The way Sara had set it, their Tea Party had an air of majesty.

A gleaming, silver samovar stood high in the center of the table, steaming with tea and presiding over a bright tablecloth inhabited by a small population of porcelain cups and candle holders, and two attendants on either side. Cas was one of these attendants, and she felt the sacred atmosphere Sara had set up weighing on her. She’d promised to be completely honest with the woman for the duration of their tea, and she intended to be. The woman had also promised to be honest, and Cas believed that she would be.

Naturally, Cas immediately wanted to blurt out: Magic! Tell me how to do Magic! Magic, Magic, Magic, Magic! Like, fwoom! Ya know? Fireballs!

Unfortunately, her sense of dignity prevented such a direct approach, and Cas had to tell her story first.

As promised, Cas was entirely honest, and she had a lot to be honest about. It was the better part of three hours by the time her story caught up to the present.

Sara gasped as Cas came to the end. “What! And they tried to kill you after all that? Why, you even saved their Oasis! Why those ungrateful…!” the woman was an attentive audience member, and she’d spent the past hour paying rapt attention to Cas’ life story, giving colorful commentary and shocked gasps whenever the plot twists demanded them.

She wasn’t shy about expressing emotion, a fact that was endearing to Cas.

Sometimes the woman’s passion was such that she didn’t even seem to be listening to the story, getting lost in her own, ranting tangents whenever something struck her as particularly unjust.

This animated performance was almost hypnotizing. It drew Cas’s attention away from her own self, and it encouraged her to speak with less self consciousness.

Despite this, Cas was able to notice something becoming more so about the woman. A brightening of her aura.

Pausing for a moment, Cas decided to pay a bit more attention to it.

image [https://i.imgur.com/IiQhpHS.png]

Cas was left surprised by what she saw.

The woman’s status sheet was… lavish, for lack of a better word. More than that, her aura had more favorable luster to it. It reminded Cas of the sand angler, except where the angler had dealt in lies this seemed more akin to… minor embellishment. It felt kind of like looking at someone’s life through their diary, with edits and whiteout and all.

The stat sheet itself confirmed this perspective. Unlike with most creatures, Cas had no trouble at all reading this woman’s stats… some of them, anyway.

The woman was purposefully amplifying the readability of those stats, Cas realized. Considering the above average nature of all the stats, it seemed obvious that the woman had chosen the stats which put her in the best light.

“-s. Cas?”

Cas blinked awake from her studies, sheepish. “Sorry,” she smiled, “what were you saying?”

The woman gave the practiced, forgiving look of a lady who was used to people staring. “I was asking if you weren’t going to eat?” Sara gestured at the half-empty bowl of food blocks which sat between them on the table.

That came as a surprise to Cas, who stared with some hesitancy at the bowl.

“I actually don’t need to eat,” Cas tried to explain. “Like I said, I made this food from the stuff I already ate, so it wouldn’t really make sense-”

“Upupup!” the woman interrupted, raising a palm in objection. “If I recall correctly, we both agreed to a proper tea, and that means all guests partake. No excuses. Besides, you’re making me feel like a pig, fasting over there while I stuff my face.”

That last point seemed of particular importance, and Cas, deciding not to belabor the argument, took a hesitant bite, trying not to think about the fact that she was technically eating herself.

Sara took the moment to refill their tea. Picking up an ornate, silver samovar which sat bubbling in the center of the table, she tilted it gently over Cas’s cup like one might a drunk friend over a toilet bowl.

The samovar did it’s business promptly, and Sara placed it back down with an empty, hollow clunk.

It was obvious to both of them, by the hollow sound, that the tea time was coming to an end, and with it their pact of honesty.

Sensing that the time for hard questions was running out, and not wanting to waste the opportunity, Sara broke the silence.

“What do you want?”

Sara had a naturally self confident air, which never feared being misunderstood or considered rude.

“Excuse me?” Cas asked.

Sara let out a pained sigh. Whatever she’d meant, it was obviously a delicate matter for her, and she resented Cas for forcing her to explain.

“Well…” she started, speaking with the lilting tones. “You did save me,” she admitted, “I suppose I owe you my life, and, well, naturally, it’s only right to repay someone in equal measure, and I do consider my life to be quite a valuable thing.” Sara’s words were uncharacteristically terse and disjointed as she circled about the issue. A slight expression of embarrassment colored her face down to the neckline. “What I mean to say is… I would repay you with money, but… I’m of humble means at the moment, so naturally I’d like to know what I can do to repay you by deed.”

