"What was that?" Emily hisses at me in a quiet voice as we hurriedly grab our things and rush out of the room after him.

"You have a bunch of earth mana in you, it's going to make you too honest," I explain in a quick whisper as we go down the hall. No time to get into details.

"Can you take it back?" she asks worriedly. She knows exactly how overly-honest earth mana makes someone after our conversation the other day.

"I already have too much too," I respond.

"Then what do we do?" She's panicking.

Somehow, a plan springs fully formed into my mind. "Don't worry, I have a bad idea." It really is a bad idea, but it'll work.

"That just makes me worry more!" Before she can say anything else, I pull hard, sucking most of the mana out of Emily, she looks a little wobbly, but I'm careful not to take everything and knock her out. I hastily pull apart her mana and the earth mana, then give back hers.

Now with way, way too much earth mana in me, I feel like my mind is starting to go weird. I can't help but grin, even while part of me starts to freak out that this plan is going to backfire in some horrible way. Just before we reach Mister Fredricson's room, I bump into a rather tall boy with blond hair. During the brief contact, I shove a large quantity of the earth mana over into him and my thoughts return mostly to normal. Or at least closer, and I don't want to try putting too much mana into someone, I don't know what will happen. I still have all the lightning mana to deal with too. I haven't even figured out all of its effects yet.

He begins to turn, and I apologize. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bump you," I gulp.

"Aww, it's no problem," he gives me a big smile and chuckles. Then I start walking quickly again, while he looks confused.

Emily rushes up to me, grabbing me by the arm as we continue rapidly down the hall past him. "Did you just?!" she whispers frantically. All I can do is give a worried smile. "That really is a bad idea!" But we've arrived at Mister Fredricson's door. We open it and walk inside. Of course Mister Fredricson is sitting at his desk, but Andy is also standing near the door where we walk in. I wordlessly pass the small basket to Mister Fredricson before we start.

When Mister Fredricson gestures to him, Andy begins to speak nervously, as if giving a report. "I received ten hobins from Emily and Aria last night. I sold them for twenty copper pieces. Ten coppers for the orphanage," he says while placing a pile of coins on the desk. "Five coppers for Emily," handing her some, "and five for Aria," giving me some too. Mister Fredricson nods slightly.

"Umm!" I speak up. Andy and Mister Fredricson look over at me with very different expressions. "Thanks a lot for your help, Andy," I say, and hold out two of the copper coins for him to take.

Following after me, Emily moves forward and says, "Yeah, thanks a lot," while giving two of hers as well.

"You're welcome," he responds a bit stiffly while taking the four coins.

"That wraps up the business from yesterday. I've already heard about what happened, head down for breakfast," Mister Fredricson instructs.

"Yes, sir." We all respond, leaving the room quickly. As soon as we're back in the hall, I see the blond boy from before. I feel kind of stupid putting all that mana into that kid when we ended up not even needing to talk much. I was worried I'd have to find him again, despite having a hard time recognizing him in a crowd. But right as I see him, he starts to walk away.

"I-I'll see you two downstairs," I say, and begin to rush after him.

"Aria?" I hear Andy ask, but I just run away. I really don't want to leave all of that earth mana inside a random kid, I have no idea what might happen. So I move quickly down the hall after him. I reach him just as he makes it to the stairs, bumping into him again. I pull hard, sucking all the mana out, and he begins to go limp. But I'm prepared for it, so I immediately push some of his mana back, while working to separate the rest. He's only out for a short instant, seeming just slightly confused. After the next moment, I push the rest of his mana back, and he turns to me.

"Hey, watch where you're going, brat!" he snaps at me.

"Yes! I definitely will!" I respond with a big grin and a bow. He looks kind of creeped out, but I run off before he can say anything else. Or before I say anything else. I immediately start converting the earth mana, there's way too much of it even to split between both Emily and myself. I've been doing this so much lately, I hardly need to think about it anymore. I'm a lot faster too, but there's so much it's still going to take quite a bit of time. I stand in a connecting hall, leaning against a wall with my eyes closed, while I try to convert as much as I possibly can in the short amount of time I have.

I don't know exactly how much time I have, so I just count to two hundred while I work. Then I begin making my way downstairs, still using most of my attention to convert the mana as fast as possible. I walk through the kitchen, into the dining room and find Emily and her friends off to one side.

"Hey Aria," everyone greets me as I approach.

"Good morning everyone," I respond. I brush Emily's hand a bit as I sit down, pushing a small portion of the earth mana to her. Not enough to cause any issues for her, but it helps bring my amount down some more, so it won't be completely uncontrollable at least.

