024

Legal Lenses

“Warm greetings, Ashen!” Suro called as he trotted up to the Crystalline One’s clearing.

“Ah, I was beginning to wonder if you were going to keep coming,” Ashen said. “Seeing as… well… nothing’s happened.”

“Simply because I have nothing to report does not mean I shouldn’t check in on you regularly,” Suro said as he sat down and started grooming himself. “I know the phrase ‘loneliness isn’t good for a soul’ doesn’t always apply to Crystalline Ones, but I can’t help but think you’re all the better for having someone to talk to.”

“…I do miss Jeh’s frantic loudness. The serene quiet of the forest can be… aggravating, at times.”

“Really?” Suro frowned. “From my experiences, most Crystalline Ones like the sensation of being alone.”

“Probably because that was the way they were born. Naturally, in a forest, or somewhere else. …Jeh brought me many books on the subject. Those formed like myself tend to go awry.”

“I… suppose that is the pattern, yes,” Suro admitted. “Just one I haven’t seen. Since. Well…” Suro let out a large sigh. “That’s actually one of the things you and I need to have a talk about.”

“…Am I showing signs of going crazy?”

“No! No no no!” Suro waved his paw to calm her down. “You’ve actually shown a tendency to calm down over time, remarkably so.”

“Then I am confused.”

“Understandable. Jeh probably didn’t know about this and probably didn’t find it in any book, as it is specifically the legal code of Kroan. One that has put me in a rather… annoying situation that I can’t exactly ignore anymore.” Suro flicked his tail to the side and sighed. “To be an unregistered Crystalline One in Kroan is highly illegal, to the point where there is a government agency responsible for hunting down undocumented Crystalline Ones.”

“…Oh. And I suppose the ‘more fire’ response I use to keep the bears away isn’t going to cut it?”

“Definitely not, they employ Crystalline Ones of their own to this end, as well as some rather... effective individuals.” Suro lifted his head. “Or so I hear, I actually haven’t met any of them. We are far outside of where they operate, so you’re safe. For now.”

“I think I see the issue. With Blue having gone to the capital…”

“Yes, Willow Hollow is suddenly going to be on the map, and it occurs to me that you can’t exactly be hidden.”

Ashen was silent for a moment. “Clearly, we need to either hide me better or find a way to ‘register’ myself without causing a scene.”

“I am… surprised you warmed up to the idea so quickly.”

“I am quite warm.”

“Har-de-har,” Suro deadpanned.

“In all truth, it is the sensible thing to do. I’m clearly putting you in a rather awkward place by asking you to keep this secret, aren’t I?”

“At first it was no real trouble… well, nothing that I lost sleep over anyway.” Suro shook his head. “But I do consider myself a law-abiding citizen, and it occurred to me that everyone is required by law to report all Crystalline Ones. Even though basically no one knows that particular clause of the law and it’s shrouded in awkwardly worded nonsense…”

“I have a feeling I am going to grow quite tired of Kroan’s legal code.”

“It’s a headache, you’re not missing anything. We don’t even have all the books with the code in it here, just certain relevant things, and even with that I think this is self-contradictory*.”

*Suro is completely correct. The law requires that all Crystalline Ones be reported. But that report has to include a section on if the Crystalline One is a danger to society or a stable one. The course required to give a “stable” recommendation is to spend “a significant amount of time” around the Crystalline One to make a proper judgment. Both things are mandatory. There is no win here. Yay for legal snarls.

What generally actually happens is the Office of Crystalline Investigations makes the judgment calls on what gets accepted, why, and who’s liable to be prosecuted for “withholding information.” Many have said this gives the organization too much power and leeway, but nothing has been changed about it, so it is what it is.

“Spare me the… nonsense.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Suro cleared his throat. “However, I do have a plan. The plan can get you registered without the Red Seekers even knowing you exist, or even most of the town for that matter. So if anything does go down you’ll have the papers to prove yourself.”

“…What is this plan?”

“Well, if I sent in a registration form, it would be met with scrutiny and might get an… investigation launched, and depending on who they send it could end in disaster. But if Lila, the mayor of Willow Hollow makes the report, it will likely be accepted without much fanfare.”

“You just want to tell your wife about me.”

“That’s… not entirely untrue, but I wouldn’t have brought this up if I didn’t think it was necessary. I will, however, respect your wishes. Though… I can’t really protect you by myself.”

“…And I was thinking I was just going to have to deal with not being much of a secret anymore to begin with. Very well, you may tell her of me.”

“Great! She’ll be so glad to meet you.”

“I didn’t say…”

“She has to write that report, she has to make a judgment of you and who you are. She’s not the sort to just rely on my word for something so official. The truth matters to her quite a bit—even more so than it does to me.”

Ashen flickered a few times. “…Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

“I’m sure you’ll like her! You liked Jeh, you grew to like me, it’s just another person to know!”

“It’s already hard enough thinking about just you two.”

“Well… eheh… it’ll get easier.”

“…Yes… I know.” Ashen paused. “I miss Jeh. I wish we knew when she was coming back.”

Suro sighed. “I… I do too. But we have no idea how far away she landed. Blue’s calculations say she could be anywhere on this hemisphere of the globe. And if she hit the ocean… she could be washed up on some deserted island shore somewhere trying to build a boat right now.”

