Demon World Boba Shop: A Cozy Fantasy Novel

The next day, it was time for the three towns to end their integration and become separate settlements once more. The quarantine on the old towns wasn’t over quite yet, but there was a long walk before they got back, and there was no rule about when they could start making their back.

“Are you sure you don’t need any wagons, or anything? Seaside took some when they left,” Arthur offered.

“Wouldn’t do us much good. We don’t have great roads all the way up to our town. Not that we couldn’t get a wagon up there, but it would be easier to just backpack everything in.” Zelk clapped Arthur on the shoulder. “We are miners, Arthur. Our strength scores are high. We can handle carrying our ill-gotten wealth home, I promise.”

“Not ill-gotten. Earned. Just look at that road.” Arthur smiled at the entrance to the town, a completely involuntary response that happened anytime he looked in that direction these days. “You’d never know it got attacked by an army of monsters.”

“You know as well as I do that you could have hired that work out for a fifth of the price. Maybe less.” Arthur didn’t, in fact, know that. But Spiky was nodding along like it was the truth. “We may not have a debt, Arthur, but Peaktown will never forget this. Really. Honestly.”

Zelk hugged Arthur, Spiky, and the rest of the council, then nodded and turned on her heel to go help her people with their last-minute organizing. Crue lingered behind, motioning to Arthur to follow as he walked a bit slower towards the gates.

“So, are you going to do it?” Crue asked.

“I think so. Once things settle down a little. Tonight, maybe tomorrow. You aren’t wrong about right now being the time for something like that. And you weren’t wrong about what I should do,” Arthur said slowly.

“Glad to hear it.”

“What about you? Zelk is like me,” Arthur said. “And you’re you.”

“Oh, that’s fine. We work together pretty well,” Crue stated. Arthur could almost imagine the same setup working out in Coldbrook. Him being the mayor in name while someone else helped with the day-to-day operations. Arthur shook his head to clear out those thoughts. Oblivious of Arthur’s internal turmoils, Crue continued, “When it comes down to it, I don’t have any problem being loud if I need to. There’s more than one way to lead.”

“I see that.” Arthur held out his hand. Crue looked at it for a moment before grasping it. “Thanks, Crue. If Peaktown needs help, just call. We’ll be there.”

Arthur couldn’t have known it then but his unique way of sealing a deal would ripple into a series of events that linked the fates of Coldbrook and Peaktown together, and somewhere in that mix was Seaside, albeit with a smaller role. Today, it was Coldbrook that had been in a position to help the other two towns, sharing goods and giving hope. But now, if a weight came along that would have crushed any individual town, the other two would be ready to help bear the load.

While Arthur didn’t have a skill that could let him see into the future, the idea of Coldbrook and Peaktown being friends felt right. He couldn’t explain why he felt it, but he knew that some victory that had come to the town in a distinctly Arthur-way.

Arthur sat on a bench and watched as Peaktown walked away, hitting the treeline and disappearing from view. Just like that, Coldbrook was just Coldbrook again, safe and sound between the cliffs and the sea, but never alone.

—

The council gathered that night, not for a public meeting but to prepare for one. A lot had happened in the last week or so, and now that the monster wave was done, there was a subtle lack of direction. Before, they had all been thinking about how to prepare for danger. Now, after months of focus, a tough battle, and a fun festival, the town needed a target to inspire for again.

“The problem is,” Milo said, “that at this point we need to just be a town again. Right?”

“Well, yes,” Spiky said. “But it’s more complex than that. Eventually, yes, people would settle down. The walls would be built, everyone would be safe, and we’d continue to grow. But we’d have let an opportunity slip away.”

“What opportunity? To be worried about monster waves all the time?”

“It’s not that,” Spiky said. “It’s not that at all. It just seems that way. What we have now is a group of people who got a taste of civic responsibility. They saw what they could accomplish if they all worked together. And now they want to do more than what their classes imply. Maybe not a lot, but something.”

“Huh,” Lily said. “Yeah. I feel that. Spiky put it into words. I’m the same way.”

“But what are they going to do?” Milo asked.

“I’m thinking that we go to the town and tell them about civic work. Something like everyone getting together for an afternoon once a week and working for the betterment of Coldbrook.”

“Doing what?” Karra asking. “I can think of a dozen things the work crews could do, but most are things that they’re already doing.”

“Oh, various projects. It’s all in here.” Spiky patted his notebook, then turned to Arthur. “I can explain it here but it’s going to take longer than the time we’ve set aside tonight. There are lots of ways to keep everyone working productively on bettering our town.”

That’s as good of a lead-in as I’m going to get, Arthur thought.

“Actually, about that.” Arthur tapped nervously on the table. “I don’t think I’m really the guy you should have to explain it to.”

“You’re the mayor. You have to at least understand it a little,” Spike protested.

