‘It’s raining today…
…I don’t know how water even gets inside with that whole barrier thing they have around the whole village, but sunlight, water, and wind can enter with no problems even with the outside looking like a foggy dark place…’ I chalked it up to magic shenanigans. Though, I’m still curious about how it works.
Twirling a fountain pen in my hands, –’with all the free time I have I’ve gotten pretty good at it’– I reminisce about the past few months beside my desk.
‘It took a while to get used to… everything. The people, their culture…’ While I’m more familiar with the more secluded units of households, here, they are much more carefree. There are still couples and some others that prefer to raise their own kids. But in all, the village functions as one giant community, or family, instead of separate groups with a governing entity, one of the reasons there are so many children running around unsupervised, it’s because everyone, regardless if they are parents or not, keeps an eye out for them.
‘…Though, I’m not sure if I’ll ever manage to fit in, not entirely. This place is safe, yes, but…’ There are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night unprompted, jump at the slightest sound when I’m not paying attention to my surroundings, which is even worse than what someone would normally expect because of my enhanced hearing. I had gotten used to staying at high attention, never truly falling into deep sleep, every night I couldn’t sleep properly, with nothing else to do I had started to go for walks in the middle of the night to take my mind off things, which left me sleepy and lethargic for the rest of day.
But with time, maybe, I’ll get better. ‘A part of me still reels back in obstinate confusion with this sensation of safety, a churning sensation in my gut that makes me want to scream and hide… But it’s not like I have anywhere else to go to.’
Though, despite it all. ‘This peace… It’s nice.’
I doodle in the corners of my notebook. It’s chock-full of scribbles and annotations from top to bottom. While I have a decent grasp at speaking now, I'm not that proficient in reading their language yet… So I’ve been given this book that I’m using to study. It’s a children’s book about a story of little kids getting kidnapped by six-fingered monsters in the forest.
‘Not… quite what I’d call something suitable for children of all things. The story is foreboding, gory at times, and overall something that should belong in the horror section of a library… But who am I to question them?’
I’m translating it word for word, transcribing each line of the book to mine with the corresponding translations in my own language. Plus many side-notes of questions about words I’m not quite sure about.
It felt weird, suddenly changing to that worn wax-slate to this. Curiously, I asked them what was up with that, and it looks like paper here isn’t all that expensive to make, they have an abundance of trees and a good technique to produce them with high quality, however, they aren’t on the level of mass-production that industries have, and someone still has to go through all the back-breaking work to make all of them.
So… while they aren’t that rare, they aren’t common either, it’s treated as a somewhat expensive item that requires delicate handling so it doesn’t go to waste.
After getting a good enough grasp of the language, and more importantly, writing. Samyra, who apparently is an archivist of sorts with a side job as a teacher, gave me the “next grade” of writing utensils, so now I have a book, or rather, a tome, given its size and girth, to practice in and take notes of the things she is teaching me.
‘...Given my size, this thing is so big it looks like a book-shaped shield when I'm holding it. My sense of scale of how big or small things are is skewed sideways and to high heaven, given how enormous the forest is and how tall these people are.’
Aside from the more mundane topics, math, chemistry and science, which is called “alchemy” here. The things she is teaching me are very exciting to learn, especially geography and history which are kind of fused inside the same discipline… Though, history is outdated by centuries at minimum, since apparently the last time someone bothered to go outside and actually bring back anything about what’s happening outside is god knows when. Even the most recent archives are at most decades old and only from around the nearby area.
As for geography, unfortunately they don’t have a world map, and apparently, even though the village is a couple of generations old –human generations–, it is considered a rather “new” settlement, and the information they have stored, although vast and full of relevant things for the functioning of the village, isn’t very deep.
They have surprisingly advanced knowledge for their apparent technology level, though not anything like what I know about the things humanity achieved back on Earth. For example, they know gravity is a thing that exists, but there isn’t any research on why or how it happens nor the more in-depth details of its inner workings regarding physics. Same thing for thermodynamics –not that they call it that, I don’t think they even have a word or studies for it.–
I pause upon the doodle of a particular toothy animal, simplified in a chibi appearance so it looks less scary. Absent-mindedly I run fingers across my chest at the phantom ache from the memories of getting mauled by it. ‘...I wonder where Gaviel went, I’ve heard people mentioning him one or two times but…’ After he dropped me off, I have never seen him around, not even once. ‘It's not like I miss him or anything, but at least… I wanted to properly thank him for everything.’