“Then she should hurry up and build that boat.”

~~~

“Dark room experiment… whatever,” Krayz said to herself as she scrawled a short description of what she was doing on a notebook. As the room was dark, she was using faint red light generated by a Purple crystal to illuminate the page. After making this note, she turned the light onto her experiment setup.

She currently had the rather tedious task of measuring how light bent as it passed through various sheets of glass. For individual panes of glass, this wasn’t that much of a problem and that data had been tabulated out months ago. However, they needed multiple sheets of glass in order to keep the windows on the Moonshot from breaking when hit by those tiny ridiculously fast rocks. Layering multiple panes of glass together like that distorted images even more. There didn’t seem to be a way around this in general, though the flatter and purer the glass the better the results were.

So, she had to figure out exactly how much light was bent so that when Blue only had access to one side of the window she could still figure out the apparent size of Ikyu and the moon. This needed to be as precise of a measurement as possible since there were already going to be huge error margins. Thus, the painstaking tabulation of exactly how the light passed through all the panes of glass.

Krays was no mathematician. She could make measurements and write down the numbers, sure, but she wasn’t exactly clear on what it all meant. All she really knew was that the closer to zero degrees it was, the better.

She also knew that her eyes were getting strained with all this work. The procedure of the experiment was to set up a focused Purple device that released a beam of white light into the glass, and then examine where on the “projection screen” it ended up. She was well aware that different colors ended up in slightly different places, and she recorded that too, but when the spread for that was large that meant the glass was bad. The problem was, she needed to see where the light was going and simultaneously read the grid with precision while in the dark without ruining her night vision…

Basically, her eyes were sore trying to make out all the fine details in her current situation.

“Traitors,” she grumbled to her eyes as she wiped them again, trying to ease some of the burning sensation. “You are my eyes, you’re supposed to serve me. Now see the tiny ticks and write down the numbers. Got it? You better behave or I won’t so much as look at Darmosil for a week! You don’t want that!”

Her eyes made no response to the threat.

She muttered under her breath. She wanted to take a break and get out of the dark room, but that would require destroying her night vision, and waiting around for that to re-acclimate would be tremendously boring. What she needed was a better way to do this.

She sat down in the dark and used some Purple to illuminate the room in a soft red beam. She saw her various panes of glass, the Colored crystal storage, and a lot of lenses she had made recently since focusing light was a huge part of the experiments and Vaughan wanted her to start sourcing the materials to make telescopes directly…

…Wait…

…Lenses…

Krays picked one of her custom-made lenses off the table. Lens crafting was a bit different from her usual fare, for glassblown lenses, while powerful, weren’t precise enough for the work Vaughan needed. So she had bothered to learn how to make precise lenses, which really involved ordering a curved grindstone from somewhere else and spinning it really fast to grind glass away to a perfectly smooth shape. Not difficult, though it did require a lot of specialized sanding.

She carried her lens over to the experiment and held it up to her eye. The size of the gridlines and numbers increased markedly, making it much easier for her to see them. Even in the dark, she could now make out paint flecks and line imperfections…

An idea began to form in her head. She began to chuckle. Sure, it may not have been the craziest idea she ever had, but it was one she just had to go and make right now.

“Why couldn’t you have thought of this sooner? It’s so obvious! I’m pretty sure that cat knows about this!” She bonked herself in the head, eliciting a short laugh. “Idiot!”

~~~

“Is this the week’s shipment?” Lila asked as she jumped on top of one of the many dozens of minecarts currently sitting at the edge of Willow Hollow, each of them packed to the brim with Colored crystals and other valuables.

Big G nodded. “Does it meet your satisfaction?”

“You seem to produce more and more every week, of course I’m satisfied.” Lila jumped to another cart.

“The mines are showing no signs of drying up anytime soon and we keep improving our techniques. You should have seen the improvement when we started using the air restorers.”

“I can only imagine…” Lila jumped to a cart of Magenta crystals, sniffing them even though they didn’t have a smell—such was the way with cat instincts. “Big G, I have a question.”

“I hope I have the answer.”

“My predecessor never did these inspections, he rarely involved himself in much of anything. Did you prefer being able to work without oversight?”

Big G folded his arms and frowned. “…Yes, but not for any good reasons. Having oversight ensures that we keep everything organized, productive, and proper. You’re not telling me how to do my job, you’re just making sure it gets done. I think it’s good, in the long run.”

“It takes quite the man to say something he dislikes is good for him,” Lila said. “But perhaps we should address the fact that you are annoyed. Where do you suppose that comes from?”

“…Ma’am, with all due respect, this is a business meeting, not one of your services.”

Lila folded her ears back. “Oh. Right. Uh. Hold that for later, then…” Slightly flustered, she turned back to inspecting the crystal merchandise. Everything really did seem in order and better than last week, as always. “It’s all good, Big G. Just make sure to file the earnings report when it comes in. Just in time, too, we need to re-pave one of the roads, it’s barely more than a streak of mud in the ground right now. You should receive the financial record*… within three days if all goes smoothly.”

*In theory, every settlement in Kroan is part of the tax system. The system is decidedly loose and free-form. The local government is responsible for taxing the citizens however they see fit and writing up financial records of said taxations, which they then send to larger settlements with some of the taxes. However, the “taxes” do not have to be money and are regularly just goods. For instance, Willow Hollow pays almost all of its taxes to the Crown in Colored crystals, with hardly any actual money or other products involved. There is rife opportunity for abuse in this situation, for out-of-the-way towns could easily tax the citizens exorbitantly without the Crown ever knowing about it, while also sending back faulty reports on how much was actually levied, resulting in a small number of “miniature kings” who rule over towns with an iron thumb. At least until an agent of the Crown finds out. They tend not to take kindly to being lied to. Lila is not one of those people and is being very transparent, calculating out exactly how much she needs to give the Crown based on how much she’s taken from everyone. She is not required to give this report to Big G, but she is anyway.

“You know I don’t read those, right?”

“It’s all about transparency,” Lila said. “I’m not sure what the old Mayor was doing with all the finances, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t done in a way any lawyer would approve of. And even without that, you are the primary person I tax, you have a right even if the law doesn’t say you do.” She flicked her tail. “…It is quite annoying at times, the law. Being a law-abiding citizen is not that difficult. Being a manager of the law while in the law…” She chuckled to herself. “I really shouldn’t be surprised that life continues to throw new challenges at me, but here we are.”

Big G frowned. “Lila, if I may…”

“You may always, I am not some stuffy politician.”

“That’s the problem.” Big G shook his head. “You’re too… frank. Open. You have doubts, and rather than keep them hidden, you show them. You don’t act like a politician.”

“I am specifically trying not to, you do understand.”

“I… know. But I think it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming harder to respect you as a leader.”