‘Oh…’ Cas realized. ‘She wants me to put a price on her life!’ she realized again, with a bit more feeling.

Sensing the awkwardness, and not knowing how to handle such an intense request, Cas responded automatically: “Oh! I don’t… I mean, You don’t have to-!”

“Hush!” Sara broke. “Don't patronize me, darling, just don't,” Sara had a glint of anger in her soft eyes as she spoke. “I'm an adult, and when someone pays me a favor, I pay them back thrice over, or my name isn't Sara Mathalthizar Quintessia Exispestara!”

Cas found herself missing the mono-syllable names of the desert village. Struggling to find a mnemonic to remember that name by, she gave up and wrote it down in the notes section of her status sheet.

“Are you going to keep doing that?” Sara asked. “It's kind of rude, you know.”

Scrambling, Cas dismissed her sheet, returning her full attention to the conversation. “Sorry!” she apologized with an embarrassed laugh. “It won’t happen again.”

Sara quirked an eyebrow. “But… you’re still doing it.” she looked at Cas with some distrust.

Cas paused as well. “Doing what?” she asked.

Another annoyed face, and another obvious explanation. “Masking your aura!” Sara said with simple exasperation. We’re having tea, not a knife fight, you know.”

Like a person suddenly reminded of the fact that they were breathing, Cas woke up to the obvious knowledge of her faux pas. Unlike the woman’s billboard of a status sheet, Cas’s was an invisible wisp.

Cas had been clamping down on her aura, hiding all traces of information which might have been gleaming from it.

Cas relaxed her grip on her aura, and filled the room like a lightbulb.

image [https://i.imgur.com/AW4S3LI.png]

Sara’s eyes widened slightly as she was given a more complete look at Cas’s aura. Strangely enough, her eyes drifted downward, staring through the table at Cas’s belly, as though she were looking at something that suddenly appeared there.

“Sorry,” Cas apologized, “I didn’t even notice I was masking. Just a force of habit, I guess.”

“A habit?” Sara let out a look of surprise followed by pity. “Oh, dear. You said the villagers were hostile, but I never imagined they’d be so ghoulish. You’ve truly never found someone you could be relaxed around since you came to this world?”

“Oh, It wasn’t the villagers,” Cas hastened to correct. “I actually started training to hide my aura after I left the village.”

“Why?” Sara looked puzzled.

“Well, I knew I’d find people eventually,” Cas shrugged. “I guess I was worried they’d see that I was a… well, not human, if they got a good enough look at my aura.”

Sara’s expression instantly brightened, and she laughed. “Haha! I keep forgetting you’re from a world without aura. Aura can’t tell you things like that!”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Really?” Cas said.

“Of course,” Sara assured. “After all, did my aura look that different from the Glass Dogs that were chasing me earlier?”

“Glass dogs? Is that what they’re called?’ Cas asked, growing more curious as to what sort of classification system the people of this world might have.

“Stay on topic, darling,” Sara eased, noticing the excitable glint in Cas’s eye.

“Oh, right.” Cas deflated a bit. “To tell the truth, I really couldn’t, “ she admitted. “You all had the same Aura ‘color’-”

“Hue,” Sara corrected quickly.

“Right, hue. Although, the plants had a different hue to either of you. So there’s that.”

“Plants are different, darling,” Sara answered, hurrying to get over the basics. “You can’t reincarnate into a plant, after all, even if monsters are fair game.”

“Well, that’s comforting to hear,” Cas admitted after a breath. “You’re sure no one will be able to tell, though?”

“I’m certain,” the woman assured.

The confidence in the woman’s voice eased Cas’s worries more than the arguments had, though not by much.

“Well, if you say so.” Cas decided she’d just have to take the woman’s word for it.

Seeing the hesitancy in Cas’s acceptance, Sara decided to bolster her confidence with advice. “You know, If you really want to be safe from suspicion. I'd suggest showing more of your aura, not less. Nothing attracts interest like closed curtains, after all.”

Seeing the logic in it, Cas rolled her eyes up to stare at her own character sheet.

Ever since getting her Aura skill to level one, Cas found that her aura acted more and more like a part of her body, like she’d developed an instinct for how to use it, and like a turning hand she flared it out, brightening everything and organizing all the discordant waves of information into neat convergent beams.

Her status sheet was quick to update to this.

