(II)

My foul mood kept a hold of me the entire rest of the day all the way through dinner. I didn't let it colour my interactions with anyone, I could have mustered that much self-control even before the Light made it a trivial matter. But it always sucked suffering alone. The Handy Trio wasn't there to lighten the mood either, we three always dined alone after Dad came back from his latest… I guess delegation is as good a word as any for what he did. My business arrangements were the family business at the end of the day. Keeping the details in house was just common sense.

"Nobody said anything straight up," Dad said between forkfuls of lamb. "But the painters wondered very loudly nearby when they'll hear word back on that new glaze, the weavers asked me to convey their 'request' not to forget about some dye, the bakers gave me an ounce of that baking soda for 'testing', and that's just the top of what I've got in my satchel. Most of them didn't even know all that stuff came from us! No, everyone just wanted to get up my arse about 'sparing the Master Alchemist a trip, would you kindly', as if I couldn't tell they meant the exact opposite, bloody vultures."

This was going well beyond comically missing the point. "How the hell can people still not know when it's something of ours? I did meet everyone partnered with us in person. I get that they probably didn't bring up my youth to preserve their own credibility, but I'd think my products have proven themselves enough by now. Is it just because we're not nobility? Or in spite of it?" People would have a bug down their shirt if they had to pretend awe and praise at 'bright' child nobles on the regular, but still. "Do people think I can't do anything but glow in the dark or something?"

"It's a lot worse than that," Dad said, stirring his broth. "Everyone and their grandmother take me for the upstart messenger of his 'excellency' Ferdie Gasi, the 'eccentric genius recluse'." Dad had taken to air quoting with a vengeance ever since I first did it. "Fucking ridiculous."

As with all things, I come even by my swearing honestly. I looked at him sympathetically. "They still hate that they have to treat with their old shoemaker, don't they?"

Dad grinned wolfishly. "And I'll never let them forget it."

Good for him. Why there even was such prejudice I could barely understand, shoemaking wasn't exactly a lowly profession. But I suppose people will always look down on the guy they remember going down on his knees at their feet, even if it was just for fitting and measurements. Still though… "I still don't get this whole confusion about me."

"Why, son, you only needed to ask!"

Apparently, despite the way I tossed the Light around to dissuade further reprisals from hired blades just last year, general opinion ranged from me being two or three different people with little to no connection to each other. Well. "I guess I can see businessmen encouraging that schadenfreude."

"What the hell even is that word?"

"Pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune."

"Oh. Yeah, I can definitely appreciate having a special word just for that."

"Happy to help," I nodded. "Oh well, if this is all the 'ill' we have to endure, so much the better."

"Maybe not," Dad grumbled, drinking his glass of our very own apple wine. "Things around the market were tenser than usual, and this time it isn't just the nobles up to their old feuds again." He gave me a serious look. "There hasn't been a single Stromgarde trader passing through for nigh on two months."

Crap. "… I suppose it was naïve to hope we would be the one lucky generation to get away without a border war in our lifetime."

"General Hath is rumoured to be conducting new patrols," Dad said dryly. "Increased bandit activity and night-time sightings, apparently."

"Bloody Alterac," I bit into my meat. "I bet this kind of nonsense doesn't happen in Stormwind."

"Speaking of nonsense, the hunter's kid waylaid me two hours out of Alterac City, that boy's gonna surpass his old man soon, mark my words." Jensen Farran. Another name I was beginning to recall from the other world. Wasn't he also in Theramore? A fletcher and hunter, just like his father was now. "Your associates that are in the know hired him to send a message. They want a meeting. In person with you. Discreetly." Dad's look was somewhere between irritated and worried. "As in 'don't make the nobles suspicious' discreetly."

I blinked incredulously. "They do remember I'm a walking Light flare, right? And that I haven't tried to claim responsibility for the gunpowder openly? There's a reason I scour the property every night and morning." Technically I didn't need more physical training, but jogging never hurt anyone except interlopers. Of which there had been some, in the early months. Whether bandits or 'bandits' I wasn't sure because even the couple I managed to hold back to 'chat' didn't agree on whether their boss was a 'bandit' or bandit. I made certain to smite all of them extra hard regardless. Distance was just a suggestion when the Light was involved.

"Well, they kindly but firmly ask you to make an effort this time." Dad handed me a missive. "That's the details."

I took and read it. Gratifyingly, it was to take place in the very first building made with my Roman concrete mix, hot-mixed quicklime and everything. Why they expected the location to qualify as 'discreet' was beyond me, but I'll freely admit I didn't have a hand on the pulse of Alterac, unlike businessmen who literally needed to in order to last more than a year. More significantly, they left it up to me when to show up so long as it was within the next two weeks. They provided details for who and how to contact to have the meeting called. There was a special mention to come prepared to stay overnight, to give everyone time to be informed and come together the following morning. I was even directed to a particular tavern where my anticipated expenses were already covered.