Lila nodded slowly. “I am well aware of this. I… decided that I was going to do this Dia’s way, or not at all. And Dia’s way is the way of humility, openness, compassion, and a bunch of other words you already know. I’m here to lead this town, but I will not pretend to be something I am not. I am not a perfect leader, and people should not put their whole trust in me.”

“Things go smoother when people have unquestioning loyalty, Lila.”

“Is smoother a moral good, though? Shall we throw away our values for the sake of efficiency? Ah, but there I go, preaching again…” She chuckled awkwardly.

Big G glanced at one of the carts filled with Yellow crystals. “Yeah. This is not the place. I’ll take these away, now.”

“We will continue this conversation later in a more appropriate setting.”

“…Of course.” Big G walked off to start giving orders to all the miners on where to move everything.

Suro walked up to her. “Everything okay?”

“There’s a strain forming in our relationship,” Lila said, frowning. “I am demonstrating an entirely different sort of leadership than what he is accustomed to thinking about. Before I took office, he was the most capable person in this town and had no doubts about how he ran things. But when he looks at me, he sees someone effective, but not in the way he would do things. I threaten his way of doing things just by demonstrating something else.” She shook her head. “He has not realized this consciously yet, and it’s causing a rift between us. But he is not the sort of man you can just confront with his faults, for he will claim he is aware of them, but nothing will change. He needs to realize on his own, and I can only guide him.”

Suro nipped her ear. “Reminds me of someone.”

“Oh, me? Suro, dear, I wasn’t even subconsciously aware. I was much worse.” She let out a hearty laugh. “I do need you to tell me, though, if I am doing wrong in leading as I am.”

“As I have told you many, many times over these last few months, I think you’re trying something new, and that’s good.”

She twirled her tail in his. “You know, my heart says that your approval is enough for me… but I have enough of a brain up here to know that I really do have to consider the alternatives anyway. Too many people depend on me, now.”

“No kidding.”

“Anyway, why are you here? Do you need to talk to your wife, your keeper, your Mayor, or your old friend?”

“All four at once?”

“Ooooh, this is going to be a big one, huh?”

“You could say that. I’ve got something to show you in the forest.”

“And now I’m intrigued. You need me to see something, you’re a little nervous, and I can’t know what it is ahead of time. The possibilities are maddening.” She pecked him on the cheek. “Let’s go.”

~~~

Vaughan came home from a productive day to the sound of maniacal laughter.

“What on Ikyu…?”

He quickly tracked the source of the laughter to the dark room. It was definitely Krays laughing, which made him even more concerned. Had that woman finally gone off the deep end? She was never all that stable to begin with, and given her personality, her snapping would likely be very unpleasant for everyone involved…

Maybe he needed to be ready to defend himself. He should probably—

The door to the dark room was thrust open, revealing a set of truly massive, bugged-out eyes inches from Vaughan’s face.

“AUGH!” Vaughan shouted, stumbling backward.

“I hear you lingering around out here,” Krays said. She had two large and thick lenses strapped to her face with a mixture of rope, twine, and something sticky Vaughan couldn’t identify. Now, gari eyes aren’t small to begin with, and the magnifying effect of said lenses was so absurd that it made it look like the eyes took up more of her face than should have been physically possible.

When she blinked Vaughan felt mildly nauseous.

Krays grinned mischievously and started blinking rapidly.

“Krays, what are you doing…?” Vaughan ventured to ask.

“I can see everything,” Krayz said. “Everything.”

“Did you… need glasses…?”

“What? No, my vision’s perfect! But now… I can see more. Yessss… come with me, ye of the not gray enough beard, and I shall introduce you to the land of… lenses.” She dragged Vaughan into the dark room—though at the moment it wasn’t all that dark, since there was a rather large lantern lit in the corner of the room next to a bunch of lens-crafting tools.

“Krays why did you take all this stuff out of your workshop…?”

“Because I needed to test it!” Krays declared. “I brought everything here! So I could make lenses! So I could see… this.” She pointed at the grid she had been projecting light onto. “I can see the individual flecks of paint, Vaughan. The individual flecks of paint. I—” she tripped over a box on the floor and slammed her head unceremoniously into the table, knocking off some pens and a notebook. “Ah, floor, I see you have decided to show your treacherous leechy hide at last! But you shall receive nothing from me for your efforts!” She stood up and brushed herself off.

“Krays, you can’t see everything, can you?”

“Oh, I can! Just not all at once!” She waved her hand to the side of her head. “Basically nothing in the peripherals. But what I’m looking at… oooh boy, I don’t think I realized until just this moment how ugly human skin is. Look at all those lines, those pockmarks, evidence of ancient pimples! Disgusting! Meanwhile…” she gracefully ran her fingers up and down her arm, on both the muscle and the plast gauntlet. “Smooth, angular, pure… and pointy! HeHAH!”

“…Krayz, you’re scaring me.”

“Good! You need more fear in your life.” Krays proceeded to turn around. “But perhaps, in my mercy, I may alleviate your fears by saying I’m not excited just because I can see more. No, oh no… the seeing more has let me do things.” She picked up a piece of paper off the ground and showed it to Vaughan.

He squinted. “What… even is this?” He held the paper up to the light and strained his eyes. “Is it just… a black square?”

“It’s a grid.”

Vaughan blinked. “A what?”

“A very, very, very small grid. For measuring things.” Krays tapped her lenses. “I made things that could magnify more than this. I grabbed all of Blue’s mathematical drawing equipment for straight lines. And then I just… made a grid so small you can’t even see it without magnification. Precision, Vaughan! Precision!”

Vaughan blinked. “You… made a magnifier?”

“It’s as simple as strapping lenses together! And, well, knowing exactly how they refract light due to their shapes but I’ve been sitting in here for so long I’m already an expert on that! And so…” She picked up two lenses and put them in front of the ones on her face. “I can see the small. I have become the great observer. And with time, I shall see smaller, and smaller, and smaller.”

Vaughan backed a few steps away. “Er… why?”

“Because grids! Because precision! Because stuff looks really strange when you make it really big!” She threw her hands into the air. “Or just because! You didn’t have a reason for wanting to go up, I don’t need a reason for wanting to go small! She tripped and fell, shattering the two front lenses, a few of the shards cutting her arms. “…Little help?”

Vaughan used Green to restore both her and the lenses. “Perhaps you shouldn’t wear them all the time?”

“I can get used to it!” Krays huffed. “Just gotta remember I can’t see left or right. That’s fine, we mostly only look forward anyway. But the detail. Think of all the intricate glasswork I could make…”

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“Suro does basically already have something like this… he uses it to make fine adjustments to arcane devices…”

“Yeah, well, I made this one, so it’s better. Also, I bet he didn’t make his. I made these lenses, Vaughan! From scratch! These telescopes of yours that see the stars are also going to be used to see the itty bitty teeny tiny insignificant specky minuscule points that make up everything! I just… have to make them stronger! Yes… more lenses… more… and some of them make things blurry so I’ve gotta figure out which ones are right…”

“I’m… pretty sure there’s a limit to all this…”

Krays grabbed him by the shoulders. “Give me everything you have.”

“I already did. So you could make the right lenses.”

“Find me more. Get me those fancy schmancy know-it-all papers about everything. I’m going to make you a telescope that sees small. …Actually, why not take a look!” She pried the massive lenses off her face and put them on Vaughan’s head.

He immediately got a headache. One eye was magnifying more than the other. “Krays… it’s unbalanced…”

“Really? I made it so I could see perfectly after lots of trial and erro—oooh our eyes are different! Duh, you don’t have to threaten yours on a daily basis to get them to behave, obviously.” She snapped her fingers. “Don’t you worry, it’ll just take a few hours of trial and error to get you your very own pair!”

“I don’t need special lenses for my face.”

“That’s what they all say!”

“…I just want a telescope…”

“And you’ll get it, stop whining. Just… be patient! Or something, I don’t know.” She put her hands on her hips and laughed. “But you and the world better watch out, because now Krayz can see everything! Nothing can stop me now!”

“Except tripping hazards.”

“A temporary setback.”

