We walk into our room. It's really dark, the moons in the east sky not even having risen over city walls, and our window faces west anyway. It's hard to see anything but the most vague outlines of the beds from the tiniest traces of light coming in the window. Even so, I can feel that everyone is awake. I can hear their breathing. Regular, non-sleeping breaths coming from every one of them.

As we blindly cross the room to my bed, I hold Emily close. With Mister Fredricson's beating, I'm almost as fragile as I was after waking up from my breakdown. I know this isn't a good time to have any sort of difficult discussion. But I have to clear the air with Eve and Jannette.

We sit on my bed, and I keep clinging to Emily. Since it's so dark, I can probably safely rely on Reena if I really have to. But for now, I take a few deep breaths. I draw up my battered courage, and lower my head. "Eve, Jannette. I'm sorry that I touched your things without your permission." I squeeze tighter, anchoring myself before I go on. "I didn't know you didn't trust me." And then I just say what I think. "Learning about that really hurt, because I trust you. I know it's unfair to you, but I felt betrayed because I thought you trusted me too."

When I remember what happened and let the feelings out, it's like a wave of sadness rushing out of me. I clench my teeth, holding onto Emily. Letting her be my anchor. I shudder, tears in my eyes as I endure.

"I'm sorry, Aria." I open my eyes at the voice, looking into the dark where Eve is sitting. I hear her unsteady breathing right in front of me, even if I can only see her outline. "I..." She stops for some time and I don't know if she's going to say anything more. But all of a sudden, she starts up again all at once. "I, well... I saw my things and I knew I should have been mad but I just... wasn't." She stops momentarily, before the rest comes rambling out. "I don't know, I don't get it. We aren't supposed to let people touch our things, but what bothered me the most was that it didn't bother me. I guess I do trust you? I mean, you're just so... you. I can't imagine you stealing anything, you know?"

"I..." I don't know what to say. She does trust me? Some of the pain in my heart lifts. "Thank you..." I whisper into the dark room. We sit for a bit longer, everyone's attention silently turning to Jannette.

"Aria..." Her voice comes thick with regret. "I'm sorry." She hesitates. "When I saw my stuff, I just-" and cuts herself off. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet, trembling. Is Jannette crying? "Please, don't touch my things again."

I lower my head. "I understand." Holding tight to Emily is the only thing keeping me together. Long moments pass in silence, heavy and oppressive after Jannette's pained words. I don't understand why, but she's closed her heart, she won't trust me. It feels like a knife, the knowledge that despite everything, she won't trust me anyway. Can I... not trust Jannette?

"I'm going to do my homework," I tell Emily quietly.

"Will you be alright?" she asks as I grab my blackboard and chalk.

"...Maybe," I answer uncertainly.

"Do you want me to come?"

I consider it, but... "I think I want to be alone for a bit."

"Alright. I'll be right here waiting."

"Thanks Emily." With that, I walk out of our room. I have a strange urge to put as much distance as I can from our room, so I go all the way down to the first floor. I end up sitting by an east facing window so I can see my blackboard in the first light coming from the moons as they rise over the town. I sit on the floor and just write. Writing is nice. Writing doesn't need me to do anything special, I can just comfortably scratch out the same letters I've learned. I keep it up for a bit, letting the easy, repetitive motions calm me down.

I look down at the tiny blackboard in my hand, only large enough for a dozen letters at a time. It looks like all this practice is helping, my letters are a little neater and less wobbly than before. I look briefly at the chalk. It's starting to wear down a little. I'd rather it wear down than me...

I stand up, I think I've practiced enough for tonight. It's already over a thousand ticks after last bell, and I don't even know how long nights are and I have to get up before first bell to wash myself. As soon as let my attention return to the world around me, I'm immediately significantly more aware of the powerful feelings coming from Maven, that were just kind of pushed to the back of my mind while I was writing.

It's dark, he can't really see anything out in the forest at night, but he's outside his burrow, with that female hobin. They're kind of rolling around and pressing up against each other repeatedly, but the overpowering waves of pleasure from him are really surprising. It takes a few moments to understand. They're... making babies? Oh, sex, that thing Francis mentioned. So Maven is going to have children... As I slowly walk upstairs, I smile a little.

I just let my mind settle idly, ready for sleep. Imagining Maven with little hobin babies of his own really lifts my mood. I don't feel so down anymore. I slip into our room, take a moment to make the earth mana I need, and climb into bed. Emily unconsciously grabs me, even though she's already asleep. I let my tired mind rest.