"So what happened last night?" Andy asks. Clearly, he wanted to know but didn't want to discuss it in front of Mister Fredricson.

"Well..." I glance over to Emily, asking her to explain with my eyes. While she buys me a little time, I keep working at a frantic pace. By splitting my attention and controlling a whole lot of individual pieces of mana at once, I can convert all of them at the same time, drastically increasing my speed. However, I won't be able to keep up focusing like this for very long. My head is already starting to pound and I feel like I'm going cross-eyed as my vision swims and my brain turns to mush. This is even harder than keeping large numbers straight in my head for difficult math equations.

"We got attacked by a monster in the forest," Emily explains with a pained expression while I'm working. She has a lot less earth mana to dull her fear now, so it's clear from the way she trembles slightly that she's having trouble thinking about it.

"Oh man, that's bad. I saw a monster at a distance once. Never want to see one again," Andy comments.

"Yeah, it attacked us, and it was really, really scary..." Emily swallows hard, arms clutching her shoulders protectively

"It... didn't hurt you, did it?" Andy asks quietly. Everyone looks understandably worried.

"It... it grabbed me with its claws..." Her hands are clutching her injured shoulders. I can see it in her eyes, she's reliving it again as she speaks. "Then it... tried to bite me..." her breath is getting shallow. I don't know how much more she can take... Unable to watch any longer, I grab Emily's hand, pushing a good deal of earth mana over to help her, while making it easier to continue the story for her without saying something wrong. I... probably have a low enough amount to resist saying too much too easily.

"I pulled it off of her before it could attack her," I jump in to explain. "It bit me," I continue, showing them the bandage wrapped around my arm, "but I got it to chase me over to the gate, and the guards killed it."

Everyone lets out relieved sighs. "So it all worked out then," Robin comments.

"Good thinking, running to the guards," Andy praises me.

"Well, I was just running in that way-" I start to respond, when a new realization finally hits me. Everyone seems concerned when I suddenly stop speaking, so I shake my head and finish. "I only went there after realizing I was already heading in that direction." There have been so many things like that lately. Times I just do something or say something, just following my intuition without really thinking it through. Even when the monster attacked... I stare at the table for a few moments. I can feel the fight replaying in my head. I turned to Emily before she called out to me. I moved to dodge the monsters' claws impaling me before it even attacked. I don't think I'd say it's like knowing what's going to happen, but it definitely feels like I've been acting on instinct unnaturally well.

That must be the lightning mana. Even the certainty I feel right now, that my guess is right, feels like it proves me right. So that's lightning mana? Heightened fear and intuition. The fear makes things really hard, but the intuition could be invaluable, especially in battle...

"Umm, Aria? Are you alright?" Emily's voice snaps me out of my thoughts.

"Ah, sorry, I just realized something." Now realizing I've been staring at the table, probably a worrying sight after the previous topic, "I'll tell you about it later."

"Ok..." I think she understands that means it's something I can't talk about with other people around.

"Anyway... what have you all been up to?" I try to steer the conversation away from us, and just listen intently as everyone talks about their week. I keep converting earth mana, but make sure to listen.

It turns out that Andy has been competing with another big kid named Jack to see who can gather more hasha. I'm not familiar with that plant, but I wonder if he's referring to the Jack I know, or if it's a different Jack? In any case, they're going to see who won later today at the market.

As for Tony and Robin, no big changes this week. They say they've just been working away, learning how to work at the shop. Nothing interesting to us at least, they claim. Jess, on the other hand, says that while nothing much interesting has happened during the week, she did hear some strange rumors last Shanaday when she went to the church.

"While I was there, I overheard some of the priests talking about preparing for some big event that should be happening soon, though they were really vague about it, so I wonder what it is..."

"You don't think they were just talking about the summer solstice?" Tony asks.

"No, that can't be it," she rejects the idea immediately. "They're always talking about the summer solstice preparations. They were real quiet about this though."

"Mmm, so what do you think it is?" Tony asks.

Jess just shakes her head. "All they said was 'that will be starting soon' and they 'need to be ready for those'. I have no idea what they could be referring to though."

Something about her words clicks in my mind and I sit up in my seat. Suddenly, I'm sure that I know. They must have been referring to the upcoming battle. I have no idea why priests in the church would be talking about the rail units going into battle though...

"Aria, do you know what she's talking about?" Emily asks. She must have noticed me react.

"Aahhh..." I stammer, unable to outright lie right now. "Just a thing I heard about before... it's not important for you guys, you don't need to worry about it." Wait, that was a terrible way to put it!

"Hmm..." Jess doesn't look convinced. "But it sounded interesting, what is it?"