‘At first I literally couldn’t ask, because I didn’t know how to talk to them. Then, after finally learning how to speak their language…’ I cringe, hitting my knuckles against my forehead. ‘I got too absorbed into learning it to remember to ask, and even then I was… apprehensive.’ I didn’t quite know why I felt this way… I should be grateful, happy that he’d saved me. But for some reason… All that comes to my heart is guilt.
*knock knock* My musings are interrupted by someone knocking on the door of my little house.
Startled, I take a moment to gather my bearings, and translate in my head what word to say. “....Wait!” I rush to put some pants on. Discarding my train of thoughts. ‘Why would someone come here in the middle of this rain? I mean, it’s not storming outside or anything, but very few people have a reason to visit, and even fewer would have in this weather.’
My house –’It’s really just a shack with a single room though’– got the addition of a few more pieces of furniture, it wasn’t really made for someone to live in, but with time and the contribution of people around town that didn’t have anything better to do it has gotten some expansions and filled in with more things than just a lonely bed and a desk.
And, through some strange looks on their part, I’ve acquired pants –’YES, pants!’– for me to use. I… still have to wear their dresses and skirts and whatnot, because aside from one set of pajamas, I don’t have any shirts, and they are the only thing I have in my wardrobe to cover my upper body, but I insisted on having at least something to cover my legs.
The legacy of my manhood and shredded sense of shame still demands me to at least wear some modicum of clothing…
…Though, because of a certain appendage I’ll never be able to have regular clothing again, not to mention getting around women’s underwear, plus the adjustments that need to be made just so they fit properly to not fall down.
I swiftly put on a simple light beige dress and a short, buttoning a strap around the upper part of my butt behind me that keeps the shorts from falling off because of the adapted hole made into it to accommodate for my tail. Put on my sandals and walked to the entrance.
Opening the door as I combed my hair out of my eyes, loose locks were getting tangled on my horns and being in the way of my vision, Standing there in the light rainfall, is Clauren, in his usual clothes holding an umbrella. With a sidelong glance, I notice that the usual rainbow of stains is faintly washed out, and that thick, plastic-looking stiffness that his clothes have is gone. ‘Did he finally wash his clothes? Wait— actually, have I ever even seen him with clean clothes before??’
I stare at him in askance.
“Good morning Syuu!” He says with a grin that is a tad too wide and a silly salute that sends droplets of water into my face. I just look at him unblinkingly, and step back in a motion inviting him in, to shelter from the rain.
…He doesn’t come inside.
*cough* He makes a disgruntled sound.
“In this magnificent weather, today’s a great day to laze about, aside from those muscle-for-brains rangers. So I thought that we could~...” He starts.
He doesn’t finish.
I stare, waiting for him to finish that phrase.
*じ———っ*
A minute passes. Some rain gets inside through the open door. His smile falters a bit, and I see his eye twitch, but he patiently stays still waiting for… something?.
“..........So?…” I finally say, indulging him.
“...so much for that joke” He mutters. *cough* He clears his throat, fixing his composure. “So we have decided that, in order to not waste such a good opportunity, we could begin to initialize you in your first introductions to applied conjuration!” He ends with a flourish… that ends up splashing more water on me as he twirls his umbrella.
“...” I pause. Blinkingly staring at him as the words settle in. “...
“I mean magic–”
“MAGIC?!” I jump, excited and positively vibrating in place, completely ignoring the soaked floorboards and the water in my face. Thoughts racing in wonder at the limitless possibilities of it.
“Y-yes!” He gets startled by my sudden enthusiasm. “Magic! We’ll be learning how to do all sorts of stuff! Casting! Enchanting! Explosions! exciting, yes? Yes.”
–I stop.
His tone is… a bit off. But I can’t put my finger on it. “…...What is wrong?”
“Ah.” He paused, weighing his options. “Well, er, just me, actually, I’m– hahah…” He rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “...I’m bored. Samyra would like to get all your bases in covered in everything else before doing anything, but that would take soo~ long...” He whined.
‘Ah…’ So all of this is another one of his weird whims. ‘There goes my hopes and expectations.’ I give him the flattest look I can muster.
