Soleil requested the accommodation of a room with a fireplace. If she was going to use this as a place to rest, she might as well leverage her [Fire Making] skill’s increased attribute restoration rate. The healers running the house assured her it would not be a problem.

Accommodations to clean her clothes came standard apparently, with no need to ask.

That would be her first priority.

Upon returning to the cart, a message had been left for her informing her where Hope had been stored. Veilura apparently expected to be tied up in meetings with some council regarding the concerns of the other villages.

Soleil and Maeve gathered up their things. They were able to leave a message in turn directing Veilura to which House of Healing they were staying in. Soleil would just return the empty request sheet for her mother. She would likely procure her own anyway.

Not being able to speak to her mother still left her feeling disheartened.

She was tired.

She had a lot to process.

And she was left to explore a place she had little to no frame of reference for.

In theory, a village filled with useful names and helpful people should have been easier to navigate. Demons mostly made their homes in reclaiming ruins, not building up entire settlements from raw materials. But there were just so many people, compounded by the fact that all the factions pitched in to help get these villages set up faster.

This time Maeve brushed a hand against hers, an open gesture.

One Soleil was happy to seize. She was not entirely alone.

Maeve was a friendship she had fought hard for, but the nature of that friendship was still too undefined for her. Unfortunately, that was not a conversation she trusted herself to have yet.

“Is there anything you want to do before we head back to the House of Healing?” Maeve asked.

Soleil’s eyes glazed over as she looked at the sea of people wandering around, going about their own business.

“Yeah. Too much.”

“Let me try and break it down for you then. Would focusing on what will be simplest to do help at all?”

Soleil looked down at her bag. Unpacking things in the room would lighten her load, but she did need to procure more supplies if she was going to go out. And then there was the matter of sending her letters. That last one tugged at her.

“I want to hurry up and hear back from Nadir. I’ll write to Irellia later.”

“Okay. I think I remember where the aviary is.” Maeve said, taking her hand and first guiding her off the larger and busier streets.

Soleil calmed down not long after, even if she was not really sure why. But Maeve seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and offered her an easy smile.

Focus. One thing at a time. Send her message. Figure out bag logistics later.

Bags. Desiring something sweet, Soleil reached for one of her belt pouches, fished out a Blast Berry and popped it into her mouth.

Maeve came to a stop, squeezing at Soleil’s hand. The knight looked at her with concern. “Soleil. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“What did you just put in your mouth?” Maeve looked intense all of a sudden.

“A Blast Berry! A little old, but still oddly flavorful.”

“Are they um… supposed to be yellow?”

Soleil froze before looking down at her pouch. Each and every berry had rotted. She popped one open to see sickly yellow juice rich with rotten mana. She looked up to find Maeve’s eyes glowing with the use of a skill.

“How are you not poisoned?” Maeve asked, seeming baffled.

Soleil fished out her Magitech Lens and [Analyzed] herself. The only unusual change was a drop in her Adaptability attribute.

“I lost some Adaptability.” Soleil reported. “The berry still tasted normal, which is odd in its own way.”

“I have no idea what that means. But maybe don’t eat anymore of those.”

Soleil flashed Maeve a tired grin. “That is kinda how I feel about a lot of things lately. But yeah. I don’t think I’ve used this attribute before now. It’s not one I know much about.” There of course had been one glaring exception, but better to not cause Maeve anymore reason to worry.

“It’s demon specific. I know that much.” Maeve said thoughtfully. “So yeah, you’re unlikely to find anyone who has written much on the subject.”

“Great. Another thing for me to not understand.”

Maeve seemed to search Soleil’s expression for a moment. “Do you need or want a hug?”

Soleil didn’t even have to think. “Yes please.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Luckily, Maeve left her armor back at the House of Healing.. Whatever material Maeve’s clothes were made out of were soft and thick with padding.

The hug was almost as good as Veilura's, which was a high bar to clear. Despite having just swallowed a berry filled with rotten mana. Maeve’s muscles almost had a Brigid appeal to them, but she was just getting lost in details.

Soleil found herself calming down. She felt safe, even.

“Okay. I feel a little better.” Soleil admitted. Her words came out as a tired mumble.

“Glad to hear it. Now let’s go make sure your moms receive those letters.”

***

Back in her room, Soleil sifted through her bag. Nothing else had been damaged or afflicted with Rot mana. So that was a small relief.

She had no Intensity restoratives. That would be annoying, but if she just focused on healing it would be fine. Of her glass vials, she had Four Focus Droughts, One Vitality, Endurance, Sensitivity, and Adaptability.

She had forgotten about the Drake scale flask, but the thing was not exactly transparent. It would be best to keep that topped off with Focus for emergencies.

In a pinch, the Vitality mana filled dried meats and blood apples would likely keep for a couple more days. Pure mana being an infinitely refreshable resource had some lovely side benefits when it came to keeping food tasting fresh. Or whatever was the case with the rot mana in her Blast Berries.