~~~

“Does it have something to do with the Tempest?” Lila asked as she followed her husband into the forest.

“Nope,” Suro said.

“What about… hmm…” Lila clicked her tongue. “Something to do with Ripashi’s war on bears?”

“Nope.”

“The cube?”

“Nada.”

“Considering how little we know about the cube, it could have something to do with it. You know. Maybe.”

Suro chuckled. “I highly doubt that.”

“Okay, then, ummm…” Lila flicked her ears back and forth. “Hmmm… oh! Does it have anything to do with Jeh!”

“Yes, actually, but only tangentially.”

“Aha! Yes!”

“You have now used nineteen of your twenty questions.”

Lila’s nose twitched. “Well… there’s no way I’m getting it in one more question… so…” She jumped up on a nearby rock. “How far away are we?”

“…That’s your last question?”

“Might as well make use of it.”

“But I’d answer that one even without the game!”

Lila winked at him.

“Okay, fine, we’re basically already there, I was wondering if you’d have time to finish your questions. Which. I guess you just did…”

“All part of my diabolical plan.”

“Anyway, she’s just through here.”

“She…” Lila cocked her head to the side, but followed.

She had prepared herself for many things, but one thing she had not prepared herself for was the Red Crystalline One embedded in a tree. It was a curious sight—clearly the Crystalline One had crashed here, given the crater-shape of the earth nearby, but had also carved her shape in order to support, so much so that her form was rather tree-like itself. A bright Red entity intertwined with the green of life; it was impossible to tell where the Crystalline One ended and the living tree began.

“…I could have figured this out,” Lila said, eventually. “I knew about the whole situation with the Red Seekers…” She shook her head and smiled. “Ashen, right?”

“That is correct,” Ashen said. “I am Ashen, Red Crystalline One. A… spirit of the forest.”

“Hmm…” Lila started prowling around Ashen, examining her from all sides. “So I take it I’m here to judge if you are worthy of being registered.”

“Worthy…?”

“Oh, yes. If I’m going to file a report, I better make sure the content within is true.” She stopped moving around, fixing her gaze directly on Ashen. “Which means I need to judge your character.”

“But, Suro said…”

“Oh, Suro says many things. He does know me rather well and likely thinks there’s no way I judge you as a danger to the town. He’s probably right. But my job is my job, and I can’t just take his word for it—not on something so monumental.”

“Why… why does this have to be monumental? I just want to sit in this forest, talk to Jeh when she gets back, and… live in peace.”

“The fact of reality is that you could kill everyone in Willow Hollow if you got bored and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.”

“I would never…”

“There have been many cases of Crystalline Ones who said the same thing and nonetheless did so. Many of whom weren’t even lying at the time. Something occurred to send them into a rage. The death of someone close to them. The destruction of the environment over the course of fifty years. A few careful words from a more militant Seeker.” Lila laid down on the rock, folding her front paws one over the other. “That is why the laws, as… inconsistent as they are, exist. Tragedy can strike at a moments notice when one of your kind is involved. Many have been worshipped as gods, and understandably so, false though they may be.”

“I see why they exist, I am not stupid. I was born in a whirling torrent of rage only quelled by the quick thinking of your husband. What horrors would I have unleashed were his words not there to guide me? But since he was there, the horrors will not come.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“It is not who I am.”

“Really? Then, Ashen, who are you?”

“I a—”

“I would think more carefully before you answer.”

Ashen fell silent. For the longest time, she said nothing. For her part, Lila waited patiently. Suro, meanwhile, was somewhat unsure what kind of game his wife was playing and was trying to just trust her to handle things and not interrupt. He was still visibly twitchy.

He really thinks I might be able to make her break with what I’m about to do, Lila realized. If she does, she is a danger. …Oh, Dia, don’t let it come to that, let her just prove herself and we can move on. I do not wish to weigh the morality of condemning another life.

“I am Ashen,” Ashen eventually spoke. “A Crystalline One born of rage. Rage, anger, and a sense of great injustice. Those from which I was formed are second-class citizens, snubbed, laughed at, ignored, or outright hated. The Red Seekers are tormented the kingdom over for allying themselves with the Color of fire. I can feel their pain. I am their pain. Their cry for justice. For revenge.”

