Sylvia was learning much faster after she started to get help from the rest of the family. By pointing at an object and then naming it, they could teach the young queen some basic vocabulary. Some minutes later the young queen is mentally exhausted and needs a break from learning. Elise notices it first and suggests a small break by herself. Erik still wants to keep Sylvia company and isn’t denied. The parents on the other hand decided to follow their usual daily routine.
Time flew by and soon it is time for lunch. Today the meat of a boar-like creature is on the menu. The meat was purchased by Mark the last time he was in town, a couple of days ago. Sylvia's mouth is already watering when she sees the new meat in front of her. “She seems to be quite hungry as always.”, Mark comments, while pointing at his discovery. A chuckle comes from Elise, who just sat down at the table.
The hive queen eats with a ferocious appetite to absorb the new genetic information. Sadly, it isn’t enough to unlock new traits. She felt that if the meat would have been fresh, she may have been able to extract one of the traits from the creature. While she is deep in thought after the meal, she does not notice how Elise starts her preparations for departing to Westerville. When Elise sets off, she is a bit startled and frowns but doesn't start to wail like last time.
While Elise is on her way to get the anesthetic in Westerville, Sylvia decides to continue working on her vocabulary. To expand it, she decides to visit Erik. This is just in time for Mark, who wants to do some work for himself in his smithy in order to sort out his thoughts. The son is excited to help Sylvia in her venture for knowledge and explains things to her as a big brother would. After a while, Sylvia improves a lot and is able to name most of the items in the house. In the late evening, Mark comes back from his work to find Sylvia taking a nap in her bed and Erik cleaning his room.
Elise returns late as predicted and the family eats dinner together, which consists of a soup with small pieces of boar meat in it and some bread. It was a peaceful evening and soon everyone went to bed. After a while, Sylvia gets up from the bed like last night and decides to work on her movement skills. She tries to walk like the rest of the family but fails to even stand up properly. “I need to try smaller steps first”, thinks the hive queen and proceeds to crawl to a corner. There she could use the walls as a support to stand up on her two feet. She raises herself slowly until she stands properly, her hands on the wall to keep balance. She repeats the procedure to lower herself and stand up again until she feels a bit more confident. The next part would be to walk her first step, so she slowly slid one of her feet over the ground and then followed with the second one. She shifted her position using this method until she tried her first real step, still supported by the wall. This proved to be too hasty and she fell over and hit the floor with a loud bump!
Elise wakes up from a strange noise in the room and then hears a soft crying from the direction of Sylvia's bed. She gets up quickly and hurries anxiously to the source of the noise. Mark also wakes up, when his wife leaves the bed and looks around with a dazed expression. Elise switches on the lights in the room by channeling some mana into them and arrives at Sylvia's position, who is laying on the wooden floor. “Hush, I’m here, let me see what happened”, says the mother in a soothing voice and starts to examine the young hive queen.
“What’s going on?”, asks Mark in a confused tone and gets out of bed. His wife answers, “I think Sylvia has injured herself. I will try to heal her.”, and then proceeds to cast Lesser Healing. Sylvia hit her head when she fell to the floor. With the help of Elise's spell, the swelling goes down quickly and the pain subsides. The hive queen stops crying and gets a warm hug from Elise to calm her down. Mark notices that Sylvia is quite far from her bed, in the corner of the room and speculates, “I think she moved around at night, tripped and then fell hard onto the ground.”, while gesturing between her bed and the corner. Elise thinks about this for a moment and then asks Sylvia, “Can you …”, pointing at Sylvia, “tell me …”, pointing at herself, “what happened here?”, gesturing while putting on a questioning expression.
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“Sylvia … don’t … walks”, pause, “Sylvia … want’s to … walk”, pause, “Sylvia … “, she gestures a falling motion and then looks expectantly at Elise.
The parents think that they have understood what happened. “Sylvia's species is naturally active at night. She must have tried to practice walking by herself and probably fell.”, concludes Mark. Elise is a bit surprised but agrees with the thesis of her husband. Then she looks worriedly at the young hive queen and tries to teach her through the use of a combination of words, underlaid with a lot of gesticulation, that she is always welcome to let her know if she needs help. To sum it up, Elise wants to tell Sylvia that she can rely on them.
The Sylv queen roughly understands what her adoptive mother wants to tell her. She is quite happy about getting all this support and wants to continue, but Elise signals her that it is time to rest now and that they could continue the next morning. Sylvia decides to accept it and crawls back to her bed. Mark and Elise also went back to their bed to continue their sleep.
The next morning Sylvia continues her language studies and gets some help learning how to walk. She quickly catches on and makes huge progress. When lunchtime arrives, she eats as always with a great appetite and makes some progress regarding her trait extraction. The hive queen senses that her first growth phase will end soon. She has now a body similar to a three-year-old girl and will stop at an equivalent of a four-year-old girl. Sylvia continues to refrain from laying more eggs and to develop herself a bit more before continuing.
Soon the next day ends and the Sylv queen manages to extract her first trait from the boar meat at dinner. She gains the new “Lesser Improved Strength” Strain, which does what the name suggests. If she eats other strong animals, she may be able to upgrade this Strain in the future to “Improved Strength” or something even better. The hive queen can also combine different Strains to create new ones, but she can’t combine anything. For example, she can’t combine Rapid Regeneration and Lesser Improved Strength. The next day her hive drone egg should hatch. She is already quite excited about how it will turn out.
On the next day, the hive queen is quite restless, which Elise noticed quite quickly. With some effort, she can animate Sylvia to show the source of her nervousness. In response, she wants to be put down and begins to crawl unerringly to her egg in the dark corner of the living room. Elise curiously follows the young queen's course to her destination. Once there, Sylvia takes the egg out of its hiding place and proudly presents it to her adoptive mother.
Mark, who has been following the whole spectacle closely, had already foreseen this when the Sylv queen was lowered to the ground. Erik on the other hand had no clue until Sylvia took out the egg. The hive queen clutches her egg and makes a purring sound with a satisfied face to express her joy over her first egg. After a moment of silence, the queen begins to signal that the egg will soon hatch. Since her vocabulary still has large gaps, she must again supplement some by skillful gesticulating. Unfortunately, Elise still does not understand what she wants to tell them. Fortunately, Mark has been watching closely and announces his interpretation. He guesses right that the egg will hatch soon. Sylvia doesn’t understand the long sentences between the two parents but gets that they likely try to interpret what she wants to tell them. Regardless she already decided to stay with her egg. Now that she has recovered it from its resting place, the Hive Queen has a strong desire to watch over her egg, which is about to hatch.
Elise suggested clearing some space on the sofa in the living room and placing it there instead of on the cold floor. It may still need some time to hatch and she doesn’t want Sylvia to catch a cold. The rest of the family agrees and Erik is given the role of keeping Sylvia company while his parents went on about their other activities.