In her two-plus years as this new self, Malwine couldn’t recall having ever felt that studies-related the tension the widow had left in the distant past. It didn’t even make sense—she found most sessions with Anna Franziska to be at least engaging, despite that mana fingertrap continuing to be the bane of her existence.
Mercifully, she’d managed to avoid any repeat encounters with a certain antiquarian.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to arrange another lesson?”
“No need,” Malwine assured the woman she’d started to think of as their assigned homeroom teacher. Again, it had been so long since the widow had even been in school, that something about her newly structured education had Malwine reeling. The blend of distant familiarity and novel… schooling had her struggling to parse the whole of it. “We already learned so much. Maybe later, but I really want to keep practicing this.”
Her little sister playfully elbowed her, sporting a self-satisfied grin as they faced each other. “Told you this would be fun!”
“Sure, sure,” Malwine couldn’t help but laugh. She eyed the device—even Veit’s weird projector had been far more intuitive than this.
Not that her attempts at following the man’s advice had been going that well.
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Being left alone after Anna Franziska—and her daughter—left usually heralded the best part of her days. Perhaps that was it. As much as she didn’t dislike those relatively more mundane lessons, they couldn’t beat cultivation.
What a forester whose name was allegedly not Niemat Khödan had taught her barely qualified as a technique, as far as Malwine understood. It relied on understanding of the explanation he’d given her through that crystalline construct of his, and was meant to be implemented within the Roots at her core.
The ever so contrarian part of her mind tempted her to try and figure things out on her own, but why bother, when she had a clearly functional option right there? From what he’d let slip, Veit had a privileged upbringing, despite the family troubles.
If anyone was going to have good techniques for this, it would undoubtedly be that type of person. Success was still ways off, but they’d agreed to meet again in ten days.
Time elapsed: 73 hours.
She dismissed the pebble as swiftly as she’d summoned it. The forester hadn’t explained how it worked, and it lacked the usual descriptions of items that brought panels up when she focused on them. It appeared to be nothing else other than a magical stopwatch of unclear origin.
Malwine visualized her core. As much as it pained her, she reached for {Foresight}—not the manifestations of it within her core, but the Affinity itself. She had grown to think of it as a blueprint of sorts, based on the diagram Veit had taught her with and his suggestions as to what she should focus on.
What does your Affinity stand for? And what is it to you, specifically?
That wasn’t a hard question to answer in theory—it was simply difficult to consider the answers meaningful.
{Foresight} was some kind of Affinity geared towards predictions. Both Teach’s actions and the original description pointed to this. It was also the titular Affinity of a fell court. Much like {Ore} apparently is. A part of her wished she could redo the Katrina trial just to shout at the woman.
As for what it was to Malwine, specifically? An annoyance. The reason she was born with a curse, and no doubt a source of trouble that would follow her even if she someday managed to get rid of the curse.
But that wasn’t the answer her Affinity sought. According to Veit, understanding this part was a key step necessary for her to start detecting just what the Affinity’s passive effects were. No number on Control or Acclimation would matter if she didn’t manage to comprehend it at this level first.
It didn’t help that her mind kept wandering—just how was she supposed to know if or when she achieved this? Would there be a notification or was this one of those things that functioned purely on instinct? From what Veit had told her, she suspected the latter.
Beyond being the cause of all her problems—well, maybe not all—{Foresight} was her only connection to her absent mother. To Katrina, even. It was a tangible force, an inheritance beyond the mere implications of a blood connection.
Yet as much as she mulled it over, the breakthrough she needed had yet to come.
----------------------------------------
“You remain uninclined to share,” Veit noted. His head rested on his closed fist, on that tiny desk of his. How he fit anything into this miniature house continued to elude her, much like whatever he was hiding did. “Despite struggling?”
“What can I say? No one’s ever accused me of not being stubborn,” Malwine shrugged. “Is it one of those things that just happens with time?”
“It can, but short of some miraculously related epiphany, understanding an Affinity is something that must be done willfully.”
Malwine let out a thoughtful humph. Deciding she'd trust his expertise on that meant she had to accept this, too.
This was not one of those things where simply sitting around and waiting for it to sort itself out would work.
