There was a new addition to our little party outside. Sullivan came today because he had nothing else to do. Sullivan has no class today from the looks of it. Daemon was still asleep. At one point he managed to get to his own room to sleep.
What kind of men does she have as role models. One cried his eyes out and used her as a pillow while this one was afraid of her now.
She said before taking a deep breath and preparing her spell.
I replied.
In Celestine's head, she was first trying to visualize wind again before changing it and focusing more on her own memories. Memories about how the sandstorms howl when blowing sand around and how the wind of a lazy afternoon brushes against her arms and legs. The feeling of the air coming in and out of her nose. These were really the only experiences she's had with wind. I could add my own, like the feeling of a brisk sea draft or the chill smell of the air during a springtime thunderstorm. She has never even seen rain here. But I think it would be good for her to feel these things on her own instead of having me explain it or show it to her in dreams. I kinda spoiled her by making our little dream world in a frozen taiga.
She coupled all of those thoughts on wind with the vector forward while pushing the magic in her conduit to her outstretched hand. The feeling of the spell being cast radiated from her hand and she opened her eyes to see the hair on Warran's chin move a bit.
He nodded, closed his eyes and nodded again. "Good job. We will continue with the next part." He coughed in his hands and opened his eyes. He seemed more composed now that he saw that was the extent of what she knew herself. "I want you to use wind magic to knock down these stone markers." He waved his hand to point them out. They were tall and flat stone markers that were spaced out so they were further away from her than the last. There were five. "If you knock down all five with wind magic alone, we will continue on with earth magic since you displayed some skill with it yesterday."
"Is earth magic what you used to break the wall, Sis?" Sullivan asked behind her. Celestine turned to look at him. He was on the edge of his seat, which looked odd because he was sitting on the grass. Then she turned to look over at the wall that was freshly mended with stones and mortar. The stones and mortar were still differently colored compared to the surrounding stone. There was a gap in the bushes where the gardener had trimmed bits off to help promote better growth after having an old elf blast through it. In the corner of her eye was Warran with the best pokerface I have ever seen.
She turned back to her brother and answered, "y-yes. That was it. It was an accident."
"Whoaah." Sullivan was starry-eyed while staring at the wall.
Celestine turned away and just decided to keep Sullivan in the dark on that. No reason he needs to know otherwise. And although she wants to tell him about me, there's no guarantee he will keep it from Daemon. So better to just keep that on the down low.
She turned her attention to the stone markers. They looked flimsy enough that a breeze should take them out, but they are stone... she might have to get creative with trying to knock them down. That furthest one will be especially troublesome.
Let's just skip ahead two hours of her not even managing to knock down the closest one. All she managed was a light breeze with her magic and it barely reached the first marker and made it wobble.
I responded to her while she walked inside for lunch and to begin again on making the chess set.
After a quick lunch of jerky and fruit, Sullivan entered the lab to work on his own. He said he could still make some simple potions while Daemon was asleep. Seems Daemon working himself to exhaustion was a common occurrence and although Sullivan had been surprised, it didn't bother him too much. Daemon hadn't done this since Mother and Celestine moved in.
Celestine sat on the couch and laid out the bones and her notebook in front of her. She was trying to decide how best to approach this again.
This girl...
She sighed while picking an antler up to check the spot where the soft part started with a graver. Unsatisfied, she tossed it back into the bone crate and picked up a half-femur. Duc'kaal had cut it in half vertically to remove the marrow.
She decided to freehand this one instead of following a set design. She took a saw, cut a section of bone off the half-femur and then cut the piece in half vertically. She cut one half in half again and started filing a piece down to try to make the quarter look as uniform as possible. After it started to look like a small rod about two inches long and half an inch in diameter, she started using her graver to mark lines in the bone. She filed the base as flat as she could, then started to carve away at the bone. As more and more bone was chipped away by her graver, the shape was starting to come out. She was making a pawn and the design looked to be a simple upside-down teardrop shape. She kept the narrowest part between the head and the base a decent thickness so it still had some rigidity. Overall it took her much less time in making this simple pawn than the standard designed pawn piece that she had been trying for with the antler and if I do say so myself, it has a certain handmade charm about it you don't get from standard chess set designs.