At the last minute, however, remembering Sara’s descriptions, Cas decided to try something new with her status sheet, weaving her aura in intricate patterns and creating a rule to highlight her attributes depending on their strength.

image [https://i.imgur.com/EU7xUiA.png]

“Oh! Bravo!” the woman clapped her hands impressively at the new display, selling her impressed reaction. “It’s absolutely fantastic, darling!”

Cas withered under the burden of public praise. “I mean, It’s ok,” she diverted.

“Oh, hosh,” Sara spoke, offended on her behalf, “it’s perfectly fine! It’s better than most that I see in town.”

“So, you’re sure I wouldn’t stand out with this?” Cas gestured up at where her status sheet was floating, even as the woman stubbornly continued to look down into Cas’ belly for the answer, squinting her eyes with a considering posture.

“Well, I wouldn’t say you blend into the crowd,” Sara answered. “Your resiliency is something rather inhuman. I've honestly never seen any human or monster with such an intense brilliancy in that trait.”

"I... Take it you're talking about my 167 in constitution?" Cas ventured.

Sara blinked wildly as she processed that statement. “Constitution? 167? Are you… your aura gives you a numerical account of people's attributes?” Sara seemed aghast at the idea, even as she laughed at the ridiculousness of it. In between her laughs, she managed: “as in... It gives a number to every part of a person?”

Cas leant back with an annoyed posture. “Well, how does your aura show it, if you think it’s so much better?”

"Colors and sound, darling," Sara explained easily. “When I look at you, I see hundreds of thousands of little lights in your belly, like a ringing, refracting gem that shifts whenever an attribute changes.”

That… was way cooler than an excel sheet. Though, even Cas’s burning jealousy didn’t stop her from noticing the pertinent bit of Sara’s description.

“Wait, did you just say attributes can change?”

“Of course,” Sara answered, “they change all the time. Each attribute has dozens of faces that are constantly balanced against each other. A person’s strength might wane as they tire, or their brilliancy might spark up with a boost of confidence.”

Cas wondered about this.

Tami apparently saw hundreds of different attributes, whereas Cas had a grand total of six spread out on her display. Maybe that was the deficiency inherent in using numbers? After all, what was ‘Charisma’, and why did [Killer of Omens] have a 60 in the stat for apparently no reason? How many different facets of a personality had to be rolled together to produce a singular, unchanging number in that attribute?

“… I think my status sheet might be skimping on the details,” Cas leant forward and rested her on two palms. She glared up at her floating display with disappointment. “I can only see six attributes, and they don’t change, unless I change forms that is.”

Sara, noticing her bad mood, rushed to console. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just surprised, is all. Everyone sees Aura differently. It’s hard to say any one way is better, at the end of the day.

“Also, I'm flattered by your trust, but you don't need to show off that much of your aura,” Sara added with a judgy note in her voice. “Among strangers, It's fine to show off only some of your ‘attributes’ as you call them.”

Cas found herself forgetting her bad mood, as the choice presented itself.

Which statuses should she present? After a quick preview off her sheet, she decided Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma would be the final draft picks.

Of course, her strength was higher than her charisma, but… it just felt crass to show it off, like she was threatening to punch people by virtue of displaying it. Not to mention the fact that Cas wasn’t that strong to begin with. No, she’d stick with the mental stats, Cas decided.

image [https://i.imgur.com/KmEore9.png]

There! Cas sat back, satisfied with the result.

Sara, on the contrary, was far from impressed. “Really, darling?” she said in a disappointed voice.

“What?”

I know I said ‘preferably’, but you seem to have lost the plot. We just talked about your resiliency, didn’t we? It’s the best I’ve ever seen! Why are you hiding it?”

Cas, sensing the disappointment, rushed to justify herself. “Because it’s suspicious!” she answered obviously. “You even said it was, and I quote, ‘inhuman’. I’m trying not to get the Frankenstein’s Monster treatment here!”

“Ok, first of all, I have no idea who this Frankenstein is, and secondly, you worry too much. I said it was intense, yes, but nothing is too suspicious as long as it has a good story behind it. In fact…” she stood up suddenly, eliciting a clattering of porcelain as she pushed off from the desk – “you’ve told me such a wonderful story, I feel it’s my turn to repay you. Say… that game of yours, the one which taught you about our world, Diablo, did you call it?”

“Siablo,” Cas corrected, with an annoyed note in her voice.

