We grab some fruit at the market, then sit by the side of the road and watch the morning foot traffic as Emily eats. "So what are we doing today anyway?"
"Mmm," I think for a bit, then say, "I should probably pick up some sewing supplies while we're here."
"Sure, go on," she giggles as she sends me off. I don't really understand what she thinks is funny, so I just go back into the central market. I find a stall selling sewing supplies and buy some of patches and thread. I even pick up a metal needle, which turns out to cost fifteen hundred barr. The stall owner looks at me weird when I pay fifteen copper coins for it, but doesn't say anything.
Now I'll have everything I need for later, whenever I get more clothes. That needle went through a lot of my remaining money, I don't have much left.
Is there anything else I need? I don't have much money left. Still, I briefly consider the small basket I bought, only to be destroyed in the battle, but I'm not really going to the forest anymore, so there isn't much need for one. Maybe a belt, like I see people wearing to tie their things to? I can sort of use ties like the one for my skirt for stuff like that, I guess, though they can't hold much weight like a belt could...
At the moment, I'm carrying everything in a big bag, and it's getting pretty heavy with so many metal ingots in it... Maybe I should find a way to cut them into smaller pieces so they don't weigh as much? I'd need to go to a blacksmith, and I definitely don't have enough money for that.
Then I remember Irene telling me to buy soap if I can find it. I look around some, thinking back to the grayish bar of soap I remember using to see if I can find any.
"Ah!" I gasp when I actually do spot a stand with some soap on it. I walk over and look, but I can't really say I recognize any of the other things at the stall. Lots of little containers of things that don't look like anything I'm familiar with. Some plants, some rocks, I have no idea what is going on at this stall...
Despite my nervousness at not recognizing anything else, I ask, "This is soap, right?" Just to make sure...
"Yeah, one iron each," the man behind the counter answers. But even as he does so, he looks down at me with that 'you can't afford this' expression... It is a lot of money for something like that, but Irene said I need it, so I go into my bag of coins and pull out ten coppers. That's... basically the rest of my money, I only have a couple nuvrites left. I set the coins on the counter and the stall man's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. But he recovers quickly, taking the coins and handing me a bar of soap from behind the counter. It's even wrapped up in a bit of cheap cloth already.
"Good doing business with you." The words roll out of his mouth, probably out of habit.
I say a small thanks and begin to turn away when something on the far left side of his stall catches my eye and I turn back. It's a brush. My memories of Marrianne brushing my hair come back all at once. Tears well up in my eyes as I remember those wonderful, dream-like days with her. But I manage to hold them back and ask the stall keeper, "What about that?" and point it out.
"That's a hairbrush. Two irons." I know I don't have any money left. Even if I did, and even if I had that much, that's way too expensive to spend on something I won't make much use of. I can't even keep my hair clean most of the time.
Still, it takes a lot of effort to pull my eyes away from the brush. "Thank you," I push the words out with a small bow, then leave the shop behind. For now, I just try to put it out of mind. I made a few stops, so I want to get back to Emily before I keep her waiting too long, or she might get worried. Moving out of the market back onto the street, I go over to Emily waiting off to the side and sit down again as she bites into another fruit.
"So, what next?" she asks right away.
"Well, I wanted to tell you about all the stuff that's happened lately," I'm glad to get back to talking to her after that. "And I was also thinking that maybe we could give them a break?" I jerk my head slightly toward the west to let her know I'm talking about everyone hunting in the forest.
"Ahh, that sounds good." Emily grins. "It'll be just like going back to our days before." She nods to herself a few times, then stands up. We start to walk while she finishes off the last of her fruit. We still have some more for later too, so lunch won't be a worry. Wait, lunch?
"Oh, I didn't tell Eryk where we're going, so his messenger won't know where to bring my lunch..." I'm only realizing that now.
"Oh well, it'll be fine. Just eat the rest of the fruit with me later," Emily suggests. I just agree while silently apologizing to Eryk. He's wasting such expensive food on me...
