The days pass by quickly. With the new housekeepers taking care of stuff at home, all I have to do is go to class and work. I do still wash my own clothes, though I think they might be doing that for some of the children too. It's a bit of a fight for them to keep the house clean with the kids dragging in so much filth from the forest every day, but they actually manage pretty well anyway.

I do pick up on a few things about them as I watch them. The most obvious is that Ami is too much for Zoe. She's always excited and bouncing off the walls and Zoe can't keep up with her. However, Ami's terrible at cleaning on her own, so Marrianne is always ordering the two of them to go together so Zoe can keep Ami in line.

I... have some serious doubts about the arrangement, but it seems to be working out somehow, since the house doesn't end up filthy every other day when they're the ones cleaning. Besides that, my first guess about Ella proves correct. She feels weirdly distant when I interact with her and she makes me kind of uncomfortable, so she's definitely my least favorite.

Thankfully, it looks like Karl Liffan is leaving everything in their hands for now, because he doesn't show up at the orphanage at all. There are a couple high class soldiers posted outside every day overnight, like he warned, but I always get home before the tenth bell anyway, so I'm avoiding any trouble with them so far.

I manage to take a look at those arrows I collected when I'm alone one night, but besides them being amazingly sharp and durable, I have no idea what they're made of, besides appearing like a single piece of carved bone, with unknown, reddish feathers. I hide them back under my bed for now.

In class, Claire spends the rest of the week covering the founding of Eschalle and how the new weapons they produced gave the Bromunst kingdom the confidence they needed to try re-conquering Melphira. That was was called The Long War, because it lasted for a very long time. There were a number of times when the fighting died down, but the war never officially ended all the way through the end of The Age of Heroes.

"Technically, since there was never an official truce, the current war is still The Long War, if you want to look at it that way, despite the huge difference in the way it is fought these days," Claire says when we're talking about that. With the addition of the rail units, Eschalle and Shonamakase were pulled directly into the fighting too, which is why it's still us against them today.

Wow, no wonder why our countries hate each other so much, we've literally been fighting for hundreds of years...

The big thing that jumps out at me though, is something Claire only mentions briefly. They're called magic weapons. Apparently, they were developed as a response to the decline of heroes, and to combat Bomunst's weapons advantage, but the whole project was swept aside with the introduction of rail units, so no one even knows much about them anymore, outside of a few mentions of them existing. Beyond that... Claire just shrugs and says that if there's any more information about them, she's never seen it.

After class on Firoday, Eryk shows me the modified coil, now with more copper attached to the ends so we can easily dip them into the molten metal to combine it. We spend some time testing it on a few more crucibles of tin and copper to test the limits of how much lightning energy we need to generate with the coil for a successful combination and how much the magnet touching the sides of the coil matters, then hash out a design for a piece we can connect to the coil to hold the magnet in place properly.

While we talk about it, I actually draw most of my inspiration from the crank at the well the other day, how you can spin it to spin the bar, or in this case, the magnet. I cross that idea with some of the stuff I remember from the grindstone from Gremory's blacksmith shop, and Eryk fills in the rest, leaving us with a solid plan pretty quick.

After that, Eryk brings up one more thing. "What do we name these metals?"

I don't understand the question. "Star metals, right?" That's what we already decided on.

"Well yes, but I'm talking about this particular one. We can't keep calling it 'tin and copper' forever. It would sound ridiculous, and give away its composition."

"Oh, that's what you mean..." I scratch my cheek. It's something we completely made up on our own, so we could just come up with something that sounds cool, right? Like... "Merinium." I say the first thing that randomly comes to mind, and tag 'ium' on the end.

Eryk looks at me questioningly. "And how did you come up with that?"

I shrug. "Just a random name."

"Alright..." he still looks concerned. "It's not based on any of the actual properties or anything?"

I shake my head. "If we just have to come up with a few names... Oh." That's right, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of possible combinations. Weird, random names that don't stick to any pattern, like iron, illium, nickel, and durite aren't a problem when there are like, a dozen different metals, total. How would we keep them all straight if we had a hundred, three hundred, maybe five hundred different types of star metals?

