He simply walked past it without noticing, but the invisible line glows in her eyes. Lahar is hesitant but takes a deep breath and steps over the barrier line that has been keeping them safe.

Lahar has not walked in this direction before. The house was the farthest that she went when she first got here. She didn't have much time to explore. They instead went to work on finding out how she had gotten here and found Void. The same cannot be said for Arena.

Lahar tries her best to give Arena his space and not to pry deeply into his life, never stepping into his room or asking why he's here in the first place. Yet she has glanced into his room and seen a hand-drawn map of the area. She vaguely remembers the word reef on the beach in the direction they are walking.

"I understand how you feel," Arena says.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I have been where you are. The insatiable hunger to know that drives you forward. You can't let it consume you." Arena raises his arms wide, with his hands open. "The world is large and magical, with beautiful and interesting sights. It's fine to dive deep into something you love. Just don't forget to come back up."

Arena lowers his hands to gesture at what's in front of them. Lahar has been too distracted by Arena to notice that the flat field they have been walking by rises and leads to a large cliff overshadowing them. Sprouting from the cliff are corals the size of buses, each its own unique shape and color. She looks down to find flowers sprouting from the sand.

With a smile Arena says, "Who knows, you may find something amazing waiting for you." He lowers his hands.

They take a moment to admire their surroundings. Lahar examines the details of the massive corals above her—the way they curve and sprout from the stone wall. She sees the coral-shaped flowers spread all around the beach. The colors around her seem bland. Each flower is just a reminder of another ingredient in the potion she needs to work on.

She starts to mumble the ingredients—portion size, order of preparation, step by step.

"Well, let's find the flower," Arena says, stepping forward. "Be careful not to step on any flowers. We're searching for an orange flower with blue tips," he says as he walks through the reef of flowers, careful not to step on any of them.

Lahar follows suit, scanning the reef for the flower.

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"Get a good deep breath of the fresh sea air. You know, I first discovered this place when I was exploring. Pie and I were just wondering when I..." He stops talking and looks at Lahar. She continues to mumble to herself. He can tell she is still reciting the potion. Arena is unsure whether he finds this admirable or sad. "Why don't you forget the potion for a while? You shouldn't work every second you're alive."

"Maybe I need to," Lahar says out loud.

"What do you mean?" Arena asks.

Lahar never looks up as she speaks, using the fact that they are searching for something as an excuse to avoid his gaze.

"If I keep moving forward, I will be able to progress. I am nowhere near close to Doc, let alone you. Every step I take, I find out you are a thousand more ahead. I don't have the luxury to stop; I need to keep moving forward. I am tired of looking at your back. Tired of being a burden."

Her eyes start to water. She turns her back on him, hiding the tear forming in her eye.

"Stop it," Arena says out loud.

"Stop what? Talking?"

"Stop holding yourself to such high standards as me and downplaying your accomplishments," Arena says. He stops searching and looks up at her as they stand far apart on the reef. "This was never going to be easy. You need to realize that. Don't look at the progress that you think you should make and look at what you've done."

Gold streams flow out of his arm, and his eyes go red. "Remember what I taught you when it comes to picking your conductor?"

"Yeah. The best conductors are either something that was crafted by magic or something that is old, since they have been around the Source for much longer," she says, rubbing her eyes.

"The strength of a spell is proportionate to two things—the conductor and the caster," Arena says. He tosses her a ball made out of his gold. She turns and catches the ball. She stares at it in her hand and then reluctantly looks up at his burning red eyes.

"Turn it red."

She says the spell, and the ball goes red.

With a smile Arena speaks. "Not that long ago, that spell had you pulling your hair out. Now you can do it without a second thought. You didn't master your first potion until two weeks after you started."

Lahar tosses the ball back to him as he continues to speak. "You will do badly, probably, for a long time. The bad will turn to good and then to amazing. That's how it works," Arena says. He turns the ball back to gold and then to a liquid state.

"Don't trap yourself in a cage of your own making. It's good to be ambitious, but enjoy the life you have."

Lahar stands there quietly. Every word he says, she absorbs. She looks around and now sees the beauty of the vibrant colors and shapes that surround her. Arena crouches down as the gold surrounding his arm turns to a small shovel.

He finds the flower he has been searching for. He carefully digs it out. The shovel then reshapes itself to turn to a vase surrounding the plant. "Here we go. How about we head home."

Lahar's expression is of defeat because she knows he is right, but she's annoyed by that same fact. "Shouldn't we, like, relax more?" she says quietly to him.

He walks past her, heading to the house. "Don't worry; we will. Let's enjoy the walk home first," he says with a grin.