“...But I know you can talk with anyone already with little difficulty, if a little slow, and you don’t need to get into all that fancy and formal way of speaking that she plans to teach you to be able to learn…” He confessed.
I furrowed my eyebrows. This is starting to look more and more not worth-while at all, as much as I want to learn how to throw lighting around… Samyra’s wrath is not something to be trifled with.
“...please? don’t tell her.” He bowed shallowly with clasped hands in pleading. Though, he was not looking apologetic for his actions at all. “So?... Magic?”
“…” I swayed my head side to side, considering. ‘On one hand, it’s raining; Samyra will undoubtedly find out. It's a perfect day to stay inside; And I wanted to finish practicing handwriting because their written form is ridiculously obnoxious and I want to be done with that book.’
I closed the door behind me. Silently shoving myself under his umbrella in quiet confirmation.
‘On the other hand— Who am I kidding? It is magic!!! How could I NOT?!’
I showed a rare smile. And that seemed enough of an answer to him.
——— –– –– -- - -
。。。
*THUMP* He plopped a thick tome down.
I half-expected to see a cloud of dust fly as he did that but the book is in pristine condition, I guess that Samyra being the bookkeeper that she is also does cleaning and maintenance of them.
“Magic!” He exclaimed with glee. “The mysterious yet not-so-mysterious mystical essence that everyone knows about…” He opens it and begins to flip across the pages.
…And flip across the pages.
And flips some more…
He starts muttering to himself trying to find the right one where whatever he is looking for is.
I sweatdrop. ‘I’ll be here for a long time aren’t I…’
We are inside another part of his house that is attached to the pharmacy. –Their house is deceptively big.– That houses, what I assume to be, their personal library and study room. I’d asked why we didn’t use this place for my lessons before, and apparently, Samyra prefers to do those sorts of teaching lessons outside rather than inside. For all that she is a librarian and scribe, she is rather fond of outdoor activities and doesn’t like “being stuffed inside”.
My eyes drift to the stacked bookshelves behind him, there are many books of different shapes, sizes, and colors. Most of them don’t have any titles on their spines, and the few that do… aren’t written in elvish. They look like some sort of alternative germanic font that isn’t quite the latin alphabet. One of them is made entirely out of concentric circles and branching semi-circles that leaves me wondering what sort of place came up with that.
‘I guess it’s good to confirm that elven isn’t the only language in the world… Though if I ever wish to explore the world I’ll probably have to learn those too…’ The prospect of having to cram another language into my head isn’t very thrilling.
“Aha!” It looks like he finally found it. “...Ahem, as I was saying, magic, sorcery, witchery, mystical powers beyond our comprehension, etcetera, so on and so forth. Firstly… Tell me, what do you know of it?”
‘What do I know about it?... Um…’ I tilt my head in thought as he waits for my answer.
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‘Well… I have absolutely no clue about it, or rather, I kind of do. Because of the dozens upon dozens of similar “magic systems” from Earth and their arbitrary counterparts and inspired power frameworks, I understand the various possible concepts behind it. But it’s precisely because I know of so many variations of this arbitrary power system that I can’t really do any precise guesswork about it.’
“Sparkly?… um… buzzing… shiny… explosions? No– Life-blood? Not-normal lights?” I take a long pause, there are only so many words I can use to describe my perception, and they aren’t enough. “Like sun and wind… it touches the……sky and the deep…..earth?, living…..but not living, it is……..friends? with the will of men…..kind?” I end up spouting some sort of strange and convoluted metaphor that starts making less and less sense as I talk before I think about what comes out of my mouth..
‘…I tried my best.’ I wring my hands in frustration and sulk. ‘I could do better if I knew more of the fancy words!’
“...” He certainly wasn’t expecting much of a response like that. Judging from the pointed look he is giving me. “*cough* You are…” I think I can hear his head trying to wrap around what I said. “...not completely wrong?”
“Ugh.” I cringe and place my forehead down at the table, though my horns make contact instead of my head.
“A-ah, we’ll get to that in a bit.” He amends himself “You are certainly at least a step above what people normally know when beginning this path…” If Clauren ever expected anything from the little prodigious student, it certainly wasn’t this. He knows she carries herself with an air of experience unbefitting for someone of her apparent age, but he didn’t expect this sort of somewhat in-depth perspective… from what he understood of what she said at least.
