Five years had passed since Musa was born and a few things had happened since then.

For one, Ua was pregnant and was close to giving birth.

Mlezi had lost his left arm to a fire-breathing pangolin attack the year prior.

The Pangolins weren’t targeting his hut but the village and, for some reason, he rushed in to help.

Mlezi and the other men fought long and hard to take down the two beasts. It was actually quite impressive to watch. They quickly figured out that they stood no chance as long as the pangolins were able to breathe fire and so they flanked the creatures while running around them.

The pangolins were large and turned slowly, so Mlezi and company ran circles around them up until they had used all of the Glass in their scales.

They then moved in and stabbed at the heads of the fire breathers, piercing their eyes and brains.

The pangolins fell but by then the eastern side of the village had been burnt to a crisp.

Casualties were low since a majority of the villagers just swam to the Western side of the river.

Mlezi grunted at a dirt-covered Musa but all the boy could do was wheeze out his breaths as he knelt on the floor.

Ua watched, with narrowed eyes, from beneath the veranda Mlezi had built. It shielded her from the sun’s blazing heat although nothing could be done about the hot air.

She had made Musa and Mlezi simple but sturdy leather robes in her efforts to replicate that of the Pāttiram.

Musa let out a weak roar before crawling onto his calloused feet.

He then glared at Mlezi whose eyes sat half closed.

Musa tried rushing in to tackle Mlezi but he simply grabbed the boy’s head and threw him onto the ground.

“Have you learnt nothing? Take a step back, and assess your strength and your opponent’s before making a move!” Mlezi snapped while Musa squirmed in agony on the ground.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Ua said making Mlezi turn his sharp gaze towards her.

He clenched his jaw fiercely for a moment before deeply sighing.

“Go fetch some fresh water for your mother.” He growled while walking up to Ua who was dressed warmly in a gown made of shock-turtle hairs.

Musa crawled onto his feet and dragged his exhausted body to a two-litre vase which sat next to the porch.

Its existence fascinated me since the Umande didn’t have pottery like this until two years prior.

It started with mud ovens, which they used to bake bread whenever they had the ingredients, and eventually became an art form practised by key members of the village.

Mlezi and Ua didn’t know how to make any vases or pots so they got theirs by secretly trading with people from the village.

After Mlezi and Ua became exiled, they had to get their own food and because of this, Mlezi became a skilled solitary hunter. After all, it was he who helped defeat the Pangolins and he even managed to take down a shock turtle which had wandered far too close to his home.

A few villagers saw this and realized that it would be much safer to let him get food for them in exchange for certain goods and services.

Mlezi let out another sigh after sitting next to Ua on an old stump.

Ua’s lips parted as though she wanted to say something but the words never came.

Mlezi saw this and so offered her his rough, calloused hand.

He had since grown a full and curly beard but instead of hiding his smile, it seemingly emphasized it. An effect that was enhanced by the wrinkles he had gained over the years.

Ua smiled back while placing her small hand on his. She too had gotten a few wrinkles.

“It won’t get easier, will it?” She asked.

Mlezi responded by gently squeezing her hand.

She gave him a gentle nod before joining him in a deep silence.

Their weary eyes locked onto the distant horizon and it was in this silence that I heard the sounds of sobbing.

I turned to the river and saw Musa only he was on his knees again.

He had placed the vase next to him on the riverbank and started to cry but what was curious to me was the fact that he was trying to cry as silently as possible.

He let out his pained whines through his snotty nose and kept his trembling lips sealed all while the blood from his numerous abrasions dried.

He eventually wiped away his tears and filled the vase with water before making his way home.

With a lowered head, he placed the vase next to Ua before entering the hut and grabbing a small clay cup which he promptly filled before offering it to Ua who graciously accepted it.

The boy returned his eyes to the ground and his head turned away from Mlezi who scoffed as he stood up.

He then grabbed his spear, which rested against the doorway before walking out into the fields.

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A few moments passed and Musa eventually raised his gaze to meet Ua’s only fresh tears were falling from his eyes again.

“M-Mama.” He whimpered.

“Yes, my dear?”

“Why does Baba hate me?”

Ua’s eyes widened slightly.

“What makes you think he hates you?” She asked with a pained expression.

Her face only twisted more upon seeing a handful of tears as they fell from Musa’s eyes.

“He- he hits me really bad every day,” Musa said although he choked on every word.

Ua reached out and wrapped her arms around the boy.

“Sweet Musa, your father does not hate you. Both he and I love you more than anything. He just wants you to grow and become a strong hunter.”

“But it hurts so much!” Musa cried making Ua gently rock him from side to side.

“I know it does, my boy. I know. But… you must keep going. Because just as he fights for you and I now, you will one day have to fight for me, your father and your little brother. And on that day, you will need to be strong, so keep going, alright?” Ua asked while gently wiping away Musa’s tears with her thumbs.

“Alright?”

Musa weakly nodded before glancing at Ua’s belly.

“Will father teach little brother like he teaches me?” He sniffled.

“If you grow to be strong, he won’t need to,” Ua said with a warm smile making Musa nod in understanding.

I let out a low drone as it was here that I realized that I had some work to do.

Sometimes I would get caught up in watching Mlezi and his family live their lives.

It wasn’t all that bad and it helped in the sense that my perception of the passage of time was drastically slowed, allowing me to think about things more deeply in shorter amounts of time.

