Loran had asked about finding someplace else to talk. They were causing a scene in the restaurant and Loran knew that this woman was a bundle of emotions. Being a woman herself she could imagine what she was going through.
Priya had a room at a storehouse for the Le'Liss family. Good to their word they had promised her a place to stay until they made their next run north. The deal was that as long as she worked she would get free passage north as an employee. The only kicker was that the Le'Liss caravan wouldn't make the full trip north to CunStead. They would drop her about mid-way. She had been saving to pay for the fare the rest of the way back by caravan.
The family guild was also saving and making contacts trying to secure a path home. Some of the house elders wanted to force the Jorgensen family back south to be with the rest of the dwarves. It wasn't against family regulations to live in the north, but the protection that the family offered stopped at the town of Northern Gate.
The night was starting to firmly settle in when they finally made it to the storehouse. The night guard checked Id's and waved them inside. Priya removed her coat and led them to a small kitchen and waiting are that staff used during the day as a sort of employee lounge.
Cups of coffee were brewed in silence. Ed sat quietly wringing his hands, waiting on the onslaught of questions that he rightly deserved from her. Loran was smiling to herself. She viewed herself as a Knight of the highest purity. If she could conquer this she would add it to her list of exploits.
One day people would tell the tale of how Loran Lovelass battled evil and put the hearts of young lovers back together again. She also had to be careful, this woman obviously was one of the souls that Ed needed but she didn't know where her allegiances lay. Would she betray them both later?
When coffee was done Priya brought over 3 steaming mugs of the hot fresh liquid. The nice thing about working in the storehouse was that you always had fresh ingredients at hand.
The room was longer than it was wide. The kitchen was 10 feet or so across and the room was 20 plus feet long. A section of benches and couches ran along the wall. Square tables could be moved to use as dining tables or for playing games. Individual chairs sat on top of one another along the wall in the kitchen.
Priya brought a chair over into the living area. Ed was seated near the corner in the middle. He was leaned forward and sweating nervously. Loran was leaned back on the couch adjacent to Ed. She had her legs crossed and her arms crossed against her chest. She had been playing mental chess on how to handle this interview.
Priya plopped the chair down with a thud and then handed a mug to each person. The fact that she had been a waitress at some point was evident by the way she could hold 3 mugs in one hand with just her fingers.
Ed took the mug and nodded his thanks. Loran smiled sweetly and thanked Priya. Silence fell again over the room for a minute. To Ed, it felt like the longest minute ever. Priya just stared at Ed's face and tried to remember the time at home when he had been there.
"Okay Ed," she broke the silence. "What the hell happened?"
Ed looked up quickly, "What do you mean what happened?"
Priya sighed, "Don't give me that, I don't know what you are talking about look. What happened after you walked away from the farm. Traveling merchant my ass!"
Loran suppressed a laugh, she thought this might have been where it started, "Priya, he's embarrassed, can't you see?"
Priya looked at Loran and then looked at Ed's face. She could see the shame on his face. He very much wanted to look at her face. But he wouldn't. Priya sighed and leaned back, "Yeah, you're right. I can tell he feels bad. I just can't tell if that he led a young woman on or that he hasn't told me the whole story."
Ed looked up, he hated that she thought he might have been playing with her heart. He understood why it looked that way but it wasn't the case. "No, Never!" he said before his brain could stop him.
Priya's eyes lit up. "You can speak after all. So... what happened? What's the story, Ed?"
Ed got himself back upright and took a whiff of the coffee. Good fresh beans were rare. This coffee was brewed using a glass contraption and was more fragrant than he had experienced before. He took a slow sip of the warm liquid and swallowed. The heat ran down his throat and he felt it warm his belly. That feeling gave him the confidence to begin. Loran beat him to the punch though.
"If I may. You must understand that Ed was on a mission. I don't know all the details but he wasn't allowed to talk about it. I am sure whatever happened at your farm was not a lie."
Ed looked at Loran so fast he nearly spilled part of his drink. His eyes were huge, he appreciated the help but it caught him off guard the way she came up with a half-truth so quickly.
"So, I was traveling with the prophet and his friend Rennish." Ed began the story. "We were headed to the capital of Ganel to visit the church when we needed to stop and get supplies. That's when I met you."
Priya nodded. It seemed a too convenient explanation. "I had heard that you went to Ganel and that something horrible happened at the church. We all thought you were dead until someone started spreading rumors that you went south on a pilgrimage."
