Sasha looked up at the moon. The clouds were gone now, letting the white sphere above shine down on them. It wasn’t enough to truly see the world around them, but the soft light was enough to not stumble in the grass.

“It’s cold,” Mila said. It wasn’t a complaint. The young girl was still afraid to make them. Sasha would eventually get that out of her system.

For now, she just pulled Mila a little closer and allowed her body to warm the girl.

Channeling of [Active Desorption] has been activated! Current cost: [NaN]

Oh, shut it.

“What’s wrong?” Mila asked as Sasha waved a hand through the air. The blue box that had tried to take up her vision vanished with it, returning to whatever hole it hid in at other times.

“Nothing,” Sasha assured the girl, adjusting her arm to make Mila more comfortable.

As expected, the noises of the port city hadn’t done Mila any good. The others hadn’t noticed, but those small shaking hands had been obvious to Sasha. The way the shouting made them tense, the way that the foreign eyes made her want to flee. If not for everywhere else also having the constant loudness, Sasha didn’t doubt that Mila would’ve fled already.

Too dangerous.

Leaving the city for a few hours was what the girl needed. Not too far away. Just a quick twenty-minute walk to make some distance. Barely enough to ignore the shining lights from the taverns that could be seen from their hill.

How Sasha despised it, knowing those lights were making it hard for Mila to sleep. Even if the girl was trying to act like she was, those hands gripping her shirt tightly were impossible to miss.

“It’s fine to be scared,” Sasha murmured. “It’s human. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

…

“Are you ever scared?” Mila asked some seconds later when the sleeping act was accepted as a failure. “Do you cry?”

…

“Sometimes,” was all Sasha could get out at first. Those eyes reminded her too much of herself, just like all the others. “I used to cry a lot more often when I was little. Stayed up all night shaking and freezing.”

It was never a good idea to stop moving during the dark hours, back then. Even with the thickest of jackets, the ice had a way of seeping into her bones. Moving kept them warm in those seasons.

“How do I stop?”

Sasha froze.

“I don’t want this,” Mila said, pulling herself closer to Sasha’s torso. The small fingers were going right through the fabric of her shirt and into her skin, but that hardly mattered. “I want it to stop.”

Oh.

She wasn’t prepared to handle this. Not right now.

But the world didn’t care about what she was ready for. It never had.

“I’m sorry, but… We can’t change what happened,” Sasha tried to explain, sitting up in the grass and wrapping both her arms around the crying child. “The past is set in stone. Always will be, no matter how much we don’t want it.”

“I want my mom.”

…

Sasha could say nothing. What comforting words could she give? That Mila’s parents had wanted her to live? Who cared what they wanted? Mila wanted them back, and that would never happen. Mila had been assured of that in those weeks when she’d been forced to watch them rot away.

“I’m starting to think that sleep isn’t on the table right now,” Sasha commented when the sniffling started to die down and Mila could hear her words again. How long a time had passed while they sat in the grass wasn’t known, but neither of them cared much about that anyway. “Going out exploring now wouldn’t be too good either, with how little we can see.”

“We’re not meant to leave camp while it’s dark,” Mila agreed. “You’ll get lost.”

“Smart,” Sasha praised, rising to her feet as she looked up at the sky. The tears were still fresh on Mila’s cheeks, but a distraction wouldn’t hurt. “Say… have you ever wanted to fly?”

“What?”

“Flying,” Sasha repeated. “Above the trees, like a bird. I never thought much about it until the past few months, but the idea sounds like a dream, don’t you think?”

…

Seeing the gears rotating in the child’s head made Sasha want to laugh, but she kept it inside. There was no reason to break that moment of wonder.

“I want to fly,” Mila finally said. “But not above the trees. That’s too high.”

“Scared of heights?” Sasha asked, as she adjusted her grip on Mila and raised the girl above her head.

“No!” Mila instantly rejected. “... Yes.”

“That’s okay,” she assured her, as she stopped sending out the waves of heat. “Fear is healthy. It keeps us safe.”

Channeling of [Active Absorption] has been activated! Current cost: [NaN]

Focusing on the world, Sasha honed onto the tethers holding her down to the ground. The invisible force that tried to pull her to the surface at all times, the chains that kept the world together.

So annoying.

“Now… Are you ready to fly?” she asked, moving away from her tethers and over to those of the younger girl.

“Yes!” Mila shrieked. With her lower weight, she could probably feel as each chain was ripped out. “Can I fly now?”

It’s more floating than flying, but who cares?

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“Just about,” Sasha said, pulling away all but one of the gravity’s tethers away from the girl. It was enough to keep her stable but not enough that she could start floating around without coming back eventually. “I’ll give you a small push and then you can figure out the rest, right?”

Another shriek left the girl when Sasha let go of her and she didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, she stayed in the air, starting to turn as her flailing arms pushed the air around her.

Sasha knew she would’ve felt a little nauseous rotating like that, but Mila seemed to have the time of her life. She was… perfectly happy with the experience, focused on figuring out how to move around and experiencing the world from above. All those fears heard before had seemingly vanished.

It made Sasha’s heart lighten a little more.

The steady pressure that was felt beside her heart was another thing. As Jack had promised her through their journey, her powers would grow with practice. Even without having a book that said what to do, trying to learn the secrets of her craft would let her do more with it.

And this? This was proof of that. Around two months ago, she had trouble making a rock stay in mid-air for more than a few seconds above her palm.

Now she could stand almost two meters away from Mila’s floating form while keeping the girl in the air. It tested her, becoming too much if she even leaned back, but keeping the girl happy was the perfect motivator for Sasha to keep pushing.

