A rather small and unhappy ’star’ guttered and hissed inside a pocket of low pressure and thermally protected air. The small bead of what was essentially semi-constant fire, flickering as it was fed oxygen, hung only a couple handspans above a wooden floor. To the reincarnator, it was merely a sort of chemistry... held on a very short leash of a kind of control that she was highly confident in. To almost anyone else in the territory it would have read as a small, if beautiful, disaster - waiting to become a larger one.
’Probably what they think of me in general, hm?’
Elua ’watched’ the two gases as they met inside that hot little ball: silicon hydride, otherwise known as silane, a substance that was so pyrophoric that it wished to burn the very instant it caught the faintest touch of moist air... and pure oxygen she let sip in at a very specific rate. Where they touched they reacted to make heat, sand, and *normally* water if the oxygen in the air was too abundant... but instead only a fine white powder and hydrogen gas came to be.
A lesser cultivator, without a careful essence field buoyed by a powerfully precise spirit, would have probably flashed and detonated it all at once. Splitting her attention between coaxing her supplies of gases toward her goal and keeping the exothermic reaction relatively docile felt like something only her Element was capable of. A real generalized elementalism - Air, to Fire, to Crystal - all because her Aspect was broad enough to play with some of the most interesting fluid dynamics of cosmic physics.
If only she could easily make all of the gases involved do exactly, *exactly* as she wanted... then the silicon dioxide would form and settle on the splinter of quartz she was keeping in Adhesion. Set there as a seed to grow a Crystal from and learn to partially mimic yet another Element. Instead, because even her control and experience was finite... much of it was reacting and flowing down toward the bottom of her tiny vacuum gas alchemy chamber.
’Our father would mostly, with a fwoosh and a prolonged grrrr, tell the crystal he found to be a cup or a chain or just longer. I have to convince a fire’s corpse to be left in the right place. These are not the same things... no matter what his sounds translate to.’
Some of it was a success. Only in the sense that it was, undeniably, a piece of quartz now twice the size of the sliver it had been when she first started. It just felt like a lot of failure when considering the palmful of snow-like sand resting as excess on the table beside her. Regardless, containing a reaction like this was the kind of pleasant difficulty she had already missed from her more ’free’ experiments since returning from the Exclave.
"Mmrgh."
A small grunt of effort from Onya on the floor behind her came as the girl sat cross-legged on a cushion. With the seriousness of someone who had been told sitting still was ’part of the work’... and who privately suspected this was only a cruel and possibly invented rule. Frankly speaking, it was!
However, when learning any skill or training in any exercise, there was always value in isolation of the mechanics to promote general mastery. You *could* walk, talk, and throw a ball at the same time kind of effectively on instinct alone - but if you mastered all parts of it separately the combination would be far more effective.
Which... was the sort of additional hypothetical statement that made the little sister think it was made up in the first place...
"You are catalyzing the fats too fast. You do not have the control yet to store away that much energy at that rate. You will spill more out as waste than you keep."
A tray beside the reddish blonde child she chided held half of the wreckage of a breakfast chosen for density rather than flavor. Marrow-rich jelly was spread over heavy seeds that had been seared soft by pressed plant oils. The sort of meal no mortal would really choose to eat a half a plate of, without seasonings... but a growing cultivator with the right techniques could handle finishing without the stomach ache. If they did it correctly.
"...It goes too slow when I do it ’right’."
"It is supposed to go slow. Do you think you want to eat something like *that* every hour just to feel sated?"
"I don’t want to eat it ever again!"
Her physical energy churned as she pulled and ripped at the food dissolving in her stomach wrong. Trying with more enthusiasm to be done with it... than to do it the way she was told.
"I won’t make you eat it again - without salt. *If* you slow your conversion into physical energy down, now."
"...Okay."
Mint eyes remained on the clouded little stone as she instructed, but a coil of her spirit had been resting in a small spiritual construct planted against her sister’s digestive tract the entire while. There was a tide rising in her body, closer than a week ago to spilling over and closer than yesterday, even. She would know this way the hour it decided to come in fully - and change the little otter’s life. Though it would not be today, at this rate... even if Onya exhaled, reset herself, and sulked as she more slowly tugged at the rich clump of fats.
"You disappeared the whole night."
A minute later, this was said down toward the cushion she sat on... more than aimed back, to reach the intended target. A short, unhappy tone of an accusation that had been saving itself up for the right moment. Her little brain had decided this was close enough, the novelty of spending time cultivating with her eldest sister had long run its course, anyway!
"I did, yes."
"A whole night. We just got here."
"All of that is true."
"I had to have breakfast without you. Au kept saying you were ’busy’ with Qatrand."
