Willow Hollow

As soon as breakfast ended, Vaughan suggested they should all go out back; he didn’t say why. Blue was already suspicious but she didn’t complain as she stacked all the empty bowls with her telekinesis and set them aside. Jeh only released her bowl after much complaining and failed attempts to eat it. Suro held back, waiting for the two girls to finish their drama before heading out. Blue noticed he didn’t take his eyes off Jeh for a moment.

Blue would have called him paranoid had she not also been slightly wary of Jeh. She was certain the girl meant no harm, but that didn’t automatically make her harmless. Her regeneration may not have been her only attribute. For all Blue knew, she had the ability to belch fire or make anything she touched explode. It would be best to keep an eye on her.

Upon arriving in Vaughan’s backyard, Blue had to admit, the sheer level of disorder and devastation was impressive. There wasn’t a single living plant in the entire pock-marked field of dust and broken rock. Numerous patches of earth were blackened and a few were even glassed. A smattering of metallic objects was strewn about the field, a large number showing evidence of having been half-melted in the past. Along the edge of the cabin were numerous storage chests and tables. Many of the chests hung open, revealing interiors just as disorganized and haphazard as the numerous bits and pieces lying on the tables.

Blue glanced back at the cabin, noting numerous places on this side that were scratched, charred, or otherwise. “How have you managed not to burn your house down?”

“Cleverly,” Vaughan said, approaching the only locked chest.

Blue gestured with a hoof at the careless devastation of the yard. “Doesn’t look clever to me.”

Vaughan ignored her. He unlocked the chest, revealing numerous palm-sized crystals of all seven Colors. “Let’s start from the top, shall we?”

“Start from th—“

Vaughan tossed her a Purple crystal, which she caught in her telekinesis. It was shaped like a cube, the natural shape for Purple crystals.

“You are excellent with your attribute,” Suro noted.

“Every unicorn has to be,” Blue said, turning the Purple cube over in her magic. “If you live among those with hands, you better get a replacement or suffer.” She gestured with her hoof at the band around Suro’s paw that he had been using to hold his spoon earlier. “Those are quite expensive.”

“Ah, but unicorns have two attributes!” Vaughan said, pressing his hands together. Let’s see the other one!”

Blue lit her horn, sending a blinding wave of white light out in all directions. “How’s that?”

Vaughan blinked several times, rubbing both of his eyes with his free hand while leaning heavily on his scepter. “How… do you see when you do that?”

“Don’t, not really. It’s not the most effective light.” She tapped her hoof impatiently. “So, are we gonna get to this Purple or not?”

“In a hurry are we?”

“I know what you’re doing and I want to get it over with.”

Vaughan let out a noncommittal shrug, taking a seat on a chest next to the locked one. “If you insist. First, what exactly does Purple provide us?”

Blue cleared her throat. “Purple is the aspect of light, widely used for creating images, illusions, a—“

“That’s good enough, you clearly have an academic understanding.”

Blue twitched. I had a lot more to say. Purple is one of the most useful Colors in so many applications!

“Now, demonstrate how well you can use it.”

“I suck,” Blue deadpanned.

“Ah, but I’m trying to figure out exactly how much.”

I know that, Blue wanted to snap, but she clamped her jaw shut—that would only elongate this immense embarrassment. Twirling the cube in her telekinesis for flair, she quickly brought it to a standstill and focused intently on it. She imposed her will onto the lattice within the cube, and immediately it let out a sparkling purple glow. She produced a directed beam of white light at the ground.

“Specify color,” Vaughan ordered.

Oh boy… Blue tilted her head to the side, trying to force the emitted light to become yellow, so it wouldn’t be clouded out by the crystal’s natural glow. Instead, she got a warbling green-orange mixture that couldn’t settle on a single color.

With a grunt, she removed her telekinetic grip and dropped the cube to the ground. “That’s about as far as I can go.”

Vaughan smirked. “Xerxes wasn’t kidding, you do suck.”

