Tafel exhaled as she put down the papers in her hand. Sometimes, she was jealous of warriors. They didn’t have to stay behind desks, charting and writing things down; all they had to do was swing their swords and train their bodies. They didn’t have to perform complex calculations to figure out a region’s spatial coordinates. Then again, the extra work she had to put in let her do things warriors could only dream about. Tafel’s horns glowed silver, and a portal appeared beside her. On the other side of the portal, she saw Vur … not sleeping?

Tafel put aside her plans to construct her cache. If she needed to store things, Auntie’s pocket was always available. It was just a bit troublesome to store living things inside of it, an issue that didn’t exist with a spatial cache. Tafel tidied up her papers and left them in the corner of her desk which she had found in a neighboring tree. In fact, there was a whole room up in the neighboring tree’s branches, and Tafel claimed it as her personal space. “Vur, what are you doing?”

“Gluing an egg together,” Vur said. His hands were held in front of his chest, his elbows bent. It looked like he was holding a jacket open for someone to put on, but instead of a jacket, white threads were coming out of his hands instead. The threads were wrapped around and manipulating eggshell fragments on the floor in front of him. “Garlic broke his on accident.”

Tafel wasn’t quite sure Vur’s last sentence made sense, so she asked a question to clarify. “Garlic?”

Vur’s pinky wiggled, and a thread looped around a small, blue caterpillar before lifting it up. The caterpillar wriggled and shouted, “Hey! Being lifted by a thread is embarrassing! Put me down! I’m afraid of heights!”

Vur’s pinky drooped, and the caterpillar landed safely on the ground. It wasn’t very difficult considering it had only been lifted a couple of feet. Vur turned his head towards Tafel. “This is Garlic.”

“It hatched?” Tafel asked, raising an eyebrow. “That was awfully quick.” She squatted down by the caterpillar and blinked upon seeing how large it was compared to the eggshells around it. “Why is it so small, and why did you name it Garlic?”

“He came out too early,” Vur said as two pieces of eggshell were combined and stuck together by the silken threads. “I didn’t name it. Garlic named himself.” He gestured towards the motionless ant pupa with his head. “Her name is Ginger.”

“Garlic and Ginger,” Tafel said, looking at Vur with a blank expression. “Are you sure you didn’t name them? Their names sure do sound tasty.”

Vur nodded. “I didn’t give them a name in case I wanted to eat them,” he said, “but since they have names now…, should I just eat a tiny part of them?” He shrugged before continuing to repair the egg. With how many strands of thread he was controlling at once, it didn’t take long to recreate two halves of the egg. The two halves flew down and trapped Garlic inside before being bound together again. The final result was an egg half-covered in white threads. It looked like the head of a person who had suffered an injury and was bound with multiple bandages. The egg flew up into Vur’s hands thanks to the thread, and he lightly tossed it from hand to hand before putting it down. “Not bad.”

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“Not bad? It’s horrible in here! The lighting is completely messed up!” Somehow, Garlic poked his tiny head out of the egg through a patch of silken threads. “Everything used to be one continuous color, but now, there’s cracks everywhere! It’s like I’m sleeping in a broken mirror. Have you seen your reflection in a cracked mirror before? It’s weird!”

“How does it know what a mirror is?” Tafel asked and glanced around the room. The elves must’ve woken up looking like angels and superstars because they didn’t have makeup tables or even mirrors around.

Vur pointed at his head. “It has the experiences of its ancestors stored inside its mind to help guide it as it grows,” he said.

“Hey! Are you calling me an it now just because I’m inside my egg again?” Garlic asked. “I’m still Garlic. I’m still an individual, and I won’t let you call me an it. That’s very disrespectful.”

Vur ignored the caterpillar, maintaining eye contact with Tafel. “Garlic says he’ll hatch faster if he experiences new things that even his ancestors haven’t experienced before.”

Tafel stared at the repaired egg. Garlic was still poking his head out of it like a worm coming out of a rotten apple. “And you’re saying he hasn’t hatched already?” Tafel raised an eyebrow. “If an animal can survive outside of its egg, doesn’t that mean it’s ready to hatch? Why did he go back inside?”

Vur shrugged. “Maybe it’s comfier inside of there,” he said. “Garlic wouldn’t stop crying until I told him I’d fix his egg.”

“I wasn’t crying, excuse you,” Garlic said, waving his tiny little legs in the air. “I was voicing my displeasure in a way that’d solve my problems! My dad taught me how to do that. Mom says he’s a whiny little—oop, shouldn’t finish that sentence. Thanks, Grandpa.” The caterpillar cleared its throat. “Anyway, if you want to raise Ginger and me properly, then the best way to do that is climb the tower and explore each floor to completion! There’s lots of things hidden away on every floor of the tower and discovering those things will be great nutrients for me!”

“I thought dragon drool was enough to raise the ant pupa—Ginger, sorry,” Tafel said, changing the way she addressed the pupa upon seeing Garlic ball up his little legs into fists. She looked at Vur. “I’m almost done with everything I need to do. I’ll finish by tomorrow at the latest. When Auntie gets back from issuing that mission to find Mary, we’ll make our way to the ninety-first floor. Sounds good?”

Vur nodded. After thinking for a bit, he picked up the caterpillar egg and passed it to Tafel. The demon received it with a confused expression on her face. Vur nodded again. “You can take care of it for now. Watching you will help it grow.”

Tafel glanced down at the caterpillar egg in her hand. Garlic’s head was out, and he was beaming at her while waving one leg. “You just don’t want to take care of it, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Vur said, his expression serious. “I’m going back to sleep, and Garlic is very noisy.” He picked up the ant pupa. “I’ll take care of Ginger.”