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Long after Adelheid and Franziska had gotten it—with that last one making Malwine feel particularly irked about how long it took—she finally had a general idea as to how the mana practice fingertrap worked.
She had not asked Anna Franziska for the thing's proper name and she had no intention of doing so.
In some ways, it wasn’t too dissimilar to revealing harvestables, in that there was a pull from it. But it tugged at her as Katrina’s obit had—even more insistently so.
Malwine let out a sharp hiss through her teeth as the fingertrap feigned accruing her full [Toll] again. She had to give it to Anna Franziska—this was certainly an excellent way to let someone know their mana control was shit. Pulling back only to try again, Malwine focused on the sensation that came with the item's activation.
It established some form of connection, just as harvestables and obits did, but it was greedy. If she didn’t want to lose from the moment she touched it, she had to actively fight its pull, and the mere act of resisting relied on a muscle she hadn’t exercised even once in her life.
She didn’t have a doubt that putting up a proper fight was possible—it was simply beyond her current capabilities..
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“Didn’t you mention dictionaries once?” Adelheid asked her one pseudo-night.
Malwine had been trying to avoid bringing it up with her little sister—there wasn’t much use in risking giving the girl a reason to worry—but Adelheid had ultimately taken it in stride.
“Yep,” she agreed. “What of it?”
“Dictionaries tell you what words mean, no?”
“They do, but—” it doesn’t work like that. Still, Malwine froze, her expression warped into a scowl. Did it not work like that? Veit had said she needed to first understand what the general meaning of the Affinity was before she could determine what it truly meant for her?
“...You’re right, I need to check those.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was a silly idea, but Malwine was more than a bit peeved she hadn’t thought of it sooner.
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That comparative draft of the seafarer language, which still sat abandoned within the family library, surprised her in that it indeed contained a mention of foresight—as a term, not an Affinity, but it had to count for something.
> Foresight / Praescientia
>
> Our word for foresight is one of the most egregious examples of lost context as the ancient Grēdôcavan tongue evolved into what it is now today. Three different dictionaries credit the seafarer terms prōvidentia and praescientia as roots for it, but the reason eludes me—even with my expertise, I cannot parse this at first glance.
>
> The fact that the definitions do not match in their entirety does not help their case, although I shall not name names for I do not intend to insult any fellow scholars. The Grēdôcavan term of ‘foresight’ stands for preparation in advance, without a prerequisite of knowledge, while its counterpart involves the need for full knowledge of what is to be. One merely demands caution—the other outright requires knowledge that would border on precognition.
>
> For this reason, I disagree with the claims that these words are etymologically related.
As she let the manuscript slip from [Remote Reading]’s grasp, Malwine pondered that. Both Teach and {Foresight}’s tier 2 description agreed on a description the draft’s unknown author would have considered incorrect—and Malwine found she was on the author’s side.
{Foresight} had never made sense to her as a purely prophetic Affinity, but she’d written that off as her simple opinion, then. With how limited her knowledge of this world remained, it was safer to err on the side of assuming she was the one who didn’t understand something—yet she understood, now, that she wasn’t the only one disliking that official definition.
Even if this had technically been about the original seafarer word, strictly speaking.
Her next ‘stop’ was the labyrinthic library of Beuzaheim. The only silver lining to its organization system was that once she found the dictionary section, she had most definitely found the dictionary section—it appeared endless. Many of them were specialized dictionaries for professions, but Malwine had a handful of definitions of the word by the time she decided there wasn’t going to be much more for her to scrounge up from this.
> foresight: the capacity or understanding needed to prepare in advance
> forsyght: the ability to properly exercise caution with regards to the future
> foresight: to foresee
Oh, yes, the truly timeless, helpful definition. Out of curiosity, she checked the corresponding verb on that one.
> foreseeing: the act of seeing ahead
Excellent. Just, quality work.
> fore-sight: the application of provident precautions
> foresight: preparations for the future
That was more than enough for her to conclude the definitions were certainly on her side, not Teach’s. Yes, foresight could technically be interpreted as some type of clairvoyance, as said woman in the trial had—but this wasn’t where Malwine’s thoughts went when she thought of it.
She had to admit, actually having a way to see the future would be great. Then again, when someone planned ahead and it worked out for the better, didn't they get praise for having the foresight to do so?
