"So... impulsive... confident... and... kind of playful?" I tilt my head a bit while Emily picks twigs out of my hair. It's just a short time later, and we are back in our tree. I've cleared out the excessive air mana from earlier at least.

"And easily distracted," Emily adds in. "So, it makes you into an overly playful cat, got it..." She sighs with a small roll of her eyes.

"Cat?" I ask.

"You know, cats. Umm, the little things? Four legs, furry..." She balls her hands up and kind of waves them in front of her a few times, but I have no clue what the gesture means. "Meow meow... cats?" I just blink at her blankly. I have no idea what that is. "There are tons of them in town, haven't you seen any?" she asks.

"I can't... remember seeing any before..." I mutter.

Now she actually looks a bit concerned. "Basically everyone keeps a cat around the house to catch mice. We have one at home too..."

"I've... never seen it..." That's all I can say. I've been living there for a month, and there's an animal running around the house that I've never spotted before? If I'd known about it, I might have dismissed that tapping last night...

That reminds me... "Oh, speaking of last night, I wanted to tell you about it."

"Wait, wait, what? Do you still have air mana rattling around up there?" Emily taps me on the head playfully.

"No, sorry." I shake my head. "Talking about the orphanage reminded me that I wanted to tell you about last night," I clarify.

"Ohhh, ok. Got it," she gives a quick nod and straightens up a little. "So what did happen exactly? All I heard was stuff about Mister Fredricson yelling at you in the middle of the night? What did you do this time?"

"Well, after I went to pee, I heard a tapping sound and saw some movement, and decided to check it out."

"Uh huh..." her eyebrow is already twitching with worry.

"I was half-asleep and curious..." I mutter in my defense, which finally gets a shrug out of her. Then I clear my throat a little. The story is weird and confusing, so I mostly try to stick to the important parts. "So, I went downstairs following the sounds, and wound up in the storeroom. I didn't see her, but I'm pretty sure Reena was there."

"Woah, what? Reena?" Emily immediately waves her hands to stop me. "What do you mean she was there? Like, in person? In the house?"

"Yeah, I think so. There was a bucket of water and stuff, but I'll get to that later." I wave that bit off for now.

"A bucket of water...?" Emily mutters to herself, but doesn't interrupt again.

"I didn't see her or anything, but I had a... a vision. I think she was showing me the future. I saw what is going to happen, and she told me what I need to do. I also saw that it happens on the night of the full moon, so it will be tomorrow."

Emily's mouth drops open. "A vision..." She stops for a few long moments. "That's a... a really serious blessing you know," Emily says.

"It is?" I still don't know most of the stories of the gods that people know about, so I don't really understand. I make a mental note to learn more about that... if I come back...

"There aren't many stories of the gods bestowing visions of the future, but every one of them marks a huge turning point in history. Like when Saras showed the queen of Liantra a premonition of the great flying wyverns losing a newborn in their territory, and where they could find it. It's thanks to him that they forged an alliance with magical creatures in ancient times. Basically all of the stories about blessings of premonition are like that."

"There's... a whole lot there I don't understand," I chuckle nervously, hardly recognizing half of the words she used, "but I get your point. Visions of the future are a huge deal. So... why did I have one?"

"How should I know?" Emily shrugs and just keeps shaking her head. "Are you really sure you aren't important somehow? With your whole secret past... Whatever it is, are you really sure there's nothing? You said you never knew your parents, so maybe they were actually powerful nobles or something like that? What did Reena tell you you have to do?"

"Umm, I can't really say..." I look down. Emily frowns. I try to explain what I can. "She told me to do one thing instead of something else. Otherwise, I'll die. Like I said... I'll tell you more tomorrow, before I leave."

"Right..." she mutters. Then she takes me by the shoulders. "Well, what she told you to do... Whatever it is, do it. I don't want you to die..." Emily pauses for a few long moments, eyes turning off into the distance. "And of all the gods, for The Powerless Goddess to grant such a blessing, there must be something extremely important that's going to happen in the future. And somehow, you have to be alive for it, whatever it is."

I lower my eyes. "I think I get it..." It's not necessarily that I'm important, I just need to be alive because something in the future will depend on me being there. I look up to Emily again. "Just... how much about the future do the gods know? How much of it do they control?"

She shakes her head. "I have no idea."

That figures. So the gods are playing some sort of elaborate game or something, and we can't see the big picture since we're just tiny pieces. What role am I supposed to play in all this, I wonder...?

We fall into silence for a little while, and eventually I return to my studies. Now I'm even more worried. Now I'm not just trying to survive because I don't want to die, I have to because I'm apparently a piece in some grand plan... I sigh a bit. It's not like I care what crazy, mysterious events the gods are setting up with our world, but I do worry what will happen if it goes wrong... What sort of terrible things are coming...?

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Leaving those thoughts for later, I focus on the present again. My primary goal is still just surviving the battle tomorrow. Nothing else matters if I'm dead. I have a good idea of which types of mana will help. Now I want to work with the mixed types to see if they will be helpful or not, possibly expanding my options...

For my first test, what I want to know is if the effects on my mind and body are different when mana types are combined. So I generate some air and lightning mana to use.

I try to make equal amounts, somewhere around... twenty five percent full of each. It's a sizable amount, but it won't be uncontrollable. First I go through senses, getting a feel for the heightened sense of smell and sight that comes with them. Then I move on to the feelings, thinking of positive and scary things to get an idea of how I should feel at the moment. Once I have done that, I mix the two mana types together. I just keep pushing them all into one another, breaking each apart and stirring until eventually it feels like they have completely mixed.

