Sophie made her way back into the shrine’s entryway with Elowen floating alongside. She approached the shrine stone’s cabinet with slight hesitation. After all of Elowen’s warnings and her experience with the fire the day before, she wasn’t sure what to expect.

She opened the cabinet carefully. The shrine stone still glowed the same faint blue. Was it perhaps fainter than before? She had no real way of telling, but something in her gut told her it might be. Right. She was here to fix that. She would fix that. She would do whatever it took to get that stone glowing just as blue as the lamps, and hopefully that would allow Elowen to manifest fully again.

“Is it okay if I –?” Sophie wasn’t sure what she wanted to ask exactly, but it felt like she needed Elowen’s permission for this. “If I try channeling mana into it?”

“Of course,” Elowen replied. “Just be careful.”

Sophie nodded and reached her hand out. She placed her palm directly on the slightly rough surface of the stone. After her experiments with distance channeling earlier, she figured it wasn’t worth wasting the extra mana to do that. It sounded like this was going to be difficult enough without adding the extra challenge.

She centered herself, focusing on the point where her hand met the slightly cool stone. She could feel the mana within the stone resonate with her to some degree. She still couldn’t truly sense mana, but the stone was different in that regard. Somehow she had a special connection to it – likely through her relationship to Elowen and the shrine itself.

Next, she found her own mana, growing more familiar every day, and she began to let it flow outward until it formed a connection with the stone. The connection itself happened easily, as if she had done it a hundred time before, but what came next –

Her stomach sank with something almost like fear, as if she was looking over a deep precipice. The stone seemed nearly hollow with emptiness. She could feel the capacity for mana and it felt almost endless at her current level. The stone didn’t feel like the fire – like it would pull all the mana from her – but it seemed impossible that she’d ever be able to fill it on her own.

She tried channeling some mana into it anyway, but it was like adding mere drops to a pond that was once an ocean. This time, it wasn’t the stone that wanted more mana, but Sophie herself who felt like she could put all of her mana into it and still not be satisfied with the results.

In fact, after what seemed like only a moment or two, she suddenly realized that couldn’t tell how much mana she had even put into it. She broke the connection, immediately letting her hand drop, and weariness slammed into her. She swayed slightly, but at least she didn’t pass out this time.

“Wow,” she breathed. That was a close one.

“Are you alright?” Elowen asked, worry creasing her expression.

“I am,” Sophie reassured her. “Although, I guess I can see why you wanted me to wait. I don’t think I made any difference at all, and I already feel more drained than I expected.”

Elowen frowned. “We should stop then.”

Sophie glanced back at the stone, chewing on her lip in thought. She really wanted to try again. “Acacia actually gave me some more mana bread,” she said after a moment. “I’d like to eat some first, and then decide.”

Elowen shook her head, obviously skeptical of the idea. “I’m not sure how wise that is…”

The mana bread yesterday had immediately improved Sophie’s mana exhaustion, even after she had completely passed out. Today, Sophie felt the bone-weary feeling of being low on mana, but she was still standing, at least. She wondered what the mana bread could do when she was only just on the borderline of mana exhaustion, instead of already completely drained.

Sophie went back to the kitchen area and pulled out the little loaf that Acacia had given her. She unwrapped it, but it was still frozen solid. “Ah, drat. I guess I’ll have to wait for it to thaw.”

But, actually… There was still a little bit of mana bread left over from the previous day. It might be a little stale, but Sophie found the remaining piece in one of the cabinets and sniffed it. “Seems fresh enough.”

There were only a few bites left so she popped the rest of it into her mouth. The effect was almost instantaneous. Mana rushed back to her, even quicker than it had the previous day. She felt as fresh as she had when she woke up in the morning, before she had done all of the markers on the path.

Elowen watched her with no small amount of anxiety as she approached the shrine stone again. “I really don’t know if you should try it again…”

“It’s really okay,” Sophie insisted. “Besides, I don’t think I’ll be able to do much. Even just a moment or two was nearly too much earlier.”

She placed her hand back on the stone, reopening that strange, vast connection. This time, with her mana at its fullest, she tried paying more attention to the flow of the mana between her and the stone, but she still couldn’t quite get a good read on it.

She pulled her hand back suddenly, unsure if she had gone too far. As soon as the connection dropped, the exhaustion crashed back over her again – this time seeping deep into her bones. She sat straight down on the floor of the shrine and laughed. “I guess that’s all I can really do for today.”

Acacia had warned her against eating too much of the mana bread and besides, the new loaf was frozen anyway. She would just have to wait until tomorrow to do anything more.