The reborn cultivator finally let the ’star’ stop flickering as she considered exactly how much of the truth a six-year-old was owed. The answer, as always, was all of it. Just not all the *details*, as there were lots of ways to tell the truth completely while telling none of the small facts at all!
"We needed some time alone together. Like Mom and Dad often do."
"Oh."
A number of heartbeats passed in which the young girl clearly connected dots with more ease than a child should be able to. Elua didn’t know for certain that her parents’ activities had gotten any better - or worse, depending on your perspective - but clearly that little twinge of ’understanding’ in Onya meant that they must not be very quiet. A deduction that was quickly reinforced, as kids tended to do, at the most awkward of timings. In this case, while El was slightly reminiscing about this morning.
"...I feel like Au always disappears around when I hear them at night. Can she maybe not stand the sound of couples doing that stuff?"
"You are calling your personal servant ’Au’ now, I see."
The older Goltbred elected to ignore the actual question, since it touched up against other things she didn’t like thinking of. It was a time honored skill of misdirecting... talking about something else they may care about!
"Mhm. Leysah said... or begged? Anyway, she wanted me to start calling her Sahsah again like before. Especially around Hoolov, she said."
"When did you ever - ah. When you and dad stayed here for a while."
"Yeah. After the uhm, Saltfire Storm Alliance thing."
A thoughtful frown appeared on the young face. Though it wasn’t about that kidnapping attempt she barely remembered or understood as being dangerous. Her expression was just about last night. She still didn’t really understand adults that well.
"And then when I started doing as *she* asked, to practice so I don’t forget, Aurehl looked kind of glum. So now she’s Au."
"That was kind of you. Remember that people can treasure things heavily that we give out lightly."
"It’s not a big deal."
Since she had already stopped her Crystal Mimicry experiment thanks to the talkative child, the adult in the room turned. Mint eyes fixed on brown in all seriousness. Whether it was her place or not, cultivation wasn’t the only thing she wanted to share with her precious sister.
"But it is. That woman has been watching over you since you were born. People can also treat things lightly that others have invested heavily in, little river bend."
"...Ah?"
"You don’t have to love her more than others or put her on a pedestal because of that, but remember that she cares for you. So any action you take that expresses or insinuates care back will have impact."
"Okay, okay. Can we go see Tana soon? He left before I even got to pick him up and see how much he weighs now."
The little girl tried moving on from this talk and into something else. Elua didn’t mind. After all, it seemed like she wasn’t that interested in learning more about ’Au’ or getting along with her better. So the earlier question about why she disappeared was essentially now negated entirely!
"Soon. We have a few things to handle first."
"...Okay."
The acceptance in her voice and heart was grudging - but real. Onya went back to churning fats into physical energy, trying to prove she could do this super boring thing that was apparently *soooo* important. For all her outer and inner complaint, the little sister of the heiress had in fact sat still for a very respectable stretch when compared to what either of them thought would occur today. Elua, for her part, let her work at it a while longer than she actually needed her to. But eventually, the brunette rose to her own feet.
"Alright. You have sat still in practice more than enough to satisfy even me. You have made progress, but you won’t hit your targets all at once."
She crouched, working her fingers into the reddish-blonde hair in a slow and playful scratch. A sort that always made Onya’s eyes go briefly unfocused with contentment. A bit like a pet - which, considering how much the girl wanted to play with the strange fox and the Skydancers... and even with other people throughout her growing up, Elua was surprised. That the girl did not have an animal companion of some sort.
’Yatrel and Ondua both badgered me about buying any one I wanted when I was young. But there were too many books to read to look after a new comrade back then - and then there was Qat~’
"E-El you are scratching hard now."
"Sorry. I was lost in thought. Come help me with an errand."
"What errand?"
Onya brightened at the word ’errand’ the exact opposite way she had dimmed at *cultivate* hours ago. Scrambling up with abandon, the girl looked every bit the part of the six year old she was. A little hop, eyes bright, and tugging at her taller sister’s Silver sleeves diligently.
"I owe some awful people a number of decent swords."
"Swords? Are you gonna make them really sharp? What shape? Can I have one too?"
"I am going to have them made to certain specifications. Sharpening... comes later and I will do that part myself, just before applying a minimal amount of sigilscript."
"Hey, don’t evade another question. Can I-"
Coughing and realizing that she hadn’t *actually* pulled a fast one on the girl earlier, the ancient cultivator did what they all usually did. Doubled down stubbornly!
"Tell me something. Have you ever actually seen Molten steel up close?"
Changing the subject to something else more interesting.
At least, eventually it would be...
To the eventual Tri-Enchanter.