Chapter 89: Selia’s realization (part 1)
It took me only about an hour to start silently regretting my decision.
An hour filled with insistence, smiles and convincing Selia that I really meant what I said.
And coincidentally, it was exactly after an hour that we’d left the city, with just two bags worth of supplies, the prepared seeds and a determination to greatly improve the time we took, just a few days ago, to cross the distance between the jungle and the town.
"I wonder if your body is simply adapting to the reality of this world," Selia muttered under her nose while throwing me one inquisitive look after the other. "After all, you didn’t really train much nor did you get any ability that could improve your movement speed, so how come you can move much faster now?"
I closed my eyes, taking a moment to think things through. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t really find any logical explanation to the issue Selia brought up.
"Maybe you are right?" I suggested, only to then press my lips into a thin line and gently shake my head. "Or maybe we are missing something?" I shook my head again before sighing out. "I don’t mean to claim you are wrong, but it just doesn’t feel right to assume the easiest possible answer simply because we are missing a proper explanation."
"What else could be the reason, then?" Selia asked while locking her arms behind her back and leaning forward a little only to turn her head towards me and grace me with another lovely smile of hers.
"I don’t know," I shrugged my shoulders. There was no shame in admitting ignorance. If anything, it would be shameful to try to pretend I knew more than I really did just so I could avoid admitting to the fact that I didn’t have all the answers in the world. "And I’m not trying to say you are wrong either," I shook my head again. "But hey, it’s not like we can explain the existence of this mental bond between us either, can we?"
This was yet another interesting fact that we ended up pretty much glossing over.
There was this weird bond between us that allowed us to share our feelings and thoughts to a certain ambiguously limited degree. And while me not knowing where it came from was a given, apparently, Selia couldn’t really explain its presence either.
"It would be easy to just claim it’s all the workings of fate. But how would it be any different from claiming that thunder is a physical manifestation of a god’s anger?"
Even though I wasn’t the studious kind of a kid who would remember everything that was taught in class, I could still recall the myths from ancient Greece where thunders would happen because of Zeus throwing his mighty javelins down to the earth.
"Wait, it isn’t?" Selia opened up her eyes wide, only to turn her face up to the sky while cowering a little, acting as if she fully expected the sky to instantly turn dark only for the clouds to coil and produce a lightning to cast me down for daring to utter such a heresy.
But the sky remained as perfectly clear as it was just a few moments ago, with no sign of a physical manifestation of godly anger coming to strike us down.
"Assuming the principles are the same in this world, then thunder is generally an effect of a myriad of tiny particles striking against each other high up in the sky. Then, once there’s enough charge brimming in the skies, it gets discharged down to earth by following the route of the smallest possible resistance."
I recited the whole thing out from my memory, only to then shake my head and raise my hands, as if in defense against a horde of online critics that was bound to appear after such an imprecise and likely untrue statement.
"That’s how I remember it, so don’t take my word for it. It’s no more than the great simplification of how things happen where the reality is likely to be a lot more complex than that. There’s also the chance I remember things wrong, so..."
"Hey," Selia ran up a few steps ahead only to turn on her heel and face me while standing directly in my path. "I never thought to ask before, but how would you even know that?" she asked while leaning her head off to the side. "Were you some kind of a scholar back in your world?"
I raised my eyebrows, taken off-guard by the sudden question.
"No, not at all!" I instantly denied the accusation, even going as far as to shake my hands before my chest in a silly attempt to dispel the false accusations.
Then, I froze.
’Wait, thinking about it, I did spend the better part of my life constantly learning. And while it was merely a norm back on earth...’
I opened up my hands and held them palms-up at the level of my chest, all so I could stare at them in this moment of enlightenment.
"Now that I think about it, I did spend most of my life going from one school to the other. Heck, I was in the middle of a lesson when I was summoned to this world too..."
Selia’s eyes widened up, as if she suddenly connected some dots that led her towards one hell of a massive discovery.
"That..." she gulped her saliva down, her face suddenly growing quite tense, "that explains a lot..."
She retreated a step... only to bow her head down.
"I’m sorry! No," she shook her head, only to then bow even deeper. "I humbly apologize for my unpleasant remarks from back when we first met," she spoke out from the bottom of her heart, our bond only serving to confirm just how honest of an apology it was. "I never knew you were one of the sages, I swear! It was never my intention to..."