There was something there, a breakthrough just waiting to happen.
So against her better wishes, Malwine waited, mulling it over between one lesson and the next.
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The Snow neared its end soon enough. She’d only met with Veit briefly since their longest session, twice so far. It had amounted to little other than her informing him of how she’d yet to figure anything out. The forester had asked if she was doing alright, just once, but that was it.
Malwine would have been lying if she said she wasn’t growing frustrated. Feeling like the answer was right there—yet being unable to cross that imperceptible divide—had a way of getting under her skin.
The only real winner was [Meditation].
Your [Meditation] Skill has improved! 35 → 36 You have reached Level 66!
When had it been the last time she’d seen this kind of growth for any Skill? It rivaled even the swift leveling some of them had on their early stages, and a part of her feared she might have higher odds of maxing it out than of actually figuring {Foresight} out.
It stung because she was trying, legitimately so.
And how was she supposed to interpret this, if even her best efforts fell short?
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By the time The Fog rolled around, Malwine hadn't met up with Veit in over a week, as her new magical stopwatch let her know.
It wasn't that she was avoiding him, no. She was just so caught up in her meditations! There was simply no way for her to make time for him, and she'd apologize… later.
As the latest lesson with Anna Franziska and her ‘beloved’ fingertraps had passed, Adelheid had disappeared—her little sister had been doing that often, and asking had only gotten her a vague response about ‘practicing with Presence’.
Well, you do you, girl. At least that spared Malwine the embarrassment of having to explain herself as she lay flat on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
For reasons unknown, Bernie had their perfectly functional wall feylights replaced with a humongous—and objectively ugly—model that hung from above. Flowers had been painted into its panes, the paint nearly ashy, and whatever the wires were meant to represent was unintelligible given the quality of the metalwork.
Whoever had been put in charge of interior design was most definitely scamming her family.
It didn't help that not only did the light it cast came out as different shades of that ubiquitous greenish light, but it did so with no seeming rhyme or reason.
To her frustrated and potentially sleep-deprived mind, this wasn't that unlike how the contrast between her interpretations of this all and what seems to be the norm kept having her run around in circles.
Yeah, I need a nap…
Yet she felt so close—genuinely so, for possibly the first time.
As the comparative draft put it, foresight didn't really have prior knowledge as a prerequisite to it. That was the main thing that always kept her from seeing it as Teach clearly did, even if she had to acknowledge there was nothing inherently wrong about using it as a source of prophecies.
Having the foresight to do things was more about properly accounting for what could be of use, of relevance, down the line, not about actually having any guarantee that it would happen. In the widow's Earth, you wouldn't install sprinklers only if you knew there would be a fire in the building someday. No, it was about the possibility, it was about keeping people safe in the event that it did happen.
It was about planning ahead, to take measures against what could happen, regardless of whether it ever actually did.
And it struck her, then, that she probably couldn't have picked a better Root to plant for
, when [Unpacifiable] was right there.The deck, once stacked, accounts for tomorrow.
To Malwine, {Foresight} had never been about predicting the future, not in the slightest. Perhaps it was because of her own incompatibility with the idea, perhaps it was a quirk of the Affinity.
She wasn't a planner, not quite, but she did cherish any chance to stack the odds in her favor, if she could. Much like the widow, she would avoid anything she knew wasn't likely to go in her favor, and never would she start anything she couldn't finish.
In the end, that was what {Foresight} did for her, wasn't it? She'd been lucky to reveal that candle from the harvestables, even if she hadn't known it at the time. And as much as she hated to admit it, having and using that advancement elixir had taught her a minor lesson.
A part of her hated that, if she was right, this wasn't quite something Malwine could control. It was simply an underlying force, and its effects only paid off occasionally, at least so far.
It wasn't the most useful of Affinities, but it certainly wasn't ‘zero on every value’ levels of useless, either.
Your Acclimation to {Foresight} has grown! 0 → 1
Malwine glared at the notification—she hadn't even been visualizing her core, yet this felt like proof that she was on the right track, if she hadn't been before.
It was a start. Onwards to 50/25…
Besides, who knew? She was starting to get curious as to what she might find out if she actually made all her Affinities match {Legacy}—what would their effects look like, in the end, both individually and together?