----------------------------------------

The next morning comes far sooner than I'd like. Myra mentally kicks me awake, and I grumble as I stagger up out of bed. I'm still tired and sleepy from staying up so late. Even Emily just squints up at me a little as my movement wakes her, before shrugging the blanket up a little, and going back to sleep.

"Come on, wash up," Myra urges me on. I think she's enjoying this a little too much.

First I need to deal with the earth mana. Like I planned earlier, I grab the manastone from under my bed and push the earth mana into it for later. But then I feel a change, and stop. It's strange enough to make me wake up a little and take a closer look. Feeling at it, I can tell that it's full. Manastones can be filled up all the way? I had no idea there was a maximum amount they could hold.

I take a few moments to pull all the mana back out, then just push in more earth mana. Based on how much I can hold, the maximum of the stone is... about twenty percent of my maximum. That's even less than Emily! Even from memory, those stones I found back in that strange building had far, far more mana inside of them than this. Why is this one so tiny inside?

I can't do anything to figure that out now, and I need to get washed up. I put back the ten percent lightning for Emily, and another ten percent of earth until the stone is full. That leaves like seventy percent earth in me, with a few random bits of those other mana types tossed into the stone back when I made it. I convert it all, just leaving my usual ten percent or so of water, and the... weird fire.

I really need to come up with better names for all of these... The thought again reminding me of Reena's warning about names. Did she mean names are important? Or dangerous? Again, no answers to be found now.

Returning to my task, I store the manastone and head down to the storeroom. I still have those hair ties and the stick in my room from Helen doing that weird hairstyle the other day. I can deal with tying it up after I wash. So for now, I just grab a bucket. I go to the well, but... I've never actually managed to draw water from the well all on my own before. There's no one out here, before the sun has even risen, to help me get the rope to even tie it to the bucket.

"Ugh," I grumble. I hate how small I am... I climb up onto the edge of the well, holding tightly onto the bar, leaning out over the well so I just barely snag the rope with my fingers. Then I pull it back with me, carefully climbing back down from the narrow wall of the well. Next up is tying it around the handle of the bucket. I've seen it done, but never had a chance to do it myself because there were always other people to do it for me, usually because I was holding them up from using the well themselves...

So I sit and take some time to just keep fighting to tie the rope like I've seen, until I manage a nice knot. I pull on it some to make sure it isn't going to come out, then lower the bucket into the well.

Once more, I'm grateful that everything goes fine. I have to carefully climb up and pull the bucket back, but I'm soon sitting on the ground with the bucket, successfully filled with water. All on my own. Some more time fighting to get the knot out, and it's done.

I consider just washing the clothes I'm wearing first, but Emily said I shouldn't do that since I'm already seven... So I drop the bucket by the front door since leaving it outside would definitely earn me another beating, and go back up to our room, grab all my clothes and the soap I'm going to need anyway, and climb all the way back downstairs. I take the bucket and soap into the alley next to the building and start washing. Even in the summer, the early morning water is chilly and makes me shiver a bit. The moons haven't even fallen out of the sky yet. Scrubbing the soap into my clothes really seems to help getting them clean as I work. I keep going until wringing them out mostly runs clear.

Then I swap into my damp clothing, and wash the other set. I even wash all my underwear while I'm at it. After wringing out my clothes the best I can so I don't go into the house dripping, I put on the one that I think looks a little cleaner. I think these are the second set of clothes I bought for myself... probably. I head back upstairs, setting my clothes over the windowsill to finish drying, and shake Emily a little. I need her help with the next part.

"Mmm..." she grumbles at me, but slowly sits up anyway. "...Time is it?" she asks sleepily.

"A while before first bell. I'm working on washing, can you help?"

"Sure, whadyou need?" she slurs a couple words together, rubbing her eyes.

"Can you help me get the tub again?" This time she just nods as I give her a hand up out of bed. After we get to the first floor, I head to the well to draw another bucket of water, while Emily heads to the storeroom, looking a good deal more awake now that she's on her feet. Of course, by the time I get the bucket tied off and lower it all the way down, she's finished with the tub and come all the way back to the well to check on me. She doesn't interfere though, she lets me keep pulling the bucket up the rest of the way.

"Is there any better way of getting the bucket and rope?" I ask. With one look, she knows I'm not tall enough to reach.

"I'd ask how you have been doing it but... I don't want to know, do I?"