“...Right” She is still getting there in the talking aspect, but from the looks of it she can listen and understand as well as anyone else, bar her little growing vocabulary. He can work with this. “Well then, let’s start with the textbook answer…. Magic! and its other counterparts, are types of essences and laws that permeate everything, can infect, imbue, alter, and interfere with many things in both the literal and metaphysical sense…”
To demonstrate, he mutters something under his breath and snaps his fingers. My eyes focus on him in wonder as a tiny flame appears above his hand.
It’s similar to a lit candle, but the flames flicker and burst erratically and trail higher than a normal flame, there’s also no smoke, but a very faint smell of ozone.
“To the majority of people— mostly humans, because we make damn sure everyone here in this village is well educated about it— magic is something that they know only of the barest surface of its incredible potential… Those that choose to stay ignorant, anything that happens that is unexplainable to their shallow understanding, they often end up misinterpreting and connecting the phenomenon in question to either magic, spiritualism, or an act of a god or a demon… There was a time where mages and sorcerers were enslaved, persecuted or killed for their “heretical” existance or put on a pedestal for their “miraculous” abilities.”
He sighs, a deep sound and sloughing of his shoulders like he has had personal experience with the latter.
“...Which, very, very unfortunately, can be true. Since gods, demons, spirits and whatever do exist. And each of them has their own tree of academics and history.”
‘Oh…’ The revelation comes to me like a shock. ‘That is… certainly… staggering information to which I do know what to do or how to deal with… and a question that I’ll shelve for another time.’ It’s one thing to know magic exists. But for my essentially agnostic beliefs that I had been living my whole life to get confirmation from someone that a hundred percent knows much more about this world than I do…
‘I’ve never been a religious type before… but maybe I should start praying just in case.’
After noting my expression, he continues. “...Fortunately, to those that are even half as wise as I am, such unexplainable occurrences can be succinctly and precisely explained by either science or the various areas of knowledge related to magic. And thankfully, the actual cases in which paracausal beings such as angels and ghosts are involved are very rare. Last I heard, the world at large stopped being so ignorant to the inner-workings of magic so the witch-hunts are a thing of the past…” He pauses “...hopefully.”
looking down at the heavy tome under him. “But that is a topic for another time, today, we are here to learn how to cast magic!”
I stand straighter and my eyes sparkle at the prospect of lobbing fireballs and lightning. Unseen to me, my tail swishes side to side in curiosity…
He stops for a moment, dispelling the fire that he had summoned. “...That is, if we get past the theory first. Which in of itself will take quite some time and I doubt we will finish everything today.”
…And my excitement is promptly squashed, I slump down my shoulders.
He chuckles, “I know that this is terribly exciting. But if anyone, and especially Samyra, catches you practicing spells, especially the more dangerous ones, without supervision it’ll be my skin and yours that will be at stake. If not done right, and without fail-safes and proper precautions, this can be a very dangerous, and potentially lethal, thing to teach you. It is a discipline that requires exceptional dedication and comprehension to safely handle, and it can become a tool both as deadly and miraculous as it sounds.” He explains.
“We don’t have much of the history of magic since who did what and discovered this and that has been long since lost throughout the ages. What I can do, however, is tell you about the things that someone proficient in certain schools of magic can do, and show you what you absolutely should not do with examples of people that met bitter ends with the mishandling of their powers…”
He flips forth and back the pages of the book. I notice, written in big letters “Fundamentals of chant-assisted formulaic mana-casting and control for dummies part 1” in what looks suspiciously like his own handwriting.
“...So, to start with, let us discuss the nature of ‘magic’ and its different attunements. There’s mana, prana, anima, ord, vita, eitr, aether, ether, arts, magicules, flux, light, darkness, focus… Just to name a few, all of them are either variations of the same energy or different theories about the same mystical essence that affects everything. We’ll go from the newest to the older definitions and explain why the people of the past called them so and such. Firstly, the most commonly adopted identifier and the one we’ll use for the foreseeable future, “mana”, describes the intraphysical energy that has the potential of affecting the surroundings through either applied willpower or pre-structured willpower…”
The day was long with lectures and education. I was enraptured with wonder by the novel experience that would’ve belonged in the wiki of a fantasy story, but instead, it is very much real here. And the potential things I could imagine doing left me itching for more and more as I learned…
*click* “Heey! Clau? Are you here? I have been searching everywhere for you and— WHY IS THERE A GODS FORSAKEN FIREBALL INSIDE THE LIBRARY?! YOU DAFT PIECE OF ROTTEN #$///—”
…That is, until Samyra came through the door and the metaphorical ceiling came down on both of us.