Lila blinked a few times. This all made sense, sure, but she certainly wasn’t expecting it. Then again, she had not been around many vulnerable Crystalline Ones. Perhaps they were all capable of such personal introspection.

“That fire burns within me, the desire to see the wrongs set right. But the Red Seekers sought to turn me on you. To worship the very concept of their rage. But you and your town have done nothing to them. You gave them a place to stay. You did not drive them out. But they could not see that, they could never see that, it was already too late for them. I… was new. And I could see. I could see it. I could only see it because there were people there to show it to me. I was born among people who could only believe in prejudice against them. I had to see kindness from strangers to even believe it was a thing. Suro showed that to me. Jeh showed that to me. The rage is not gone, it is still there, and it will always be within me for it is part of who made me. But who made me is not as important as what I have become. I burn, but I do not want to. I want it gone. I want it out. I want to live here in this forest and protect this tree that I hurt in my panic, to repay the damages that I have caused. That… is who I am. An atoner. For the burning rage within me, I shall atone, for the Red Seekers will not.”

“…You have come a long way in such a short time,” Lila said. “I wish others were more like you, more capable of seeing themselves.”

“I am all I have to look at most often. I am such a curious puzzle… how can I not?”

“Tell me, then, what do you think of the Red Seekers’ beliefs?”

“I am no god.”

“Are you part of one?”

Ashen frowned. “…If I am, I wish it were not so.”

“Interesting…” Lila jumped down from the rock and approached Ashen. “You are not sure what to believe.”

“Jeh read many books to me on myths and legends and peoples… the answer is not clear.”

“Is there a reason it would be?”

“…No.”

“And yet, it is unimaginably important, is it not? What you should be and how you should act changes significantly if the Seekers are correct as to your nature, or if we Aware are, or even the Gonal. Are you right to reject the teachings you were given at birth, or have you committed a grievous error?”

“I have made no error!” Ashen’s facets started sparkling rapidly. “It cannot be right to lay waste to all. The revenge they sought is far worse than what they received.”

“Then I ask you this… having rejected that, where do you wish to go?”

“Nowhere. I wish to stay here.”

“I did not mean physically. I mean… mentally, spiritually, or perhaps some mixture. You have looked into yourself enough to know that you are changing. For the better, it seems. The question is, what do you want to grow into?”

Ashen was silent.

“…It is not a question you need to answer right away, but it will be good to think about.” Lila smiled at her. “You have passed my test. I shall request registration for you, and your existence shall remain a closely guarded secret known only among a few—at least, as far as my power allows me to do that.”

“Wait, that’s it?”

“You actually proved yourself to me quite a while ago, I just wanted to help you examine a few things you might not have seen yourself.” Lila gave Ashen a warm smile. “My politician job ended and my Keeper job began, I just didn’t tell you that I switched in the middle there.”

“…I… Thanks?”

“Do not thank me until you are sure you have benefited. Thanking out of politeness only is not the truth.”

Ashen addressed Suro. “And you really like this one?”

“She’s the best cat in the world,” Suro said with a smug grin.

“She seems like a handful.”

“Oh, that’s also true. But compared to a dozen kittens…” Both of the cats shivered.

“I will be sure to drop by when I can, Ashen,” Lila said. “You are now a citizen of Willow Hollow, and everyone in this town is my concern. I want your life here to be a happy and meaningful one. The two are often at odds with each other, but navigating that ocean is part of life. I can be a guide if you want… or just a friend. Or neither, as it is your life, ultimately, and you can do what you will with it. That, after all, is one of the great gifts we have been given.”

“…Then I will thank you for the registration.”

“And that there is a truthful expression of gratitude. You are most welcome, Ashen.” She bowed her head. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have to actually draft that up, and that, ironically, is going to be the more difficult part of this ordeal… I am well accustomed to dealing with people. Paperwork? Still aggravating and befuddling.”

“I’m sure Seskii can help,” Suro said.

“Yes, but I really do need to learn how to do it all properly… which is annoying since, so far as I can tell, basically everyone cuts corners around the law all the time. I know Dia said the institutions of the spirited are inherently corrupt but you’d think there would be something in there…” She waved at Ashen. “Until later, my friend. May Dia watch over your grove.”