“I said I suck, Xerxes said I had a ‘complete lack of natural skill in using crystalline magic.’ Get it right.” She flicked her tail angrily.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Suro said. “I’m a jeweler, I work with crystals all day. I can’t even control which direction the light goes.”

Blue glanced at him sadly. “Have you spent hours upon hours every night with a crystal attempting to coax a spell from it?”

“Well, no…” Suro folded his ears back.

“I have. I’ve poured my life and soul into these crystals, and they gave nothing back.” She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be lashing out at you. Vaughan, though…” She turned to him, intending to give him a mouthful—but she was treated to the sight of Jeh holding the cube in her bare hand, creating a perfect visual duplicate of Blue in front of her.

“By the Eighth…” Vaughan said, lifting his hat up. “A three-dimensional projection at a distance?”

Jeh giggled, twisting the cube slightly with her wrist, prompting the static image of Blue to clip into the ground.

“Are you sure you’ve never used the magic of a crystal before?” Vaughan asked Jeh.

“Magic!”

Vaughan blinked a few times. “Right, forgot for a moment who I was talking to. Hmm…” He scratched his beard in an attempt to look intelligent, prompting Blue to groan. “You seem to be learning words rather quickly for a feral child, Jeh.”

“Words! Magic words.” Jeh struck a pose and winked at him. Then she used the Purple to create a duplicate of herself making an identical expression. However, the duplicate didn’t look exact, with a few of the dirty spots not shown. She couldn’t see herself right now, so she had to use a memory of herself.

“I’ll be giving you Crystals to test from now on.” Vaughan reached into the chest and threw a Blue crystal, which Blue caught with ease.

“Ah yes, my namesake, associated with speed and warps. Used generally to provide a velocity boost, can also be used to warp the physical world in slight ways.” Blue twirled it in her magic. “I can’t create a visual change with this one.” She pressed her will onto the crystal, detecting no change. “I am assured I am moving one percent faster.” She tossed it over her shoulder, where Jeh caught it.

The ensuing burst of motion from Jeh sent a whirlwind through the area. Jeh came to a stop, frantically patting the embers on her bearskin.

Blue gestured at the smoke. “Also, as Jeh has just demonstrated, apparently it’s not that difficult to go too fast. Records from advanced wizards report the difficulty of moving increases with Blue speed, and air eventually feels like syru—“

Vaughan interrupted her by throwing a Green crystal.

“You already know about this one,” Blue said.

“I just wanted to throw it,” Vaughan said with a shrug. “Here, have the most useless Color in existence.” He tossed the next shimmering crystal to her: Yellow.

“I object,” Suro said, flicking his tail. “Yellow is not useless, it is the means by which we can share deep, personal connections with all spirited beings.”

“Yes, the immensely useful empathy stick,” Blue deadpanned, twirling it in her telekinesis. She willed it on Suro and got nothing in return but a strange desire to flick her tail.

Jeh jumped into the air, tearing the Yellow shard out of Blue’s grip and pointing it at Blue. Immediately, Blue was overcome with an immense feeling of confusion combined with excitement and a sensation that she had forgotten everything that had ever been important to her.

Blue quickly decided she’d had enough of the emotional overload and resisted, at which point the connection was dropped. “That… was a strong connection.”

“And yet, easily severed,” Vaughan said, clicking his tongue. “Can’t even be used to coerce people.”

“Not everything has to have a practical use,” Suro said. “The gift of a communal connection is one many rely on to even know each other.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Vaughan said, dismissively, picking up an Orange chunk and tossing it.

Blue caught it. “Oh no, the pushing stone. So completely redundant.“ She pointed it at the ground, barely able to get a few grains of sand to move. At which point she lifted an entire chest with her natural telekinesis and slammed it into the ground. “Tah-daaaaah.”

Jeh grabbed the crystal… and proceeded to sit down and start drawing on the ground with it.

