6.5

Jewel no longer risked falling over as she walked.

Her legs and back finally had the strength to hold her true. She was not yet confident enough to run as she saw some children her size do.

She didn't like how precarious she felt on just two legs at that speed even if she mostly was able to avoid losing her balance.

Still the victory was there Jewel could walk and stand on her own and her arms now moved more or less then she wished them too.

She could grasp and lift things with her hands, although not as well as she remembered doing with her larger wyrm self at this age.

She was even managing a few of the simplest flight cants, although her lack of wings made her feel almost as badly muffled as her tiny throat.

It was there that Jewel still strived the hardest.

She could produce a wide range of sounds, Gurgle and cry, Yet speech and words yet eluded her.

Things simply did not flex or open the way she had learned to do it.

She could trill a bit and mostly hit all the right tones and pitches, but the control was absent to actually shape those much more.

The rumbling growls in her throat could not be cut off to make any sharp stops besides sloppy clicks.

“Icha!”

It didn't sound anything like Smithson’s name but it was the closest sound she could make and many attempts had settled into her Squire recognizing it was her word for him.

“Hmm? Yes little Gem? Do you need something?”

When she had the clarity of hearing and knowing of her larger self Jewel disliked the way he pitched his voice like that.

But when they were alone together it made it a lot easier to follow the words. No matter how much it seemed demeaning otherwise, She appreciated it for the kindness it was.

There was so much noise to discern and focus on and lose even clearly spoken words in the muddle. Her tiny head felt like it was constantly being filled to overflowing some times for all the ways that sounds just seemed to catch in it like burs in sheep wool.

Her vision and hearing had ceased blurring up over the last year, changing along with her limbs lengthening and muscles strengthening. But instead of relief the clarity turned into an endless pouring of details and confusion bombarding her every sense.

Sounds.

Sights.

Scents.

Tastes.

Without her larger self all of them flowed over her and pulled at her attention in every single way.

Without the stability of her wyrm body and memory she drifted constantly. Following motes of dust in a sunbeam too the sound of trickling water off the manor houses’ roof in snowmelt.

Amid all of that, words sounded muttered or mumbled even in what she knew were normal speaking tones. Against the catching hooks of everything around her without the infantilizing pitch shift in smithson’s words his speech could be utterly lost.

“Gem? Focus girl... what did you want?”

And that was the other reason Jewel loved her dear squire.

He was strong, he caught her when she fell, he could see when she lost the pattern-

“Gem?”

Jewel shook herself out and nodded hard, then gently reached up to grasp a few of her squire’s fingers in her tiny hand.

Her squire’s attention and hand secure, she began walking, gently tugging him along.

Her legs were longer but still short, her head barely was much higher then Smithson’s mid thigh. The simple babe smock she wore billowed out around and over her swinging tail.

She could just about get the cloth smock over her own head without assistance now, but her horns and the awkwardness of her shoulders still meant Smithson needed to assist her when she had to change.

Which had been embarrassing the first time but honestly Jewel was mostly used to it now.

Her squire walked with her, taking a few short steps for every four paces of Jewel’s.

They moved through the looming vast hallways her larger self required for basic comfort.

As foggy as her mind still could be however Jewel knew the way in her own home.

Most of the time.

For his part Smithson did not try to fill the silence between them. He knew Jewel was frustrated with her awkward speech. She could tell he appreciated her using crude, improper words to draw attention and make requests but did not force her.

Occasionally he had tried to help her speak words correctly but if simply watching and trying to imitate him as he spoke would have solved her speech difficulties she would have been reciting ballads by now.

Probably.

She could not in fact actually remember them as well as when her greater self was close.

But she had been able to remember the song during the darkest night.

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Not able to say the words but she sang the feeling of them.

And that had been a wonderful discovery.

Because it had given Jewel’s smaller body something she desperately wanted.

She could once again and for the first time hold her wyrmflame inside herself!

The near full season it had taken for it to drain entirely out of her left Jewel pained and worried. Chilled in a way that only the absence of her flame could ever feel.

And she thought she remembered it right from the time Tsulogothulan explained it while watching the flame slowly dissipate and fade.

But the Weird was much harder to understand without her wyrmself.

Not as bad as the absolute silence of the stones, air and world at large when Jewel’s smaller body was alone.

But the Wizard made even less sense than the mumbly resonant voices of the other adults.

Adults.

Jewel was an adult, and yet she was also a child.

She didn't even measure up to Smithson’s belt with the tips of her horns!

She had to reach up to grasp his fingers!