She held it up in her hand and was rubbing it with the abrasive powder that Duc'kaal told her to use on the pendant. It did a good job of buffing out the tool marks.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
She placed the pawn down onto the table and turned it to embed the design into her head. She also held it against the paper and marked the dimensions of it. Then she moved onto the next bone piece to repeat the procedure again.
She found replicating it exactly harder than actually just making it off the cuff. She spent almost twice as long on the second piece as the first just because she kept messing up. I wanted to tell her to just keep going and that the little imperfections added value to it. After the fourth attempt she gave up on them being exact. Luckily she kept all her mistakes and now had five simple pawns finished by the end of the day. They all had a different look to them whether it be a wider base, slightly shorter height, wider neck, or thinner head. Overall the shape was there and no one would confuse them for another piece, which was the point. After rubbing them with the abrasive powder to clean off the smaller imperfections, she placed the pieces in a cloth bag, cleaned up the bone shavings, and prepared for dinner and bed.
The next day she woke up early again. Just as the sun was starting to send its rays over the horizon. She took the time to go into the library. This time the light crystals were off. She was disappointed somehow, but shook her head to get rid of that thinking and sat back on her regular spot to keep reading the book she had started the morning before. She hadn't been picky with her choice of reading materials yesterday morning because she was too preoccupied by the grown man using her lap as a pillow, so she ended up grabbing something of an adventure book that detailed a journey through the elf lands. It was specifically about a country called Eldwen and she was thinking about where she heard that name before. Probably something Warran said that she wasn't paying attention to at the time.
It was a reading level higher than she was typically used to reading, but she enjoyed the author's descriptions of the terrain. Lots of forests and green shrubbery. Thick humid atmosphere. She asked me many times to explain these to her because the book was written for someone who should probably know about these things. She hadn't even seen a tree before except for the ones in the dream world with me, so she had no way to reference things. I tried to keep it vague to let her imagination run wild.
Sullivan showed up instead of Mother to let her know that breakfast was ready. So she got changed and the day began again.
And she was back in the backyard trying to figure out how to knock down the stone markers again. No matter what she tried, the wind magic just dissipated before it even reached the first stone marker. She struggled for the last hour to try to knock one down to no avail. So now she's begging for help from me.
Well it's not like it helped her. She still wasted the rest of the class not accomplishing anything. By the end of the assigned time for practice, her thoughts wandered to where Sullivan was. Since he didn't show up to watch her, it must mean Daemon woke up today and resumed the teaching. She hoped that after making and giving the chess set to Sullivan, he would at least be allowed the free time to play it with her.
After her practice she had lunch and went back to her carving. Duc'kaal was still gone, so she was alone again. She finished the remaining three white pawns and was starting on the next level of pieces. At least she was going to keep with the general theme of chess being the pawns were the shortest pieces, followed by the rooks, knights, bishops, queen, then the king would finish as the tallest piece. She would need to work harder on the special pieces, but since there were only three sets of two, with the queen and king, for each side, she felt taking her time was better than rushing it like with the pawns.
She sawed off chunks of bone from the same femur as the pawns so the color would remain the same and she filed them to size to begin the work. She marked them so they were slightly taller than the pawns and started with the base. Going off the simple design of a round castle tower with parapets at the top like from the piece in the dream, she made the base round to match the pawns and made the tower more or less the same width from the bottom to the top until she got to the top. Then she extended the diameter a bit and carved the rest of the top. Then she got to detailing. She started using the smallest graver she had to carve in small brick shapes into the side of the castle. She was meticulous in their spacing and carved them deep enough so that the abrasive powder wouldn't rub them away. She finished with the raised parapets on the top with a file and graver. Now the rook was the best looking piece compared to the pawns. She finished with the abrasive rubbing and sat the piece on the table to admire it.
After a few minutes of examining it for any unforgivable imperfections, she decided to end her carving session early to see what Daemon and Sullivan were up to. She has been worried about the two of them for a while now. She put all the chess pieces she had made so far back into the cloth bag and cleaned up before washing her hands and entering their work area again.