"Probably not..." I look away since even I know the way I've been doing it is dangerous. Emily gives a big shrug, then climbs up a little, leaning onto the side of the well so she can just reach the bucket, and pull it over. Huh, I guess even she has a little trouble. She fights with my clumsy knot briefly, saying she needs to teach me a better way of doing this, before the bucket is free, and we head back to our room again.

Unlike last time, after I heat up the water with my ignium ingot, I don't just rub myself down quickly. I think back and remember how Irene taught me to wash, carefully getting all of the places, hard to reach, out of the way, or not particularly visible. I scrub myself as well as I can. I'm going to be playing with Eryk's niece.

Actually, I was so preoccupied, I never thought to ask. What is a 'niece'? I ask Emily to clarify, quietly, to avoid waking everyone else so early. She explains that it is the child of a sibling... which I don't know either. We end up playing the 'what does that word mean' game for a bit until I figure out how all of the words relate.

"So Eryk has a brother or sister, and they have a child." A daughter, since she's a niece and not a nephew. I mention how I'm supposed to go play with her today after class, and how I don't really know what to do. Unfortunately, she can't offer much advice. She doesn't really know much about how rich kids play.

"Just remember to be respectful. If he's bringing you over all dressed up, that must mean he expects you to act like a vulgant while you're there."

"Yeah..." I mumble. I'm supposed to be going there to play and have fun, but pretending to be higher class is tiring and stressful. Is this really going to be alright? Even just worrying about it makes my heart tremble. As usual, it feels like sleeping last night helped my state of mind, so I'm a little less fragile than before, but I have a long way to go before I could consider myself stable again.

In a futile attempt to take my mind off of my worries, I work really hard at scrubbing my hair as clean as I can get it. With soap and hot water, I actually get it to a brilliant, shining white brighter than I've seen it in a long time. The last time it was so nice was probably when Selena washed me at Eryk's house.

Letting the smooth strands scatter in the tub around me, running my fingers through and across my wonderfully soft hair. I wonder if it's as soft as Myra's? Even trying to compare it, neither of us are sure.

I stand again, wringing out my hair and splashing it with more water to get any extra soap out, then give it a few more squeezes. In the past couple months since coming here, I think it has grown a little more, even as I've gotten taller, so it actually goes a little below my knees when I'm standing. At this point, recognizable or not, I probably need to keep putting it up just so I don't start tripping over it or something. Maybe cutting it at least a little wouldn't be such a bad idea...

While I wonder about that, Emily washes herself off too, and I scrub her clothes a bit while she bathes. I make sure to sit in the corner of the room next to my bed, where the floor is still nice and clean and free of any dirt after us washing it the other day. Since then, the other girls have tracked in enough dirt that the rest of the floor is not really clean anymore. She finishes up much more quickly than I did, just making sure she's at least somewhat clean. We quickly finish with her clothes, dump the water, and put everything back in the storeroom.

Even able to tell time accurately now, I have no idea when the first bell is actually going to ring. For that, I would need to know how much time passes between the twelfth bell, and the first bell the next day. Which means I would need to count all through the night. I... might actually be able to do that in my sleep if I keep practicing some more. Though it's hard to say if my nightmares or being out of my mind with earth mana to avoid the nightmares, might mess that up. I'll keep it in mind for now.

While my mind wanders over thoughts like this, and keeps going back to worrying about what might be expected of me when playing, Emily works on my hair. After a few long moments, the feeling draws me back from my thoughts. Her fingers trailing through my hair feels amazing. I close my eyes, just savoring the feeling, until she hits a snag and pulls at my hair a little. The tiny pinch of pain makes me sigh slightly.

"What is it?" she asks.

"No, it's just..." As always, I tell her anyway. "Every time I get my hair really clean, I remember how Marrianne brushed it for me, and it makes me want one, but they're way too expensive. Even when I have enough money for one, I have more important things to buy."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"A hairbrush, huh..." Emily mutters. There isn't much else to say, so I just go back to paying attention to the comfortable feeling of her fingers in my hair as she works on pulling and tugging it in different ways to tie my hair up for the day. After a little while, she finishes.

"There, I did it extra nice today," she says with a grin.

"Thanks Emily." I hug her. I'm not sure why, I just kind of want to. It feels nice. Just so... comforting and safe. I wonder, if she really was my big sister, is this what it would feel like? The thought forms another comparison between her and Eryk.

What is having family like?

