fish.
Usually buying fish costs two silver coins per pound. Sylvette herself was a fisherwoman. The fish she sold were basically ones she'd netted herself, so she didn't rely much on purchasing and basically only charged a consignment fee of five copper coins per fish.
This way, by the end of the month, Lucita had actually earned a bit of money. Adding previous remainders and hunting earnings, she had accumulated savings of over a hundred silver coins total.
Once she had spare money in hand, her thoughts turned again to raising sheep.
Unfortunately, now blind and with inconvenient movement, she could only temporarily keep this plan in mind.
Recent life was like a pool of water without any ripples. Aside from only being able to eat bread, Lucita had nothing else to be dissatisfied with.
Blindness hadn't caused any particularly obvious impact on life.
But tonight, she had a dream.
"Lucita, come here... come here..."
A deep, distant voice kept calling her, raising faint echoes in the endless night.
Lucita sat up from the bed, threw off the blanket, and followed the voice.
She didn't put on shoes. Barefoot, she stepped onto the wooden floor of the room, pushed open the room door, then pushed open the courtyard gate, and walked on the town's main street.
That voice was still calling her over and over, seemingly coming from the distant forest.
"Lucita, Lucita..."
Who is it?
Who are you?
You sound... very sad.
She walked across the uneven gravel street and was swallowed into the black forest at the end of the long street.
The forest floor was full of weeds, vines, and stones. Thorns pierced her feet. Blood seeped from shallow cuts one after another, but she was completely unaware.
Until she came to a familiar lake. That water seemed boundless, leaping with deep green scale-like light under fireflies and faint starlight.
The life breath filling the air suddenly cleansed her entire body. Lucita's breathing lightened, and she shivered.
She opened her eyes.
A stabbing pain came from her soles. She looked around in confusion. When she saw the lake before her, she couldn't help but furrow her brow.
She recognized at a glance that this was that so-called sacred lake, but this time the scene was vastly different from last time.
When she'd seen this lake before, the waterside was full of fresh, moist flowers in bloom. The swaying of violets, the elegance of white wild ginger, yellow daffodils dotted here and there, deep green plump leaves standing tenderly upright.
The water was fresh, the trees were fresh, even the air was fresh.
But now everything was quite different.
Withered yellow, drooping petals, curled, rotting leaves, even the soil gave off a fishy stench.
Lucita walked to the lakeside. The lake water's color was much darker than last time, but it was still clear and transparent, one could see the bottom at a glance.
At the bottom of the water was locked a person—no, that's not right, an elf.
She met the elf's gaze.
Those eyes were so clear, so green, seemingly desperate yet seemingly compassionate, gazing at her calmly through the lake water.
No, perhaps it was just an illusion that Lucita was being watched, because what was reflected in those eyes wasn't any person, it was the starry sky and tree shadows above.
Eternal and parched, like the forest's sigh.
The elf was completely locked by rusted iron chains, lying motionless in the lake's heart. The thickest chain pierced straight through her heart.
Where the flesh had been pierced, a patch of dark red had congealed. It was impossible to tell if it was bloodstains or rust, but it could be seen clearly through the lake water.
Lucita looked at her, and suddenly tears rolled down.
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