Of Short and Simple Hopes

John let silence reign for a few moments. The look on Ela’s face was oddly tense, and he couldn’t quite parse what emotions were supposed to be coming through. For a moment, his social anxiety crept up on him again, a nervous chill holding him in place, but he swallowed those emotions.

As long as he was around, she wasn’t allowed to be alone with her feelings, either.

The Gamer squeezed his girlfriend’s hand, reminding her that he was there. “You alright?”

The knight finally turned her gaze from the egg, meeting his eyes. “Yes. Sorry. I suppose I was lost in thought for a moment.”

“Well, that’s my thing,” John teased with a smile. “So you gotta find something else.”

She giggled, softly, for just a moment, the tension in the air floating away with the soft sounds of her laughter. “I will try, but I make no promises.”

“I suppose that I’ll allow it. Since it’s you.” He squeezed her hand again, chuckling lightly, before it tapered off. “...You sure you’re alright, though?”

A calmer silence passed as Ela chose her response carefully, gazing distantly out the window. “It has been a long week for me, too. One that has left me with much to think about.

“This little one,” she continued, looking back down at the bundled sun in her lap, “is what worries me right now.”

“Do you not think Cornelius will find something to help?” The Gamer asked, softly. “He said that the Order has probably had some around before.”

“I would never question the Lord-Protector’s Sage, in ability or intent,” Ela replied, placing her hand once more upon the egg, which rippled with orange-golds at her touch, “but his search will take time, if indeed his predecessors left him any information at all.”

“Ah…” John understood immediately. He’d seen only a small fraction of the Order’s history from the outside. If the older man was to be searching their own archives, it could be a matter of days or weeks to find anything specific and useful - time that the egg might not have before hatching. “I… Hmm… yeah, that makes sense.”

He leaned over, placing his own free hand upon the egg. “Don’t worry, lil’ guy, we’ll get you sorted.”

The Gamer swore that the egg glowed a little brighter as he spoke, but again, he couldn’t quite tell. Now, he just needed to figure out how to live up to those words.

Wincing, he considered the possibility of checking the Abyss Auction for resources on the rearing of phoenixes. They’d surely have it, but, if the prices he saw on info about the Order was anything to go by, it would be painful, even on the cheap end. Getting the absolute cheapest offering when he wanted information to raise a newborn animal, one that was rare even in the Abyss, didn’t seem like a great idea, either.

“Do you have a plan?” Ela asked, teasingly, drawing him away from that line of thinking.

“Uh, well, I figure I could try and find some basic information on the Auction, if nothing else.” John said, trying to sound more confident than he was. “It’ll hurt to pay for, if I can find what I need, but it’s worth it.

“Not… not just for my quest or anything,” he continued, remembering the phoenix’s final moments, brushing its feathers against his hand before it burst into flame. “That shard, or whatever it was, that was in its chest was deep, overgrown - it had been there for a long, long time. I don’t know if that phoenix ever knew freedom.”

The Gamer’s voice picked up as he turned to his girlfriend. “This creature deserves another real chance at life, one far away from… whatever it was that they did to it.”

The Bookworm Knight smiled back, enjoying the conviction behind his words. “I agree. This budding life should be given a chance to bloom. Which is… what I was thinking about."

John blinked, thinking back a minute. “Ah, right, sorry. I almost forgot. You already mentioned that you knew someone who could help, right?”

Ela shifted in her seat. “I do.”

“You don’t sound particularly confident or enthused.”

“I am certain that she would help,” she answered, looking down again. “I am… not certain how I would ask her.”

“You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to,” John assured her, concern in his eyes. “You’re already helping way more than you have to, without me even having to ask.”

Ela smiled, sweetly, squeezing John’s hand. “What sort of friend - or girlfriend - would I be if I did not want to help you? Besides, if this egg does hatch into a baby phoenix, I am sure that it will be adorable, and I would not want to miss that.”

“Ah, so the true ulterior motive is revealed!” he exclaimed. They both smiled at that, a moment passing in peaceful silence. The Bookworm Knight leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder for a moment, and so he let his own head lean down, resting atop hers.

’As crazy and messy and confusing as this week has been,’ he thought, ’if I could do it all again, I don’t think I’d change a thing.’

John immediately over-thought that sentiment, ’Well, actually, there’s probably more than a few places where I could have done things better. Definitely could have gotten hurt a lot less in my first dungeon if I was better prepared. Ack, I know what I meant.

’I wouldn’t change this for the world.’

“We are almost there,” the blonde sang, barely above a whisper, interrupting that brief quiet to gesture out the window.

The couple both sat up, each straightening themselves out to look more presentable. They’d let enough time roll by as they were talking that Reginald had gotten them most of the way across town, over both the bridges and into the expensive part of the city. Brighton Manor was no more than a few minutes away at this pace. Part of John was a little sad at that, knowing that the peace he’d been enjoying all morning was likely soon to end.

The Gamer laced his fingers into the hand of the woman next to him, enjoying the warmth shared between them. “It’s been a long week for us both. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the Order will just already have everything nice and sorted. Then, we can just take the rest of the week off. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

That got a smile out of her. “If only it could be that simple.”

“‘Simple’ certainly hasn’t been my track record for the last few days.” John shrugged, smiling wryly. “But luck’s gotta turn around eventually, right?”

“Hopefully,” she sang, accepting his segue away from her own troubles. “It would be nice to have a few days to relax after what has happened. I was hoping to go downtown this weekend to see what types of food I can find.”

“Well, I happen to know of one really good Brazilian steakhouse on the far end of the river. If you’re interested, of course.”

Ela perked up at that immediately. “Mmm… I think that you could talk me into trying that out.”

“My treat then,” he said, grinning. His smile faltered as he realized something, though. “Uh, actually, I might have to take a rain check on that.”

The Gamer looked down, gesturing back at the phoenix egg, still glowing brightly from beneath the tightly wrapped blanket. “If this thing really is about to hatch, I don’t know if I can go anywhere too far. I’m not supposed to keep it in my inventory, and I can’t exactly just leave it around without supervision. And I’m pretty sure taking a miniature sun into a mundane restaurant runs up against that veil you were telling me about.”

“Unfortunately, that does make sense,” the Bookworm Knight replied, the edge of her lips curled in the faintest smile. “If only one of us could transport the food home without it getting cold.”

“Haha!” John laughed heartily before quickly coughing and cutting himself off. Luckily, it seemed that either Reginald didn’t hear him through the divider that separated the front and back of the car or he was simply choosing to ignore them.

“Ahem… I really am gonna need more inventory slots at this rate,” he said, still holding back the last bits of laughter. “I think I could manage to hang on to a nice dinner, though.”

“Good,” Ela sang. “We can finish making plans once we are done speaking to the Warden and her father.”

The Gamer nodded, letting the rest of the ride pass by all-too-fast, the warmth of Ela on one hand, and the egg on the other.

’I could get used to this…’