We go for a little while before Emily looks over and asks, "So you feel better now, right?"
She isn't directly mentioning how bratty and sulky I acted earlier, but the thought is still embarrassing. "Y-yeah, a lot better."
"Good. And you're not getting tired or anything?"
"No, I feel a lot better now. I'd say I'm pretty much completely healed."
"That's good," Emily sighs with relief. "You really had us all scared, you know."
"Yeah." I lower my voice and slide close enough to bump shoulders with Emily. "As much as I tried to prepare, I had no idea what I was really getting into. I couldn't do a single thing against them."
"I see..." she lowers her voice and leans close as well. "I don't really get it though, why not? With everything you can do already..."
"Mmm," I consider how to answer the question, but even speaking in low voices, there are too many people around to really get into it here. "I'll tell you in a bit," I say, and she gives a small nod in understanding. We pick up our pace a little as we head out of the city.
We go through the gate, down the road a little, and then into the forest. Finally alone, I call Maven over while I start to explain things to Emily. "So basically, the reason rail units are so powerful is they can use their divine gears to summon impossible weapons from thin air." Even out in the middle of the woods, talking about this makes me a bit nervous and I keep my voice down. "For instance, you know the spears the guards carry?"
"Yeah." She tilts her head a little, so she's probably imagining what they look like.
"During the battle, the enemies were standing so far away that they were almost at the horizon. They summoned bows and spears, double or triple the size of the ones the guards use, and fired the spears at us."
"That's..."
"Insane, I know. On impact, the spears exploded into huge clouds of metal fragments that would kill anything, anywhere nearby." I see the color draining from Emily's face. "That's just one example of what rail units are capable of. I didn't really get it until I saw for myself. There's no way to realistically survive against them with what I can do."
"Th-then why are-" She cuts short when I nearly start glaring and changes her question. "What are you going to do for the next battle?" Emily asks, on the verge of panic.
I put my hand on her shoulder to calm her down. "I found out that I can give my mana to the other rail units, so my best plan at the moment is giving most of it to them so they can fight better and protect me."
"Oh," that calms her somewhat. "But that means you're completely relying on them, can you really trust them?"
"Mmm, that's a good point," I have to agree. "I already had to do the same thing during the first battle, but 8C died protecting me..." That just leaves Effy, and I still don't know for sure whether I'll be close enough to her next time for her to protect me again...
If I get grouped with another couple rail units like last time, I can't let them use Lilia on me again, or they'll wind up like Effy. Having more and more rail units wandering the city sounds like a really bad idea. But without Lilia, I'll be even more vulnerable. Any one of those hits I took could have killed me outright without its protective effect, so I don't know what to do. The situation seems pretty hopeless so far...
"Haahhh..." I sigh. "Oh, but that reminds me," I think aloud. "I haven't had a chance to tell you yet, I met 3F." I make sure to use her identifier since Emily doesn't know her by name.
"Really?" she gasps. "When?"
"It was last Shanaday. While you were out getting food, I met her."
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"Her?" It figures she immediately picks up on my choice of words.
"Yeah, let me explain." I quickly go through how things went, how she told me she remembered feeling what I felt, and how I think that changed her. While I'm going over all of that, Maven reaches us, and coils up in Emily's arms as she pets him.
"Hold on, Lilia..."
"That's the spell type armament she used that let her feel my feelings," I remind her.
"Right, right," she nods quickly.
"So she basically told me how she's been going around the city, trying to figure things out. It sounded exactly like how I was back when I first started going out, so I told her a lot of what I learned about how emotions work and how to act around people so that she doesn't have to go through everything I did." Emily nods emphatically at my description. "I guess I still feel bad for using her as a tool during the battle," I admit, "so now that she has feelings too, I can't really look at her as a thing anymore..."
"That's... understandable..." Emily replies slowly while staring at me. Is... is that how she sees me too? A thing that she has a hard time seeing as a thing? I'm too scared to ask...
