Maybe her intended purpose was right in front of her. The science. She'd been fiddling with this pen design off and on all week, and started to realize that both the ink and the tiny metal ball were inadequate. It was one thing to know about a device and quite another to be able to build it!

But there were still discoveries to make. Selen switched to another project she'd been wanting to try. She filled a basin with water and fetched an empty beaker, first. ("Beaker" was another of those puns nobody but her could appreciate.) She added a little salt, clamped the empty bottle upside-down in the water, and used both her hands to perform magic.

With her improving skill, she still couldn't shoot lightning, but she could create voltage. Probably. She sank both sets of finger-talons into the basin and tried electrifying it. Her hands tingled as she tried to contain the energy without hurting herself this time. Sure enough, there was a distinct sense of energy flow between her hands rather than a vague "lightning power", and the liquid seemed to boil. Instead of growing hot, bubbles rose. She kept the spell going for as long as her Mana held out, several minutes of continuous low-level zapping. When the blue glow of Mana exhaustion obscured her vision, she said, "I'm a nine-volt bird-ery!" and carefully pulled her bottle out.

"If my hypothesis is correct, this beaker is now full of explodium." She had been separating water into its components of oxygen and hydrogen, capturing the latter and a bit of chlorine from the salt, and she could now use it for a variety of experiments she wasn't equipped to do. Or she could just set it on fire, but her family probably wouldn't appreciate that.

She carefully took it down to the basement, held upside-down in a metal stand. That was a tricky task since she had to hop over the section of stairway the family kept retracted at night. But she made it down, to weigh her bottled treasure on the postal scale. She frowned. "Not sensitive enough to tell."

"Now what are you doing?" asked the Centaur employee, yawning and trotting over to her. Young Newroot wore silly-looking hoof slippers and a matching pajama blanket over his silvery hide and chest.

Selen looked down at the scale. "Trying to measure a bottle of special air."

"Special magic stuff?"

"Not really. See..." She tried to come up with an explanation.

Newroot chuckled. "I can't sleep either. Want to go for a walk?"

"In the city streets?"

"Just around the Shrike. And I'll kick anybody who bothers you." He thumped his chest.

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Selen feather-smiled and nodded. She went outside to turn her beaker right-side up and let its little mystery escape into the moonlit night.

"Going for an Alchemy level?" asked Newroot, as they walked away.

"I think so. Oh, it's your birthday tomorrow, isn't it?" She was pleased with herself for not forgetting after Tradewind told her this morning.

"Yeah. Then it's training time for me!" He paused, staring at nothing. "Ha! Just got the System message. I guess I was born at night, so I'm eligible now."

Selen offered a hug, and he accepted. It was strange to feel something like Human arms around her again, and she leaned up to rest her head on his shoulder. "Congrats."

"It's been great living with your family, Selen. I don't know what I would have done otherwise. Gone down the river and looked for a place, I guess. But then Ma would've been alone."

All of the family's downstairs employees were a rotating cast of foundlings of one sort of another. None but Selen were formally adopted, and Bluemoon pretended he was only keeping them around as cheap labor, but Selen knew he was funding a party for Newroot tomorrow.

Selen walked around the Shrike Tavern with him, listening to his muffled hoofbeats. "I'm glad you've been here. I've been feeling like I'm not from around here, myself, and I can't tell Dad or anybody without sounding crazy."

"You did get quiet about whatever happened to you. But you said you remember things?"

"There's more to it than that, but yeah." She paused, and blushed under her feathers. "Listen. Nobody in the whole world has ever heard this."

She began to sing, if not very well. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."

After a verse, she felt Newroot staring, and looked up into his eyes. He said, "What language is that?"

"It's called English. It means... something I don't feel qualified to try translating. But I remember stories, too, that nobody's ever heard."

"Like what?"

She reached for something easy and fun. "I'm not sure how this lines up. It's got different kinds of people in it, made-up ones. Guess I could name them using the real races. So. Once, there was a little Vulin living in a hill, comfortable and rich. One day a mighty Human with a robe and wizard hat showed up and asked if he'd like to go on a quest..."

Newroot listened, his ears flicking back and forth, but then he laughed when Selen got to an early scene. "Well, that doesn't translate! Don't go telling it that way around any Kobolds."

"Why not?"

"Don't you know? Kobolds are all crazy for Dragons. You're describing it like the gang of Kobolds barged into the guy's house and recruited him to kill their gods."

She blinked. "I had no idea. Have to add it to my giant list of mysteries to solve." Come to think of it, she'd missed a hint about that when being offered those other lives to live.

"Hey, you don't have to keep it all to yourself. Even if it seems crazy, some of the music and storytelling is probably worth showing off."

She looked into the sky. The Silver Moon was high and full, almost like a warm Earthly night, reflecting brightly on her feathers. The lesser Copper Moon peeked out from a cloud. "You're right. Thanks."

"We should probably get home, though."

"Yeah."

They turned and trotted back to the Two Hoots. Newroot grinned and suggested, "If the Alchemy thing doesn't work and you want to tick off your family, tell them you want to be a Bard!"

She laughed as they parted ways.