Aperio tapped her foot against the stone floor, occasionally breaking it from using a bit too much force. "How does that work?" she mumbled to herself as she searched through the thousands of regions that made up her System. "There has to be something…"

A finger poking against her forehead caused Aperio to stop her search and focus on the woman to whom it belonged. "Yes?" she asked, a small part of her mind quietly going back to looking through the System.

"You'll have an easier time finding what you are looking for once the System has fixed itself," Caethya said, retracting her hand. "It's fine to trust what you have built before."

"It's not that I don't trust it, but that I feel the need to understand it."

Her disciple sat herself down on the bed next to Aperio, idly brushing a hand over her wings as she spoke. "And you will have an easier time understanding when you don't have to piece it back together. The world has worked with the System, broken as it is, for millennia; a few more years will hardly make a difference."

The All-Mother let out a sigh. As usual, Caethya was right, but the knowledge did little to quell her need to know. Her desire to know more and better herself was part of her Domain — something that she should likely also properly figure out.

It had been months already, perhaps even a year since she came back to Verenier, and she still knew little about herself. Remembering who she was before certainly helped, but it mainly showed her what she did not want to be, not why she felt the way she currently did.

Aperio wrapped her wing around Caethya and pulled the Elf closer. At least I know I like her… Trying to run from her feelings any longer would only cause them both to suffer, something Aperio most definitely did not want.

"It's not wrong, is it?" the All-Mother mumbled to herself, glancing at Caethya. Her disciple's weight as she closed her eyes and nestled deeper into the offered wing was welcome, but negligible at best. A twitch away from being thrown across the room.

"What is not wrong?" Caethya asked, grasping one of Aperio's hands between her own. "Looking at the System again?"

"No," Aperio replied, lowering her head slightly before she continued. "My feelings for you… are they wrong? Should I feel this way for someone? I don't even know my birthday, let alone anything more noteworthy about myself. Nothing good, at least."

Caethya leaned forwards slightly to better look at her Goddess before she spoke. "Why should it be wrong? Just because you are the All-Mother and I am but a mere Demigoddess?” The look on Aperio's face prompted her to try again. “Or because someone else would object to it?"

"Because I do not know what I will become once I have retrieved all my memories."

"I doubt you will change for the worse," Caethya said after a moment of silence, tightening her grip on Aperio's hand a little. "The only thing I am worried about is that you will feel guilty for things you did not do… It hurts seeing you be so down on yourself for something you did not even know had happened a moment before."

"But it was still me who did it," Aperio said, closing her eyes and rubbing the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "Forgetting what I did does not absolve me."

Caethya let go of her hand and sat as straight as she could, likely trying to appear a little taller before she delivered her next words. "Continuously beating yourself up about it won't do anything either. If you cannot live with what you have done; change it."

"I am trying, but to right the wrongs I have done, I need to remember more—"

"Which only shows you more things you need to fix, I know," Caethya interrupted. "Focus on one thing at a time. So for now, we focus on finding Moria while you let the System repair itself." The Elf placed her hands on Aperio's cheeks, looking directly into her unblinking eyes. "Okay?"

"I’ll try," Aperio mumbled, gently removing her disciple's hands from her face. "But it is hard not to think about it. The same is true for the System — even now, I am looking through it to figure out how it can repair itself."

Caethya dropped her now-free hands in her lap, leaning slightly against Aperio's wing again. "Do you ever focus on only one thing?"

"I do sometimes, but it happens less and less frequently." She tilted her head lightly, answering a small prayer from Maria. "I don't know how I managed to live without being able to do a multitude of things at once."

"So even when I can, quite literally, feel the weight of your attention on me, you are still doing a myriad other things?"

"Yes," Aperio replied, tilting her head lightly before she continued. "But what do you mean by 'weight of my attention'?"

"You can feel the presence of other people, yes?" Caethya asked, continuing after the All-Mother nodded slightly. "I can sense yours, and when you focus on me, I can feel it drawing closer; bringing with it what I assume is a good amount of your mana."

"But I don't do anything? I just delegate whatever I was doing to the back of my mind and pay attention to you. How would that act shift mana?"

"Probably because you are who you are. You said yourself that using mana is as intuitive as breathing is for me. I am sure there are moments in which you use magic without even knowing it."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Maybe I should ask Mayeia about this." Or Ferio, but she still doesn't want to talk.

A giggle came from her disciple at the words. "'I bet she would be eager to perform all manner of experiments to figure out why that is. Or, maybe, she already knows why it happens and could just tell you."

Instead of asking the other Goddess directly, Aperio merely shifted her focus to her; observed how she was scribbling notes. It only took a moment before she looked up from her work and faced the All-Mother despite the multitude of walls that separated them.

Mayeia's mental query asking if she needed anything came a breath later, the Goddess sounding eager even through her thoughts. Aperio's question was easily conveyed, as the phenomenon she wanted to ask about had just transpired.