"A-anyway," I stammer a little, "I named her Effy, since she'll need a name."
"Effy," Emily repeats it. "That sounds nice."
"I... have some experience..."
"You really do..." Emily sounds kind of awed, like it's the first time she really thought about that.
"Oh, that reminds me. I got a cat. Her name is Riko."
"Another animal? How many are you up to?" she asks with wide eyes.
"Eight?" I nervously grin. "I felt like I needed another set of eyes and ears in the city. After what happened with Frank last night, I've been thinking about having her hang around the garrison."
"Sorry, what with Frank?" she asks for clarification. She already knows about our deal and what happened with him and John last night, but I don't think I told her this part...
"Well, he had to send a guard to get me, but the guard had to run all over the city to find me because everyone thought I was in a different place. It took about two bells for them to get me there. I don't really know how long poison usually takes, but if it was worse, the man might have died before I even got there. So I was thinking if I keep Riko around there. I'll know if someone needs help before the guards find me to let me know."
"I see your point." She thinks for a bit, then asks, "But won't it be suspicious that you just show up whenever they need help?"
"True," I agree reluctantly. "But maybe... Do you think I could just tell Frank that I 'know things?' I feel like he would believe something like that..." I feel really bad, trying to think of a plausible way to lie to him, but if it helps me save people's lives...
"Yeah, that would probably work. He would just think it's a blessing or something, that you know when someone needs help, I guess." Emily shrugs a little. "Just be careful, you're a terrible liar." Of course she points that out right away.
"Mmmm," I pout. She giggles a little and pets my head with her free hand. The conversation took a little while, so we reach the spot the hobins set up to hunt while we're still talking. There's a small pile of fruit on the ground at the base of a tree, so we climb up into the branches, just like we used to. We give Maven a small wave as he heads back toward his burrow.
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Up in the tree branches, I sit so close I'm practically in Emily's lap so we can talk quietly without making too much noise and scare off the animals. Now that we're alone and I have a chance, I grin and say, "You know how I told you I'd try to find a way to make physical things with mana? Look at this." I hold up my hand and push a little bit of absolute mana out. She silently watches the speck of white float upward before fizzling out.
Then she turns to me, still in a whisper, "What was that?" Her eyes are sparkling so much I have to keep myself from giggling.
"I figured out that I can push absolute mana out of my body. It doesn't work with any other type. I don't know why it works differently, but it does. I can't exactly call it a physical thing, but it is something you can see. It seems to absorb into things it hits, and it makes them act like they've been put in a mana field. Like this." I hand her the ignium ingot, then point a finger at it and push a little absolute mana over to it so she can watch it float right into the metal. She nods a few times, then hands back the ingot, now warm to the touch. "It actually lasts a little while if I use more, but... it turns out generating absolute mana eventually uses up the nickel ingot for some reason."
"Even though the rest are fine?" Emily asks right away.
"Yeah, I guess it's just that absolute is different somehow." But all I can do is shrug, since I don't really have any idea how or why.
"So..." Her tone seems to say that she expects more, but I just shake my head a little.
"That's all I've figured out with that so far. I don't really know where to go with it from there."
"I see..." her lips curl down faintly into a small frown.
"I'm kind of stuck with a number of things now, actually," I admit. "I haven't really gotten anywhere with making physical things with mana, and I've hit a wall with what I'm doing at work, so things have been pretty rough."
"Mm," Emily just makes a sound for me to go on.
"For the first one, I'd like to try it out with special stones, but I don't have anything like that."
"Special stones?"
"Oh right, let me explain." I briefly go over my exploration of the strange rail unit building and how I found those stones. "I was wondering if they're manastones. Since you know, stones full of mana." I give a shrug to show that it was an obvious guess. "But I got a chance to look at Effy's manastone, so I can say for sure, they're definitely different. A manastone is insanely complex. I mean, it was made by Rostor, so..." I shrug again and sigh a bit. "But my point is, they had these stones there that contained elemental mana. After the divine arms, they're the closest to a physical thing made of mana that I've ever seen. If only I had some idea where I could get things like that, I might be able to figure out something else."