“If I was the mayor. But I’m not so sure that I’m the right person for the job. I almost got us in a lot of danger with the monster wave and I don’t know anywhere near enough compared to Spiky” Arthur said. “It’s time for me to be Arthur again, not mayor of Coldbrook, just Arthur of Coldbrook.”

There was a sudden of chatter around the table as every single one of Arthur’s friends tried to disagree with him at once, their words tangling together like a pile of cables stored in a milk crate.

Arthur held up a hand. “No, I’m serious. Spiky, correct me if I’m wrong, but you have all this planned out already, right?”

“I do, but…”

“And you aren’t wrong about your plans, right?”

“Well, I don’t think I’m the one to say something like that…”

“See? You know those plans are right. You spend more time explaining your plans to other people than you do making them. And I’m the dumbest person here. No offense, Milo.”

Milo smiled. “None taken.”

“I’m the mayor because it made sense back when we needed a leader who was the spiritual center of the town,” Arthur said slowly. “And at that point, I might have been the right person. Okay, I was the right person then. But times have changed. Coldbrook doesn’t need a spiritual center anymore and I’m not the right person for the new job.”

“I don’t know.” Mizu frowned. “We all know you want the best for the town. It’s easy to be sure of that because you are Arthur.”

“Well, I’ll still be around. I’m not leaving the council. I’ll still be here for input.” Arthur sighed. “Look, it’s not just leadership. You all saw me during the wind-up to the monster wave. Every single one of you spent at least a few minutes a day telling me to calm down. That it was okay to just do my job making tea. That I didn’t need to be stressed. But I was stressed. The whole time. And I’m never stressed when I make tea, right? Because I’m supposed to be doing that. Being a mayor was… something I was supposed to do for a while. Now I’m not. I can tell.”

“It was true that you didn’t handle the pressure well,” Rhodia said evenly, then held up her hands defensively. “Don’t look at me like that, everyone. We all noticed it.”

“And you noticing it saved me. I think I like being just Arthur better. Believe me, that’s fine.”

The room went quiet for a moment as everyone considered that, and Arthur saw acceptance seep into every face in the room. Spiky, who was always a bit ahead of everyone else, was the first to move onto the practical problems Arthur’s admission presented.

“But who will be mayor then? ”

“My first thought was you, Spiky,” Arthur said. “Nobody knows more about the town than you. I don’t know how you fit everything in that notebook, but you do.”

“It’s not my only notebook,” Spiky explained before realizing that wasn’t what the situation needed. He went to the bag of papers he carried with him and fished around until he found a particular book, opening it to a well-worn page. “This is demon law. You can’t just appoint me as the next mayor. We have to have a vote.”

“You didn’t vote for me,” Arthur protested.

Lily groaned. “Yes we did, Arthur. I’m guessing Spiky didn’t mention any of this because it didn’t matter, but when we made you the mayor, we all agreed on it beforehand. There was no real question of who it was going to be. We had a vote, even if it was an informal one.”

“Gods, it’s more than that. We have to have a whole election. Candidates. Speeches. Campaigning. Ooof,” Milo groaned and frowned. “Spiky, if you’re a candidate, then who’s going to set everything up and document things?”

“Well, Leena can,” Spiky said. “I’ll tell her as soon as I see her.”

“Is it a lot?” Arthur was suddenly beset by vague memories of Earth politics, which were never pretty. “Are people going to make enemies over this?”

“Oh, Arthur. Who would make enemies just to be in leadership?” Skal said. “It’s not like being mayor is an easy job. You have to make sure everyone’s happy, all the time.”

“Or else what?”

Skal looked confused. “Or else they are sad! You should know this already. You had the job. It’s still gonna be a hell of a thing. People will need a chance to say their piece. People will have to know when the speeches are so they have a chance to hear it. Which means running around the town to make sure nobody misses it. Maybe even multiple speeches as new issues come up.”

“That’s necessary? We can’t just count on word-of-mouth?”

“By demon law, no. It would be easier if we had a gazette, or something. But we don’t. We have to make sure word gets out in a reasonably universal way. Counting on gossip leaves too much to chance.”

—

Arthur went to bed that night light in his spirit, not least because he no longer held the responsibility for the whole town on his shoulders. He checked, and he no longer had access to the mayor window. As soon as he put his thoughts to words, the system had acknowledged it and taken the burden off his back.

That wasn’t the only reason he felt good though. It also wasn’t because there wasn’t a monster wave coming from them or the fact that Milo and Rhodia had invited him, Lily, and Mizu to dinner the next day.

Arthur felt good because he lived in a place where the biggest problem politics presented was getting the word out. It was a scheduling problem. He lived in a place where the biggest problems related to politics were just related to making sure everyone had a chance to know which good choice was their favorite.

As fuzzy as his memories of Earth might be, Arthur knew this was much, much better. He fell asleep grinning.