Lissa had initially been disappointed with her own prize in comparison to Bup's, but she made a startling discovery when she finally got around to examining the thread with her magical senses later that evening.

She and her father arrived back at their homestead as dusk faded into night. Drust was still holding her hand as they walked into their meadow, and she finally tugged it free once their house, complete with its smoking chimney, came into view. The fingers of her gloved hand were stiff and uncomfortable from being held nearly the entire day, and she flexed her hand several times as she ran ahead of her father.

"We're hooome!" Lissa hollered as she neared the front door.

The warm glow of firelight backlit her mother's silhouette as Tecka opened the door almost immediately to let them in. She scooped Lissa into a tight but brief hug as Lissa moved further into the house and began removing layers of her winter clothing. Drust's crunching steps on the dry earth outside changed to resonant footfalls as he entered the wooden-floored house. Lissa heard her parents exchanging soft words that she couldn't quite make out as they greeted one another. She gathered up her bundle of doffed winter clothing and went to her room to put them away.

Soon after, her mother called her for dinner, and Lissa regaled her mother with the harrowing tale of venturing into a dungeon with one hand tied to her father. Tecka smiled and winced on Drust's behalf, who was himself conspicuously quiet during dinner. Lissa revealed her prize at the appropriate point in the story, remarking on her disappointment that it wasn't as great as a the skill potion that Bup had received.

Tecka, as a [tailor], marveled at the thread, remarking, "Lissa. Stop and consider for a moment: for someone who wants to figure out a way to create magical garments of myth, endless magical thread seems like an incredible boon."

Lissa stopped mid complaint, mouth half open. She opened and shut it a few times as the implications of what her mother pointed out finally dawned on her. She smacked herself in the forehead loudly.

"I can't believe I didn't think of that!" Lissa whined. "May I be excused?"

Tecka just smiled at her eager daughter and nodded, placing a hand over Drust's curled fingers on the table beside her.

Lissa took one last bite of food from her plate and dashed to her bedroom. She consciously dropped [dull senses] as she searched through her clothes for the [golden mending thread] she'd left in one of her pockets. Her fingers closed on the spool, and she withdrew it quickly. To her mundane senses, it was just as shiny as ever, but adding her magical senses, it seemed to bloom with gossamer cyan light. It wasn't quite the same color as the [water, purity] fundament in her core—but close enough that it was probably related—and it was the same color as the cyan from the [floating stairs].

She examined it for a loose end and found one secured tightly in a narrow notch cut into one end of the wooden spool. Carefully drawing it free and unspooling a short length, she saw that the thread was indeed spun from two strands of gold and two strands of the cyan magic, much like the magic she created her spellforms from. She just had to try it out.

She grabbed a needle, a thimble, and scissors from the chest at the foot of her bed and a random garment from her wardrobe. She cut the short length of thread, even remembering to re-secure the spool's loose end in the tight notch, and threaded her needle with practiced ease. It took no more than a few moments to sew several neat running stitches along the inside of a hem where it wouldn't be noticeable on the garment. Securing them with a knot, she cut the thread once more and examined her work closely. The cyan magic had diffused into the fabric around the stitches, holding the two gold filaments in place and reinforcing the fabric around it. It would be quite effective for mending, she concluded.

She studied the forearm's length of thread still on her needle when a sudden thought struck her. Could she use the thread to recreate her spellforms... on a garment? For that matter, could she make thread like this? She jumped up from the bed, holding the needle tightly and searched for a suitable hat. She found one that had two layers of fabric, and flopped back down onto her bed. Lissa knew her [dull senses] spellform best out of all of them as it had been the very first one she had ever learned. She flipped the hat inside out, and recalled the lacy details of the spellform. It took more time and thread to recreate with her hands than she initially thought it would, and she was surprised as she considered how complex the spellform really was. She wondered at how she had unlocked the spell at all, much less on instinct. Half an hour later, she had recreated a decent approximation of the lacy spellform on the inside of the hat and tied off her thread carefully.