The end result of their combination feels kind of like charged up, lightning filled air with little zaps streaking out of it. I go back through my tests. Oddly, everything feels exactly the same as it did just before. So... mixing them doesn't do anything? Somehow, that just doesn't feel right. I combined them together, so there should be the same amount of air and lightning, but shouldn't each bit of mana be half air and half lightning now? Trying to get a feel for the quantity, it feels like it takes about fifty percent of the room inside me.

That can't be right... How could it be that I combined them, making the mana include both types, the quantity didn't change? I briefly form an analogy in my mind to make absolutely sure I'm thinking of this correctly.

If I have ten baskets, with a potato in half and a hoffa in the other half, I have five potatoes and five hoffas. Take them and put them into the same baskets, now there are both a hoffa and a potato in five of the ten baskets, but the other five are empty.

That's definitely correct. So why is that not what I'm seeing here? I scratch my head, trying to turn the situation around in my mind. Maybe there's another explanation that I'm missing. However, a tap on my shoulder brings me back out of my head a bit. I glance down, going to catch the next hobin that has shown up. I have quite a bit of air mana again, so it is difficult to curb the jumpy impulse to just run off after anything that catches my eye again, but I'm already on guard against that, so I manage, and we head back into the tree to wait once Emily is finished with the hobin.

Safely back on our branch and away from distractions, I turn my thoughts to the issue with quantity once more. I keep picturing the baskets, trying to figure out some way you could fill all ten baskets, but it's just not possible without more stuff to put in them.

Staring down from my branch at the pile of fruit below, I vaguely imagine them being dumped into the baskets along with the vegetables. Looking at the imaginary baskets overflowing with the small fruits, it finally hits me. What if they aren't single pieces? I was thinking that each bit of mana was made up of an element. What if there are multiples? Like, two or three bits of fire in a little bit of mana.

I shake my head. I need better words to describe these things. Let's say each smallest piece of mana is a mote. That means a little bit of something, right? So the even smaller bits of each element that make up these motes would be... I wrack my brain for another good word. Sub-mote? Mini-mote? No, it should be its own word. Is there a word for the smallest part of something? If there is, I don't know it. Mite... no, that refers to small insects, right? Then a speck. That doesn't sound good, it's not really something you can see... I guess element would work, but that would be too confusing since I already call the elements that. Bit just sounds too generic... What about part? At least that indicates that it isn't the whole thing.

That might work... Let's say a mote of mana was made of like, five parts of fire and three parts of air. Yeah, I like the sound of that. I nod to myself a few times. So if I assume mana is made using multiple parts of each element, I can imagine how those parts can get split up. They could all combine into the same amount of mana, but with fewer parts of each element in each mote of mana.

Yeah yeah, that could work! But then I scratch my head. I have no way of testing any of this... I look at the mana inside me. I don't know if my control is good enough yet, but let's give it a shot...

I pull some of the air-lightning mana away from the rest. I try to push everything else away so it can just sit on its own. I carefully focus closer in, splitting off more of it. I push that away as well. Slowly, carefully, I break off smaller and smaller pieces and remove them. It just keeps getting harder to maintain focus on the little bit of mana as it gets smaller and smaller. Eventually, I don't know for sure if I can feel it at all anymore. It's more of a vague feeling than anything definite.

With all of my effort, I focus further and further, narrowing my entire conscious view onto the tiny amount of mana. Everything fades away as this bit of mana faintly occupies my mind. I continue to slice away tiny portions, but it just keeps getting smaller and smaller. I had some idea that a mote of mana must be incredibly tiny, but I didn't know it would be quite this much.

Eventually, the fragments I shave away become more and more difficult to remove. Maybe I'm getting close? All I can feel is the airy, buzzing bit of energy. Everything else gets hazy. I pull it in half and toss away the extra. Then I do it again, and again. No matter how small the portion of mana I'm working with gets, I can't seem to reduce it to a single mote. It's taking every last bit of my willpower to even maintain awareness of the thing.

I keep it up for what feels like a really long time, continuously redoubling my efforts. Bit by bit, I force myself to keep trying as it only gets harder and harder to pull ever smaller pieces of mana away.

But eventually, it just isn't enough. No matter how hard I push or pull, I can't get it to separate anymore. I don't think I've gotten it down to a single mote yet either. I don't know what it should feel like when I do, but somehow, it just doesn't feel right. Or maybe I just can't tell, part of me feels so far past the point where I can feel anything clearly anymore.

I don't want to give up, as I've felt every time before, one part of me just says maybe one more push and things will work out. But the rest of my thoughts finally give up. I'll have to try again later, I'm simply not good enough at manipulating my mana yet. It takes way too much effort to do even this much.

So I pull back. I let the unbelievably tiny piece of mana go and let my mind draw back to the world around me. I wobble a little on the branch, all of my senses coming back all at once. "Woah..." I mutter, holding my head. I don't have a headache, but it feels like my brain is beyond worn out. Probably from trying that. I slouch down onto the branch. I don't want to think anymore.

"Aria?" I hear Emily ask.

"Yeah?"

"Umm, what was that?"

"What was what?"

"You kind of just... stopped moving for a really long time. I tried poking you but you didn't respond."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't notice. I was trying to do something."

"What were you trying to do? Anything interesting?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Umm... will you tell me about it?"

"I don't feel like it."

"O-ok? I guess you can tell me later then..."

I don't answer, and just let my brain rest...