After looking over her four tokens, she decided not to spend any on consumables. Worst case scenario, she could use [Herblore] to gather up replacement materials. Maybe she could find someone willing to turn them into potions for her. Learning how to make her own potions would be nice to have, but it was not an immediate concern.

Soleil instead thought it better to get herself equipped for the long term, which meant placing orders for commissions if she didn’t find anything.

There was one other thing she could take care of before she left. Soleil began to [Analyze] [Fire Affinity] and [Heal] for details on what she would get upon ranking them up.

Both would give Focus and increase how much mana would answer the call of each skill use. [Heal] would now match the five motes of white light she saw in passing conjured up by the other healers. Getting more mileage out of her mana was always good.

[Fire Affinity’s] second rank gave her much the same. She would now be able to conjure up to two motes of fire within a single skill use. The cost of using the skill would increase with the number of motes she wanted to work with. Her motivation to rank up the ability to [shape] and [manipulate] more mana at once grew along with her skill ranks.

[Fire Mastery] would have given her much the same benefit from what she had read up on. The Affinity version of the skill mentioned that her tolerance for being exposed to fire mana would increase.

Soleil felt… warm, all of a sudden. With the added skill ranks came new Focus. She immediately shoved the feelings of exhaustion and that ambiguous wrongness to the side for now.

There was a long overdue conversation that needed to be had.

Soleil set her Magitech Lens down above the fireplace and pulled the black band out of her hair. A bath was long overdue and this would give her ample opportunity to sort through what she wanted to say.

Relationships remained a weird and nebulous subject in Soleil’s mind. How might her expectations conflict with Maeve’s? Soleil still had every intention of embracing mana despite all the trauma and hostility.

She was going to change, perhaps in ways that even her parents could not predict. Calamity taking an interest in her really complicated things. But Soleil needed her friends and partners to be okay with that.

Why make this anymore complicated then? Soleil would stick to asking about boundaries, expectations, and confirm mutual interest. Easy.

A sudden knock at the door interrupted that chain of thought.

“Uh, can you give me a few minutes?” Soleil called to the door.

“Take your time. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay.” It was Maeve’s voice.

“I’m alright. Just give me a bit.” Okay. She did not have as much time as she thought. This was still easy. Dry off, put on some clothes, be herself.

Soleil decided to keep it simple, donning a soft black robe with extra accommodating sleeves for strapping magitech devices to her arms. It was normally an Alchemist thing, but Soleil just enjoyed the comfort of having a loose fitting robe.

Soleil willed a few points of Focus into [Fire Affinity] in order to dry her hair off. Easy. Why should she bother waiting for it to dry normally?

“You can come in!” Soleil said before turning to greet Maeve with a smile.

“Oh. Hey. You uh, you look good.” Maeve stopped in her tracks for a moment before stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Moderately so. More Focus and a bath is no replacement for sleep, but it is enough to finish my errands.” Soleil said. “I did want to talk to you about some things, but was there something you needed?”

Maeve stood with her hands clasped behind her back, but she did a poor job of hiding that she was still actively fiddling with them. “I just uh, wanted to know if you wanted to meet for dinner. Later I mean. After your errands.”

Soleil put the nervous knight out of her misery with a warm smile. “Of course. I just have one question.”

“Good. I mean great. What’s on your mind?” Maeve did at least manage to return Soleil’s smile with one of her own.

“Are we going out as friends? Or as something more?” She wasn’t entirely sure how humans handled relationships, so she thought it best to leave the question open ended.

Maeve’s cheeks slowly began to grow pink. “Oh. I mean, we don’t have to put any specific label on it. But I’d like to at least try treating it as something more.”

“It’s alright.” Soleil said. “I just wasn’t sure what kind of labels you were comfortable with.”

“Oh. Right. A lot of this is probably new to you too. Don’t worry too much. We’ll figure something out.”

Soleil tried for a joke. “I’d be quite content knowing there is someone who can offer me an unlimited source of hugs.”

“It’s a promise then.” Maeve declared. “Right, you said there was something you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Oh we just did. I am quite pleased with the outcome.”

Maeve’s face got even more colorful, but thankfully saying their goodbyes for now came gracefully enough. They would both have plenty of time to speak again later.

She had time enough yet to wander around the village in order to finish her errands. Mender’s Crossing was new to her, however. It would be best to ask a local. Soleil made her way to the front desk and asked for directions to Wisteria’s Bounty.

It only took her a few minutes to find the right street. The shelves through the windows of the quaint little store were practically filled to bursting with commonly used supplies for traveling out in the wild.

Just as Soleil began to reach for the front door, she heard voices from inside.

“Promise me you’ll come home safe.”

“I promise.” Aster assured the first speaker with a kiss. “Neither of the requests should even involve me getting into melee. Really, these should be jobs for perception and ranged skills. You have nothing to worry about.”