The moment of truth. She placed the hat on her head, and... nothing happened. Her magical senses were as sharp as ever, and she wondered if that was that then. She took the hat off, and probed it with finger, feeling the magical thread woven into it, wondering if there was a way to make the spellform effective. It was still cyan to her magical senses, instead of the usual foggy grey-black that the spellform had when she cast it. Maybe... maybe it just wasn't the right flavor of magic to activate the spell. She had never heard of anyone doing anything like this, but maybe it just needed some shadow magic instead. She drew the thread for [dull senses] from her core and pushed it toward the embroidered spellform. Her magic reacted like oil and water, refusing to blend with the cyan magic already present in the hat. She frowned in disappointment. She felt like it should have worked, or at least done something. Maybe if something like this was going to work, the thread would need to match the fundament for the spellform.

Well, if that was the case, she had fiber that definitely had the [shadow, haze] fundament still squirreled away here in her room. She had several drop spindles, and all of the [umbral fur] she still had, had long since been combed or carded into a ready-to-spin state. It had been a few years since she'd pulled out the fur, not having made any progress on stabilizing it for use in sunlight, but maybe... maybe if she figured out a way to spin it with her own shadow fundament magic, it could endure.

Not taking the time to put away the things already laying out on her bed, she got up and rifled through her trunk once more to locate a light-weight drop spindle and the thick leather satchel that held her stash of [umbral fur]. After finding what she wanted, she returned to her bed, realizing in a mild panic that she wasn't sure where her needle had gone off to. She found it after a few minutes of searching, tucked into the side of the spool of [golden mending thread]. At that moment, Lissa decided that she would tidy up before continuing.

As she returned things to their places, she realized that she would need to switch from her oil lamp's light to [moonlight] in order to keep the [umbral fur] from evaporating. She extinguished the lamp, plunging her room into darkness. She realized in the sudden stillness that she could hear that her parents were still speaking quietly in the next room. The tone sounded contemplative, maybe a bit mournful, but she couldn't make out any specifics. She drew her attention to her [spheres, moon] fundament, and wove the correct strand into [moonlight]'s simple under-over weave pattern above her hands so that she would be able to see what she was doing. The spellform condensed into a patch of cool blue-grey illumination in her lap.

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The lighting appropriately set, Lissa pulled a fuzzy cigar-shaped rolag of [umbral fur] from within the satchel and looped one fuzzy end of it into the spindle's feeder thread. Before she began spinning, she considered what the next steps were. She had made yarn from the vaporous fiber before, and it had evaporated all the same in the sunlight. Should she attempt to spin her magic into the single ply, or make a ply that was only [umbral fur] and then another that was only her [shadow, fundament] magic? Would she even be able to spin it? Her brow furrowed. There was only one sure way to find out.

She kept the [umbral fur] on the leader's loop, and drew forth the [dull senses] strand from her [shadow, haze] fundament. It was a decently long strand in order to create the complex spellform, and she attempted to cause it to interact with the physical world. It seemed to pass right through the leader, as if the ordinary wool weren't there, but the [umbral fur] stopped its movement, and the two shadow materials—magic and fur— lay neatly against one another. Instead of the gold and cyan of the mending thread, the combination in her hand was two-toned inky darkness that gave off a faint miasma under the [moonlight] spell.

Lissa grinned, and gave the spindle a good hard flick. The magic and the fur began to twist together into a long continuous strand. Lissa let out an excited whoop that cause the voices in the other room to immediately fall silent.

On no. She thought to herself as she heard footsteps approaching. Frantically grabbing at her bedding, she quickly shielded her experiment from the light in the next room as her bedroom door opened.

"Lissa?" Her mother's silhouetted figure asked. Tecka stepped into the dark room, noticing Lissa covering her lap.

"Close the door, mom. Quick!" Lissa exclaimed anxiously.

Tecka did not close the door quickly, looking back the way she had come and only then gently pushed the door shut behind her. She looked at her daughter squarely in the very dim light, and asked guardedly, "What are you doing, Lissa?"

Lissa threw the covers off of her work, revealing the [moonlit] surface of her hands. Lissa's excited face was barely visible in the darkness of the room, as she declared, "Mom! I think I figured out how to spin the [umbral fur] with my magic!"

Tecka's eyes widened in surprise. "You... what?" Her daughter's discoveries always came at night, and usually caused issues. This though, this was something new. Tecka herself had often wondered if such things were possible, but she expressed her creativity in clothing designs, not magically dubious experiments.

