"I can't sleep."
In the darkness, Dia tried to look for any sign of the Moons, but there was nothing whatsoever. Normally, even during the New Moons, they weren't fully darkened out; there was usually a ring of light that enclosed a black core. However, ever since the months of the New Moons started, these rings had been conspicuously absent.
Dia didn't bring it up back then. Nor did anyone else. It was, however, something that everyone probably had noted once or twice, even if they didn't say it out loud. To make matters worse, even the small pinpricks of light that usually hung around at night had been completely blotted out by some unknown power, something that Dia had never seen before.
Farah grunted. Sitting up slowly, she said, "Maybe we should make a detour. Or sleep during the evening, when the sun's still up."
Dia turned to look at Farah, whose eyes were glowing faintly under the flames. The two of them were sleeping quite close to the small fire created by the Porta-Pyro, since neither of them felt good closing their eyes in the darkness. "A detour?"
"We'll take a longer road. There are also three baronies under Farah County, and each of these baronies have a few small villages too. If we change our route to accommodate these villages, two-thirds of our trip can be spent in doors, in an inn.
"Do we have enough time?" Dia asked. "We're already cutting it close, aren't we?"
"No, when I said that we would take nine days to get there, I meant that in terms of walking." She paused, and then said, "Normal walking, like what we did earlier."
"I was wondering why we were walking," Dia mumbled. "So we were just taking it easy?"
The countess cleared her throat. "Well, I was intending on sneaking in when everyone's at their busiest. Otherwise, we would take an entire day in talking to my people, who, in their infinite love for staying home, are very hungry for stories about the outside world. And I can't really bring myself to reject them either."
"Well, you must have a disguise for sneaking in, right? Surely you weren't thinking of waltzing into your home territory, where everyone presumably knows you by sight…wait." Dia eyed her lookalike, and then scoffed. "Aren't you already in disguise? You're disguising as m—my mistress! What do you think was going to happen when you walked in?"
Farah jumped. "Eh?"
"…Judging from your reaction, you've forgotten that you've been disguised as m—my mistress for a very long time. Do you even take that off when you're sleeping?" Dia asked, curious.
"…Changing hair colours is quite troublesome."
"I hear that Lily changes out of her disguise, though," Dia replied.
"Who said that?" Farah asked.
"Claud?"
"And how would he know that?" the countess pressed on. "What, were they sleeping…yeah, they were sleeping in the same room, now that I think about it. Phew. You'd think that Claud would make a move or something, but now that I recall their recount…hmm."
"Right?" Dia nodded, her thoughts directed towards the two. "But we shouldn't do anything about them, though. Pushing them together might not be a good idea. Let things take their course, okay?"
"…Fine."
"That pause sounds awfully suspicious," Dia noted. "Anyway, do you have a partner? Now that I think about it, if Nightfall has a fiancée, I don't see why you don't have one."
"The count is three hundred or so years old," Farah replied. "He's at the upper bound of the marriageable age for a mana-user. He's had three vanilla lifetimes to fool around with, as does his fiancée. In contrast, I'm just twenty-seven. I'm not in any particular rush, really."
"I thought you were kidding about being twenty-seven," Dia replied, somewhat humbled. "In that case, you're an abnormally wise ruler. Most nobles — well, those from the other sovereignties, anyway — like to play around for the first two hundred years or so…"
"Well, they didn't get an entire county dumped on their laps, you know," the countess replied, her narrowed eyes staring at the flame. "Nor did their parents see it fit to run away and let a five-year-old rule the area with the help of some maidservants. If they had fired my butler back then…"
Dia winced inwardly. As expected, the countess of Farah County also had her own growing up troubles, but she didn't expect these troubles to be in the form of abandoning one's territory. Usually, if a noble inherited the title this young, it was usually because their parents met an untimely end, so this was really something new to her.
"They fled."
"Yes." Farah chuckled. "Depressing, isn't it? Fortunately, if my people and my helpers didn't unite and guide me, we would have probably collapsed from the debts they left behind long ago. We did eventually get back up on our feet, though. Paid the debt off and expunged my parents from the records, last name and all. I even changed the name of the county to Farah, using my given name as the foundation."
Dia didn't know where to begin, so she spent the next minute or so staring at the fire instead. Farah didn't look like she was expecting a reply either, which meant that Dia was completely fine with staying silent.
"I think I did a good job," Farah concluded.
Reaching out a hand, Dia patted her head. "Yeah, you did. Good job out there, Farah."
"It was funny, really, when I removed all traces of my surname from the county and the records. My useless parents heard that I cleared their debt and made the territory profitable once more, so they tried going back." Farah had a nostalgic look on her face. "Their surprise when they learned that I expunged their surname from my name and my territory's name was excellent."
Dia wanted to ask about Farah's last name, but decided against that after a second of thought. Given that this was something that only she knew so far, and especially given the events that Farah had recounted in a light-hearted manner, Dia knew that these memories were definitely not pleasant ones.
"What happened afterwards?"
"Well," Farah replied with a grin, "they had brought along one of the Emperor's officials to wrest back control of the territory. I was scared back then, but it turned out that Emperor Grandis had heard about the mismanagement back then, as well as my efforts. After I verbally affirmed that I was willing to fight it out in a court of law, Sir Agni got his soldiers to arrest my parents, before stripping them of all lawful claims and then exiling them into the swamps of Voidum Sovereignty."
"That sounds harsh."
Farah shook her head. "It was a mercy, actually. Out of consideration for me. Emperor Grandis personally consigned my parents into what could be described as a nursing home for deluded nobles, and then conferred me with the full rights and privileges of a count."
Dia looked up and smiled. The Emperor was a scary person, but Farah's story, when she recounted it in this fashion, felt like a fairy tale through and through. The noble and just Emperor, who intervened to save the poor girl…
"You should tell your story to an acclaimed writer," Dia replied.
"What? Why? What for?"
"It'll sell like moonpies!" Dia rubbed her hand. "Your story is about Emperor Grandis, who saved the day for a young maiden! And it's real to boot! Publishers are going to snap it up. Everyone wants to butter up to Emperor Grandis, but you can't falsify deeds of the Emperor. You, however…"
"That's not appropriate," Farah replied, shooting her suggestion down. "And besides, the Emperor saved me. It would be unbecoming of me to use him as a channel of profit, no?"
"You make a point there," Dia conceded begrudgingly, before letting out a yawn.
"You're tired?" Farah asked. "Well, what do you know. You're not the only—"
She yawned, cutting off her words.
"Seems like all we needed to do was to share some gossip, eh?" Dia chuckled.
"Indeed," Farah replied. "But how did we even arrive at this topic to begin with? What was our original…"
Dia scrunched her brows together for two seconds, before promptly deciding that it was too much hard work for her sleep-addled state. "We were talking about mana-walking, I think. And then we moved to Lily and Claud for some reason, before derailing onto a conversation about your age. After that, you shared with me how you became a—"
A gentle, rhythmic breathing entered her ears at this point, and Dia smiled gently. Stretching slightly, she laid back down and closed her eyes. Now, after a good talk, the darkness around her didn't seem all that dangerous any more.
Or perhaps, she was just too tired to actually care all that much.
Yawning once more, she was about to sleep when the sound of someone walking entered her ears.