"Do you mind if we go to Mayeia?" she asked. "I am not quite comfortable only talking via telepathy with her."

"Sure," Caethya replied. "But you will have to accept that I will continue to use your wing as a blanket." To underline her words, she retreated deeper into Aperio's wing and tried to pull it over herself a little more.

The All-Mother obliged her disciple, wrapping her wing a little tighter around her as a thought twisted reality apart and brought them both outside.

Roots' branches shook lightly as they appeared at his base, seemingly quite happy to see her. Mayeia, too, quickly turned around and took the few steps that separated her from Aperio and Caethya.

As the Goddess sat down on the grass in front of the All-Mother, a few books appeared floating gently next to her, seeming to wait to be used. "While I don't know why, exactly, this happens, I do know that it's not only divines that have this problem," Mayeia began.

"There are some mortals who also experience this," she continued as she plucked one of the books from the air and started leafing through it. "It doesn't really make sense at first glance, probably more so for you as magic is second nature to you… Do you even think about using magic, or do you just do it?"

Aperio tilted her head at the question. She understood what Mayeia had meant, but the choice of words struck her as quite odd. "I simply exert my will on reality. I want something to be, and then it is.

"Teleporting some people? That merely takes a thought. Something like the System, on the other hand, requires me to build every part of it on its own. It is too complex to be imagined in one go." While that statement was not entirely true, it came the closest to conveying the situation as it appeared to her.

The All-Mother could simply force something as complex as the System into being, but she was also very certain that it would not work how she wanted it to. And probably break the existing one even more… Aperio was confident that she, at times, even used parts of the System unthinkingly. As it was a part of her, though, did that really count?

"I wish I could use magic like that," Mayeia said as her eyes darted back and forth over the pages of her book. "Would make many things so much easier."

"How do you use magic?"

The Goddess of Magic looked up from her book at the question. "I have to channel my mana to where I want to use the magic I am trying to invoke, be it my hand to throw a ball of fire or my eyes to see what wants to be hidden.

"Then," she continued, "I have to either attune my mana to the fitting element myself or let the System handle it. Knowing how this is done could be considered a detriment as most mortals do all of this unconsciously and don't even know it."

"Like me, then?" Aperio asked, willing a small flame into existence that danced across the palm of her hand. "I do it unconsciously too, most of the time."

"Not quite. Most mortals rely on the System to attune their mana to the right elements, even when they are not using a chant to hand over the entire process."

"And your little flame there contains more mana than a normal mortal could expend," Caethya said, her eyes closed again as she simply leaned herself against Aperio's side. "Your control over the magic, once it has been formed, is also better."

"That is to be expected," Mayeia said. "She is basically magic given a physical form. The universe itself as a person, if you will."

"I am not the universe," Aperio snapped, her aura flaring slightly in irritation. "I am not this world, not you, nor anything else other than myself. Just because I made it does not mean I am it." She paused briefly, glaring at the Goddess of Magic with narrowed eyes. "Are you the clothes you made; the words you wrote?"

"Not really, no," Mayeia replied, her face having lost a bit of colour. "I apologise, I didn't mean to offend you."

"It is annoying when people assume that I am somehow everything," Aperio said with a sigh. "But, that is not what we were talking about, now is it?"

"No, it is not," the Goddess of Magic replied, her eyes cautiously wandering back to the book in her hand. "The truth of the matter, however, is that nobody really knows why an aura shifts mana to the person you are paying attention to.

"It could be something as simple as your mind not being able to differentiate your attention from a desire to know more about the person," Mayeia continued. "Something that would require your aura — your mana — to be close to the person in question to figure it out."

"Or it could be something completely different," Aperio said. "Like your Soul reacting to the presence of one that is stronger than itself."

"Perhaps," Mayeia said. "But studies of the Soul are outlawed. At least for most of the Pantheon. Some still do it, many of whom are the ones who are also less than pleased with your return."

"And those that do will pay for their transgressions." Aperio’s eyes were still fixed on the Goddess of Magic. "I do not tolerate the defilement of Souls."

Caethya's arms slowly wrapping around her caused Aperio to relax a little, the slight glow beneath her skin dimming again. Why that happened was another thing she had to figure out, but that could wait. Her next goal had already been made clear: finding Moria.

The talk with Mayeia was a distraction, the information she could gain certainly useful but not what she needed to focus on at the moment. With a small shake of her head and a sigh, Aperio gently shifted her wings, causing Caethya to sit a little straighter.

"As much as I would like to stay and find out exactly why my attention is a literal weight on people," Aperio said, "I have matters to attend to."

Mayeia closed her book, holding her place with her thumb. "Might I inquire what those matters are?"

"I have to find an old friend," Aperio replied. And hope she actually is one.