"Ahhh... this could be a problem..." After I breathe out those words, I think for a while, searching for a usable pattern. The names could be combinations of the names of their components. Like tin and copper would make 'tico.'

"But tin and titanium both start with 'ti'..." None of the other metals have that issue, but it's still an issue. If we did three letters, it would be tincop, which just sounds weird... What if I change tin since it's the only exception that overlaps with another metal? It makes light, so I could think of it as light metal instead and use 'li.' That would make this combination 'lico.' That doesn't sound bad, but doing that for all of the names might still make their composition obvious to anyone who sees the pattern...

I keep spinning those thoughts around for a while, considering the different possibilities where things could go wrong. For instance, I land on one thing that breaks the pattern entirely. 'Plch.' I think of the combination, just a mess of consonants without vowels. I don't think you could even pronounce that in Ternian.

Even if you swapped to 'Chpl' it wouldn't really help. And for that matter, how would we decide which comes first? Whichever one has more of it in the mixture?

Wait.

My entire thought process on naming grinds to a halt when I consider the possibility of not mixing metals evenly. I already know mana is made up of different parts of different elements. One metal could be made of a ton of parts of different individual metals!

I frantically bring it up with Eryk, and he slaps his own forehead and groans. "Oh gods, duh! It's so obvious," he groans. "For all we know, we could get completely different products based on the ratio of the mixture!" But then he shakes his head. "No, can't get ahead of ourselves. I'll test that out over the weekend, you keep thinking about names. I'll let you know how things go on Arcaday."

I nod nervously, kind of off-balance after the sudden realization, and we finish up work for the day.

The weekend passes uneventfully. I continue considering naming schemes based on metals, their properties, their names, how we produce them, their intended uses, and anything else I can pull into my thinking. But generally, I spend my time with Emily, or meditating. I do take some time to go to the clothing store and get more outfits now that I have money and really need more than one set of clothing to wear every day.

Then Shanaday comes, and like Karl Liffan demanded, the caretakers bring us all to church. Since there's no more Mister Fredricson, Marrianne and Emily come with me, to the corner where Claire always stands. We share a quiet greeting before the service and thankfully, there's nothing as terrifying as Catherine Lundrum's introduction last week.

After the ambush on Avara, we haven't seen any sign of her or her men in the forest, outside of the dead animals and monsters, their wounds clearly from weapons, not from any of the magical creatures. As long as they're helping protect the town I guess...

Once the service ends, we head outside. Marrianne clearly noticed the familiarity between us earlier, so now she asks, "I don't believe we've met, you are?"

With an amused smile, Claire curtsies and introduces herself. Immediately flustered, even though she tries to hide it, Marrianne clumsily returns the gesture, much more respectfully. "So you're the one who has been teaching her," she wonders aloud. "From what I've heard, you are an excellent instructor. Eryk only had the highest praise for you. What subject do you teach?"

Still smiling, Claire answers, "I'm well versed in all subjects."

"A-all?" Marrianne blinks at her for a few long moments. "How?"

Claire chuckles, bringing a hand up to her mouth to cover it momentarily. "I am quite devout, you know. I've spent my life focused on learning, so of course I can at least teach up to an intermediate level in any subject matter."

"A... a follower of Reena...?" Marrianne continues to stare, bewildered by my instructor, who just smiles back, still looking very amused by all of this. When Marrianne finally recovers, she stammers out a thanks and fumbles her way through a respectful gesture while Claire laughs and assures her that I've been a great student.

By the time Claire heads off, Marrianne is red up to her ears. I've never seen her so flustered and embarrassed before, it's weirdly funny... She rubs my head and sighs. "I'll admit it, Aria. I am not used to interacting with such high class people..."

