With Aether having left and knowing Affection was going to be otherwise occupied for some time - and likely far too furious to actually be chatty with him - Rou dragged himself from the bed where he'd been laying to get up and wobble off it. Not long after he grabbed the book on gravity magic and returned to the bed to climb back up using another of the wooden steps like at the sink.

Quickly he sat down on his rump after looking out the window once more to see his parents still working and chatting and seemingly back on good terms, and tapped his left temple to activate the new perk he received.

[High-Dimensional Reading Glasses]

A semi-transparent pair of glasses that were completely unable to be touched except by anyone but him. The see-through lens allowed him to understand the title on the book.

Research and Theorems on the Lost Art of Gravity Magic

By Elliot Vanse-Droe

For the eyes of scholars only, care of the Royal Library of Estarch

Penalty of execution for viewing otherwise.

A bit surprised by the two lines at the end in much finer print, and in a wholly different language at the bottom of the front of the book, Rou had to wonder how an old villager even got this into his hands. And Estarch? Was that their current kingdom or something else entirely? Well, he certainly couldn't say.

'Aether, this book I'm playing with isn't enchanted or something to kill me right? If I read it, I mean. It has a warning threatening death on the cover.'

"Hm?" Aether seemed curious, and then a notice popped up.

Notice:

Aether is viewing the world through your eyes.

"Ah, well, look at that. How unexpected of you to come across something like that. Well, you will be fine from what I can tell, at least having it here. But actually carrying that out and about and showing it off in the capital might get you punished a bit more firmly. Estarch is an ancient kingdom far, far away practically on the other side of this plane. It is long since fallen apart, but knowledge of it isn't unknown. But the language comprehension to read the relevant text is. It would seem… That's odd. Estarch predated the language used to write the warning, but the text of the book is…"

Aether's voice rang in Rou's head as he looked at the book for her and opened a page to let her see some more.

"I believe this 'Elliot Vanse-Droe' might be a name of fiction, and this book wasn't actually written back then so much as was trussed up to be far more dangerous than it actually is. If my guess is correct, he was just trying to scare off nosy parties from getting into his writings. Self-important perhaps. The primary language of this book is… oh, yes, you have no worries. His primary language is what the main book is written in and it would seem he just copied a warning from another tome as his penmanship on the warning isn't confident."

She actually giggled at the idea. "That's cute, I might have to use warnings like that to mess with Affection."

Notice:

Aether is no longer viewing the world through your eyes.

Though Rou had never seen Aether, in his mind she was something of an older sister/neighbor type who was happy to be sociable, who was also a researcher. A few possible images came to mind of what she might look like, but just as he started to forget those thoughts and return to the book her playful voice once again rang in his head.

"Do refrain from getting too wild in that brain of yours. We high-dimensional beings don't even have bodies. The form you saw Affection in was one of her own creation based on what she found cute. Me, I never even bothered to make one, sorry to disappoint. Though if I ever do create one, I may take your thoughts into confidence. I'm sure Affection would be amused by it, since you two have similar tastes."

'We do?'

"Oh, yes, from what I can tell you two are peas-in-a-pod if I remember the expression right from your world. Not that she would want to admit it. I guess you didn't have a chance to notice… when you customized your body? The first thing she looked at was your tail. And very much approved of how long and fluffy you made it. So I would trust your opinion on something she'd find fun more than I would trust her to be honest about it."

Rou snorted before remembering that interaction. Well, if they did share tastes… mm, he'd have to ask her once he was old enough to look like that, should he manage to find a way to bridge the dimensional gap proper.

–

As the pages were turned and more and more was read, it was all very much over Rou's head. These were very much scholarly writings and musings regarding advanced gravity magic use and theory. But it wasn't as if he was unable to parse certain things. Thanks to the glasses, even if he didn't /understand/ everything, some of the concepts were passed on.

An oversight by Aether?

He wasn't sure. But as he studied further and further, he wasn't sure how long it had been since his parents came back into the cottage. They saw him looking at the book and assuming he was simply occupying himself and unable to understand it, they left him be. Also as they were unable to see the glasses they didn't think anything was wrong. At least until it got dark and he still hadn't moved much, just slowly moving page to page and eventually his mother walked over and tapped Rou's nose.

"Hey… you okay?"

"Ah!"

The sudden noise and touch startled Rou, causing him to drop the book and lean back to look up at the source.