And only a few would actually fit in her palm.

Jewel was so small and she was a child and it had been a long two and a half mostly bleary years for her to accept that.

She couldn't speak.

She was only just getting enough confidence in the strength of her shoulders and the suppleness of her motions to make the crudest flight cant.

Not enough to be understood clearly by anyone.

Not yet.

But her Squire was there with her.

Smithson made it all better.

Paul too, although he was much less confident around her.

He put on a brave and assured face when both of her bodies were together, but he deferred entirely to Smithson in absence of Jewel’s larger body.

The one time he had tried holding her had been a very uncomfortable experience for both of them.

He was so utterly unsure of himself she feared he would drop her.

And where that would have been nothing when she was a Wyrm, Jewel the wyrm spawn child had already had a very painful experience with even slight falls.

The sheer pain of a mere tumble had left her in a mortifying combination of inconsolable sobbing and screeching like a stuck pig.

But Smithson was there with her, even when she was still too shaky to walk with assurance he would not let her fall.

And he like the proper squire and friend he was helped her.

He kept her fed, he made sure she stayed clean and was always patient.

Cleanliness was a challenge beyond all the awful new sticky things she had to worry about. It required something not quite the same as either the care for a babe or a dragon.

Her scales were far softer than her larger self’s. But they were also by no means as tender as her sister Gwenna’s skin.

Even when not fortified by her true self’s wyrm flame.

They needed care to stay shining, to make sure the occasional peeling didn't hurt her or look unseemly.

That she didn't get stuck too stiff to move.

And Smithson was there with her to learn about these new challenges for her care and help with all of it.

There was truly no one that gave greater service or comfort for Jewel when she had to be separate and small like this then her Squire.

It made her feel warm and happy when he was close in a way almost as good as the safety of the flame coursing through her body.

And course it did!

Retained and held by Jewel now via a slight focus of attention. Not shaped as finely or specifically as how it had laid inside her after the longest night, but present all the same.

Those weaving threads of living fire had broken when at last their vital heat had run dry inside her, without the divine working as a scaffold she could not find how to recreate it.

But even without its heating structure Jewel could still hold the vital flame within.

Keep it stored inside pulsing over almost two full days if needed.

That had interested Tsulogothulan somehow?

Jewel was not sure, it made sense to her larger self but did not quite come clear in her smaller head.

Something true about it, but also different.

Jewel was happy just to hold the comfort of her larger self close and sustained longer than the brief hour that she had before the darkest night.

That it might one day lead to workings she could perform with it was of hardly any interest compared to the sheer relief she could feel in both her hearts to no longer have to suffer in the absence of wyrmflame.

Finally they reached Jewel’s study. Where her larger self was not, because today she would be visiting with Mother and Father.

Paul was also not present, instead about in the village she thought? but that was no concern.

Smithson had been given the right to enter these chambers. And it's not like the footmen in Valasect were plentiful enough to waste time barring the way.

Her Squire opened the vast towering door for Jewel. Letting her gently pull him into her study with its fine high windows that tinted the spring light with murky disks of glass.

She walked over to a shelf that if she was her full self was just right for reaching over to pluck things from while laying against the fine stones of the floor.

Jewel released Smithson’s fingers and then extended with a trembling and intense concentration to keep only the one digit extended. To point at what she could not see but smelled hints of and fuzzily remembered should be there. Offering the one word she could almost manage.

“Ghok!”

As with her attempts at saying her Squire’s name it was barely more than an animal cry. But again Smithson was the best friend and servant she could hope for and had long since learned to hear past her failures.

He laughed in joy rather than derision (she trusted him too, but it was even harder to tell when she was so small what people actually meant).

Then reached beyond her sight and lifted the precious treasure of Thurzó’s gift. The venerable leather bound book of The Travel log Pythra of Veracules brought such sudden joy to Jewel she could not stop herself from squealing in glee and clapping her hands.

“Eee!”

Her Squire being of course the best Squire nodded and moved over to sit at the desk in a chair that mostly served Paul when her husband used Jewel’s study.

But today was going to serve as a place for her and Smithson to continue making their way through the Log.

They had not yet reached the point he actually spoke to The Seer of the Mountain Shialtza. But Jewel loved to hear the words written there.

She could mostly still read these days as her smaller self, although some of the letters were hard to follow.

However Smithson had grown much more confident in his letters and reading in the act of speaking what was written.

Jewel thought it good that she encouraged her squire to better himself in this.

She also loved the way he changed his voice when speaking the words of different people.

That was the second best part!