"Well..." I bite my lip. This is really hard. I look down, wincing while I force myself to say, "I can't really talk about it... I'm more interested in the summer solstice anyway," I look back up and try to change topics. "What is it?"

Jess has a look like she really doesn't want to drop the previous topic, but Tony answers my question. "The summer solstice is the longest day of the year. It's a special holiday when everyone has the day off work. Everyone goes to the church to give thanks for the summer and there's a big celebration all over the city. It's really fun. Haven't you gone before?" That's right, Emily mentioned that. The longest day of the year is the last day of Filar. So I guess it's called the summer solstice.

"No, I don't think so," I shake my head. "I didn't even know about it. When is it this year?"

"It's coming up soon," Robin says.

"Soon?" I don't get it.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Yeah, soon. Should be within the next few weeks, I think." Tony sort of elaborates, but it doesn't help answer my question. I look at Andy, and he nods.

"Yup, it's coming up soon," he just agrees with them. I look around a couple more times. No one knows when it is exactly? This was something I'd wondered about before, but Emily said it wasn't important. But here's a reason to actually care about what day it is. Without knowing exactly what day it is, how am I supposed to know what day other things are supposed to happen? I didn't know we had special days like the summer solstice before, but now that I do, I really want to know what day it is...

"So... no one knows how many days it is until then?" I ask a bit sadly. It doesn't seem like they understand my concern or my curiosity though.

The only one who speaks up is Jess. "Well, the priests mentioned it was next Shanaday," she says.

"Next Shanaday?" My eyes light up. "So it's seven days away? That means... today is the twenty third of Filar!" I know what day it is! "So it's the one hundred seventy third day of the year, and there are one hundred eighty seven days left before the end of the year." It's so satisfying, being able to place the exact day of the year it is. I couldn't say why, but it really, really is. It feels like I'm grinning ear to ear, bouncing in my seat as everyone stares blankly at me.

"That's... how did you even figure all of that out...?" Jess asks, looking a bit concerned.

"I just did the math," I comment. When I look around and none of them seem to understand, I just explain it. "The longest day of the year is the last day of Filar, the thirtieth. Seven days before that is the twenty third. Since Filar is the sixth month of the year, that means it's the one hundred seventy third day of the year. There are three hundred-"

"No no no, wait," Emily interrupts. "How does that make it the one hundred seventy... uh, something, day of the year?"

I don't understand the question. It's just simple math. "Five times thirty plus twenty three equals one hundred seventy three..." I scratch my cheek a bit. "It's just some simple math...? Hmm..." I rethink that a bit. "I know I'm good at math," at least compared to what people seem to expect, "so maybe it's actually not so simple math?"

"Aria..." Emily is speaking in a quiet voice. "What do you think hard math is...?" The way she says it makes me a bit worried, so I take her question seriously.

"Usually I have the most trouble with large value percentages... so something like... fifteen percent of seventeen thousand five hundred thirty. Would... be..." I give it a good bit of thought, working through the numbers before continuing, "two thousand six hundred twenty nine... and a half." I look up after thinking through the difficult calculation. Everyone is staring at me. I guess they couldn't follow that if they aren't as good at math as I am. It was a really difficult one after all.

"Uhhh..." is the only response from any of them. They all just mouth it at me blankly. But then it goes on for longer than I expect.

"Umm, guys?" I ask. Before anyone finally responds, they finish making breakfast and start serving it. Everyone starts eating automatically, staring at their food. Then one of them finally speaks up.

"Aria, where in the world did you learn to do something like that?" Emily is the first to ask.

"I uhh, learned it when I was younger." I can't tell them where I learned it, so I just give a similar answer. "I think I mentioned this before, but math was one of the only useful things I learned. I guess that's why I'm good at it."

"I think you're kind of off on that, Aria," Emily says in a really concerned tone. "That can't be considered 'good.'" Wait, how is that not good? It seemed like other people didn't understand it as well, so how could it be bad? "It's too good. Impossibly good. I don't think people can do math like that..." The way she says it almost makes my heart stop.

"The people who taught me could do it though," I argue back nervously. It's not like we can do it because we're rail units, the handlers who taught us are people, and they're able to do math like this too. Of course I can't explain all of that, but at least it makes me sure that it can't be something exclusive to rail units. Which makes it... maybe just a tiny bit less worrying.

"I don't know who that could be, but it's so out of the ordinary... you might not want to mention it much. It's... just too weird." She looks meaningfully down at the clothes I'm wearing for a moment, reminding me that my robes were incredibly strange too.

"Umm, thanks, I guess. I'll try to keep it to myself then..." I scratch my cheek, still worried. Was everything taught and given to me by the rail program strange? Is every single thing from there considered strange by everyone outside? I have no way of knowing without anyone telling me... I just sigh dejectedly. "I'm sorry I'm so weird, everyone."