Eventually I pull back. She looks amused, but doesn't say anything.

I have just a few more things to do this morning before John gets here, so I start working down my list. "How are your injuries?" I ask. With a small rub, she says they're all better, so I swap out the earth for her lightning, filling the manastone completely with the earth.

That does it for all of the important things I need to get done, there's just one more thing I want to do.

"Come on," I take her hand and head to a window at the far end of one hall. Our room faces west so that window is no good. I try to lean out the hall window as best I can to get a look at the eastern sky. It's starting to get lighter out, though it's pretty hard to see much with the tall buildings across the street blocking our view. It's only doable since we're on the third floor.

"Not much time left, but maybe it's enough." I think aloud. On our way back toward the stairs, I remember to grab my things so I'll be ready when John gets here. Then we go to the first floor and sit in a couple chairs in the dining room. Mainly because it's the only place to sit where I won't get myself or my now clean clothes completely filthy again.

"So...?" Emily asks expectantly.

"When I was talking with Reena, I noticed something really interesting. It's, uhh, a little hard to explain. I wanted to give it a try."

"Alright," she just nods and waits for me to do whatever I'm going to do, watching with interest, even though most of what I do doesn't actually create any effects she can see.

"Ok..." I breathe a little to calm and ready myself. Then I touch Emily's arm. Her eyebrows go up, of course wondering what I'm up to now.

First I try just touching her barrier, that sort of wall that surrounds the mana inside her. I try to reach out with my mana, going through my barrier to touch it, but I can't seem to get it to work. For some reason, I can't only go through my own barrier.

I guess because the space between the two isn't inside a mana well? Or, I guess, whatever kind of space this is inside a living thing... Leaving aside my wandering thoughts that again go back to not having good names for any of these things, I push through into her.

Now from inside her, I reach over and touch her barrier easily enough. It feels... kind of hard I guess? I don't know if a description like that really makes sense when it isn't actually a physical thing though.

Alright, now how did Reena do this...? I try to clear my mind, letting myself focus spreading across all of my mana once more. I can't really do it like before, not with my attention split to keep the mana I'm holding into Emily under control. I keep breathing, keep focusing. Holding tight, I try to do what Reena did. With nothing better in my blanked out mind, I think, "Hi," at her.

I can sort of feel the movement of my mind and how it moves through my barrier. But nothing happens. Or at least Emily doesn't respond. It doesn't feel like the mana I'm using passed along that feeling. Like it wasn't connected... I think about that for a bit. If the movement affects my barrier, then maybe...

I try taking the bit of mana that's holding onto her barrier. Where it comes back into me, I pull it out into another end. Now it's like I've made it into a sort of rope. I use the other end to grab onto my own barrier. So now it's like a rope with one end connected to me, the other connected to her. Strangely, my barrier feels more... soft than hers? Or like it's humming or something? I'll think about it later. Let's try again. With more force this time, I think to her, trying to will the feeling through my barrier, across the connection between us, and to her.

"Urgh!" Emily jolts, flinching a little as she half collapses onto the table in front of her. Her arm jerks away from my hand, cutting the connection.

"E-Emily?" I grab her as she sits, hands pressed flat on the table with her body shuddering for a few moments. Then she pushes back up, one hand coming up to her head. Her eyes are still heavily squinting like she's in pain.

"I-I'm sorry! I must have used too much force." I apologize immediately, though my explanation is more intuition than anything else.

"What was that?" she asks while holding her head.

"Well, since I've been talking to Reena in my head, I noticed that she touched my barrier when she did it, so I tried doing it to see if it would let me talk into your mind."

"Barrier?" she questions my new term.

"That's what I'm calling the kind of wall around the space inside living things," I explain while motioning with my hands in a kind of sphere, even though it's not a very good representation.

"Alright," she lowers her hand, looking like she's started to recover. She takes a deep breath. "Want to try again?"

"R-really?" I stammer. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, just uh, a little more gentle this time?" she shows a playful, worried grin. I nod emphatically.Then I gulp and reach out, hesitantly touching the back of her hand. I form a connection the same way as before. I focus on expanding my mind once more.

Then, I gently think toward her, "Better?" She winces a little.

"Kind of loud," she notes. That's strange. Even when she responds, I don't feel anything across the connection.

I drop further, a mental whisper. "Now?"

"Yeah... I think I see what you meant before." Still nothing coming back from her...

Another tiny whisper, "What?"