"Huh, so they have stuff like that..." Emily wonders aloud.
"Umm..." I get a little nervous when I get to this topic. Emily raises an eyebrow, silently asking me to tell her. "Right now, my closest idea to being able to work with them is... well..." I feel a shiver go up my spine. "The closest thing to those stones is, umm... mana wells." It only takes a few moments for Emily to grimace with realization.
"The way you described them... aren't those basically souls?" I gulp and nod. Then I look away so I don't have to see her expression anymore.
"I don't like the idea, but it's the only one I really have right now. I figure if I have to, I should do it with animals I'm going to kill anyway."
"Do you know what will happen?"
"Not really, I feel like trying it will help me understand." We sit in silence for a few long moments.
"Ok." I can hear the resolve in her voice and look back at her. She pets my head and says, "Just be careful, since you don't know what will happen, alright?"
"Nn," I nod. We keep sitting for a little while longer. It's really nice, just being with Emily. I don't have to hide anything or worry about anything. I can actually just be... me. Even though I'm terrible, she's never seemed to care. She likes me despite everything. It's just really, really nice.
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"Oh," Emily eventually speaks up again. "We were supposed to talk about water mana, right?"
"Oh yeah, that's right." I'd completely forgotten about that.
"Well first off, there's the sadness you mentioned, and hearing, right?" I nod to confirm that I also noticed that too. "The only other big one I've figured out is it makes me learn stuff way better."
"Learn better?" I ask.
"I've had no trouble remembering recipes at the bar after Matthew showed me once or twice, so I noticed it right away," Emily explains.
"Huh..." I mumble as I think back. I perfectly memorized all of Irene's etiquette lessons, didn't I? "Duh, of course." As hard as I tried, cramming all of that information into my head at once was unreasonable. I really should have noticed the change, like Emily did. I guess I was so focused on learning that I didn't even notice I was doing unusually well. "The question is, will I still remember everything without the mana?" That is the first worry that comes to mind, since I'm always converting mana to all different types. If I don't have the water mana, will I lose everything I learned with it? Despite my worries, I have to know, so I clear the water mana. I can still recall all of the etiquette lessons, but I'll have to see if I start forgetting soon... I tell Emily that I'm worried about it.
"How could you forget something you already learned?" she responds immediately. "It'll be fine!" She grins to assure me.
"If you say so," I agree. I don't know where she gets so much confidence from, but I'm still glad. "So, do you want to hang onto the water mana or get rid of it?"
"Hmm, that's a good question." Emily thinks about it hard, going quiet for a while. I just wait patiently. I look out over the forest from our spot in the branches. I can see small bits of movement from the animals and the slight gusts of air blowing through the leaves and bushes when it breaks through the tree cover overhead. And there are lots of little rustles, thumps of far-off animals walking, and the steady swish of wind moving over the treetops high overhead. It's quiet and... calming.
Then Emily finally comes to a decision. "I'll hold onto it, at least for now," she says. "I haven't had too much trouble controlling it so far, and it really does help me remember what I'm learning more easily.
"You have better self-control than I do," I sigh. I feel like I've been crying all the time lately.
"Don't worry, you'll get better when you're older."
I scowl. "That was on purpose."
"Of course not," she teases with a big grin as she rubs my head and gives me a hug. I just sigh and let her wrap her arms around me while we continue to wait a while longer. A hobin should fall for our bait any time now...
Unfortunately, we have to wait quite a bit longer before one does finally show. Maybe we were talking a bit too loud. Even if they don't have the best hearing, maybe the other animals in the area were disturbed enough to keep them away. Which reminds me about those men the other day, but I put that from my mind to focus on the hobin. It comes up and takes one of the fruits sitting at the base of the tree, then I drop down and knock it out like usual.