Maybe I’ll be able to fly around by myself someday.

Sasha would never say such a thing aloud, lest Jack would pester her about it until the end of time, but it was a fun thought regardless. To soar like a bird… that man really had a way of putting the strangest of ideas into her head.

After ten minutes of floating around, where Mila insisted she had mastered the art of flight, the child finally began to tire out. Though she refused the notion, it hardly took more than another two minutes of sitting beside Sasha’s warm aura before she fell into true slumber.

The small fingers still held onto Sasha’s shirt, of course, but it wasn’t as tightly as before. It was more of an afterthought, instinct calling for the action and Mila obliging before falling far into the darkness.

Sasha smiled at the soft breaths that left the girl. While she wasn’t cut out for this type of thing, small doses were doable.

The smile vanished after a minute or so, as the air shifted and a pressure fell upon her Core.

“I was wondering how long you were going to watch,” Sasha commented, looking over at the elven figure standing a dozen meters away. Those gray eyes of hers seemed to almost shine with the moonlight.

It creeped her out.

“It’s best to observe delicate situations for some time before trying to intrude,” Lura said in her defense, approaching the two. Each step was unheard, the grass undisturbed where the elf walked. “I know that many of my brethren would’ve spent days in hiding before they would think to approach you. Maybe I would’ve done the same, if not for my schedule forcing quick action.”

Glancing down, Sasha made sure that Mila wasn’t disturbed by their voices. It didn’t seem like it, the breathing still even and the dreams still wild inside the child.

Good.

“If you want me to fawn all over you as the others did, think again,” Sasha warned, moving away a stray hair from Mila's face. When they got back, she needed to find the girl a comb. All that moving around had caused quite the chaos.

“While I won’t say I know everything about you, Sasha, I’ve learned some things through my talks with the others,” the elf announced, ignoring her words. Sasha glared in response. “You’re prone to violence, you have little to no respect for most people you know, and you’ve displayed instant aggression towards anybody approaching you.”

“... Sounds about right,” Sasha agreed. “Which makes it all the more strange that you thought it would be a good idea to follow me out here.”

“The world is renowned for its danger, yet we all must traverse it despite this fact,” the elf said. “And when the alternative to action is to observe a spiral continuing to worsen, you must act.”

“And I’m the worsening spiral that you’re observing?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t understand how Jack was so infatuated by the elves when they were like this.

“Fine,” Sasha gave in, figuring that playing along would end this quicker. “What do you want to tell me?”

“That you are an abomination to nature,” Lura replied with a smile.

…

Right.

“It’s been a while since somebody told me that, and that was in a very different context,” she said. That old fight with that bloody hulk of a man briefly replayed in front of her eyes before she fought her way back to the present. “Would you care to elaborate or should I assume this is just your own opinion of me?”

The elf wouldn’t be the first person to think such things about her.

“The world calls you an Absorber, yes?” Lura asked. Sasha confirmed as much. “It’s not a true Affinity. It’s a flaw in the world, a crack that the higher beings could never fix no matter how much they tried. The space where an Affinity grows and develops into those of the Mages is taken up by nothing in your case. Not an absence of ability, like what the usual mortals have, but an absence of existence. Inside you, reality is fractured.”

Harsh words.

“And… why should I care about this?” Sasha questioned, smirking when that look of fury briefly appeared on the elf. “Your opinion doesn’t change much about my life.”

“Perhaps, but the truth remains,” the elf retorted. Her back straightened when Sasha leaned forward just a little. The elf was afraid. “You are an Abomination, cursed to absorb and grow until the world can no longer exist with you present.”

“And you know this fact how exactly?”

“Mistakes like you appear every thousand years or so,” Lura explained. “The devastation and pain you cause is well-documented. Many of my ancestors fell to remedy the actions of the abominations who were selfish.”

…

Sasha laughed. Softly, so as not to disturb Mila’s rest, but it was genuine laughter nonetheless. This shit the elf was spouting… it was probably true, wasn’t it?

“For your information, I never wanted this,” Sasha supplied. “I tried to leave this world the moment I entered it, but those who brought me here never got the chance to give me that mercy.”

The elven eyes blinked at her. Slowly, as if surprised by her words. What had the idiot expected to happen?

“Well… If you need a piece of advice, I can tell you that your own hands will allow you to leave this world without hardship,” Lura commented, that subtle smile returning. “I urge you to consider it.”

And, yet again, they were talking about different things yet they both carried that same casual tone.

“For somebody saying I could break the world, you’re strangely comfortable with getting this close to me,” Sasha said.

“You might be an Abomination but you still journey with this group of yours,” Lura explained succinctly. “If one of the prince’s underlings were to harm a foreign diplomat… it wouldn’t end well for anybody, you included.”

…

No.

Even if she had every desire in the world to defy the expectations, Sasha kept herself in check. Mila was here with her so she could rest without fear. Who would she be if she broke that inkling of trust?

“Try this again, and I’ll end you,” Sasha warned, as the elf rose from the grass.

“With any luck, there won’t be a next time,” Lura replied. She didn’t smile when she looked down at Sasha. “The protections on me are on you as well, but neither will last for long. Make the right choice before you lose this compassionate side of yours.”

With no other goodbyes, the elf left Sasha behind.

Rude.

Sasha wasn’t too surprised by that type of attitude, at least. Respect was hard to get from others and it was even harder to grant to others.

“... An Abomination?” she muttered, as she laid back down on the grass, making sure Mila could use her arm as a pillow. “Maybe you’re right.”

At least it was an assurance that she could grow more powerful if she tried. That’d make Jack happy.

And, with any luck, it would let her leave this world.