Ashen sparkled, intending to offer a word of thanks, but stifled it. It would not be true. After all… did she even want Dia’s blessing? The “blessing” of the Red was hardly worthwhile…

~~~

Vaughan woke up in the middle of the night and was struck by the silence of everything.

No sound of Jeh snoring.

No sound of Blue working furiously on some mathematical formula.

Not even the deranged ramblings of Krayz.

There was silence.

Just as it had been before…

He’d lived like this for many, many years before the Wizard Space Program had started… this was the normal state of the cabin.

So why did it feel so… eerie?

Without really knowing why, Vaughan got up and went outside. He stepped out into the cold night air with nothing more than his nightclothes and looked up at the stars. The Stellar Flow* was on clear display high above his head, running across the sky. So many stars that they could not be distinguished from each other without a telescope, but stars they were… all collected in a ring that surrounded Ikyu at distances so absurd nobody could even measure it.

*The Milky Way was named because of a Greek myth about a goddess who sprayed milk across the sky. Naturally, Ikyu doesn’t have this legend, so whatever they call the galactic disc would naturally be something else. They obviously won’t call it the galactic disc since they have no idea what other stars even are yet… The name Stellar Flow comes from no legend, but rather the academics at the Academy who were tired of listing every name the various peoples of Kroan had for it. It’s where the ‘stars flow’ even though stars don’t move. (Though, to be fair, at the time it wasn’t readily accepted that Ikyu was the one doing the rotating.)

What are they? Vaughan found himself wondering. The Moon is probably rocks… so are the planets… the sun is fire… but what are the stars? Crystals? No answers were forthcoming. Objects almost randomly scattered across the sky… almost. Pinpricks of light… but with different magnitudes and even different colors. Were the fainter ones just further away?

One day… one day, we’ll find out.

But his thoughts returned to the empty cabin. We. Blue and Jeh were gone. Blue doing something she really didn’t want to do. Jeh lost somewhere on Ikyu. And then the rest of the program… they all had their own homes. Krays and Suro had families. Big G and Mary had their own secondary concerns. Seskii…

…Wait a minute, where does Seskii live?

“You look like you’re doing some deeeeep thinking.”

Vaughan let out a shout and pointed an accusatory finger at Seskii. “You… you!”

Seskii giggled. “You should see the look on your face.”

Vaughan gave her an uncertain look… and then let out a relieved laugh. “Yeah, I was thinking.”

“About me?” Seskii fluttered her eyes.

“Well, yes, but that wasn’t the main thing.” He put his hands behind his back and frowned. “Seskii, I had grown used to being alone. I spent most of my time here, in this cabin, just… being. But now… now I don’t want it to be empty.”

“It won’t be empty forever,” Seskii said. “Blue and Jeh will be back. The program will expand.”

“Yeah…” Vaughan looked up at the sky, frowning.

“Unless… you’re thinking about missed opportunities.”

“I… I am not young. My thoughts were all focused on ‘get old’ and ‘become a proper wizard’ and ‘gray that beard,’ but… there have been missed opportunities. I did not have to live in an empty cabin for… so long.”

Seskii nodded. “Yeah, maybe it was a mistake. But so what? That’s the past, you can recognize that now. There are people in the cabin. You’re not living alone, cut off from everyone.”

“…Have you ever thought about having children?”

Seskii let out a low whistle. “Y’know if you were talking to anyone else that question would probably startle them.”

“Not you, though.”

“Nope!” Seskii giggled. “And I have thought about it, many times, but for many reasons it wouldn’t exactly… work.” She shuffled her feet awkwardly. “It’s just not meant to be, for me.”

“Ah… I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be, I have other things to make my life meaningful.”

“…I do wonder, if things had been different…”

“So many people ask that, Vaughan. But could it really have been any other way? Could anything be different?” Seskii closed her eyes and folded her hands. “The decisions we made are what they are. If time were wound back and it happened again, is there any way we could have done anything differently? Right or wrong, we did what we did. What happened, happened. We succeeded or failed.”

A single tear rolled down Vaughan’s cheek. “But…”

Seskii put a hand on his shoulder. “Time is not our domain, Vaughan. We can’t go back. Even the greatest Blue Crystalline Ones can’t go backward. And besides, if they could… wouldn’t that basically ruin everything?”

Vaughan frowned, staring at nothing.

“I’m not saying that whatever happened to you didn’t mean anything. It did. Every experience we have means something, though most aren’t able to see it at the time. But it happened.” She gave him a wink. “So instead of asking ‘what if’ we should just ask ‘what,’ and become better people from those experiences.”

“Then… I find myself asking why?”

“Maybe so you could become the sort of person who would recklessly try to fly into space at immense danger to himself and kick off this crazy series of events that is going to take us to the moon.”

“I hadn’t thought of that!” Vaughan laughed.

“Or maybe the answer is even further in the future! Maybe the moon isn’t the goal, maybe it’s the stars!” She spread her hands wide. “You’re here now, and if anything had gone differently, how would you have gotten here?”

“Seskii… you are far wiser than you look.”

“I am a lot of things I don’t look like. For instance, did you know I’m much older than I look?”

“Really? How old are you?”

“Vaughan! Hmph! Don’t you know not to ask a woman her age?”

Vaughan flushed. “Well, I, er… uh…”

She booped him on the nose. “It’s fine. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a number. So… I’m at least four!” She gave him the stupidest smile she could manage and did a little jig.

“Why four, of all things?”

“The number sounded funnier than five.”

Vaughan snorted. “Seskii… never change.”

“Oh, goodness me, no! I want to change!” Seskii put her hand to her face in mock horror. “We aren’t Dia, can you imagine being unchanging? With all your faults and shortcomings? You’d never be able to learn anything new! I’d never be able to tell a new joke! The horror!”

Vaughan stared at her.

“Of course I know what you mean.” Seskii broke into a grin. “It was just sooooooo easy to twist your words there. I shall do my best to remain the kindhearted, outgoing weirdo you know and love.” She gave him a wink and with a skip she ran off into the night.

“What a strange woman…” Vaughan said, chuckling to himself. He went back inside and found that he was able to go to sleep.

~~~

The night was moonless and overcast, plunging the land below into nearly absolute darkness. The bitter cold chilled everything to its bones—if it had bones, that is, which most things in the Shinelands technically didn’t. On nights like these, there was no telling where one was going. No knowledge of how far had been traveled. No warning of potential danger lurking within the absolute darkness.

But it was night, and they had to travel during the night. The day was no longer an option—Jeh had the capacity to heat things up for her passengers, but not cool them down. If they were to travel under the gaze of the sun, it would be most certain death.

So Jeh trudged forward, a Red crystal stabbed into her arm that she used to continually regenerate a fireball behind her head to warm the others. The child was hunched over and grunting fiercely against the bitter cold of the night, a series of thick cords wrapped around her shoulders. The cords led to a ramshackle sled made of scavenged metal; little more than a rectangular slab on top of two curved blades to skate across the flat landscape.

Atop the sled were two individuals. One was Jill, sitting near the back, unmoving. She only rarely beeped, in order to conserve her power. The other passenger was Envila, wrapped in numerous layers and seated as close to Jeh’s flame as she could manage. Her eyes were not visible, for they were under her hood—leaving such large organs exposed to the elements in her state would be suicidal, so she had to make do with blindness. To be fair, she wouldn’t have been able to see much even if she did look around, as Jeh’s fire was the only visible light. Normally, her mouth was covered by a scarf-like garment, but right now it was free, the only part of her skin visible.

Even only seeing the mouth, it was easy to tell she was in bad shape. The edges of her chin were gaunt, and flakes were coming off parts of her skin. She was shivering—and not entirely from the cold. But she was aware of her surroundings. Aware of the grunting of Jeh. Aware of the horrid scraping sound of the sled against the ground.