"Oh… mom." But it was a little dark and his attention wandered and he saw it was later at night. Wait, night?! The confusion on his face caused his mom to realize he hadn't even noticed and she began to giggle at him. "Mm hmm. It's night already. Come on, have some dinner. You're probably hungry."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"N-no, not…"

His stomach betrayed him.

"...okay I am."

–

After dinner, which was mostly quiet except the usual being stared at by his mother and his parents playing footsie under the table, finally Dominic spoke. "You seemed pretty interested in that book. Learn anything?"

Almost innocently Rou started to reply about it but caught himself and realized he probably shouldn't say anything. …but he really wanted to talk about it. The consternated look on his face amused both parents before the kid said aloud, "It's not the same."

"Huh?"

"The book… grab it for me?"

Dominic got up and walked over to pick it up before Rou pointed to the cover. "See? It's different." he pointed out the title at the topic being one language, then pointed towards the writing at the bottom. "Everything inside looks like this part…" he tapped the top, "But not this part." then the bottom.

At his age, almost four, both parents were surprised he might have even noticed something like that. Both knowing magic, they took the opportunity to look it over and recognized the main language of course, but indeed neither one of them actually knew the other.

"Wow, you're pretty smart Rou. I probably wouldn't have noticed that. Did you see anything else?" his mom asked, now very much invested.

"Mmm…" he thought about it and tried to think of anything else someone his age could share without exposing himself, but finally realized and said, "Affection was reading it to me."

–

Somewhere in the realm of the gods, Affection yelled out, "Like hell I did!"

–

But of course she couldn't actually claim otherwise as Rou used her name. From a young age all kids were taught about the pantheon of the gods so to speak, so he 'knew' who Affection was. Especially after his connection to her was made evident to his parents. "I did not understand much. But… maybe if I learn it, I can float around instead of having to climb the stairs to get onto things like the sink or bed."

That got another laugh, seemingly fairly innocent. Even if that was actually something that Rou had thought about. Float magic. Even in his past life the idea of being able to float around on a whim seemed fun. And from his assumption that was a fairly cheap application of gravity magic that could be accomplished using fairly benign materials.

"Cottonfluff? Do we have extra?" Rou inquired. "Oh? Yes, I suppose we have a lot, why?"

"Do we have a crystal for that magic? Gravity?" Rou inquired.

"Ah, no, there is no gravity crystal …we can probably make a Dark-aligned crystal though. It might not be the best but… you want one to play with?"

"Mm. The book said that a gravity crystal is a dark crystal that is inverted.”

His parents discussed with themselves, neither being remotely capable in dark magic - even passingly as neither had studied. But both being familiar with fire, his mother healing, and his father wind… at least aligning their elemental discharge accordingly should be at worst a theoretical thing.

Sure, giving a child stuff like this probably wasn't the best, but Affection wouldn't let him get hurt surely.

Thus the two took a moment and concentrated, a bit of blank mana forming in their palms before joining as they leaned against each other. Once they'd gotten themselves matched up, a practice they usually did when generating crystals for other normal day-to-day uses, Dominic let Shiela take the lead in converting it through the elemental wheel. She pushed it to light, then guided it the opposite way awkwardly until the crystal that was forming started to suck in darkness - awkwardly brightening the surrounding area briefly before things balanced out.

And within two minutes the crystal formed and clacked down to the wooden table, leaving the two a bit tired-looking but happy at their achievement. "There we go… and to check it…" Shiela picked it up and stared, "Okay good there's no corruption. Well, that was novel. But an inverted crystal of darkness? Well, an inverted crystal of any type, such a strange request."

"But why Cottonfluff and a crystal?" Dominic finally asked Rou.

"A picture in the book. I want to try. Can you help me?"

–

Though they weren't quite certain what the boy could possibly understand or demonstrate, the two were certainly content to oblige his curiosity. They helped him powder the crystal after sussing out what he was talking about, him having flipped through the tome towards the relevant pages. And while there was some confusion regarding finer points, eventually his parents put things together that it wasn't water but aether in liquid form. Took them some effort and failed attempts but eventually they were able to convert the ambient aether into mana then back into aether again in a different state. Which they then inverted as well, with fair effort.

And they were kind of having fun with it. It was the first time they'd really… all three as a family did anything like this. That, and watching Rou's fluffy, stubby tail wiggling as it gave away his excitement for it all encouraged them to just go along with it even if it failed.

