He always thought that he had seen rainbows. Colors. After all, when you spent a fifth of your life staring at the machines capable of displaying visualization of two hundred and fifty fives to the power of three you would expect that all the visible light had to offer was within the realm of your comprehension. A something that since you had seen, you knew.

Apparently, that was a height of folly.

Right now and in front of him was true grandness —true majesty. It refuted what was clear and brought everything he thought he knew to hindsight. On the moment alone, and as the time slipstreamed, he understood. Somewhat. It was beads and strings and sparks of epiphanies. Scattered and struggling to be weaved to a coherent whole. However what was clear, crystal, was that what he had seen, what he had briefly glanced and left not thought beyond that the barest of appreciation; the vast sky, the green neverending, was in fact just a piece of artifice. Towering, intricate, elaborate.

Beguiling.

It was blur and semi-occlusive. White yet grey like ointment applied to an arm. Like frosted glass when the hot shower was turned on. Yet it was there — there. He could see it. Saw it. Shimmers and warps that pervade the sky. Mana wefted in cross and criss. The geometrics, few that he could barely grasp, barely see, bobbed and dimmed from existence —bending lights all around.

What the purpose of such grand spell — such grand illusion was beyond him. But what more beyond him was the fact that the town only charged a measly two silvers for the entrance. He seldom said the word travesty. But this occasion seemed — no, this occasion was unequivocally fitting.

The ground — the mound itself wasn’t skyscraper tall. It was at most his calves. Sixty centimeter raised from the ground level. It was also not all-encompassing wide, cut by the horizon in the background, two roads circled it in an elliptical round.

But from the tapering base of his squeaking boots, the slope gentle, the angle sharp mound was a wonder manifested. Its soil was earth’s brownest brown and from it grew rose-colored spurts.

Three meters inside it was a clearing; pebbles and mushrooms arranged to circles and squares, pools of sand and boulders, stout standing. Then there were the trees. The hush of them. Tall and thin, spindly and curved. Each and every single one were wind-swayed, blowing pollens and flowers smalls.

Also he swore that they, the trees, were singing — humming. In harmonic and one after another. The leaves, coniferous and fern; poplar and aspen, wheedle. The branches, willow-like, and gnarly like pearl, waggle.

It was a cacophony of colors. Of dance.

And it wasn’t like it just those — serene, peaceful; whistling wind and contemplation lull. There were critters, there were lives. They filled and scurried every time he blinked. Tastefully of course, as it was befitted the perfection; three if they were small, two if they were pairs, or alone if they were a swarm so as not to crowd everything.

One of such was a blue rodent. Which he would classift as a squirrel, well, squirrel-adjacent. Its mink was dripping gloss of oil-wet, its teeth marble brown. The critter was currently smushing (or was it chewing?) some kind of red berry as big as its head. He looked at how it sniffed around, digging, turning its head sharply in case of a predator — everything a squirrel would. He counted that he spent at least twenty seconds captivated by it before suddenly a rumble chased the poor thing off to the nearby bush.

What was that? He asked.

It went flap, flap, then swoosh. It was echoing — vibrating.

Whatever made the sounds weren’t alone.

All of a sudden they came. At first he thought they were, well, glares. Sun leaving their light in some kind of halo or simply stray mana, leaking from the illusion above. Then again considering what he currently seeing, well he agreed to a benefit of doubt. So, curious and wary, he looked closer. Even closer.

It was a ...swarm. No, not of bees, nor of hornets, or ants. Their wings were too big to be either of those things. Their flap also. Too bright. He could barely observe anything but their trail of sparkle. They moved with such a great speed — not as fast Clar and Sir Telin when both of them dueled, but fast enough his eyes couldn't catch thrm. One second they were on the fallen log on a nearby bush, then a second later they were already under that berry-bearing tree.

It wasn’t until ten seconds later when they passed under a particularly big tree that the shade revealed what they truly were; butterflies. Well, close. Instead of usual butterfly-shaped wings, their wings were albatross-like, stretching thin and wide from their body which also different, iridescent —almost transparent under the sunlight.

Not-butterflies, then?

Hahh. He knew, he knew, he shouldn’t name things arbitrarily like that. Even though admittedly it kind of ...fitting? But like those not-horses, the ones with cracked scales (those apparently called clines instead of, well, not-horses), it was with total confidence he could say that this not-butterflies kust have their own local name. Cooler, fitting name compared to his lazy ones.

Still, and to his defense, this world fauna was just that confusing. Earth-like with few stark differences. Of course, there were few that was a copy-paste from the [Chronicle]. For example, slimes that Barna mentioned. But like rusts or goblis which the guild freely provided information of, slimes were categorized as monsters, as in dangerous, mana-wrought monster. Not animals.