——— –– –– -- - -
。。。
I asked Clauren why we haven’t done this now instead of before starting the lessons.
Thankfully, for me, I was left relatively unscathed by the verbal lashing we received. The blame had fallen mostly on Clauren’s shoulders since he’s the ‘adult’ tempting the poor ‘child’ here. Though, regardless, I still got some backlash from it.
Samyra didn’t want me going into these sorts of things until I was either “older” or “ready”...
…The thing is, she didn’t know when to ever decide when those were.
She was stalling.
She was running out of things to teach me that weren’t super advanced or highly specialized fields I’d probably never use if not going into a specific career path. And she really didn’t have any good reason to teach lost runes, theoretical textiles, or architecture to a little kid. And even if she did, they actually don’t have much of anything about them. Only mentions of them in other books.
Unfortunately for her, however, I was very interested in the arcane.
‘And Clauren was there. I mean, he offered. And It’d be dumb not to accept. And he’s going to teach me magic!’ I bounce my footsteps as I follow them.
So there wasn’t any good reason for her to keep me from going with Clauren anymore. In the end, she relented… But only with the condition that she would be there to supervise us.’
‘...They’re a couple… but she really doesn’t have any trust in Clauren being a responsible person huh?... Though I don’t blame her since he isn’t anything of a model example.’
“Perhaps we could have done this first…” He answered me. “...But I believe that being well informed about it would be better than jumping straight into it. Regardless of your talents, it is good to know about how a mage accomplishes their job...” And also knowing your enemies, in case I ever need to fight a mage, but that was left unsaid. “...And it was raining. I didn’t want to have to walk all the way out here in the rain.”
‘Ah… well, fair enough I guess.’
He explained to me that right now we are going to do a test of aptitude, to measure the saturation of my mana, the “attunement” or affinity of my mana, and get an imprint of its footprint or “frequency”.
This is all to see if I can be eligible to dive into the art of spell casting in the first place. Everything has some trace of essence inside it, but there are people with minuscule capacities of mana that can faint after casting even the simplest of spells.
And also to see if I have an innate talent with an element that would qualify me to do sorcery instead. There are many other things aside from “wizard” and “mage”, the whole range of talents or specializations that work with mysticism range from purely scientific and artisanal professions to obscure and occult practitioners.
And I say “affinity” and “frequency”, but mana is a sort of paracausal energy that can’t be easily defined by these words, you could say “taste” and “color” and it would very well mean the same thing, mana is as measurable as we can perceive it, and as such things are, everyone can perceive and interpret differently, and because of its abstract and metaphysical properties, you can’t let yourself be constrained by the words you use to define it, because there’s always more behind what you actively use to frame your definition of mana.
‘I learned all of this yesterday! Hm-hmph!’ I mentally push my chest out in pride.
“*Sigh*” Samyra sighs, crossing her arms and resting her head sideways on her hand. “They grow up so fast…” she says dejectedly.
“I don’t know why you are so against her learning.” Clauren interjects “I understand that I’ve called her precocious before… But isn’t that a good thing? People who haven’t lived or were raised with elves take a lot of time learning to even begin speaking fluently…”
He roughly ruffles my head all of a sudden. Before I could bat him off he’d already taken his hands off.
“...She’s already plenty good at talking for the little time she has spent learning, and she’s even already able to read and write! All of this in only a few months!”
“For you? Maybe… But children ought to spend their time enjoying childhood.” She argued. “It went by so fast… I wanted to have had more time to spend with her and now you are going to hog her out all to yourself. Hmph.” She pouts.
I decidedly hold back a shudder at the mention of childhood as I clench my hands and take a deep breath. The disparity of perspective and body coming to the forefront of my mind along with the maelstrom of mixed emotions.
“Aw… Now you’re just being jealous.”
“Says who?” She jabbed. “I know you have been waiting all this time for this. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you setting up all those training targets in the backyard.”
He missed a step. “Er, W-well… prudence is a virtue.”
‘<ᎮᏒᏬᎴᏋᏁፈᏋ>...?’ The meaning goes over my head, I don’t recall ever hearing it before. '...I’ll make a note to ask what that word means later.’ I still have a lot to learn.