"Oh, it's alright, everyone is different, you're just... more different than other people..." Andy at least tries to comfort me while patting me on the back. At first it makes me feel a bit better, but then I wince when he pats on the stinging claw wounds. At least his words are comforting.

"Well, I'll see you guys after church. Let's head over to the market together. It's time I settle the score with Jack," Andy says confidently, standing after he finishes his bowl of stew.

"Yeah, we'll totally be there." Tony responds. We all wave as he leaves the table, finishing up ourselves soon after. Everyone splits up for now.

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

Standing by the door with Emily, I look around a bit. There are way too many kids around us for any private discussions now. And lots of them are paying attention to us, even if they're trying to hide it and just glancing our way sometimes. That concerns me, I remember most of the kids here trying to avoid each other most of the time. I don't know if it's just because everyone loosens up on Shanadays, or because we've attracted more attention to ourselves lately with the meat we've been getting, but whatever it is, it worries me. It seems that everything I think is so far outside of normal, it's hard to avoid attention, but that is the most dangerous thing for me. The more eyes on me, the harder it will be to hide my identity. That's why I'm so glad I can get some appropriate clothing to wear now.

Maybe I should change my hairstyle as well, so I'll be harder to recognize... I like my hair long, even though it's so much longer than how people wear theirs. But it's hard to imagine cutting it shorter after I've had it like this for as long as I can remember. Maybe if I tie it up or something, it will make me look different without needing to cut it. That might help me avoid all the attention already on me after wearing my robes around town like I was doing...

While I consider all of this, I suddenly notice Emily waving a hand in my face. "Hello..." she's saying.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Emily." I shake my head. "I was just thinking about something."

"You look worried, what is it?"

"I was thinking of changing my hairstyle."

"Why?" she blinks a few times at the random thought.

"I got a lot of bad attention wearing my robes, so I was thinking if I change my hair and clothes, people might not recognize me as much." I've been clumsily tying up my hair when we go to the forest, but this is different.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Let's give it a try!" She seems unexpectedly excited about this. So much so, she immediately starts dragging me back upstairs.

"Wait, aren't we going to church soon?" I ask.

"There's still time," Emily giggles. "We can give you a cute hairstyle before then."

"O-ok?" I have no idea what she has in mind, and just follow along. We reach our room quickly, and she takes some of the extra bandages out from under my bed. I have... a concerning amount of those piling up...

"We need to use the ones without lele fruit on them, right?" she asks, while picking out a few that aren't treated with the fruit. I just nod as she collects about four of them. I don't know what she intends to do with them though. I don't really know anything about working with hair outside of the couple times I tied it up to keep it from getting dirty and snagged. That required a stick to keep it in place well though. Just using cloth, I only managed to sort of get it awkwardly pulled up so that it all fell out if I moved too much. Can she get it to work better with just cloth?

The first thing Emily tries is just collecting all of my hair in the back and wrapping some cloth around the base near my head. I have no idea what it looks like, since I can't see the back of my own head. But it feels like the way she gathered it, it stays a lot more tight and secure than when I did it myself.

"Hmm..." Emily steps around me in the narrow floor space and considers it. "A ponytail seems alright, but doesn't make much of a difference in your appearance. Besides, you have so much hair..."

"So much hair?" I ask. I remember her mentioning that once before. I know it's long, is that what she's referring to? Or is it something different? Feeling the ponytail, it's pretty similar to what I've done in the forest, though it doesn't really shorten my hair. But even when I pull on it a little, it doesn't loosen at all.

"Yeah, it's so much longer than mine, you can do so much more with it. Just a ponytail kind of seems like a waste." So she is just referring to the length, why did she put it differently then? She unties the cloth and my hair all falls down again. "Although... being so long makes it really recognizable. Do you think we should cut it?" I grimace a little when she immediately suggests the one thing I've been trying to avoid.

"I didn't really want to cut it, I've always had it long," I respond. It's weird, do I like my hair? Is there some reason I don't want to cut it? Nothing comes to mind, I just... don't want to.

Emily nods knowingly for some reason. "I totally understand, I only cut my hair short for convenience. It was too much work to manage when it was longer." I bite my lip a bit. I've noticed that my long hair takes a lot of work, and I can't even wash it properly now. Maybe I should cut it after all, even though I don't wan to? I grumble quietly to myself.

"Is there any way to make it shorter without cutting it? Or maybe some way that makes it easier to manage?" I try asking.