“Yes, that. You said it had a complete world map, and something about a second continent?”

Cas vaguely remembered saying that. She hadn’t even known why she’d bothered mentioning it; the second continent was just part of a DLC package Cas had too much self-respect to buy.

“Yes, there’s a second continent, but it wasn’t part of the main story. I don’t really know much about it.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” the woman answered briskly, pacing excitedly now as possibilities flew through her head. “You at least know where it is, right?”

“It’s on the other side of the world,” Cas answered immediately before pausing, “... your people do know the world is a sphere, right?”

“Yes,” Sara hissed. “We’re not stupid, you know? In any case, tell me what you think of this. You are…” she waved a hand in Cas’s direction as she looked up for inspiration – “the third daughter of a minor king. Upon your coming of age, you were given a ship, a crew, and told to make a name for yourself. The dream of all sailors is to cross the oceanic boundary. We can say…” Sara drew her syllables out again, evidently making the story up on the spot – “you tried to do the same, and were attacked in Sea Monster Bay”

Cas remembered the bay from the game. It lived up to its name.

Cas mulled the story over in her head, looking at it from multiple angles.

“A shipwreck there would be believable, ” she admitted tentatively.

Sara was far more excited about it. “Not to mention,” she continued, “all the major currents there flow past Rock Pass. That’s not too far from here. We can say you survived the attack, and washed up on shore here.” Tami paced more excitedly, now, as all the facts of this fabrication came together.

Cas, catching on, put words to the vital point of the story: “and the ship, all my crew, and all my treasure would be on the seafloor!”

“Which explains any lack of any evidence very neatly, if I say so myself,” Sara completed her sentence, nodding triumphantly at her accomplishment.

Cas was never one to accept a happy ending so uncritically, however. “Yeah, but what about my ‘resiliency’ as you called it.” She pointed a teaspoon at the woman with a skeptical manner. “This story doesn’t explain that.”

Tami shrugged as if that were the easiest thing in the world. “We can just say that you have water-attribute magic. Someone who’s mastered the self-healing spell might be expected to have a resiliency on par with yours.”

Cas shot another skeptical look. “Would they really believe that I spent my entire life studying the most useless spell in the game?”

“They’d have to believe it,” Sara smiled deviously. “After all, what’s the alternative, that you’re a slime which took human form?”

“Touché,” Cas pronounced. “But we don't even know my magical attribute. What if I discover it’s actually fire or something? How are we going to explain that?”

“First of all, people can have more than one attribute,” Sara explained. “I have two, in fact.”

Cas was surprised to hear that. That… had definitely not been an option in the game, probably for balance reasons. Then again, considering Cas had unlocked flight at level 6, it was obvious this world didn’t care much about balance.

“Second of all,” Sara continued unabated, “You in particular don’t need to worry about discovering a contrary attribute.”

Cas was confused. “Why not?”

Sara answered most naturally, “Because monsters can’t do magic, of course.”

That… hurt to hear, more than Cas had expected anything should.

No magic? Ever? Just like that?

It was so sudden, it felt like she’d been given a terminal diagnosis at the doctors office.

Cas paused a moment, before sitting back up and crossing her arms, obstinately.

“You seem disappointed,” Sara noticed.

“No,” Cas denied, looking aside. “Why would I be disappointed? The magic in this world didn’t seem that interesting anyway.”

Sara allowed a slight smile to show. “You know, on this world, we have a story called sour grapes.”

“Yet you don’t have Frankenstein. Maybe appreciate the classics a bit more, huh? And are we done interrogating me, now? I have questions I want to ask you, too, you know.”

Cas was still smarting from the bad news, and she let it seep obviously into her voice.

“Of course,” Sara obliged, sending an apologetic smile in Cas’s direction. “You’ve been very patient with me, and I’d be happy to answer any and all questions you might have. Although, if you don’t mind, I do have one final question. I’m sorry for not asking it earlier, but we got a bit sidetracked.

Cas calmed from her bad mood enough to nod. “Sure,” she raised her hands in an accepting posture, “go ahead. Ask away. Not like I can get more annoyed.”

“Oh, that’s good!” Sara cheered calmly. “It’s nothing too strange, I just wanted ask because, well, it’s not important, really, more of a curiosity of mine.”

Cas raised an eyebrow, sensing she knew where this was heading. “What did you wanna ask?”

"Well, it's just-"

"What?"

Sara answered immediately.

“Why are you Black?”