Despite the plethora of scientific and medical jargon my vocabulary has because of Clauren, my range of words is skewed between kiddy informal talk and academic jargon because of these two people… Because of that many of the more complex words they use go over my head.
We are making our way to unearth the tools needed to do the testing we are going to do. “The last time someone needed to do an aptitude test was what… 4? 8? Years ago.” Clauren explained.
“20. Actually.” Samyra said. I blanch from their collective broken sense of time.
“Regardless.” He continued. “Since nobody was going to use all of those things anytime soon, they had everything stored away. It’s been a long time since anyone ever touched those things, so we’ll have to set it all up and calibrate it to use it. Hopefully we won’t need to do any maintenance.”
“Isn’t the measuring tool just a shiny ball though? How’d maintenance even work on that thing?”
“It’s a… very complex ‘shiny ball’.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “While the main component, the crystal, is very robust and just a focus, the peripheral components that make reading the results possible are fragile.”
“Ah, I remember now, that clunky, unwieldy thing… I wondered what that was for.” She paused, furrowing her brow. “Wait… wasn’t that ball being used as a paperweight by Dahlia?”
“No…” Clauren didn’t sound very assured. “...Maybe” He rectified himself. “I do not know, I am fairly certain that’s an entirely different orb.”
Arriving at our destination, a warehouse that is overgrown with vines and weeds located behind the giant pavilion where that meeting with the elders happened. You can see that this is the corner of the village where people dump stuff to never see the light of day again because there’s other two warehouses besides the first one that are in similar states of disrepair.
Though even with the creeping vegetation claiming the walls of the buildings, underneath it all I can see that they are made out of solid pieces of stone instead of wood, so maybe they disregarded cleaning up this place because there wasn’t any need to.
Claurne goes to grab the set of comically oversized handles embedded into the gate that leads inside and—
*clack* *shwiiish* He opens them in one smooth motion as if they weigh nothing at all.
“—Eh?” I was expecting to hear the sound of old unoiled hinges groaning heavily against the sheer weight of the gates but…
It’s a sliding door.
“Guh…” He grumbles. “We will have to sift through all of these piles of rubbish just to find one little thing… Could they not at least leave the place organized when they use it? Who even is responsible for taking care of here?”
I take a sidelong glance at the gates as we enter. There are lots of little cylindrical bearings under the rivet they rest on top of, and thick, robust locking mechanisms… on the inside? ‘Why would these latches and drawbars be on this side… to keep something outside from getting in?’
“I do not think there even is anybody assigned to do that…” Samyra says offhandedly. “And it’s plenty organized, it is just you that has a problem with your perfectionism and your obsessive need to label everything you touch.”
“Said ‘perfectionism’ is what keeps my experiments and medicines safe for when someone” He makes a jab at her with his elbow. “switches them out of place when I’m not looking…”
‘…And they start bickering. Again.’ Sometimes I honestly can’t tell if they are serious during these fights or if they do it lightheartedly and I just can’t tell the difference.
Looking inside I see a sprawling maze of objects and… things that I can’t identify, intermittently separated by shelves, balconies, racks, drawers or just laying on the floor for the bigger and heavier items.
There isn’t any obvious sign that identifies what is what. Aside from the loose grouping that they are organized in, there’s a corner entirely made out of chairs, an enormous pile of various different sorts of knives and sharp things, 5 shelves just filled with unidentified bottles and drawers, and… ‘Is that a trebuchet in the back??’
I keep my hands to myself and avoid messing with whatever I encounter. For the most part, I think I’m just here so they don’t have to leave me alone, so I silently accompany them from behind.
Eventually, after they fell out of the jabbing match against each other into a comfortable silence, they walked and searched across rows of different shelves and piles of items, and finally found what they were looking for.
It was under what I can only call the “thing-a-majig” section of the warehouse, it was a large circular balcony full of knick-knacks, trinkets, and items with indiscernible shapes and unknown purposes.
And the actual thing… that has a long name I didn’t bother to remember, looks like the love-child between an altar, a globe compass, a gyroscope, and a spirograph. There is a socket for what I believe to be the orb they were talking about later, and around it are so many moving parts and contraptions sticking out of it that make me dizzy. There’s even a thing that looks like an upside down bird feeder made out of what looks like marble and amethyst attached to the base of it.