And finally he asked them to stuff the excess Cottonfluff into a bucket, along with the powdered crystal and liquid aether before finally covering it with a lid and tying it up.

Cottonfluff being the name of a type of plant that was harvested for various fabric purposes.

But sadly there was no immediate effect. Rou was disappointed though his parents expected it. The two had no belief it would even work, let alone do anything at all, but tried to encourage him to wait and see.

A shared family bath later and a snack that they left the house to buy at the general store - several candied fruits and for the adults something a bit more filling to restore their stamina as they'd actually gotten rather exhausted from the process, they all returned home only to realize the bucket was gone. Dominic naturally stood in front of Shiela and Rou and went inside first to look around, clearly ready to fight, but they couldn't find anyone in the end. It wasn't until Rou thought to look up that he got excited.

"It's floating, the bucket!" The bucket had actually floated up and traveled along the slope of the roof until it got tucked away by a rafter. Both parents were flabbergasted at it having actually done something and Dominic used wind magic to hop up and grab it.

"Well, look at that." he said, shaking it and listening. "There doesn't seem to be any more liquid inside. Shall we see?"

Rou's tail flapped like a flag in the wind and his parents both laughed at him for it but found it cute. Normally he'd feel awkward but excited as he was, Rou quickly grabbed and tore into it before the lid was pulled off and cottonfluff promptly began to float out. Indeed it had absorbed all the dark energy, and it would seem simply that allowed it to have anti-gravity properties.

"So dark elements are similar to light…" his mother guessed. "Light naturally brightens areas, I always assumed dark would just… darken it. But it seems like it causes this instead?"

"Perhaps it's a unique interaction? Perhaps the lighter something is, the more chance it has of being like this? Dominic queried in turn.

"Maybe… not like we can ask Rou." Shiela in turn lamented, now curious.

What they hadn't noticed as they were both a little distracted with it was the way Rou was staring at it. Having ideas.

IDEAS.

If darkness inverted produced anti-gravity, then inversion of other magic would in theory produce the opposite? Would inverted fire absorb heat instead of expel it? Would inverted wind create a vacuum instead of force?

… would inverted light rot? If inverted darkness was anti-gravity, then darkness was gravity? Or was it simply suppression? Was this kind of magic lost because people thought Crystal inversion was pointless and simply stopped trying?

“Mom, Dad? Could you put the cottonfluff in my shoes? More inverted crystals, maybe it floats higher?”

Both of the adults stared at the kid in surprise that he could even think up the idea to increase the density of inverted darkness crystal dust in the mixture to achieve different results.

“Or make it like the sprayer?”

“You know Shiela, he’s not… wrong? I don’t know if it’s possible to make tools using inverted crystals, but if we can…”

“Well we would also have to find out how to redo the internals to fit the inversion of darkness, which is already a problem because there aren’t really any darkness tools. Besides, I was never really good with fixing or trying to make those things anyways. I always just used them, heh…”

“Yes, well you did grow up wealthy so you never had to fix anything like that.”

It wasn’t long before his parents started to laugh with each other, and almost began to flirt again before Rou tapped the table.

Almost at the same time, both of his parents responded awkwardly, “Ah, right…”

“For the time being, how about we try your shoes first?” His father chimed in towards Rou to change the subject. “And perhaps we can ask the priest regarding light tools, he may have some insight to give regarding theoretical dark tools? Can’t imagine he would complain too much given Affection was the one reading it to the kid.” Dominic added it as an afterthought towards his wife.

“Yes, I am not at all concerned about a goddess reading tomes on lost, possibly forbidden magic to my three-year-old.”

Rou wanted to say something to break the tension, but then he paused and looked at his father, “Remember when you asked me to tell you before I do anything like last time?”

His mother looked confused, only for his father to snort laughing again and reach over to tap her on the forehead before replying, “It seems Affection thinks you’re being silly again.” Shiela was stunned before puffing up slightly and raising a rather rude gesture at the ceiling.

“He’s my child, of course I’m gonna be worried!”

—

Meanwhile, in the realm of the gods…

“He’s dead the little bastard, I’m going to rip the soul out of him and reincarnate him for the next thousand years as a shit-eating beetle! Using my name as a shield, I did not say that! …this time… aaaah!”