Ed swallowed. So that's what everyone was told. He knew he couldn't tell her that a goddess had pulled him out of the world and 5 years went by instead. "That's mostly what happened. We were sent south to save our lives. A member of the church had a cult and wanted to capture us for use by the church. We had to fight our way out. Erust used a miracle of the gods and summoned legions of rats to help us escape."
Loran had heard the story so she knew that Ed was changing names. She found it odd that Ed was so easily able to transfer that all to Erust. She wondered if he took any responsibility for what happened. "So you see why he couldn't tell you. And why he wasn't allowed back. If it was found that he was alive where the church could get him they would have all been killed."
Priya took a long drink of coffee and thought silently to herself. She had dreamed of the moment she would find Erust as a young girl. She would embrace him and they would head back home to CunStead to work the farm and forge, and raise a family in a small house on the edge of the property. That was the silly dream of a 16-year-old girl. The woman in her knew that if she did find him she expected to see him hopping from town to town, selling wares and informing her that she was nothing more than a moment in time.
Priya had never been one to stand down though. When she wanted an answer, she would go out and find it. She wouldn't have admitted it then to the man who walked away but she had wanted him to stay at the house. The boys in CunStead were all stubborn and fixated on the tiny lives they lived in the town. They were all completely content to live small lives. Erust seemed worldly and mysterious. That had been his draw.
Ed, however, right now sitting on the couch, he seemed small and afraid. "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"
"What do you want to hear? I am sorry I felt something for you? I am sorry I had to leave? I am sorry I didn't make it back before now? I am sorry you ended up here in the south, unable to go home?" Ed looked at her and locked eyes. He was very sorry for everything. He felt guilt about the hair and how she might have been a soul simply because he existed.
"That's a start at least. So at least that stupid girl on the farm wasn't holding onto hope for nothing." Priya sighed and scratched the back of her head. Her blond hair was pulled up in a bun. She grabbed the ribbon that held it and pulled. Her hair cascaded down around her shoulder before she shook it. "Oh, that's better. Do you remember that creek beyond the trees? I remember the way the water made my hair smell."
Ed laughed. "Yeah, that was a good place to rinse off. That whole town was clean and fresh. Hard to get a good bath in the city isn't it?"
"The hot water is better but the water smells like it's all been reused one too many times." Priya sighed. "And momma's fruit water."
Ed looked up, "Wasn't that just leftover tea and fruit rinds?"
"Yeah it was, but momma loved it." Priya looked at the ceiling before running her eyes back down at Ed. "So if you carry all that around why didn't you write or anything? If you knew, like really really knew, how I felt why did you stay silent? What the hell were you thinking?"
"I thought you would move on. I was a strange boy from a strange place who just showed up on the road one day." Ed stammered by the sudden veracity of her question.
"Are you an idiot Ed?" Loran said, breaking into the conversation.
"I hope not?" Ed said suddenly unsure of himself. He was trying to muster all the confidence he could and bolster his charisma. Faced with a woman on each side of him he suddenly felt small and outnumbered.
"You do get it then," Priya said to Loran.
Loran nodded and laughed. "Oh who hasn't had that crush. A new young man comes into town, strong and youthful. You have dreams of a life together. He seems to just fit right in. Mine was a fay from another tribe who came to train with my village. Oh, he was an eyeful. If I hadn't been hell-bent on being a knight I might have followed him back to start the life of a wife and rebuilding the world's population of fay children."
Ed sighed, "Do you hate me Priya?" He was ready to accept any judgment. He didn't know what The Oracles plans would require of her later but he didn't want her mad at him in case she was needed later.
Priya sighed, "I did, for a while." Priya told Ed how she started into the world to find him. She told stories of her own merchant life and then how she was captured and held as a slave. She told him about how she was freed from the slavers and how she made her way to the city of the Glass Capital. "When I slept at night in that cold damp cell, yeah sometimes I hated you almost as much as I hated myself. I hated myself for being worried about you still. Just a stupid boy who spent a week on my family farm and probably got himself killed or moved on when I was out of sight."
Ed leaned forward and put his mug on a table just arm's length away. "I am sorry. Would it help if I told you I never forgot about you or your family? Or that I very seriously nearly gave up the mission from the gods just to have a family for once in my life?"
Priya looked at him, she had learned how to study the body for signs of a lie from the other older merchants. She watched his eyes, even the way the vein in his neck moved for signs of a lie. Either he was a very good liar or telling the truth. "I want to believe you, it's been five years and you have to realize you don't look exactly like I remember."
