Marisol had to wait until the chaotic lunch hours were over in the Familia—staring longingly at the waves crashing against the harbours below—before the owners of the restaurant finally had some free time to attend to her.
There were more of the owners of the family restaurant than just Bruno, Aidan, and Helena. There were five more helpers aged ten to sixteen, working odd jobs around the restaurant, and Marisol watched them while sipping on her cold lemonade: Bruno and Aidan patted the older kids on the back as they were sent out of the restaurant in Harbour Guard Academy uniforms, while Helena straightened collars, polished shoes, and gave the younger kids tight hugs before sending them to afternoon school, wherever that was. It wasn’t until three past noon that Helena finally turned over the ‘Not Open’ sign on the front door, leaving the restaurant all but empty and quiet at long last.
As Bruno and Aidan sighed, working on floor and table cleanup, Helena swerved by and offered her a glass of vermouth on the house. Marisol had never heard of the drink before, but it smelled faintly alcoholic, so she declined politely. She made it a point to refuse any food that’d make her unstable while skating.
Shrugging, Helena took the window seat opposite from her table and slid her an extra bowl of ice cream.
“A type of helado artesano,” Helena said, tapping the rims of the bowl, “flavoured with almonds, nougats, cinnamons, and figs. Four in one. It’s the Familia specialty.”
Marisol’s eyes glimmered. Now, she hadn’t had before, so she picked up the small spoon and started feeding herself, the creamy ice melting on her tongue while Helena watched with a satisfied smile. Seeing the Imperator stare at her reminded her to pay for everything, because she’d most definitely eaten way more than her fair share of free food in the past three hours.
Even if she was a guest—and everything in the menu was horrendously cheap—she’d feel bad at getting all this free food without doing anything in return.
“How’d you find this place?” Helena asked, propping her cheek up with her human hand. “I’m surprised you even ventured all the way down here just for food. Did that Flower Cape tell you?”
“Archive,” she said, in-between furious bites, “said… this place was… best lunch place in the whole wide city.”
Helena grinned from ear to ear. She looked over her shoulder and hollered at her older brothers mopping the floor, “Did you hear that? Marisol’s Archive says we’re the best lunch place there is!”
“What about the best dinner place?” Aidan hollered back from several tables away, looking up from his mop. “What’s your friend say about the best dinner place in the city?”
“It says it’s here as well,” Marisol said, much to Aidan and Bruno’s delight. The two brothers high-fived each other as they walked past, and Helena chuckled softly.
“Well, this calls for another celebration. Wait here. I’ll go in the back and get you another plate—”
“I’m surprised, though,” Marisol said, wiping cream off her lips with her thumb and sucking it clean, “I thought being an Imperator was a full-time job, and that all of you live up in the upper city.”
“Most Imperators are residence in the upper city because it’s closer to the lighthouses and the whirlpool,” Helena corrected. “Doesn’t mean all of us take that offer, though, especially when we have family in the lower city. Why trade what we already have for a cold, unfamiliar, albeit maybe more luxurious and secure place in the upper city?”
Marisol leaned back against her cushion, looking the restaurant over once again. The small round tables, the painted floor, the cracked walls, the faded tapestries, and the brilliant close-up view of the harbours right below. It a quaint little place, and Marisol wasn’t sure if she’d give this up for her room in the Highwind Inn, either.
“... Eight of you siblings run the restaurant?” she asked, taking another sip of her lemonade.
“Ten. The youngest are seven and eight, but they had to go to afternoon school a bit earlier today.” Then Helena pointed out the window, gesturing at her younger siblings meandering their way up the street towards their school. “Short of an entire manor, there’s no residence in the upper city capable of housing all ten of us, and the seven of them will have to change schools if they move up top. Best to stay down here where all their friends are.”
Marisol whistled. “Your mama and papa must’ve had a hell of a time raising all of you, then.”
“You’re an only child?”
“Only daughter.”
“It has its ups and downs.” Helena smiled. “But I like to think we’re running Familia decently well.”
“What’s up with this, anyways? Don’t you guys get paid well for being Imperators?”
“We do,” Aidan mumbled as he passed by their table, kicking Helena’s legs under the table so he could mop the floor. Helena grumbled and clicked her pistol shrimp claw at his back, making him stumble slightly. “But as new recruits who can only dive down to Depth Three at best, the pay’s only enough for just about seven people. Granted, because of you, we’re taking more extermination missions than we used to, but it’s still enough.”
“There’s three more kids we have to send to school, and until the oldest graduates from Harbour Guard Academy, we’ll still have to pay for their living expenses,” Helena said, shrugging lightly. “Besides, we like to keep Familia open. The reason why we can keep our prices low is because we work for super minor profits—we pay for most of our ingredients out of pockets so the kids around here can eat for cheap.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
the Archive pointed out,
picky eaters.]
“How do you guys do it, then?” Marisol asked, tilting her head back and looking up at the painted murals on the ceiling. “Working as Imperators and as restaurant owners… must be tiring. Why not let your mama and papa help out—”
the Archive said plainly, and without warning, a wide status screen popped up over the table showing aerial images of the lower city in ruins.