"I think I figured it out. Come look!" Lissa insisted.

Tecka crossed the room and sat next to her daughter. The young girl animatedly explained what she was attempting, and then showed her mother the single length of thread she had spun by the time Tecka had come inside. Lissa had lost her concentration on the magical strand from [dull senses] and the magic within the thread had already begun to dissipate.

"Oh. It's fading," she said with dissapointment.

She frowned at the receding magic. She knew there was something here. Maybe if she maintained full concentration while she was spinning...

"Even so, this is fantastic, Lissa," her mother's proud voice interrupted her thoughts. "You've discovered something wonderful, sweetling. We have to show Igmi. See what she thinks."

Lissa grimaced, remembering the last time that she and Igmi had tried to collaborate on a project with the [umbral fur]. She admitted to her mother, "I... I don't want Aunt Igmi to take over, mom. This is my experiment."

"Mmm. That's right. You two had a big fight about this last time. I think since you know what you want, you can talk to her about it beforehand. She's a very respectful person, you know. Even if you don't want to work with her on another project, I still think that even just telling her about what you've learned would be really thoughtful." Her mother wrapped an arm about her daughter's shoulders. "Just think about it, 'k?"

Lissa nodded grudgingly, and then giggled and scrunched up when her mom tickled her neck. Tecka kissed her on the top of her head, squeezed her tightly, and stood up, stretching a bit.

"I'd love to see what you come up with, sweetling, but I'd best get back to your father. He had a very difficult day today. I know he's very proud of you, though, even if he wasn't able to say so himself," Tecka said. Lissa watched her cross to the door and wait for Lissa to cover her [umbral fur] again. She said a quick good night and exited the room quickly.

As soon as the door shut behind her mother, Lissa threw off the covers shielding her experiment and decided to scrap this attempt and try again.

Several attempts later, Lissa held the same hat she had embroidered with the mending thread, now doubly embroidered with her new [umbral thread of dull sensation] in the same spellform as [dull senses]. If she had a lapse in concentration at any time during the process, her fundament's magic immediately began to dissipate. Finally, she had a reason to be thankful for her hyper-focus. After tying off the two-ply thread, she finally released her concentration on the [dull senses] spell that had been bound into the thread. She watched the embroidered spellform on the inside of her hat carefully. It looked the same.

It looked the same! The magic was holding together!

She placed the hat on her head and felt the [dull senses] spell cover her magical senses with its familiar haze. It wasn't a completely occlusion of her acuity, but the hat's enchantment reduced her sensitivity by approximately half. The real test would come in the morning of whether or not it could withstand sunlight. In the meantime though, the firelight in the next room would suffice. With care that chaffed painfully against her own excitement, Lissa packed away the failed experiments—good fiber was good fiber, and she could always comb it back out and spin it again. When only her newly embroidered hat remained atop her bed, she grabbed it and took a deep breath.

Taking it into the next room could destroy her work, render it useless—or show her that she was on the right track. If this works... Excitement and anxiety swirled in her heart. She couldn't wait anymore. She dashed to her bedroom door, and threw it open—

Only to find a dark living area on the other side. It might have been later than she realized, and the thought made her suddenly aware of the exhaustion tugging at her eyelids, her shoulders, the backs of her thighs.

Still.

She couldn't wait for morning to know if this worked.

The embers in the fireplace were still red, but gave off only a pittance of light. She leaned a single fresh log over top of them, and gently stoked fire with the bellows until the new log caught. The sudden brightness caused her to squint, but she bravely held her hat up to the light, embroidered side out. The embroidery's miasma didn't grow or spread. Both the fiber and fundament alike held together, maintaining their form under the fire's glow. Lissa's eyes grew wide in triumph, and she threw her hands up, barely remembering to be quiet in her jubilation this time.

As she tucked her exhausted self into bed, she thought about the events of the long day. She and Bup and Artaxes had gone to their first dungeon and walked through the strange body-less mirror place to get there. Her dad had even gone back to a dungeon for the first time since his family had died. Then they had worked so hard to complete the [Hidden Glade]'s challenge and received amazing prizes. Artaxes could even talk now! And after her mother's encouragement, she had discovered something important, something amazing—something that would perhaps allow her to take her first steps toward one day creating something like the Lost Treasures.