Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 41 (Patreon)

Chapter 41: Endless Preparations

(Original Chapter Title: Endless Preparations)

This chapter isn't quite as fluffy as the last, even if it still predominantly focuses on Ranthia and Avyna shopping.

Preparing for a new home is not an easy feat. When I got my first apartment on my own, my mother dragged me to the store to buy a bunch of cleaning supplies I hadn't even thought about; I'd been focused on furniture, decor, and cookware. Ranthia didn't own much in the way of non-essential items and Avyna had been renting fully furnished—there's a lot of gaps to fill. They needed multiple days to prepare, and I felt there was enough of interest to write some of them out.

The chapter opens with Ranthia still flustered from nearly declaring her love verbally, and the other Sentinels assume she's still embarrassed about her incident with the dwarven 'science' and start heckling her. In the OG draft Ranthia threatened them with her knives, but it felt a bit too forced—bordering being out of character—with Ranthia's current mood and focus.

Honestly, she was kind of (mostly) over the ordeal after her shopping date.

In the OG draft I left the identity of the twin that attacked Mirage vague—at least as Ranthia relayed his story to the reader. Not entirely sure why I did that, I'd known even back then about what the winged ogre twin would be like. Easy fix.

Night had a bad night/morning and was impatient to end the meeting—he had heard Bulwark starting to dismiss them before he entered—which cut the usual structure of the Sentinel meetings down a bit.

With the meeting done, the ladies are back to shopping. Avyna reveals a slight miscalculation in how she prioritized her purchases, but she does her best to mitigate the harm. We also see Ranthia being overly impressed by the most mundane things (look, new relationship is new; I'm not going to be the one to tell Ranthia she can't gush over her new partner).

The spicy meal scene is a minor bit of fluff, but it was present from the OG draft too. I like the scene, both for its own color/showing the ladies' personalities, and for the lesson hidden within. Avyna relied (to her detriment) on a stereotype that, in this instance, proved to be wrong. No culture or species is monolithic: there will always be outliers and those that go their own way. And sometimes you luck into finding one of those on the first go, assuming the stereotype you learned was even accurate in the first place! Tl;dr - don't rely on stereotypes, you'll get burned.

But hey, everybody loves a parfait!

Ranthia: Eeeehn, it's not bad, I guess?

Traditionally made yogurt is kind of absolutely horrifying in terms of explanations (no, I wasn't kidding in the prose; that was how it used to be made. The history of some foods seems to exist simply to make us wonder what the heck was wrong with people back then), which doesn't help with Ranthia already being vaguely sweets-adverse and is wholly unused to the idea of foods served chilled (Remus... largely couldn't do that, outside a specialty [Chef] doing their own thing).

I don't see her seeking out yogurt or parfaits any time soon, but she might be willing to stomach them occasionally for Avyna.

I feel like one of the bigger themes for this chapter is Ranthia struggling to adapt to Avyna's culture (yogurt pun not intended) while Avyna seems to effortlessly take to Ranthia's, including seeking ways to blend the two. But Ranthia's doing her best, which is the important part. The ease of success is irrelevant—the effort is always key.