Quarti was home again, in many hundreds and thousands of old deep memories the simple task at hand was familiar and smooth.

[https://i.imgur.com/LezjmWA.png]

So many muscles and frames and brains and minds had run this simple task that it had ground the memory of it deep into her soul.

Hands and feet and shoulders and necks by the hundreds had ached in just this way. It was a deep familiar burn that she had relearned over and over again.

Unlike words, unlike songs, unlike tastes, unlike sight this one consistent and repetitious experience had been repeated like a drum through her lives so many times that it could hook and form itself in a way very little in life could.

The grind of the stone was not always the same, but there were so many ways the stone had ground together that the impression had threaded her soul in a way that the young sparse lived souls of most terrans rarely could comprehend.

Quarti knew her soul was hardly a human one by this point. She had shed and consumed and spliced parts of herself over and over again.

She more puppeted her living shells then properly grew up in them.

Half of that was the nature of the raising. Human children did not grow correctly in isolation and darkness like she had this vessel nurtured. It would have been cruel to do to a fresh soul.

Horrible and stunting. But it let her shape and sculpt and force the meat of the brain to grow as she wanted it. As she needed it to preserve as much of her as possible. To avoid overly contaminating and undoing her.

The other half was of course having bred her lineage carefully. Some of that had been vanity, she had missed the teeth from her first lives. And when one was nudging and encouraging and laying the roots of enticing features and beauty for generations on end that was quite readily doable.

Then there was making it all more pliable.

But all of those contrivances settled that Quarti was much less a terran and a soul in a body, then a soul with her fleshy puppet.

Her flesh was merely a channel of experience and motive action for the deep memories she carried in spirit.

Still she found this peaceful, soothing and pleasant in all the idiosyncrasies and ways she had subtly earned mastery of mastery. Learned to relearn.

Aleph however was not so fortunate and required some correction.

“Don’t press so hard or fast youngest of us. It will spit the grain from the dish and scatter your work. Slow and steady, look at my wrist, my arm, here let me share with you”

She stretched her spirit out, sang ether to Aleph the child and fresh soul. Gently embraced and nudged at her own soul. Letting the infant spirit obstruct or relent her intrusion as it was comfortable.

Withdrawing when the intensity and depth of the contact was too great.

Aleph stuttered and babbled a bit over the choral network at the contact. She withdraw entirely and grinned at the other terran. Meat to bone Quarti was certain Aleph was older. But soul to spirit it was like a second to a year between them.

“There ya see? Ease the muscles more like this right? Gentle but firm and just enough you can hear the slight vibration with your fingers?”

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The youngest glared at her own fingers as she made a passable attempt at emulating what Quarti had tried to show her.

“W-what was that? T-that was... That was not like any demo anyone ever gave me before...”

Quarti shrugged and rolled her eyes.

“Stupid youngsters only know how to learn if its been shoved into an idiot crystal and rolled back on them. Nothing like the old ways... Still you are much too fresh for more... Mostly meat be you then soul. And the meat works thrice as hard in first lives.”

Aleph huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Yeah yeah, only my first life, be gentle with me! don’t strain me! keep secrets from me! I just don’t know anything about the real way of being terran! WHy I’m barely human at all right?!”

Quarti turned to fix the youngest with a sad smile. Eyes tracking over her scowling face and sweaty brow.

“Nothing at all like that. Idiot ‘elder’ sprites that speak like that... Bah! Think they wise when lived only three lives?! Hold it over such bright young gems as you? Pay their words less then thought. Useless foolish fear and spite”

Aleph stopped grinding wheat, but Quarti got her going again with a tap on her stone bowl.

“Nay, nay a thousand times more you are beautiful and fresh and most human now then all. Yon brain is fullest this life then ever it will be again. Burning brightest and sharpest and hardest on all that is. Shaping and making and forging the empty soul to carry a pale daughter of flame into the future”

The two of them continued grinding, then when the texture was good they poured their bowls empty, and filled them with another batch of wheat berry. With the old skill of ancient hands it was just barely a pace with if they had actually bothered to build a millstone.

But not by much.

“The fools have it rightly backwards. Fresh souls are brighter and stronger than old ones. You can bend where most of those ‘elders’ will break. You will become in years what most of them will fail to ever be in lifetimes. Your first life is precious and beautiful and not to be squandered, poisoned or broken by the ways of old fools as I or even that spry little young blue of yours”

Aleph was slowing down again from the gravity of the statement. Quarti nodded and let her mull on that at her own pace while she threw a bit of twists and speed to her own milling to make up for the lax.

“Is that- I mean... wait? If that's, then what you did is?!”

Quarti laughed and shook her head.

“So you won’t be grinding flour for three fortnight! Is good to nurture and not lift too much of your learning lest you squander this precious and beautiful time of gifts for you. But a few times sharing a neat trick won’t make ya a driveling mess girl”

She tossed a husk of wheat at Aleph just so it could make her flinch away and blink at the obstruction to her eye.

“Hey! Damn it! QUarti! What are you a child?!”

Quarti laughed and poured another bowl of flour and refilled her bowl.

“Of course! I’m three years younger then you!”