When she starts to head toward home and I break off in another direction, Marrianne stops me to ask where I'm going, and I tell her about my Shanaday check-ups at the doctor. I have to spend a little time to explain what counseling is since she doesn't know, and listening to it puts a complicated expression on her face, like she isn't sure how to feel about it. I just shrug and tell her it's been helping me deal with everything going on, and she finally smiles, and waves for me to go.

When we arrive at the clinic, the first thing Beth does is unwrap the bandages all over my body. It's clear that I don't need the ones on my chest or leg anymore, and my right arm isn't too bad either. The burns are still pretty discolored below the elbow, but they're just a bit pink above it now.

"Your recovery is coming along nicely," she says with a gentle smile, and rubs my head, before applying more burn ointment and fresh bandages. After that comes my counseling session, but there isn't all that much to talk about. I tell her about the new caretakers and mention how I felt really bad the other day because I'm so small, and I'm hoping the even better food I'm eating now will help, but I'm just so impatient to finally get bigger.

Unfortunately, all Beth can do is tell me to have patience and assure me that I'll grow in time. "Actually, here. You're growing all the time, I'll show you." Then she stands me up and measures me. "You were one hundred five centimeters tall when I measured you about a month, a month and a half ago. Now, you're one hundred six centimeters tall."

I grimace a little. That's less than a one percent increase. No, that's in just a month or two. It probably isn't that bad over the course of a year.

But a year is so looonnngggg......

"Now now," Beth pats me when I start pouting. "It may not sound like much right now, but every bit adds up, and before you know it, you're way taller than you were before!"

Even if it's kind of hard to believe, her encouragement helps a little, and a small smile touches my lips. "Thanks, Miss Beth..." I say quietly.

"You're welcome, Aria."

There isn't much to say after that, and I head home with Emily. But not before Beth offers to measure her too, since she's always there with me. The result: one hundred twenty six centimeters. Almost twenty percent taller than me...

The rest of Shanaday passes in a blur of study, sewing my new clothes, meditation, and chatting with Emily and her friends. The same goes for work and classes Arcaday and Venaday.

It's only on Saraday, when Eryk and me meet for work, that we've finally finished the two things we split up to work on last week. Now, I sit in the back room, up on the table with our newly improved coil... thing. Unlike before, there's a whole second part attached to it, with the durite magnet clamped in place so it sits in the middle of the coil without touching the sides. Just like we designed it, there's a crank on the end to spin the magnet and produce lightning energy. That whole section looks to be made of titanium, which I guess should be fine so it doesn't break, but the conductivity worries me.

We definitely had a number of metals that resisted lightning energy more than titanium. Since it's connected to the coil, it could give the energy an easier path than through the metals we're combining. Like... maybe nuvrite and mollite, I think those ones were really resistant, so it wouldn't work for them. I mention that to Eryk, and he immediately sees my point.

That turns into us sitting and testing each metal more carefully, to determine which one has the most resistance. It's really difficult to tell just by feel since a lot of them are really similar, but thankfully, the handful that are way more resistant immediately stand out.

"Ok, so leaving the rest aside, the most resistant ones are: illium, then titanium, durite, ignium, mollite, and nuvrite, in that order." I point them out one after another. "Illium is about double the resistance of something like iron, titanium is about four times. But we'd run into issues trying to combine anything above those with what we have now."

With a hand rubbing his chin, Eryk nods at the metals slowly, as I go on. "Durite, ignium, and mollite go about six, eight, and... nine or ten times more. But nuvrite," and I tap it, "feels about thirteen times more resistant. Comparing that to copper, I'd say it's..." This one's a lot harder. Copper has so little resistance to judge by. That's why I used iron for a comparison instead. "Mmm, probably somewhere between fifty and a hundred times the resistance of copper. So I think we should use nuvrite."

Eryk agrees immediately. "Yes. I'd like to try connecting the two parts in a way that doesn't make it metal on metal, maybe using leather or something, but having this part made of the most resistant metal we have could definitely be a good fallback."

Once we've settled on that, we finally move on to the real thing we're here for. Going over our new metals and how to name them.