Vermilion Rain: An FE3H Story

Chapter 3: Favorite Daughter

"Tell me about Garreg Mach," I said to Leonie. It was sometime later; we had arrived at her village (Sauin, she had called it) and we had sat down to a small but filling meal of stewed lentils with potatoes. Leonie's father, a quiet man named Emmanuel Pinelli, served the food with a single hand, a necessity for someone with only a single functioning hand to use. I had, of course, protested that their hospitality was unnecessary, but like his daughter, Mr. Pinelli was brusque in the handful of words he used. She had, if nothing else, come by her personality honestly.

Leonie swallowed a spoonful of stew and chewed. "It's a city at the center of the continent," she said. "It's also the lands of the Church of Seiros. You don't remember that, do you?"

I sighed. "You got me," I admitted. "I take it that Seiros is a deity of some sort?"

"Not really. Seiros was a great Saint who lived a thousand years ago. She was gifted with a revelation from the Goddess. She organized the church a thousand years ago, and defeated the enemy Nemesis, who tried to turn the people against it." She shrugged. "That's the story anyway."

"Huh."

"But that's the Church," Leonie went on. "What did you want to know?"

"Jobs," I said.

"Anything specific?" Leonie asked.

"I dunno." I thought for a moment. "Mainly, I need to find some way of making an income. At least until I get my memories back. And I don't really know what skills I have... makes it difficult to fill out a resume," I said with something akin to a laugh.

"A what?" Leonie asked.

"A... resume," I said. "You know, the thing that shows what you've done in your career?"

"I'm starting to think maybe you're not from around here," Leonie said with a smile. "Seven Samurai? Resume? Artemis? What other strange concepts do you have that I've never heard of?"

I grimaced. This indeed was one of the leading theories about my identity among the rest of the villagers. When Leonie had introduced me, the villagers, at once friendly, had gotten straight to work filling in the gaps in my memory as best they could. They decided I was a gentleman, which I took in it's original form, as a man with land and manners (I knew the etymology of the word "gentleman" but not my name... go figure). There was another notion, very nearly as popular, which had me as a foreigner, for exactly the reasons that Leonie described, along with my unusual clothes.

"Point is, I don't have a proven work history, and I don't know what skills I have," I said. "I'd bet I'm not much of a blacksmith, at least." The villagers had also remarked on my bony upper body, a stark contrast from their knotted frames, bent and broken by long hours of physical labor.

"You should join a battalion," Mr. Pinelli interjected with one of his rare comments. Like his daughter, he sported a round face and flaming orange hair and eyes, but his pockmarked features were graced and supported by a beard which obscured his chin and mouth.

"That's a good idea," Leonie agreed. "The Knights of Seiros employ a lot of enlisted men. From what I've heard, there's a good chance you can climb the ranks even if you're a commoner." She paused. "Captain Jeralt was Captain of the Knights before he became a mercenary." Leonie had already told me this,  but already in the couple of hours that I had known her, this wasn't the first time that she had repeated herself when it came to the Captain. She referred to him more than to her own father. I wondered how he felt about that.

"They like when enlisted men can read," Emmanuel noted. Yet another odd thing about me, I was fully literate. Leonie was one of three people in Sauin who could say the same. Apparently, she had taught herself how at age ten because Jeralt had told her it would be good to learn. I couldn't even figure out how one was supposed to do that all on one's own. She was a force of nature, this girl.