It was as if [Chronicle] was responsible for the —pardon the pun— ‘otherworldly’ aspect of this world. Not all the otherworldy aspect, of course. Just the adversarial ones. Even the supposedly dungeon-spawned livestock like Couchee was not something [Chronicle] had.

He didn’t know. Like most things, he didn’t know.

So the not-butterflies (for now) chased off the squirrel-adjacent (also for now). Flapping their wings, he could see them spiraling. Up then to down, then up.

Their motion, save for the positive x-axis, was random — brownian. Yet as he observed them by the way their wings fluttered and the suddenness of their acceleration, what they were doing was clear. They were catching winds.

Why they were doing that was also a mystery to him. It could be some kind of swarm migration behavior he guessed? Although... did butterflies, sorry, not-butterflies even migrate?

The answer came to him. First ...rustles, then shouts, then laughs. Glimpses — shadows of something were stalking close the not-butterflies. The shadows, whatever they were, were leaping — mimicking the not-butterflies zig-zag path.

Of course.

It was clear now. Someone was chasing them. And true to his conclusion a mere two seconds later he saw her. Hopping from the ground and branches was a little girl and her big companion dog. Their step, click and creak, broke the silence of the ground sacredness as they — wait.

...Clar?

...Leo?

W—what were they doing?

...he needed to pull them now! They could — no, they would break something! Not to mention, oh my lord, this — this, installation. This fragile-slash-work of art. Jeane! Jeane? Where was she?

Jeane??

He knew the girl and the dog was B-rank. He wouldn’t fault the [Scullery Maid] to lose them in a chase-off. That’d be beyond her. But at least she should be standing nearby, right? Worrying —shouting for them to stop.

So where was she?

Not there. Not over there. Also not — oh, there! On the left side! He half-ran to the left, to the round table where a cloth umbrella was rippling, casting a fluttering shade to the aforementioned maid. She and three other people were sitting there, two men and a woman.

Yet as he was approaching, getting a clearer view, he stopped on his track. Did his eyes play a trick on him? How — how she looked so — so unworried? The young woman and the three others were chatting, in fact, one of the other women was offering a plate of some kind of snack which the maid gladly munched.

Huh…

“My turn!”

“Nuh-uh!”

He turned his head.

...it wasn’t just Clar and Leo?

On the clearing obscured by one of the boulders, two kids, a girl and a boy was also ...playing. The girl was holding some kind of doll; it wasn’t clear — he couldn’t really see it from here. As the girl ran, the boy was chasing her, shouting —alternating between plea and swearing. They jumped, ran, they dived and slid all around — leaving footsteps that dented the ground.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

And to his surprise, no one paid them any mind. Jeane and her friends from other households (at least that what he thought from their clothing (white tunic, faded doublet, and an apron)) kept talking, sipping from a cup —having snacks. The passerby, several that came near didn’t even give a glance, they just walked, saying hello to each other before continuing.

Then on to the right side — the opposite of where he had been looking — it was pretty much the same, kids of all ages were playing near the ground. And the adults there were also sitting, chatting.

“…”

Was he just too sensitive? No one seemed to mind the children were there — laughing, screaming, and ruffling leaves; kicking pebbles or pushing trees.

Most likely.

Admittedly his heart ached to see such — such beauty get torn. Every time dirt kicked off, every time a branch bent, a fruit picked — a little part of him winced. Then again it was unfair. He knew quite a few artists that said 'far and away, a good and complete art was art where audiences in their agency, took part.’

Had he fell to the mindstate of preserving just for the sake of preserving?

Yes.

The ground was just too beautiful...

Sigh. The laughter was admittedly ...infectious. He smiled as Clar screamed; failing and flailing to reach the not-butterflies wing. He chuckled as Leo almost got hit by a recoiling branch as he tried to chase the girl. It remind him on the park next to his house, like here, it also filled with the laughter of children playing.

Memories and experiences were valid whether it was in moment or in memento.

And here evidently the moment was lauded. The sign couldn’t be more obvious in hindsight. While the ground was indeed cordoned off. It was cordoned off by ankle-tall pickets. As if the demarcation was simply a signal that here was the ground. It was different, it was special. So, come hither and play.

He gave the tapestry one long look, feeling the touch of cajoling mist cooling his skin. The sounds of laughter echoed behind him as he walked away toward a long bench.

[https://i.ibb.co/kHLk3wt/Line-Break.png]

“Hmmm…”

“No, this won’t do.”

