Bang!
Before I could react, a silver-white flash burst apart on the metal pipe in front of me, nearly blinding my eyes.
But when my eyes slowly recovered from the stimulation of the flash, it seemed nothing had happened.
“Huh… was the incantation wrong?”
On the other side was Alice, staring blankly at the wand in her hand.
“This is just about the only orthodox incantation I know. A traveler who stayed at the church for a while when I was little taught it to me…”
“Huh… I’ve used it plenty of times, too.”
…
I thought it was probably just that it had no effect on this thing.
But the moment I thought that, the entire ground began to shake violently.
Right after that, the cliff overhead let out wave after wave of crick-crack in the fierce tremor and started swaying along with the ground.
Bad. An earthquake.
I grabbed Alice’s hand without even thinking.
Driven by me, the wings at my back whooshed open through the sand and dust pouring down, and carried Alice and me out from under the collapsing cliff.
The instant I flew with Alice out of the dust onto broader sand, a boom suddenly rang out from the cloud of dust behind us.
Right after that, a surge of water like a giant wave sprayed up from underground and instantly drowned the entire dune.
This… this set something off, didn’t it…
Alice had clearly realized it as well.
When the two of us landed on the ground again, the hillside that had been sitting in a sand pit had become an island in a stretch of water.
The two of us stood there stunned for a long, long time.
Only when everything had returned to calm did Alice look at me and bite her tongue.
“I messed up.”
Messed up… you—!
What were we supposed to do now…
I could only say it was lucky this was uninhabited land.
Never mind any mysterious effects magic might bring.
This was already at the level of changing the geography.
It was too scary.
What kind of chain reaction could cause a result like this.
Even so, the marker floating in the HUD in my field of view still had not disappeared.
It still pointed toward the position at the foot of the mountain.
[Distance: 810 m]
Ah… 810 meters.
That radius was already a lake that was not small.
How was I supposed to get back to that spot?
The one more optimistic than me was always Alice.
While I was still thinking about how to return to the foot of the mountain, and even if I returned, how I would find the signal source, Alice had already crouched at the edge of this newly formed lake.
In the shimmer brought by the silver moon she lightly scooped up a handful of water and tasted it.
“Yulin-chan, it’s clean water.”
“Yulin-chan is amazing. There really was water inside~”
Probably Alice’s reaction was the normal one.
After all, an oasis in the desert was as precious as pearls.
Watching Alice fill every container that could be filled and then tuck them into her robe, I couldn’t help quietly letting out a breath, then sat down heavily on the dune.
Facing this lake was probably a kind of ease, too.
Moonlight and starlight reflected on the lake’s surface, lighting the hillside not far away.
This bay of clear water in the desert was probably already the most precious treasure of all to Alice.
If you did not feel it yourself, it was hard to understand how precious an oasis in the desert was.
Especially on a night like this, when you gazed at the calm lake and felt the moonlight overhead, on one hand marveling at a vastness the eye could not reach the end of, on the other listening to the whispers of the night wind.
The Heavenly Ring in the vault of the sky, glittering like a crown, was gradually sinking toward the other end of the heavens.
I often stayed up late, but I rarely went a whole night without sleeping like this.
This feeling was actually pretty uncomfortable.
A head that had begun to go numb told me I really needed rest.
It felt as if the previous moment I had still been in my own room, facing a screen, waving a brush and scattering color.
I would never have thought that one day I would be sleeping outdoors, much less in this endless, uninhabited sea of sand.
Perhaps she had rested enough.
Alice by the lake seemed only then to remember me.
She stood up from a stretch of silver light and walked to my side.
“At this rate we can only wait until daytime to explore. Going into the water at night would freeze us to death.”
“I see…”
She was probably worried I was getting impatient.
I looked up at her and reached out to rub my already blurry eyes.
“Be careful not to rub sand into your eyes.”
Her voice was still that gentle, with a thread of playful cuteness in her tone.
“Mm.”
If my mother were still here, she would probably say the same thing to me.
I stretched deeply.
On this night when I could not sleep and there was nothing to do, Alice bent and sat down beside me, looking up into the far, far distance.
“What kind of place is Heaven?” Alice said after a moment of silence.
“Eh?”
“Don’t angels all live in Heaven? What is Yulin’s hometown like?”
“Nn…”
I don’t know.
When I opened my eyes I was already here.
The previous moment I had still been lying on a warm, soft bed taking a nap.
But if Heaven truly existed, if angels truly lived in Heaven, I thought…
“It’s a small city. The angels live there every day.”
“It isn’t much different from cities on the ground. Everyone’s life is just ordinary and plain, watching the sunrise and sunset at ease, watching the starry sky that lights the grasslands…”
“And…”
“And?”
With a thread of curiosity in her voice, Alice’s face couldn’t help drawing closer to mine.
“And a very gentle, very cute angel standing under an apple tree, waiting for me…”
“A very gentle, very cute angel…?”
“Mm.”
As I spoke I buried my head between my arms and hugged my legs tight.
A very gentle, very cute angel.
But it was in my dreams.
If Heaven truly existed, I thought their lives would be just like what I had seen in my dreams.
Living at ease, laughing happily, singing light songs every day.
“Yulin-chan?”
“Nn.”
Hearing Alice’s voice, I immediately lifted my head.
I had nearly fallen asleep.
“What is it?”
Alice shifted a little closer to me, undid the bow at her chest, and said,
“If you want to sleep, come here. It’s warm here.”
I-I’d rather not…
Even if we were both girls, I would still get embarrassed…
So I shook my head and quickly changed the subject.
“Speaking of which, Alice said we’d wait until daytime to keep exploring. But this whole area has basically been flooded. Is there some magic that can avoid water? Something like a [Water-Avoidance Charm]?”
Fine.
I didn’t actually know.
I had just casually named a spell from some well-known work.
“There isn’t.”
Opening those big blue eyes, Alice looked at me with a face full of innocence.
“I don’t know that many spells, and I haven’t had much success talking with water either.”
“I was thinking I might ask Yulin-chan…”
“If that won’t work, we’ll just have to swim~”
…
Sw-swim…
For a NEET, that word was truly terrifying.