"If we're talking about hairstyles that make hair shorter, then usually you'd do a braid or a bun. Kids don't pull all their hair up into buns though, so let's try a braid." I feel her pulling at my hair for a bit, but I'm not really sure what she's doing with it.

"What is a braid exactly?" I ask as she works on something.

"You pretty much weave the hair over itself in a pattern," she explains. "I don't think I'm that good at it, but I should be able to get it done." I wait a little longer, it feels like she's slowly stepping back away from me as she works. I gently touch the hair behind my head and I can feel what she's talking about. It feels like it wraps over itself repeatedly. A short time later, she finishes.

"All done!" she exclaims. I touch my hair behind me. She's right, braiding it did shorten it a lot. Instead of going down to my knees, it's around the middle of my back now. It's still long enough that I can pull it around to look at the braid. It has a very strange appearance, with multiple pieces of hair all wrapped together in a pattern, going around each other many times down the length. I don't really know what to think of it. I feel like I've seen other people with their hair done like this before though.

Once more, she circles around me. "I... don't know if it really suits you though..." she mutters, looking somewhat conflicted. It seems like she's thinking about it pretty hard. "I guess it'll do for now, but we should ask Helen about it later. She might have a better idea."

"Helen?" I ask, her name seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

"Yeah, she knows a lot more about hair than I do. Yours is normally really long and straight, so it looks kind of weird all twisted up in a braid. But I'm not really sure how to do it better, I haven't done anything with hair like yours before." She shakes her head sadly. "So I think we should ask Helen, she should know."

"Ok, let's do that then," I agree. For now, we start to leave, but I stop her. "Oh wait, we're alone. There was a little more I wanted to tell you."

"Sure, what about?" Emily asks.

"I didn't finish explaining everything from last night," I say. Emily frowns a little, but doesn't say anything. "I wanted to tell you I gave you some earth mana."

"Yeah," she nods. I already mentioned that earlier, "But why?" she asks.

"Well, I noticed it makes things feel less scary. You were so scared after you were attacked, I gave you some to help lessen it a little." Emily looks uncomfortable thinking about it, but I want to explain. "I didn't want to use too much because I don't know if it'll make it harder to deal with later, but... Near death experiences are really scary, and you looked like you needed some help."

She puts her hand to her head, responding, "Yeah, I can kind of remember last night. That feeling... You're right, it was really terrifying..."

"I'm sorry, but I'm worried about using earth mana to dull it for too long, I want to slowly pull it back over time, do you think you can handle it?"

Emily gulps, then nods. "Yeah, thinking about it like that worries me too. I don't want to be scared, but... somehow, hiding from it feels even scarier."

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean."

"Hey Aria. You did all of this for me, but... how are you feeling? You were really out of it last night. I've never seen you like that, even with your nightmares..."

"Oh, I think that's something else. My guess right now is that lightning mana makes fear worse."

"So you're dealing with fear even worse than usual right now?" She looks really surprised. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, it's not a problem unless I'm actually afraid of something, so it doesn't really do anything most of the time, I guess." I try to explain the feeling. "With nightmares like mine, not much really scares me anymore..."

"Even being attacked by a monster like that?" she blinks a few times.

"Well, that was scary at the time, but what came after was a whole lot worse." I shake my head a little.

"What came after?" she clearly doesn't understand since she wasn't there for it.

I consider it briefly, then decide there shouldn't be any harm telling her. Just hearing about it shouldn't be too frightening. I feel my heart doing flips just thinking about it, but push the feelings to the back of my mind for now. "I checked out the monster later. Long story short, there was some sort of thing growing inside of it. I destroyed it, but it was... well... scary beyond belief." I try to sum it all up simply to avoid going into details.

"For you to say something like that..."

Before she asks, I put up a hand. "I don't really want to go into details," I say to stop her. "It's probably because of the lightning mana, but my nightmares last night were all about that thing. It was much worse than basically anything else I've experienced," I shrug casually. It's forced, but I don't want her to worry about me when she's already having troubles of her own. "That's why I'm not really worried about things scaring me now."

"I see..." she is clearly unsure what to think about it, so I just nudge her forward.

"That's all I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to make sure you knew you had some earth mana right now. It'll dull the fear, but it'll also make you sort of happy. And talkative, like you saw earlier." After removing some, adding some back, and so on, she probably has about as much as she did this morning.

"Got it," she nods. It's probably about time, so we both leave the room to head downstairs. Unfortunately, I was off, and we're a bit late. We rush out the door. Oddly, the first thing that hits me in the street is how strong the scent of waste is in the streets today. I shake it off though, and keep moving. It looks like we just missed them, the crowd of kids is just a short distance down the road. We run after them, catching up quickly.