“Now, the most important color of all…” Vaughan said, taking out a thin Red crystal, grinning. “Behold, FIRE!” He held it up, creating a brilliant fireball in the air directly above him. With his other hand, he activated his scepter, using several Colors at once to maintain the fireball—the combined glows made it almost impossible to tell which particular ones. He sent the fireball in a corkscrew path until it hit one of the metal implements in the yard, at which point he used the Red to create an entire dragon of fire that rose into the air, accentuated by some sparkles from Purple and rippling vibrations from the Blue.

Blue stamped the ground in the sarcastic equivalent of a clap. “Congratulations, the Red wizard knows how to use Red magic in flashy and inefficient ways. He even bothered to learn fireball, one of the most pointless techniques in existence.”

“Pointless?” Suro said, tilting his head. “I thought it was one of his better combat spells.”

Blue couldn’t help but laugh at this. “You can just point the Red magic directly at the enemy and light them on fire! No need for any fireball or anything!”

Vaughan’s left eye twitched. “Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate?” He threw the Red shard to Blue.

She caught it, smiling awkwardly. “Uh, I can’t even cook food with Red.”

Jeh jumped for the Red crystal, but Blue levitated it out of her reach. “Woah, no! We don’t need you melting the entire landscape! …Actually, there’s probably not enough surface on this crystal for that energetic of a spell, but I don’t want to chance it.”

Jeh gave Blue the saddest, most pleading eyes ever.

“No means no,” Blue said, stamping her hoof. “I’d like to live, thank you.” She pocketed the Red shard in her saddlebags and tied them shut.

Vaughan tilted his head back. “You know, I could probably deal with those flames…”

“ ‘Death by overconfidence in their ability to put out fire’ is the leading cause of death for Red wizards.”

“Ah, but there’s a technique. See, Blue provides me with the speed required to get the bucket…”

“A bucket of water is going to do nothing to a sea of lava.”

“Not nothing,”

“If you moved fast enough to get enough buckets of water you would be adding more fire.”

“Then I dig a trench in the—“

Suro coughed, interrupting the argument. “Vaughan, you’re not a Blue wizard.”

“I, well, yes, but…” He patted down his robes and dropped the conversation entirely. He didn’t throw the last crystal—he just held up the hexagonal Magenta he had. “Magenta, most mysterious of all Colors.”

Blue nodded, taking this as her opportunity to show off her knowledge. “Magenta is the only Color that doesn’t exist in the standard color* rainbow, and yet we all see it, pure. It is fitting that Magenta is the master of all other magic Colors, able to do one very special thing: tell other crystals to cast magic. This can be used to relay spells over long distances. The delay between Magenta crystal transmission allows for us to create loops that continually oscillate, the basis for all arcane devices. Spells can be stored and, with the proper crystal shape, duplicated when any will whatsoever is pushed into the crystal core. For instance, take the beacon on top of your h—“

*Languages of Ikyu tend to have two words for color: that for standard color of everyday objects, and for the Color of the crystals. Capitalization is used here to differentiate them. The same goes for the colors themselves: blue and Blue are different words, though in most tongues they only differ by a syllable or a pronunciation accent. There is a fundamental understanding baked in that Color and color are fundamentally different things, despite being visually identical.

“You would make an excellent encyclopedia,” Vaughan interrupted. “But your excitement is warranted. Without Magenta, it would be impossible to store spells. I am curious, how deep does your theoretical knowledge go?”

Blue lit up. “Oh, I’ve read every book on the subject I could find! Crystal cores a—“

“Riddle me this. I have a crystal core with three leads. When the first is given a will, it enters a Radjec Conjunction and splits into three, each connected to a stored Red spell, each of which heats a cup of water. When the second lead is given a will, i—“

Blue held up a hoof. “Um… Vaughan, what’s a Radjec Conjunction?”