Ed sighed, "Yeah, to tell you the truth for me it has only been a year since we met last."
Priya and Loran both raised an eyebrow at the admission. "When the church burned and the rats escaped the gods pulled us from the world to save us. We were gone for maybe a few months but you all moved on 5 years. I hated having that time stolen from me. I had hoped that I might have had the time to come back and find you later." Ed continued while they both listened intently.
Loran beat Priya to the punch, "So you mean that you lost 5 years that quickly?"
Ed nodded, "Stolen. I thought the whole world had moved on. All my old friends, Priya and her family, everyone would have thought I just died or moved on in my life. And I was living in the shadow of Erust the prophet. No word of me would ever get back home. I was a ghost."
Priya sighed, "You expect me to believe that you were on a mission from the gods?"
Ed nodded, "Yes they gave me certain powers to help fix a power balance issue with the world." He grabbed his cup and put one finger in the cooling water. He used basic ice magic to freeze the whole cup of coffee solid and then pulled the coffee from the cup. The whole frozen block stayed on his finger. Priya looked at him questioningly. He then put it back in the cup and returned it to full heat. This was small cooking magic but he hoped it would make an impression on her. She looked over and touched the coffee. When the heat burned her finger she immediately stuck it in her mouth to cool the pain.
"You can really cast magic?" She said with her finger in her mouth.
Ed nodded, "And divine power too. The Oracle is guiding me now. The goddess Ysennia killed me and has sent Erust off on his own new mission."
Priya looked at him. "You expect me to believe that you died and came back to the living."
Loran looked at Ed, now was a great time to get a question answered. "How many times have you died and come back, Ed? I know of two at least."
"Two times?" Priya said with surprise.
Ed sighed and thought back. He started counting out loud to himself before coming up with a firm number. "I think it's been fifteen times now I have died and someone or something had brought me back to life. Twelve of those were whole other previous lives that I died horrible deaths and they just started me back over from scratch."
Priya blinked at the conversation they were having so naturally. "You can't be serious."
Loran looked at Priya and put her best serious face on. She looked her straight in the eyes. "It is though. I saw his dead body brought into the capital and resurrected by the great mage Ko'Loss using alchemy this last time. They stole his body back from a goddess and reanimated him after the gods double-crossed him."
Ed was surprised she knew that much. "Ko'Loss told you?"
Loran nodded, "After the procedure, For'Ten and I needed to make sure what happened wasn't necromancy, which is still firmly forbidden in the southern lands. He gave us the story of what happened."
"You can't have any secrets when you are a servant of the world." Ed sighed.
Loran laughed and looked at Priya. "They brought him in nude too." She smiled and nodded her head.
Priya turned purple in the face. She had seen men since she had met him but the idea of them gaping at his corpse. Of course, it was just a corpse then and the dead had no dignity. She shook her head at the thought of his dead nude body.
Ed's head was spinning trying to figure out what the two women were thinking. Ed always assumed that men were far more lewd and nasty than women. He would have been surprised to find that women could be just as dirty-minded as men. They just did it in different ways.
Ed looked at Priya, the tips of her ears were turning red. He remembered back how that happened when she was embarrassed. "I was dead, don't worry. I am sorry for not coming back before now but now you know why. At some point, I have to go back north to give a disk to some humans. Can I escort you home when I do?"
Priya nodded. She didn't want to stay here any longer but the thought of walking back into the house with Ed nearby would cement that she hadn't been wrong all those years ago to leave.
"How long till you head back?" The pragmatist in her knew that the next trip north was 6 months away and the one after that was a year from then. Did she really want to live in the south this whole time?
Ed and Loran looked at each other. "We don't know exactly yet. We have 10 other people to find. We can get you better housing than this though."
Priya looked at them both. "I am a guest of House Jorgensen. I have to clear it with them first."
Loran stood up and stretched her back. "Well do it, I am sure the old mage won't mind another visitor. And if the Jorgensens don't want to get on the bad side of The Oracle I am sure they will permit you. Being a favorite of The Oracle and Ko"Loss the mountain would elevate their status again."
Ed smiled and nodded, "I am sure he would allow it, the mansion is lovely and you would be a guest there." His enthusiasm changed for a minute after he realized that he would be living under the same roof as her whenever he was back in the capital. He sighed and pushed the thought from his mind. How did he always get caught up in these situations?