The bell had tolled once and passed another halfway. The chatters around him were there still, but it was dying down. Children around become sparser. Probably tired from their running.

That was background happenstances, however. He was, well, working. In front of him were models and schematics — methodologies available and probable written in scrawl.

The doodle was simple in essence. Investigate mana properties — understand magic. That all there to it. It was just the stuff was well, difficult. If not downright impossible to solve in his lifetime. There was scrawled geometric of circles; abbreviation made sense just to him; lines; runes, the few that he knew the meaning of; n-gon, overlapping and connecting.

And so far the stacks and stacks of months’ careful observation only managed to elucidate four generalizations.

First, the requirement of initial mana jumps to start magic-slash-rune activation. This was universal and almost worth half of the required mana. On the opposite, the maintaining requirement was varied between 1 to 5% per one rotation (that was how long a speck of mana went from the initial point and back).

Then there were required types of metal (in the case of rune) or the amount of mana used (in the case of spells). Those were positively correlated with the rune-slash-spell complexity. Which was something that he only managed to determine in the crudest way possible: based on the amount of lines or symbols. Yesh. It was horrible.

Third, mana flow behavior. Mostly they — the mana were flowing like liquid. Non-newtonian liquid. They were slow at first, then began to pick up speed after some time. Especially after two and three rotations.

And last, the one which befuddled him the most — the fact that a certain symbol/rune seemed to universally represent a facet of the universe. Like light meant light, heat meant heat, cold meant cold without so much explanation or how they correlate with each other.

He tried to reverse engineer the one he knew, of course. Emphasize on the ‘knew’. And so far it was, well, how could you put it? Right. Like learning topology with first-grader math.

He tried partitioning. Limiting section by section. Particularly those on the closed loops or up in the cascade before connecting lines and added complexities began to mess it up. The result was nil.

It was too complex to even make sense. Some were layered on top of each other, then there was time he missed which line was which when trying to jot it down, sometimes the mana didn’t even follow the normal flow behavior, and no, it wasn’t as if their flow rate changed drastically, or its behavior turned 180 and now moved like water. The abnormal behavior was, well, you see in some of the geometric there were gaps, unattached incontiguous lines. And the mana were jumping to that lines. So if for one moment, the mana were on one spot, then not a second later it ‘jumped’ to another spot without passing the line somehow. Because again, it was incontiguous.

The worst part was, it jumped randomly. If it jumped from grid A1 to grid A2 that’d be make sense at least, since both grids were neighbor and he could simply wrote it off as neighboring behavior. But no. The mana flow randomly. For example just yesterday he observed that on [Create Distilled Water] as the mana flow to A1 to B1 which connected to C2 to D3, the mana on A2 which incontiguous to A1 flared. Without so much sign whether it came from A1 (the closest neighbor), from C4 (the second rank neighbor), or B3 (the last place where the mana flowed normally). It just jumped. Unbelievable.

Then there were facts that the whole analysis, jotting down all of the spell geometric was ...taxing. Apparently looking at a geometric too closely was akin to manual breathing. At one point you better know what you were doing because if you do it, the system would stop holding your hand. And needless to say, the whole ensemble just collapse at that point.

He sighed. It was untenable — very untenable. He needed a source of information. Something like a library. Yes. Library of magical knowledge. Surely in this magic-filled world, someone had worked out the basics. Maybe that academy, the one that Restia kept talking about. Not tomorrow of course, he would need a rest from today ordeal. Not next week also, he still wanted to maintain his customer base. Perhaps next weekend. After the weekly —

“Young master...”

“Jeane?” he lifted his head. The maid was standing right beside him, breaking his train of thought. Huh. When did she come?

“You asked me to remind you to have lunch, young master.” the young woman said.

“Oh, right.” he nodded. He did ask her that...

The lunch would be the main thing on the ‘picnic’ of the ‘picnic rundown’ he had promised Clar. Actually, his working here, he glanced down at his notes, was a bit of a letdown. He had prepared board games; checker, chess, he even commissioned a monopoly in case the formers were not as interesting. Just so they could play together. Eating good food, enjoying the scenery.

But as it turned out the girl was more interested in physical thing. She had been running around like there was no tomorrow with Leo. And quite happily also. So since the purpose of this trip, well, for the girl’s enjoyment, what more could he say?

“But isn’t this still too early?” he arched his eyebrow. He was sure just one round of the bell had tolled, not two. And sure, closing his eyes for a bit, his [Internal Clock] told him that it was 11:12, almost fifty minutes too early even they ate right on the bell.

“Yes young master, but we need to call the [Gardener]... Today is a bit crowded than usual.” she turned her head around. “Better to call them now young master, otherwise we may need to be more ...generous,” she said.