Vaughan grinned. “Why, one of the more advanced conjunctions taught in Advanced Core Construction.” He tapped his scepter onto the ground. “Blue, you’re well-read and quite intelligent. But you don’t know everything. You will have to learn the more advanced concepts of magic. And you will have to learn them well—a wizard with minimal casting ability must be a master of theory.”

Blue hated to admit it, but he was right. She lifted her head up, attempting to look determined and proud. “Of course, Vaughan.”

“Now, let’s see how clever you are.” He smirked. “How would you go about designing something to go up? I know you’ve been thinking about it.”

Unfortunately, he’s right. “Do you have a chalkboard?”

Vaughan gestured at a chalkboard lying on the ground that had its top left corner blown off by a previous experiment. With a roll of her eyes, Blue lifted the board up with her telekinesis and grabbed a piece of chalk off the ground. She drew a quick diagram of the levitator on the board. “So, this is what you had previously…” She noted that Vaughan, Jeh, and Suro were all watching her intently. She swallowed hard. I wonder if this is how the professors sometimes felt.

“The levitator is not going to do what you want it to do alone,” she said matter of factly. “Even if you replace the crystal core with one that puts out more calibrated force, you’re still only pushing in a singular direction from a singular point.” She drew a single arrow out of the top of the levitator. “This is just asking for problems because unless you’re pointing directly upward or pushing directly from the center, the force is going to lead to tumbling. And tumbling is bad. So what you want is something that wants to remain pointing directly upward. I can think of a few mechanisms by which to do this…” She scrawled an image of four levitators connected together by two beams. “If we’re not pushing from a single point, we increase stability. And if we add a weight here…” She scribbled what looked like a gold bar connected to the “X” of levitators. “Then the entire apparatus will seek to right itself, even if there is a slight force imbalance between the four levitators. However, the issue with this design is that if a large enough force comes along, say a massive gust of wind, it can also enter a tumble.”

Vaughan raised an eyebrow. “Then why mention it?”

“Because it may be used in conjunction with other ideas,” Blue said as she wiped the blackboard clean. She quickly drew an arrow—the kind loaded into bows. “This is an arrow. You may not know this, but the feathers on the back here,” she gestured to the appropriate area on the diagram, “are very necessary. They give the arrow the grace of a bird, needed to fly through the air in a straight line. Remove them and arrows are much more likely to tumble.”

Suro nodded. “I have talked with Ripashi—the local ranger. He makes his own bows and mentioned something like that to me.”

“He might be able to tell us how to upscale it,” Blue said. “Because I don’t think we can find big enough feathers that can withstand what we want to put it through. But this last idea should work no matter what.” She scrawled an ovoid shape with a point at the bottom. “Does everyone here know what a top is?”

Jeh tilted her head in confusion.

“You get a pass.”

Vaughan nodded. “I am aware. Your point?”

“Well…” Blue grinned deviously. “When the top isn’t moving, it lays on its side like so.” She scribbled the relaxed top. “But when it’s spinning, it rises up to its point and stays there until it runs out of energy and falls down. Even if you tap it, the top will seek to right itself back to the point. So the solution… is to spin while we’re going up.”

“That has to be nauseating,” Vaughan said.

“Hey, you wanted to go up, you didn’t specify that it had to be pleasant.”

“So you think that by combining these three things it could work?”

“Well, we’ll have to run tests first, and a lot of them, to see how everything works. But I think our design would look something like this…” She drew a stick figure in a harness underneath an “X” beam that held the levitators, a little cylinder of material under the person with large feathers, and an arrow indicating rotation direction. She added some supports and drew special attention to the harness. “Do note the safety mechanism here so, no matter what, you aren’t going to drop the levitator.”

Suro couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “You know, a simple wrist brace would be a sensible design improvement to a normal levitator.”

Blue pointed the chalk at the cat. “This guy knows what’s good.”

Vaughan stroked his beard, nodding. “This is a good start, and much more involved than I was expecting. But there is one thing I experienced up there that may throw a wrench into this.”