She carefully closed and re-latched the cabinet that held the shrine stone under Elowen’s watchful gaze. She felt weak and shaky, but not so bad that she thought she’d pass out or something. She remembered Acacia’s suggestion that regular food might help, too, so she figured now was a good time for a celebratory pastry. But before then…

“Can you tell…?” she asked, unable to keep the thread of hope out of her voice. “I mean, did it make any difference at all?”

Elowen pursed her lips for a moment. “Maybe a little,” she replied, but she didn’t seem any different. Sophie wondered if the spirit was just being nice.

Sophie couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She supposed if it had taken such a long time for the mana to deplete, it wasn’t going to be fixed in an evening. Especially not at her current level. But still she had hoped…

Well, she had hoped it would make some sort of noticeable difference.

She made her way back into the kitchen area for some tea and that not-so-celebratory pastry and tried not to feel too bummed about her progress. At least she had finally even tried the shrine stone. Now she knew what to expect. And on top of that, she had learned so much about the world she lived in now after talking with Acacia earlier in the day. Perhaps almost too much about the world.

She wondered if she should tell Elowen about it – but she found herself hesitating at the idea. If it had really been nearly 80 years, and if the spirit was indeed missing or losing her memories, it seemed somehow insensitive.

Sophie ate her pastry thoughtfully in silence while Elowen stared at the chill box, occasionally waving her hand over it in curiosity. She did feel a little better after the food and the tea, but she doubted she would be able to do anything truly productive for the rest of the night. Luckily, she had the books from the library.

She brought her tea over to the little writing desk and set it down next to the pile of books she had got from the library. Elowen followed curiously, watching as Sophie picked up the top book off of the stack – Taming the Ice Mage. Sophie immediately felt a little guilty about the idea of reading it – she should probably try to read more of the boring books about plants, instead. But she felt drained after her experience with the shrine stone, and it had been an incredibly long day, what with the market and the cooking lesson and learning fantasy land geography on top of all of that.

Maybe she needed a reprieve.

“What is this one about?” Elowen asked, peering over Sophie’s shoulder as she flipped open to the title page.

“I’m not sure, yet,” Sophie admitted. “But it’s fiction. A romance story probably, judging by the title.”

“Fiction? Like made up tales?”

Sophie nodded. “Have you ever read anything like that before?”

Elowen shook her head. “Not that I recall…”

Sophie almost felt a little bad for asking the question – it fell into the territory of things that Elowen probably wouldn’t remember if she tried. She quickly covered up her embarrassment by offering, “Well, we could read this one together if you’d like.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful!” Elowen twirled. “I’m so curious…”

Sophie repressed a sigh. She had honestly been hoping that the spirit would say no, but Elowen looked so delighted at the idea that she couldn’t back down now. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do that, then.”

The things Sophie had to do as a shrine priestess.

Sophie flipped open to the first full page of text and then glanced back at Elowen, trying to determine the logistics of reading with a shrine spirit. “Do you want to read over my shoulder?” she asked.

“Hmmm, perhaps you could read it out loud?”

“Out loud?” Sophie stared down at the words on the page. She had never read aloud to anyone before. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to enjoy the story herself. But it was worth a try, she supposed. “Um, sure, I guess.”

She settled into the chair, propping her arms up on the desk and began to read the first paragraph. She found herself quickly swept up into the story, barely noticing the words as they tumbled out of her mouth.

She became completely engrossed in the tale – the lead heroine’s tragic backstory, her plucky best friend who dragged her off on an adventure, their unfortunate first meeting with the arrogant Ice Mage. In fact, Sophie was just getting to the first steamy “will they or won’t they” scene after the Healer heroine saves the Ice Mage from a mortal wound when Sophie suddenly remembered her surroundings.

She immediately closed the book with a squeak. “Maybe we should take a break.”

Her voice was dry anyway, and she needed to get some water. But her face also burned with embarrassment – she had no idea how audiobook narrators back in her old world read steamy scenes aloud.

“I don’t get it,” Elowen said, floating alongside Sophie as she went to grab a cup of water.

“Get what?” Sophie asked.

“It’s just not very interesting, is it? Can’t humans just do these things already? Why would you want to read tales about them?”

Sophie spluttered a laugh. “Um, I suppose that’s fair,” she agreed, but then she shrugged. “I enjoy them, though.”

Elowen looked awfully skeptical. “Aren’t there books about something more exciting?”

Sophie somehow felt vaguely offended at the insinuation the romance books were boring, but she nodded. “Sure. There are a lot of different kinds of stories. I’m sure we could find something else you might enjoy.”

She supposed it made sense that a shrine spirit might not be interested in tales of human romances though, and she was privately relieved that it sounded like she would not have to read the steamy scenes out loud to Elowen after all. Instead, she would have to pick up a few other books at the library to see if there was something else that might interest Elowen.

It was never too late to make a reader out of someone, even if they were an ageless shrine spirit, after all.