I pondered the words. Closed my eyes and looked to the Light. I envisioned myself complying with everything in the letter and felt no dire warning. At least, none that I would prefer over the alternative. Whatever it was. I did, however, sense the approaching likelihood of some manner of endangered opportunity. But it wasn't centred on the missive or any events set to occur as a result of it. It felt more like something that was proceeding towards some sort of conclusion… mid-way through. Whatever that meant. Whether in terms of time, distance or urgency, I couldn't say. That was as specific as my foresight got without a nice sit down to contemplate some proper parameters. I opened my eyes. "Whatever this is, it's serious. Even the city-dwelling freemen of Alterac don't cavalierly try to skirt anything past the nobles, guild-connected or otherwise."

"Well, it'll still keep for a bit," Mother said with the first words I'd heard from since noon. "You give yourself some time to calm down. Sleep on it and decide tomorrow, or the day after."

I smiled weakly at her. She was right that I wasn't going to contemplate anything when I was like this. "I'm not that obvious, am I?" The Light would soothe me if I sunk into it, but I didn't want nullity of mind right now, I wanted understanding.

"Not at all, I'm just that perceptive, don't you know." She absently rubbed her belly. Her pregnancy didn't show yet, but the little ones were coming along nicely to my sight. "Pregnant woman's intuition."

I snorted. "You'd have been able to tell even without those two seeing things."

"Yes, but do let me salve your pride, son, not every mother's willing to do it."

"Why thank you, kind woman."

Mother nodded sagely, then got up from the table and disappeared into the kitchen to… do something involving the oven. Seeing through walls is not an exact science, especially when you can only see life, and not all kinds if they're close together enough. Certain lives were very bright compared to others. Like me. And Narett for that matter.

I experienced the sudden brainwave of the common sense problem-solving approach. "Hey Dad, do you suppose that people think Narett is Ferdie Gasi? And this is just his latest scheme to take up a new identity to hide his increasingly obvious immortality?"

"Say what now?"

Huh. Apparently, alchemy being all about achieving immortality was not, in fact, an open secret here like it was back on Earth. Oops? Good thing it was just the two of us now.

Dinner ended in something approaching mixed feelings, which was a long way from how pissed I was going in. Unfortunately, the moment I remembered that was when my foul mood returned.

Rather than ruin anything in addition to just my mood, I made sure to waste all of said foul mood on doing precisely nothing but glare impotently at the 'black dragon.' At least until the steam elementals snuck in to play with me. They sensed bad moods like dogs and cats, but instead of doing the self-preservation thing and making themselves scarce, they continued to do like dogs and cats and tried to make it better in their own way. For all that they drove me up the wall, they weren't completely hopeless all the time.

On a whim I retrieved Narett's gift and decided to sound out a few phrases. Surprise surprise, they actually understood some things from both Ignan and Aquan. Did this mean I had only summoned them? Or did elemental spirits possess language ex nihilo? Considering what complex craziness some animals got up to without anyone teaching them, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter. These were spirits in the end, they were definitely more in tune with that part of the self that provides living creatures with instinct and intuition. If a spider can build a web so complex and a queen bee can run a hive mind straight out of the pupa, then possession of language from conception was probably the least of what a spiritual entity could inherently accomplish.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I remembered then that, contrary to what biologists would claim, there were more than five senses. The discernment of the mood of a room was not a matter of scent, sight, sound, taste, or touch. It was something you experienced on an instinctual level. The pall of dread and the warmth of acceptance were both easier to experience than to explain. The malice of barely-suppressed violence often prompted thinking with one's feet.

Case in point, my steam boys only needed me to stumble through three dozen phrases and sentences before they figured out how to communicate with me.

~Hunger. Response. Surprise.~

It was half words, half projective intuition. But though I could only make up around 10% of the former, the latter made up for it enough to finally make progress. I didn't even know projective intuition was a thing, though I probably should have, how else would telepathy work? Maybe it was all the patience from playing doctor for Dad, but eventually I managed to figure out how to ask them the fundamentals. Strangely, though, their ability (or willingness?) to reply intelligibly was somewhat arbitrarily disproportional to how simple I made my queries. Which is to say, simple straightforward stuff returned less of a meaningful response than groupings of prompts and intentions. In the end, as with most things, the best things came in threes.

"How do you feel? What do you want? What can you do?"

~Hunger. Curiosity. Excitement.~

Even they weren't sure. They could 'recall' a lot of the grander feats of the larger spirits, but could do little in their current state of starvation. I asked if I could do something about that and they informed me that no amount or quality of steam would work, the only option was eating other elementals. When I asked why, they could only convey it had always been that way. Feeling like I should have something to say but unable to figure out what, I changed the subject and asked if they had names. That's when things spiralled into tragedy.

"Name. Identity. What do I call you?"

Apparently, they didn't have any.

"Explain, elaborate, clarify."

~Hunger. Resignation. Fatalism.~

In the hierarchical structure of elementals, you only got a name when you distinguished yourself somehow. Usually by surviving where the rest of your peers didn't, generally by eating other types of elementals or those aforementioned peers themselves before they did it to you. Even then, you weren't allowed to name yourself because elementals had so little going for them that they took personal offense when even the paltry right to name their minions was denied them.