Jeh suddenly flopped forward onto her face. The fire went out.

Something “you okay?” Envila called out.

Jeh groaned. “Just fine… need to take a break…” With a sigh, she turned to Envila and tried to convey the same thing in her language of Desc. “Good, me, stop. Some…” Jeh racked her brain. “Some…”

“Time?”

“Time!” She grinned. Slipping back into Karli, she exclaimed, “yes, I’ve still got it!” and figured the tone of her voice would be enough to convey the meaning to Envila.

Envila nodded. “You something something good and something something stop something time.”

Jeh paused. “Uh… Maybe.” She racked her brain for more Desc words. “Some time. Wait. Uh…” She gestured at herself resting. I wish I knew the word for rest.

Envila smiled warmly. She seemed to understand. Or, at least, she was used to this by now. This was hardly the first night they had done this, and Jeh had taken breaks then as well, it was just that Jeh hadn’t known enough words to say anything. She still mostly didn’t but they could at least get a few concepts across. And when they couldn’t… well then they could ask Jill but they tried not to do that. Plus, the language Jill understood wasn’t the one Evila was fluent in, and it wasn’t the one Jeh was learning.

“You learn something.”

Jeh looked up at Envila, realizing that making gestures would be pointless she groaned. She repeated the unknown word. “Meaning: fast? Meaning: good?”

“Yes.”

Jeh scrunched her nose. Good fast? Does Karli even have a word for that? She shook her head, she didn’t need to know that. Already the word was lodging itself in her brain, exactly like all the words for Karli had come. Almost… exactly the same.

This confused Jeh somewhat. Hadn’t Blue and the others said that the only way she learned Karli so quickly was that she must have known it at some point in the past? And yet, this felt exactly the same… it was just coming to her, albeit slowly. Why would she have known Desc? She had lived in that forest for as long as she could remember, and what kind of kid knew two languages?

Maybe they were just spoken nearby? But Envila didn’t know Karli at all, and she knew a lot of languages. Some clearly better than others, though.

This got Jeh more than a little curious. She picked up a Purple crystal and projected an image of Ikyu as she saw it from space, though without clouds, just showing the landmasses like a map. She turned to Envila. “Question: word place? Look.”

Carefully, Envila removed her hood from over her eyes, her two massive eyelids closed tightly. She rather quickly opened them, took in the information, and then closed them again. She thought for a few minutes. Then she took out one of her hands and pointed around the Eastern side of Ikyu and pointed toward the back.

“From the complete other side of the planet…” Jeh commented to herself in Karli. “That… makes no sense.”

“Why?” Envila asked.

“No words,” Jeh said with a shrug, the shorthand she had developed to let Evila know that she didn’t have a clue how to communicate the idea.

Envila said something that Jeh was starting to suspect translated to “how annoying,” but she couldn’t be sure.

“You okay?” Jeh asked.

“No,” Envila said.

“More food?”

“Food bad.”

“Food uh…” Jeh struggled to think of a way to convey taste. “Nom nom?” She made a few noises with her tongue.

Envila chuckled softly, then suddenly heaved, slamming one of her hands over her mouth. She took a few shaky, haggard breaths. “Food… bad.” She made a scraping motion with her hand, like a blade cutting, and spoke a new word. “Ouch.”

Pain. “Food pain. Bad… feel.”

“Yes,” Envila said, clearly still shaken by her recent episode. “Bad… pain… feel.”

Even though she’d figured out the word, it took Jeh a little longer to garner the meaning behind he words. Oh no. It’s toxic.

“Bad food no.” Jeh said, reaching to take the cooked meat away.

Envila shook her head. “Need food. Food bad. Death fast or death something something.”

“Eh?”

“…not fast.”

Jeh nodded, talking it over to herself in Karli. “I think I get it… you can’t live off the food, it’s bad for you, but with it you’ll live longer than otherwise.” Jeh sighed. “Move fast?”

Envila sagged visibly in… embarrassment? Shame? It was hard to tell. “Yes. Please. Fast. More fast.”

Jeh took in a deep breath. She didn’t at all feel rested, but this woman’s life was in her hands. They needed to get to their destination. Who knew how long Envila had?

With a grunt, Jeh stood back up, took the ropes over her back, and started pulling again. “Here we go!” She roared, trying—and succeeding—to motivate herself to give it her all. She may have been physically weak, but her will to move persisted, so this exhaustion… well, eventually she’d just up and collapse, but not yet. She was a long way from that. Sore muscles? So what? Lungs on fire? Hah!

It was nothing…

Definitely nothing.

I can do this.

At first, she counted her steps, just as a way to prove to herself that she could always do more. But she lost count. She stumbled. She shook. And—

—suddenly everything was bright. The shock of going from the warm light of what was essentially a floating campfire to something that was comparable to staring right at the sun was enough to make her fall backward. Sensing that something bad was about to happen, she whipped out her Orange crystal and tried to send out a shockwave to push anything that might be attacking back.

She felt her attempt fail.

She was low on will.

Uh-oh.

While Jeh was haggard and exhausted, she was not out. She stood onto her feet and took up a fighting stance, even though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to fight with. She couldn’t see anything in the light, but she could hear. There was Envila’s haggard breathing. Jill beeping… a lot, actually, what did that mean?

And then there was the sound of metal scraping, getting closer and closer to her. Almost like… skittering.

At this point, Jeh’s eyes finally started to adjust. She could make out large, blade-like shapes in the light… attached to a central body… Ch’eni’tho.

Did they really chase us all the way here!?

The Ch’eni’tho stopped in front of her and spoke in a monotone voice with words she couldn’t understand.

“Uh… didn’t catch that,” Jeh said.

“Karli identified,” the Ch’eni’tho said. “I asked you to identify yourselves.”

“I’m… Jeh, this is Envila, and this is Jill. Are… are you the Western Ch’eni’tho?”

“That is an acceptable moniker.”

“Good! We’ve been looking for you!” Jeh lit up. “Envila’s about to starve to death and the food I have can’t help her, and the other Ch’eni’tho ripped out Jill’s organs and I’m hoping you know what to do to heal her? Please?”