"How you said it was like passing feelings back and forth. I get it now. It's like... feelings of 'Am I doing it right' and 'what do you mean?' I guess." Huh, so she can't actually hear the words I'm thinking, just the meaning of what I'm expressing when I think them.

Emily winces again, flinching a little. But then she answers, "Yeah, pretty much." She's starting to sweat, so I pull back.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't actually mean to think that at you." I explain. I guess since it's just a connection with my thoughts, she'll pick up anything I think like that.

So I'll need to quiet all of my thoughts when I do that or I'll be too loud. But why is it so loud to her anyway? I don't need to think quietly when I'm talking to Reena...

"Well, I have some more questions about how things work now, but this is a definite success," I declare. I smile widely. "I can talk to you silently now if I have to."

She smiles back, but asks, "Is there any way I can talk back?"

"I'm not sure," I answer honestly. "You were able to hear anything I thought, but even when you spoke out loud, I didn't hear anything coming from your mind, I don't know why."

"Can I try some more?"

"Sure," I agree immediately. If we can communicate silently, it would be way easier to talk about private things without needing to find a place with no one around to overhear. I touch her hand and form the connection. It's really easy now that I know what to do. I push with a little prodding feeling to let her know I'm ready.

I wait, and wait, and wait. She's definitely thinking, I can see it on her face, but there's nothing. Because she can't control mana maybe? But... what about other people that the gods mark? If they can't control mana like me, how are they supposed to speak to their god? Is it normally a one way thing, where the god just speaks to them and they can't say anything back?

"Maybe you could ask?" Emily says aloud, answering my wandering thoughts. Oh, oops, I think. Still, I guess it's worth asking.

"You want to... test something?" I ask out loud this time, and Emily grins at my thoughts running underneath the words.

"This should be interesting."

I feel a bubble of nervousness because I'm about to try something potentially very silly.

While holding the connection with Emily, I channel my mark. I feel Reena as she takes a moment to understand the situation. Her response is a sort of nervous smile. It says, 'I figured you would figure this out.' It takes a moment to understand that she's referring to how she said she didn't want to interfere with how I developed my abilities, and how she basically knew I would figure out speaking between minds just by doing it with her.

Yeah, I guess she's right. I mean, as soon as I started paying more attention to my mana like she told me, I immediately noticed it. Actually, when I think about it like that, I want to ask why she told me to do it if she doesn't want to interfere with my development, unless that's different somehow.

But I push that thought back, focusing on Emily instead. She's already squinting and sweating, clearly overexerting herself just listening to my thoughts that are too loud for her for some reason. So instead, I ask Reena why my thoughts are too loud for Emily. She gently stretches over with her own colorless mana, touching on the connection between the two of us. If It's something I'm already working on, can she help? Or is that still too much interference?

Once more, I can feel her having difficulty making a choice. Torn between helping and not interfering. She comes to a compromise. The way it feels... A suggestion that might help, but also won't stop anything... I'm not fully sure what that means. She follows with her suggestion.

She says I should experiment with the connection. See what I can do with it. I thank her for the advice. Then I let her go, my attention on Emily again. I'll leave the other questions for later, since she looks pretty overworked already. I just let go of her barrier to break the connection.

"So, did that work? It was kind of hard to tell."

"I... think so? It kind of felt like I could hear her, but it was sort of like, I don't know, an echo coming from you, I guess." She slumps forward a little, a hand pressing to her forehead. "So loud though..."

"She said to test out the connection..." I mutter. "She really doesn't want to interfere." Something in the back of my head is starting to understand her meaning, but I'm not sure how to put it into words. "That one thought, helping, without stopping anything..."

I stare at the wall ahead of me. I feel like the meaning is right there, but I still can't quite grasp it. I shake away those thoughts. I can figure that out later. "So, testing the connection." I keep thinking aloud for Emily to hear. "Seeing what I can do with it. My first test would always be different mana types. After that..."

Hmm. Nothing is immediately coming to mind. What else could I try to do that would change the connection? "Let's try an image." Like I did with imagining pushing mana like a river, I try to make a picture out of this too.

"So, if the connection is a rope tied to both of us... Well, it's not really tied, is it?"

It isn't like the rope tied to a bucket at the well. It just kind of attaches to the surface, no knots or tying or anything.

Besides, the feeling was clearly different than when I just touched the surfaces of barriers before, it was definitely attaching onto it. "I guess it's more like they're sticky so they attach." But how does this help me?