“Finally! This fuc—” Samyra suddenly has a vice grip on Clauren’s shoulder as she sends a thinly veiled glare at him. “...I-I mean. *cough* This, um, fun, piece of masterful display of enchanted engineering is what we will need… Though the focus crystal is missing.“
“I told you that I saw that ball somewhere else!”
“Oh quit it!” He throws his arms upwards. “How could I possibly believe that the Chief is using that damned thing for such menial things in the first place?! Why, of all things, would she use it as a paperweight?”
“Point is, I was right!” She puffs her chest out while crossing her arms under her bosom.
“You!— Gah! Let us just get this over with.” He grumbles all the way as he comes back with a wheelbarrow. “Sometimes I question why I love you” He mutters under his breath.
I just watch the two of them go at it again. ‘Sometimes I wonder how you both even got together to begin with.’ I’d say that I wanted to help too, but I can’t find the voice to interrupt them.
“What was that?”
“—Nothing.” He closes his mouth. “Oh my magnanimous spouse, would you kindly assist me with getting this unwieldy mana altar on this detestable thing?...” He dryly says.
“And what’s the magic word?” She says with a taunting smile.
He sighed. “...Please?”
“Only because you asked nicely.” She pats me in the head as she goes to help him heft the altar into the wheelbarrow and mutters besides me. “Please don’t turn out to be like him.”
I’m took by surprise. “Huh? Wha—”
“What was that?” Clauren gruffly asks.
“—Nothing.” But the smile on her face tells him otherwise.
“If so, then—” His grip almost slips.“—Gah! Help me then!”
I end up helping alongside Samyra. We go back and forth for a while trying to put the altar on the wheelbarrow, it isn’t particularly too heavy, at least for me, but the size and the non-euclidean weirdness make it a tough thing to hold properly, and because of it’s limp mechanisms that spin and sway back and forth the center of mass keeps being offset, making us constantly need to adjust and hold it over the wheelbarrow.
After saving the pedestal from falling 3 times, and having Clauren almost trip on my tail, Samyra left us to hold everything in place while she went to find a rope to tie it down.
Then it was smooth sailing from there. Thankfully, the pathways of the village are smooth and bereft of any bumps that could shake the wheelbarrow too much, though we still had to hold the sides of it so it didn’t tip over.
‘Speaking of it, and now that I am not as illiterate as I was before…’ We still had quite some distance to cover to their house, so I asked them about the roads.
“...Um.......” ‘What was the word for “road” again? I don’t think there is one for infrastructure…’
Correction: I tried to ask them about the roads. I got it, eventually, to send my inquiry across… Though not with a plethora of corrections and anecdotes from Samyra as I fumbled my words.
“Ah! I see what you have meant now.” Clauren chose to answer. “Unlike the rest of the village, the pathways that run across it are certainly unique compared to the more traditional construction used on the rest.”
Samyra continues for him. “The eldest elder, when he wasn’t the oldest still, was beginning to suffer from the affects of old age, a natural malady that, well, not many of us can relate to. Since there aren’t many elves that old in the village…”
‘Huh… Now that she mentioned, only some of the elders, and 2 more people that I personally met actually look old, like 70 plus human years old. Everyone else… looks young, the only other person I have met that actually looks like an adult is Gaviel, but maybe that’s because he has such an square face.’’
“...He mostly complained about his knees and back—”
Claren interrupts her. “—He complained a lot, too much, to everyone and every day.”
“...Yes.” She concedes. “He did. As I was saying, he complained a lot, so one day he woke up and decided that he would completely demolish and destroy all the village’s pathways, stairs, and anywhere where there was a floor that people often walked on top of. And rebuilt his own ideal roads to be easy on his knees.”
“And that’s why there are ramps everywhere.” Clauren comments.
“....Waaaa?.........Everything? Did that not…” Words. are. hard. ”…...a lot-lot of work?”
““If anything, He had a lot of time on his hands.”” They both say. In a way that sounds like they had this exact same conversation before with someone else.
“He used to be a carpenter before that debacle, but turned towards masonry afterwards, with how much experience he got doing his mad project. Nowadays you can always find him sitting somewhere carving something out of rocks.” Samyra says.
By the time they told me most of an abridged version of the life story of one of the elders, we had reached our destination.
And waiting there at the doorstep… was Gaviel.
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