The unasked-for history lesson continued. Marisol blinked, her eyes swirling and stinging with information as the images on the status screen changed with rapid flickers, showing her increasingly brutal visuals of the damages caused.
Cluster of colourful buildings reduced to rubble. Bodies of merchants and dockhands sprawled lifeless. Half-sunken ships in the harbours, masts jutting out like skeletal fingers from the frothing seas. Other status panels scrolled by lists of casualties and infrastructure losses—clinical words for unspeakable losses.
It was almost like the time when she’d put on Kuku’s crab helmet and experienced his past, but not quite. This time, she was but a mere observer of a more distant, cold past.
Her stomach churned. A faint nausea rose as the images of the destruction set in, and she lurched forward, reaching instinctively for the glass of cold lemonade. Helena nudged it forward into her grasping hand, smiling wistfully.
“... Your Archive told you?” Helena asked, tilting her head. “That our parents were among the deceased, and the three of us oldest siblings decided to keep Familia running in their stead—I bet the Archive knows more about that stray attack than even we do, given I heard it can… document anything and everything it can get its invisible hands on?”
Marisol’s face burned as she took a big swig of her lemonade, swallowing nervously. “I wasn’t… trying to pry,” she mumbled, averting her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t realise. I should’ve figured, I guess, but—”
“It’s fun watching you,” Helena mused, propping up her cheek with her human hand once again. “So strong and so fast, but so easily made red-faced as well. You’re just like our little siblings.” Then she turned around and hollered at her older brothers, “ain’t that right, Aidan, Bruno?”
The brothers laughed heartily in response, but they didn’t bother stopping their cleanup just to make Marisol feel even more awkward about prying. Helena shook her head and turned back around, giving Marisol an ‘it’s alright’ look.
“I bet your Archive can tell you just about everything about anyone living in the Whirlpool City,” she said pointedly, “I think, at some point in everyone’s lives, they’ve come in contact with a Flower Cape before, and if they’ve come in contact with a Flower Cape, their names, faces, backgrounds, and general physical information have already been documented… but we’re, so so far from the mainland continent. If anything happens to someone, we’re all we can rely on. I see no point in keeping any secrets in Familia.”
Marisol had a few words to say about that, but the ring of the afternoon bell shook her from her thoughts as new customers started walking in, greeting Helena as they walked by. Aidan and Bruno immediately yelled at their younger sister to help them out with the cleanup or they wouldn’t be able to get tea service up in time.
Helena stood up, reached into a back pocket, and handed Marisol a piece of wrapped candy.
“I’m glad you got to try our specialty dishes,” she said, winking at Marisol as she left. “Leave a good review with your Archive so more Flower Capes visit us with their deep pockets in the future, yeah? This meal’s on the house for the ‘Storm Strider’ who defended the lower city from a Mutant-Class. We’ve been meaning to invite you down here for some time, anyways, so who would’ve known you’d find us all on your own?”
More and more children started racing into the restaurant, dumping their school satchels onto the cushions, and Marisol figured it was time for her to leave as well. The afternoon school children probably used Familia as a gathering spot, so it’d be rude to impose on the owners any longer—but she made a mental note to herself, as she waved her farewells to Helena and skated out the front door, that she’d definitely come back to visit very, very often.
She didn’t just like the food.
Standing before the railings of the stairs leading down to the main street, she caught a glimpse of everything the lower city stood for: messy buildings painted in soft hues of terracotta, saffron, and ocean blue, standing whole again, their intricate wrought-iron balconies adorned with potted plants. The cobbled main streets, once drenched in chaos and blood, now teemed with life. Boats bobbed gently in their moorings, their sails rolled down as their crews shared stories and smoked on the docks.
She took a deep breath of fresh, saltwater-tinged air, and relaxed her grip on the railings.
This part of the city was what she’d helped protect when she killed the Mutant-Class wraith shrimp, and the sooner she could help end ‘Black Storm’, the less the people here had to worry about carnage on the scale of what’d happened four years ago.
She narrowed her eyes at the little water strider on her shoulder, knowing it hadn’t meant any real harm, but… that wasn’t how she wanted to use her registered system.
The Archive dipped its head apologetically.
She still wasn’t quite satisfied with its casual response—if there was anything she’d learned about her Archive today, it was that it knew far, too much, perhaps even more than its own good—but at the same time, she was willing to just let bygones be bygones.
The map and the navigation data and the restaurant reviews were nice features to use, but having the Archive tell her things about people instead of said things from said people was a no-go.
She continued squinting at the little water strider, but only for a few moments longer before she returned to looking out at the sunlit lower city, eyes softening.
Water Bug Facts #66: Some crustaceans actually exhibit behaviors that resemble feeding or caring for their family, like pistol shrimps, who often live in colonies where they share food resources and work together to protect their burrows!
Next chapter on Sunday!
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