“Validating… you appear to speak the truth. Order: dim lights.”

Suddenly, the lights dropped to a much more manageable level, revealing several dozen Ch’eni’tho holding Purple crystals, completely surrounding the travelers.

The Ch’eni’tho who had spoken stepped forward. “I am Monomial Root, Initial Order of this Sect. I offer no promises. We may or may not be able to fix Jill the watchlight. But we do have stores of biological food for travelers who pass through. Virtually all who make it across need it, even if our brethren did not accost them on the journey.” The Ch’eni’tho gingerly took the ropes off of Jeh’s shoulders, removing her burden. “Come, let us get you rested.”

“Thank goodness…” Jeh said, allowing her shoulders to sag. She jumped up onto the sled with Envila and Jill and let the Ch’eni’tho push them. She spoke to Envila in Desc. “We here. Safe. Friends.”

Envila nodded.

“By the way, Monomial,” Jeh began. “How close are we to the edge of the Shinelands?”

“You are there now,” Monomial said. “If you look in the distance, you can see the Wild Kingdoms.”

Jeh gasped. “Really!? …Wait, no, it’s dark.”

Monomial lit up the Purple crystal and shone the bright spotlight into the distance. It didn’t illuminate things that far away very well, but Jeh could make out trees. Lots of trees, and a few mushroom-trees as well.

Their journey across the Shinelands was finally over.

Envila said a word Jeh didn’t recognize.

“Eh?” Jeh tilted her head in confusion.

Envila switched languages… probably to the one Jill recognized.

“Understood,” Monomial Root said.

“What did she ask for?” Jeh asked.

“She requested a bucket.”

“Why would she need a—ooooh, oh. Oh.” Jeh rubbed her arm awkwardly. “Yeah, that… that might be a good idea, now that we’re safe…”

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Okay, so, first of all, optics is not my strong suit, I never studied it directly. So I don’t have a great grasp on focal length, lens dynamics, and all that nonsense. (The best part of research for this chapter was reading about how lenses were made in olden times. Basically just a really fancy grindstone if you wanted anything precise.)

However, there is one question that I think we can spend some time looking into: why DO lenses work? Why do they make things bigger or smaller? (Let’s not worry about the issues of focusing images and all that nonsense, at least for now.)

Lenses are made out of many materials, but the most common in our past was simple glass. Glass bubbles could make things larger, and eventually people figured out the ideal shapes for them that bend light to magnify things in specific ways. It’s not so easy to see that glass bends light in day-to-day life, because we look through windows and don’t see much of a problem. However, it is very easy to see in, say, a glass of water. Everyone’s noticed that a straw sitting in such a glass doesn’t look straight. It’s still straight, naturally, it’s just the light isn’t taking a straight path from the straw to your eye due to both the glass and the water. The amount by which the light bends is determined by the material it's passing through: be it air, water, or glass. Each material has its own index of refraction. The larger the difference between the two mediums, the greater the light will bend. Larger angles with respect to the surface also create larger effects (or might even reflect)!

This is the answer most people get in grade school and are satisfied with it. Of course, the materials just bend light. But we here at GM Industries have a serious problem with asking “well why?” Light, after all, is composed of photons. What happens when the photon changes the medium it’s traveling through that makes it bend?

The explanation behind the explanation is that light seeks to take the path of least resistance and that when the light passes into a different medium (such as glass) it changes its speed and thus adjusts its angle to minimize the path taken. This is a rather roundabout argument, admittedly, and to really show it involves working out the math and showing that, yep, it does in fact produce the observed effect of refraction if we assume the path of least resistance.

Except. See. Light travels at this thing called the speed of light. It can’t be slowing down, no matter what reference frame we are in. Relativity demands that we always observe light to be traveling the same speed! So what on Earth is happening here if light isn’t moving slower?

Well, what we’ve got here is an effect of wave dynamics. Each individual photon isn’t moving slower, that’s for sure. However, photons are not just particles, they are also waves, waves of electromagnetic radiation. Individually these waves do all sorts of things—smash into atoms, pass through things, etc. All of them are always moving at the speed of light, no matter what.

However, the wave nature of light allows waves to interfere with each other. The photons interfere with other photons, yes, but they also interfere with matter. Atoms, being composed of electrons and protons, will react and oscillate in response to light passing through them (or even near it). These oscillations change the electromagnetic field. Thus, a sea of photons passing through dense matter will be affected more than a sea of photons passing through loose matter, such as air. This makes the overall wave pattern of the photons exhibit a slower speed due to the induced interference. Thus, with the slower speed, the wave takes the path of least resistance and bends.

As for why one specific angle in particular is the way light wants to go, it’s because a continuum of photons will have some parts of it hit the medium before the other parts, causing the shift in speed to be applied at different times to different parts of the wave, and thus the entire thing just bends in a reliable, predictable matter. Basically, refraction only works due to the wave nature of light.

However, the case for single photons is WEIRD. They tend to smack into atoms, exciting an electron, which prompts another photon to be emitted later. This is not the source behind the slowing because even though it does take time to do this, it’s a very random process and could go any direction, even backward. However, if a single photon is passing through a medium with only a minor chance of being absorbed, it will pass right through. Even a single photon will still refract! But didn't we just say the continuum is required to cause this effect? Well, this is what we like to call Quantum Weirdness. So long as a photon doesn't hit anything, it can remain in a wavelike state and be in multiple places at once, effectively interfering with ITSELF. Really funky stuff. But the finer points of the dual slit experiment are a little beyond this section.

To those who think its weird that the continuum wave of light moves at a different speed than the light itself, you are not alone. But it’s actually somewhat easy to do—it’s even possible to offset wavelengths of any sort of wave in such a way that the particles are all moving one direction but the wavefront is going backward! Granted, this doesn’t happen in refraction, but it is possible to engineer a case. Play around with some stones in the water: the signal of the splash always travels out at the speed of sound in the medium, but it isn’t all that difficult to get interference patterns that propagate separately from that. Though not in the reverse direction. That requires some engineering.