Quietly opening the lab door so she wouldn't disturb them, she sneaked into the room and sat on the chair she was on the other day. Daemon and Sullivan were back to work again on another complicated compound. This time with some sort of odd distiller looking machine. There were a few colorful crystals suspended in the liquid from what she could see. They probably did something that neither Celestine nor I could ever understand even if someone sat us down and explained it to us like we were five. Well, Celestine is five, so that reference kinda works doubly? Is that how it works? Though she's not five Earth years old, she looks more like eight or nine Earth years old.
Anyway, Sullivan was noticeably calmer than he was before and Daemon even had a hint of a smile on his lips. He still had dark spots under his eyes, but they weren't as pronounced.
"Alright, slowly mix the black liquid in with the cloudy one." Daemon said softly and leaned over to guide Sullivan's hands. They poured said liquids together. The black liquid was in a narrow pipette and the white cloudy liquid was in a beaker over top a small flame. They squeezed the black liquid into the beaker at a constant stream and Daemon put the pipette into a glass of clear liquid, probably for sterilization. Sullivan mixed the liquids together in the beaker with a glass rod until they were incorporated and became a cloudy gray liquid.
Daemon patted Sullivan's head. "Good job. Now let's finish up the last part." Daemon looked up and over to another table with more glass machines loaded with other colored liquids and when he did that, he caught Celestine's eyes. "Ah, Celestine! Come to watch us men work again?"
Celestine responded with a small laugh and a nod. "Seems more interesting in here than out there."
"Hi sis!" Sullivan responded with a smile, but he kept stirring the liquid in the beaker.
"If you're interested in the family business, I can teach you, too! Would be good to go back to the basics to review for Sullivan."
"I'm already starting to lose my free time as it is. at least Duc'kaal still hasn't come back."
"Aw, that's a shame. Oh well. Anyway, Duc'kaal does have responsibilities outside of this house, you know. As much as we enjoy the old guy's company, we can't keep him from his family. He did leave you enough bones to practice on, didn't he?" His voice turned pensive and he brought his finger to his chin. "I wish he would accept money as payment. Feels weird that he's teaching you for fre-"
"Dad!" Sullivan shouted. The cloudy gray liquid was starting to foam and bubble.
"Right! Sorry!" Daemon said, quickly grabbing a beaker half-full of purple liquid from the tip of a distiller and replacing it with an empty beaker to catch any extra drips. He brought the beaker over, lowered the fire a bit that was below the gray liquid and poured the purple liquid into the gray liquid in a steady stream while Sullivan continued to stir with the glass rod. The cloudy substance began to turn a clear lilac color. Daemon turned off the fire and moved the purple liquid back over to where the distiller was. He took the lilac-colored substance and poured it into another machine, which immediately got to work doing something to it with a crystal spinning above the liquid.
"Well that's done for now. Let's back off of the more difficult stuff for now while the lovely in the room is distracting us."
"I can leave if I'm bothering you." Celestine said, about to get up.
"NONSENSE! It's a welcomed change! Way too serious in here." He turned to Sullivan, "Son, let's just make some more ^$%&$#&$^# #@^@^% while Tina's here. The church begs me for more of that crap without end."
"Right." Sullivan responded and went to a nearby cabinet to grab cartons full of liquid and what looked like dried plants and powders.
"Are you feeling better, Daemon?" Celestine asked. He seemed to be in a good mood. Maybe he got over whatever came over him in the library.
"Never better! My daughter's hugs are the best cure!" Daemon declared while cleaning some other machine and snapping in a string that probably led to the power generating crystal in the attic.
"I never hugged you, though." Celestine responded plainly.
"DETAILS! Needless details. I'm sorry for showing you such a sorry side of myself. NEVER AGAIN! I will make it up to you in any way possible! To both of you!"
"Why me, too?" Sullivan turned around and asked after hearing that.
"Because you're both my children, right? That's what fathers do." He nodded to himself satisfied.
"I'm still not calling you anything but Daemon." Celestine said in response to his declaration.
"For what I've done, I deserve far worse." He said melancholically before his tone shifted back to his cheerful. "Now, let's get to work!"
"Okay!" His cheerful tone was starting to rub off on the otherwise shy little blond boy. This made Celestine smile even more to know they were acting this way now. She hoped she would never see Sullivan shaking in fear of their father again.