Recovery II

Alone in that room, Millia was afforded her first chance to relax since meeting Latonya. She took a deep breath, doing her best to keep it steady in spite of her objecting muscles. Her hand fell on a lump in her pocket, and she retrieved her warding necklace. She held it up by its severed cord. The green diamond contrasted beautifully with the late-day orange that reflected off the ceiling.

What would mama say?

The thought tripped Millia's memory and she reached for her smart device. Before setting off to join an adventuring team, Lilliana had asked that her daughter check in periodically. A loving mother, Lilliana undoubtedly sought reassurance that her firstborn could make it on her own in a dangerous world. Millia had planned on calling after her she completed her first assignment, but she had not expected that window to come two, or maybe three days after waving farewell.

Millia tapped on the communication feature to see that she had several messages from her mother. Almost all of them were some variation of Hope things are going well! Call when you can. The cow girl scooched up in the bed; a far more taxing act than it should have been. She took a moment to check her appearance, making sure she did not look too dishevelled. No need for her mother to know exactly how much she had been through on her first job.

The novice adventurer punched the command to call her mother and waited. It did not take long for her mother to pick up. The video call connected and Millia was treated to the sight of her mother.

"Millia dear!" Lilliana beamed, her crow's-feet deepening with the pure joy of seeing her daughter alive and well. "Girls, come. Millia's calling." The mother waved to those out of the camera's frame.

"Millia!" Kila squealed her greeting as she shoved her face into the shot. The girl's elation to see her elder sister was so wholesome that Millia could not help but be tickled by it. In the following minute, her three other siblings joined them, rearranging themselves until they could just barely fit the five of them in-frame. Chaos ensued as they all made their greetings at once and quickly broke into unloading their curiosity onto Millia. Where was she? Had she been promoted to D-Rank yet? Were her teammates nice? Had she seen a lot of other bovine demihuman adventurers?

Lilliana cut through the commotion. "Girls, slow down. Your sister can't understand you if you're all going to talk over one another." The sisters heeded the word of their mother, taking turns to deliver their inquiries. Millia answered them each in turn. She was on Sobrihiri; no, she had not yet climbed the adventurer ranks; yes, her teammates seemed nice; and no, she had not seen any other demihuman adventurers yet, but she had not seen all that many adventurers in the first place.

The conversation progressed with everyone reporting in on what they had been up to in her absence. Predictably, nothing wild had occurred in the three days she had been gone. They spoke back and forth until Lilliana insisted on some one-on-one with Millia and shooed her daughters out of the room.

"How are you, sweetheart?" Lilliana asked when it was just the two of them.

"As I said, I'm doing good," Millia reiterated.

"Yes, but I mean how are you holding up? No matter your expectation, the universe tends to outdo it."

This gave Millia a moment of pause. On some levels, her mother was correct. Millia had come onto this team with high hopes and starry eyes. She knew that novice adventurers were not supposed to see much action right away, and she had tempered her expectations accordingly. But this all made her first mission all the more confusing. Getting to see all that action up close and personal sounded like a welcome surprise, and most importantly, she had come out of it alive. But it was the darker sides of this profession that she was still grappling with.

The fuvea had been a reality check for Millia, reminding her that the life of an adventurer brought encounters with things that wanted you dead, and could absolutely make that a reality. She had been fortunate to run into Latonya. Without her, Millia seriously doubted that her mother ever would have gotten this call from her; and that scared her. No doubt it would scare her mother too. Millia had spent so long wanting at the very least to make it to where she was: to become an adventurer who would see the universe and climb the rungs of heroic acts to the peak of the ladder of glory. Her mother had cautioned her against this life path, but Millia had persevered. Instead of pushing harder, her mother had been supportive; doing what she could to help Millia along.

And now Millia was thinking about quitting, but she could not do that - not to her mother and not to her sisters. Her mother had done more than anyone could ask to support and love her five daughters. To quit now would be to dishonour that. As for her sisters, well, being the eldest came with certain expectations. Expectations that she would set a good example and always be in a position where she could care for herself as well as her siblings.

Millia had to succeed as an adventurer.

"Yeah, it was... more than I expected, but I think I can handle it," Millia said at least half-honestly.

Lilliana nodded with a note of melancholy. She believed that her daughter believed herself, but in her heart she was not yet convinced that letting Millia go was the right decision as a parent. "And how about your spiritual defenses? Has anything threatened you? Have you had to rely on the necklace? Did it work?" She had a harder time keeping the concern from her voice when she said this.

Millia hesitated for only the briefest of moments when preparing her answer, but it felt excruciatingly drawn-out. She still had not convinced herself that telling her mother about Latonya would do anything besides worry her. "No," she said, "this first mission was pretty quiet." She shared with her mother a version of the events that bore more resemblance to how it had been supposed to go, rather than how it actually went. "... and when I was finished, I showed up to the settlement, and I guess the fight was over. There were a lot of dead fuvea, and the warriors there were waiting for the cleanup crews."

"And your team? What happened to them?" Lilliana asked.

"I'm not sure," Millia said with more truth than most of her retelling. "I've reached out to them, but they might still be regrouping after the job."

"They had better not have ditched you there," Lilliana said in a foreboding tone.

"I know they wouldn't do that, mama," the cow girl reassured her. It was then that there was a knock on the door to her room. "That's probably them now. Got to go, mama. Love you lots!"

"Love you too, darling. Take care!" Lilliana was still hesitant to let her daughter go, but she knew she could not keep her on the line forever.

Millia ended the call and moved to get off the bed. Latonya had not been kidding about that healing spell. Even after spending just under an hour on the call, she was already feeling better to the point that she could stand and walk with only minor pain. Suppressing a wince, she shuffled to the door.