She lit the campfire.
“Was this how it was done…?”
Placed charcoal in the center.
“It is not the charcoal we used in Edlen, but its aroma is pleasant.”
And built walls on either side to create a place where they could grill shellfish.
Perhaps because she had made them from suitably broad, flat stones, their uneven surfaces did not look especially stable. Sinking into a strange reverie, Aria murmured softly,
“It might have been better with bricks…”
The mermaid, comparing the present campfire to the one in her childhood memories, looked down at her hands, blackened with charcoal.
“……”
After a long while, Aria murmured,
“…It is different from back then.”
Preparing a campfire had been so difficult with that small body.
“I have always been reminded of the past, but feeling this peaceful is an exceptionally unfamiliar experience.”
Suddenly, Aria was seized by the delusion that she was dreaming.
The cold-blooded Sage. The incarnation of the sea. The judge of all seawater. The world called the Deep Sea, and master of the game board. There was no possible reason for such a being to make this small, shabby campfire again.
Yet with these hands steeped in blood, she was repeating an action from the most peaceful period of her life….
“It does not feel real at all.”
She had never even imagined this could be possible. There had been no reason to.
“It seems strange too.”
Perhaps all of this had been created by a mermaid who could not cast off her old habits and had fallen into a long sleep. She sometimes had dreams like that, so it would not be especially strange.
After gazing at the flickering flames, Aria murmured,
“Then again,…