"That's terribly sad. I'm sorry. You deserve better."

~Hunger. Fatalism. Acceptance.~

Just the first glimpse into the life cycle of elemental spirits and I was already contemplating cultural imperialism. The entire way of life was so self-defeating that the elementals of Azeroth were practically suicidal from birth. I was particularly distressed to learn that merging together was practically death to all but the one identity that predominated. Splitting apart again gave birth to new beings, it didn't restore the old ones.

The worst part was that the little critters were so matter of fact about it.

I took some solace in knowing that the many little steam puffs that had come together to form my little group of nine cloudlings hadn't been sapient starting out. Sentience was worth mourning all by itself, but at least they hadn't been people. Not that eating your young made me feel any better, but it was a common enough thing in nature that I could get over it quicker than I might otherwise have.

I called on the Light to soothe them in every way I could think of. Nothing worked. I did manage to bolster their will somewhat, so at least I improved their psychological ability to cope with their wretched condition. But the hunger remained, a gnawing pit of spirit-breaking misery that was always there. I needed a different approach, but what?

It was to the scene of me trying and failing to persuade my nameless dependents that cannibalism did, in fact, have objectively negative consequences that Mother came into the room. Then she promptly dropped her second favorite stone slate right in front of me. There was a solid layer of black dragon spread over it, calcined into a citrine colour very glorious to behold.

I gaped.

Mother pulled a chair over and sat across from me.

I stared.

Mother primly placed her hands over each other in her lap and waited.

I closed my mouth and swore. "Oh this is such bullshit."

"Wayland! How can a saint ever spout such things?"

She wasn't even being sarcastic. "With abundant experience." And I wasn't sarcastic either. "Is this why you were so absent during dinner?" I didn't just mean that metaphorically, she was quiet and she also left the table and dining room repeatedly, not just the once at the end. "Alright, how did you manage this, because Mom? I am veritably seething in jealousy right now."

"No you aren't, you're just exaggerating." Well, the second part was true- "My son does not get jealous. You get frustrated when you're the only one who sees the best path forward."

Well gosh. "How did you do this?"

"By doing what the alchemist told you to do. Half of it I got from listening to your grousing though, so you can see that the result is not strictly perfect."

"Go ahead and don't hold anything back why don't you." Now I sounded like Dad. "Maybe Narett had the right idea after all – you should become his apprentice."

"Maybe I will, after your brothers are grown."

Well. I wasn't about to argue with those priorities. "… Can you do this again?"

"If you like."

"Show me."

She showed me. Her execution was more or less as good as my own. The proof of her inevitable success sat next to us the whole time.

The half hour ended. The black substance did not turn a citrine colour. The black dragon was therefore not at all glorious to behold. Again.

I threw my hands and turned away in disgust.

Mother, however, looked everything but surprised. "Son, if there's anything I know about you, it's that you have a very particular way to look at the world-"

"The Observer Effect does not account for this!" Did she think I hadn't considered it? It was the first thing I thought of! But this wasn't like checking the pressure on a tire, the Observer Effect barely ever mattered unless you were trying to watch quantum phenomena! Even if I had been looking beyond the surface – which I wasn't – I could barely see below the molecular level on my best day. I did have expectations about what should be happening down there, I was a materials scientist for crying out loud, I knew everything from new element creation in particle accelerators to what happens when photons pass through rhubidium gas. But that didn't change the fact that the observer effect doesn't work when you're not observing-

"I don't know what that means," Mom said idly, cutting off my mental rant with the ease of long experience. "But I trust you, son. If you say that's not it, it's not it."

I stopped. I looked at her, not strictly surprised by the sentiment as by the way she just threw it out there. "You expected this to happen. You already knew I'm altering the results somehow."

"I didn't know, but honestly, what else could be happening?

I did not contemplate heresy in frustration. "I don't know, you tell me."

"As I said, you have a very particular way to look at the world." She repeated herself, which made me feel chagrined. Far too belatedly, I needed to be more mindful about that. "It's not a bad way, mind, it earned us all of this." She gestured to our home and beyond. "But I don't think you're quite as willing to acknowledge how much the world turns around you in turn. I don't know what this 'observer effect' means to you, but what I'm sure of is that, even if it were, it wouldn't be the only thing happening." Mother looked at me fondly then. "It's never just one thing with you."

"… I don't know if that's praise or an insult."

"Call it an observation. Now let me remind you that you always say not to think ourselves in circles. You're not one to neglect taking your own advice, but this may just be the exception that proves that very good rule of yours. Something to think of, yes? I'm going to work on your father's new shirt."

And she walked off.

I stood alone in my workshop, only the psychic hunger pangs of my steam elementals for company. I should really do something about that but I didn't know what. Not yet. But maybe…

I looked at the spirits. I felt something niggling at the back of my memory, past the eon of dreaming death to the trivia of a life long past.

"Take my own advice, huh?"

Easy enough to do.