I returned my perspective to my doll which was all the way back in the lobby of the Temple of Tablets where it floated mid-air with crossed legs.

I had long since cleaned the place of any plant life and rocks, so it was usually clean until a breeze brought dust and sand in.

Placed meticulously around the doll were displays that I was quite proud of.

You see, after learning that animals could use Glass, I gathered a handful and observed how they were able to use it.

Was intelligence a factor?

Or was it all merely instinct?

I quickly learnt that it was a combination of both although I still didn’t know how they were able to grow spikes and hairs that could contain Glass.

I later turned to their anatomy and this is where my displays come in.

Standing atop ten perfectly cubic slabs of stone were the skeletons of nine different animals, each of which had transparent scales or “Hardened Conduit Tissue” or “HCT”, as I called it. Tissue which could somehow contain and allow organisms to use Glass.

My favourite specimen was the skeleton of the Shock Turtle.

Its entire shell was made of HCT and adult turtles could generate multiple bolts of lightning per second.

The only reason why Mlezi managed to kill one was because the one he found was an adolescent and was probably exhausted.

I glanced at the tenth cube and acknowledged its vacancy.

The reason why it was empty was because I had to find a human to experiment on.

I needed to find an appropriate specimen without ruining the structures of either tribe so I patiently waited for an opportunity.

I walked up to my doll, which floated with its eyes closed and reached out to it.

Its form very much mirrored mine but had puzzled me from my very rebirth since the form was feminine.

My doll and I had small, plump lips, pale grey eyes, a rounded jaw and forehead, and smooth brow ridges.

Our bodies were petite but, regardless of how I felt, if the doll was truly a reflection of me, then the only thing that separated us was the fact that I was of the ethereal.

I let out a weak sigh.

My existence as an ethereal presence was tied to my planetary body but I wondered what would happen if I somehow transferred my soul into another vessel…

No.

It was too risky.

I would need to conduct countless tests and even then, something could go wrong in the attempt on which I try to transfer my soul and I could end up dying so I temporarily shelved the idea and took control of my doll.

That being said, this was the perfect opportunity to conduct an experiment I had been putting off for some time.

One of my goals was to see whether I could take a soul from its natural vessel and place it into an artificial vessel.

I knew that certain vessels, like my doll, could be remotely controlled but what would happen if an entire soul were to be put inside?

I had no intention of trying this with my doll and so I turned to the local wildlife.

My island was populated with countless insects and various small critters but I wanted something bigger so I turned to the ever-fascinating Shock Turtles.

First off, I needed an incubation chamber for the doll version since when I created my doll, it was right after an apocalyptic event and I was unprepared.

This time I wanted to be as neat as possible so I exited the temple and hopped into the Pāttiram vehicle.

I then walked it over to one of the meteors I’d caught and harvested about twenty tons of Glass.

This was probably more than I needed but I wanted to have some extra on the side just in case.

I placed it all in front of the temple, which stood proudly before the setting sun, and promptly hopped out of the vehicle.

I then walked up to the largest slab of Glass and placed my hand on it.

My eyes widened as it showed me its journey and, like the Mega Crystal, it was born in the beginning of time.

It was once lodged in the centre of a gargantuan planet but it had been destroyed during the explosive death of its sun and its many parts went flying out into the cosmos.

I returned my focus to the present and envisioned a Shock turtle-sized ovular Glass device sitting on a Glass pedestal.

The Glass then slowly started evaporating and eventually formed what I had envisioned.

I then used some more Glass to seal it and then went to work on creating a doll version of the shock turtles.

I knew almost everything about the way they were structured so the process took only a few hours.

What followed, however, would be the challenging part.

I needed to bring a turtle back alive but those creatures weighed five to ten tons on average.

My doll definitely wouldn’t be able to carry one without risking some form of damage and so I left the doll and shifted my perspective to the edge of the Kifo Valley where I found a herd of turtles.

Using Gravity Magic, I grabbed one and floated it back to my island where I placed it five meters next to the incubation chamber and held it still using a gigantic boulder.

I feared this would crush it so I quickly returned to my doll, got into my vehicle and removed the giant rock but the fact that the vehicle moved at all probably scared the turtle even more.

It tried getting away but I held it down before leaving my doll and peering into its soul.

It was made of a large ball of white strings and I knew what would happen if I tried to forcefully pull any of them out.

The turtle would slowly die and the strings would disappear.

But what would happen if I transferred them into the doll?

I raised my ethereal arms and, using Life Magic, created a tunnel of green light from the turtle to its doll counterpart.

This was to trick the white strings into thinking that the turtle wasn’t dead and that the space they travelled through was rich with life.

I then pumped the doll full of life energy and general Glass energy before tugging at the white strings using nothing but my mind.

They were easy to move but I wanted to be careful and so I moved them slowly out of the turtle’s body and into the tube of green light that floated mid-air.

The strings remained alit as they floated towards the doll but the turtle slowly lost strength as more of its strings left its body.

I still didn’t know how the soul and the body were connected so I was very much treading through uncharted territory but onward I marched because if this experiment was successful, it could have very well led to my salvation and so I placed the strings into the doll’s artificial heart.

I almost jumped backwards as the doll suddenly jerked around, violently bashing at the walls of the incubator but just as quickly as it came to life, it died and the white strings within rapidly faded.

I tried pumping it with Life Energy but nothing could stop its death.

I wondered if this was the same for me…

Would I fail in my ultimate pursuit?

No!

I would find a way!