I could thinks things through and figure them out based on the properties of the river, but what are the properties of rope? "Ropes are made of a bunch of pieces all woven together... Could I unwind it?" Going back to the mana I was using, its form isn't actually all that similar to rope since it isn't made of a bunch of pieces woven together. "So maybe it's thread." Just one string of thread. It's just that I thought of rope first because the one I'm using is really thick. "Could I make it thinner?" I pull off a bunch to make the thread of mana about half of its thickness from before.

"Let's try this." I grab her barrier again and send a quiet thought. I wait a moment, adding more mana to make the string thicker. Then send another prod of thought with about the same force. For the third try, I pull away most of the mana, just leaving a tiny bit of connection and repeat once more. Though this time, I feel something coming from the thread. Some sort of resistance I think.

"Any differences between those three?" I ask, and Emily shakes her head immediately.

"They all felt the same. Or, mostly the same. The last one was a little... unclear I think?"

"Was it any louder or more quiet?"

"Mmm... it definitely wasn't louder, but I'm not sure I'd say it was much quieter either..." She's trying, but that's clearly the best description she can give.

"So is size no good?" It's like a thread, but with the resistance I felt... Like I was sending my thoughts through... It's starting to click. It's a connection. It has resistance.

Pulling from the metals that I'm way more familiar with, resistance to me pushing all comes down to the size. So if the resistance to me pushing my thoughts through the connection is related to the size of the connection... "But I already saw that it isn't... Making the connection smaller... actually, it did add some resistance, didn't it?" I realize aloud. "Do I make it even smaller?"

I give that another try. I take the thin thread and pull away even more of the mana. But now it's really hard to hold together. It feels like the slightest wiggle causes the line to almost break. This isn't how it feels with Reena at all... But let's give it a try anyway. I very carefully connect to Emily one more time, and send another prodding feeling. I can feel the narrow thread shudder, straining as the small feeling travels across to her. Just that bit nearly snapped it completely. The message did make it to her though.

"Yeah, that's definitely a bit more quiet," she confirms with a smile.

"Alright, so size is the key to volume. It's just... I still feel like I'm doing it wrong." I frown a little. "Just to get it a little more quiet, I had to reduce it so much that it nearly broke from a single thought," I explain.

"Oh, that is an issue..."

"I should try different types to see if they change that at all, earth is a lot more durable, for instance," I mention, but I glance outside. I don't think we have much time left, we have been at this for a while. "Well, let's just give it a quick test." From my basket, I generate each type of mana, and just roll right through them one after another. I tell Emily which type it is, set up the connection with a slightly thicker thread from last time, and just send another small prodding feeling toward her. I include light mana, but leave out absolute since the first doesn't work like the others, and dark because it's hard and time consuming to work with.

As soon as I'm finished, Emily shakes her head. "None of those work."

"Huh? Why not?"

"They're kind of muffled. Like, when you hear someone on the other side of a door. You can hear their voice but you can't tell what they're saying. I could feel you doing something, but if I didn't already know you were just poking me a little, I wouldn't have been able to tell what that feeling actually was." That's actually a really clear explanation.

"So it only works with colorless..." I mutter. "Hmm, let's try your colorless then." If using mine makes me sound too loud to her, maybe her colorless mana will work better? One more quick test reveals no change, so that's not it either.

"Ugh, what am I doing wrong?" I wonder aloud. "Reena said to test things, but what else is there?" I've done types and changed the thickness already. What other properties can I tweak to get some change? I'm still thinking when a few loud knocks on the door tell me I'm out of time.

"I guess we'll have to keep working on this later," I sigh as we both stand. Following the knocks, the front door opens. It's a bit surprising, until I remember that John always came to the door to our room. We quickly circle around to the front of the house to greet him before he starts climbing to the second floor.

"Hey," I call out to get his attention. "Hi John," I greet him as he stops and turns back.

"Ah, Aria. And Emily too? You're up early." Before we can reply, the first bell rings.

After it passes, I answer, "We were working on something kind of difficult. Right?"

Emily is rubbing her forehead. "Really, really difficult," she comments." I... didn't give her a headache, did I...?

John grins crookedly. "Hard for Emily? What are you up to now?"

"I..." I glance over at her. Should I tell him about this? It's just another use of mana, so... I guess there's no harm? Emily returns an unsure glance of her own, shrugging a little.

"Well..." Then, a sudden, dangerous grin spreads over her face. "She could test on you instead," and starts chuckling darkly.