“Calling a [Gardener], Jeane? Sorry,” —he tilted his head— ”why do we need to call a [Gardener]?”

“Ah?” she paused. Looked almost confused, she lifted her head. “...Clar and Leo, young master. They are playing in t—that place.”

“You mean there?” he pointed toward the installation, the beautiful garden part which he now termed as ‘art terrarium’. Huh, now there was a tinge of seafoam green. Was that the sun? Or the mana? Interesting.

Still looking at it, he found Clar and Leo by the berry tree. Both seemed done playing and were nuzzling with each other. And of course, he groaned, pits were scattered all around them, the girl must eat like twenty of those berries. “Why would you need a gardener, Jeane?” he asked again, standing up. “I could call them from her—”

“Young master!”

“Wha—”

He stiffened. His vision turned black and flesh red. Leaving but pinhole of light scattered.

“J—Jeane?” he managed to ask. Swallowing the worse expletive of ‘what the hell’.

The maid literally jumped at him. His notes, few that were still on the table must be sprawled right now. He remembered the content of course, he was stuck and it was like three hours old. But it would be a pain to rewrite it again — still…

There must be a reason. Yes. A good reason why her hand was grasping his eyes tight right now.

“You shouldn’t see it directly young master!”

“...okay,” he said, slowly. Acceding to her demand, he closed his eyes, grasped her hand, and nodded in assurance. Once, twice, he turned his head sideways. Once he did that, the maid’s rapid breath began to take a longer interval, her gasp and thump eased. Her hand, her tight hand — loosen. Fingers by fingers, stiffen straight to gaping bent.

Light streamed from the gap, leaving his closed eye bursting with dark flesh red of his eyelids. The moments were like forever. Passing ever so slow. It was five seconds later when the young woman was calm enough (at least that was what he thought) to withdrew her hand from his face, leaving a rough and warm mark.

“So…” he said, opening his eyes, but sideway still. “Could you tell me what was that?”

“S—sorry, young master!”

“This — this, this maid shoul—shouldn’t have done that! This maid — this maid…”

“Calm down, calm down,” Oh lord, another panic attack. “Take a deep breath.”

“*Huff*, *huff*“

The seconds passed. Then the minutes. The young woman had opened and closed her eyes several times, wincing, turning her head, before settling down. Unfortunately, instead of calm, she settled down into panic. He could almost guess what was inside her head. Over the green turf and hanging on the table corner were his sprawled, ink-blotted notes. The quill broke on the tip and at least three papers were crumpled or torn.

Oh, dear.

It was not after five minutes later after another round of fervent apologies, assurance that it was okay, and of course, picking the papers up that the maid finally managed to ramble something coherent.

“Lost?”

“Yes, young master, only children and [Gardeners] allowed on the garden. Otherwise, you’ll be lost…”

“...what kind of ‘lost’ here?” he said, making an air quote. He meant the garden like what, thirty by thirty?

“You wouldn’t be able to talk or move, young master…” she fiddled her thumb. “You’d just ...dream. Not capable doing anything…”

What??

“My previous lady had a neighbor, Lady Fair. Her housekeeper Mrs. Morte was staring at the thing. And — and she got lost,” she said almost whispering. As if whatever lurked on the terrarium could hear her.

“The maid must feed her, bathe her, clothe her when she was dreaming. They even had to help the old woman with — with ...her business, young master.” she winced at the last part.

“That — that.” he stiffen. “Are you sure Clar and Leo fine???” he almost turned his head. “That dangerous! I—if you know that, why would you let them play there?!” his voice rose, almost screaming.

“It — it was fine, young master!” the maid bowed even deeper. “The spirits like children. They wouldn’t do anything to Clar...” she said.

“Like children?”

“Yes!”

“...all right,” he said. “All right…”

“But t—that still dangerous. Why would the town let something like that stood so openly?”

“...most people only gone for three days, young master. And it was pleasant dream, not nightmare. That was why the spirit was tolerated. And the place was useful in a way. Something about the magic on the place, I don’t really know young master, just what the Town officials said.”

“Okay… But — but wait.” he rapidly touching his chin. “I saw it, Jeane. I saw it for ten minutes — sorry, two wicks.” he checked his [Internal Clock]. “And I sure wasn’t lost.”

“That because he over thirty five, girl.”

He almost jumped. Behind him as he swiveled was a woman. Middle-aged almost in her forties. Her robe was flowing green, her voice clipped. In her hand was a walking stick made of dark wood.

“Servants this day.” she shook her head, squinting toward Jeane. “You should have managed your master better.”