“Well, you haven’t exactly given me a report,” Blue said, letting out an annoyed neigh. “All I saw was you spiraling out of control due to instability.”

“I was having trouble breathing, more than I should have.”

“Hmm…” Blue frowned. “Are you aware of altitude sickness?”

“What?”

“We messengers have to be. The spirited who live at high elevations need their mail, and whenever one of us is sent on a mission like that we’re reminded that at higher altitudes it’s harder to breathe and that we shouldn’t overexert ourselves.”

“But what causes this altitude sickness? And how can we counter it?”

“I… uh… not entirely sure?” Blue tilted her head to the side. “The prescription of messengers is just to take it slow and easy.”

“Ripashi might also be able to help with that,” Suro said. “He is a qorvid. He may know a thing or two about flying high.”

“Clearly, we need to talk to him,” Blue said. “We’ll need to talk to a lot of people. I don’t know any of these concepts well enough to actually build something out of them off memory. I know what makes an arrow and why every part is there. I can’t make one.”

“That’s why we have Suro here,” Vaughan gestured at the cat. “Master jeweler. Well-connected in town, too.”

Blue raised an eyebrow. “A small town whose only major resource is the crystal mines.”

“It’s still useful.”

Suro flicked his tail. “You’ll need a lot more than that. We’ll have to acquire more levitators, craft crystal connectors for them, and build these harnesses.”

“Not to mention all the experiments we need to run,” Blue added. “I have no idea how fast something needs to be spinning for this to work. Or what shape works best.”

“We can easily press crystals into any general shape we want and spin those,” Vaughan offered.

“Ooooh, yes, crystals are very useful in that regard…”

“It sounds like you need a trip to town.” Suro plodded up to Blue. “I can be your guide, show you around, tell you of our customs and what you can find—as well as, you know, talking to Ripashi.”

“Sounds good,” Blue said, placing the chalk on the chalkboard. “Vaughan, get any supplies together that might be useful, we’ll see what information we can gather.”

Vaughan blinked. “Naturally. But remember, I’m the wizard, you’re the apprentice. And… and you’re not even listening.”

This was not entirely true—Blue had heard him, but she didn’t want to get stuck in a back-and-forth with him. She felt rather proud of her ideas and wanted to do something with them. Suro’s offer was an excellent opportunity to satisfy this desire.

Jeh followed Blue like a duckling after its mother, leaving Vaughan alone in the backyard. Blue wondered if he would actually be able to get together all the potential supplies or if he would blow something up.

Either way, she would show him. She was going to come back with the perfect combination of goods and information…

“Magic!” Jeh started cheering. “Maaaagic…”

“Yes, Jeh, Magic.” Blue grinned proudly. “We’ll be doing some real magic all right.”

~~~

Willow Hollow was ninety percent farmland, five percent mining operations, and five percent “not much else.” To be fair, this painted a poor picture of how important the mining industry was to the town: the size of the mines was actually impressive when seen on paper, but a bird’s eye view could only pick out shaft entrances and crystal storage. The majority were fields that grew normal fruits and vegetables, with the understandable dominance of wheat. Currently, the wheat fields were green, as it was summer.

The only part of Willow Hollow that actually looked like a town was Town Square, and it was not a square by any stretch of the imagination. It was a collection of around two-dozen buildings with cobblestone pavement leading to and from all of them. None of the buildings were particularly impressive: the town hall was a round building made of wood with an old roof that needed replacing, and the local Sanctuary was little more than a stone altar with a wall around it; not even a proper roof. The rest of the constructions in Town Square were just mixed wooden and stone buildings with thatched roofs. Not run-down by any means, but there was nothing really impressive. Most of the shops had signs made out of Colored crystals, but that wasn’t unexpected given the prevalence of crystals in a mining town.

“That’s where I work,” Suro said, gesturing at one of the larger buildings near the edge of Town Square. It had far more crystal designs on it than the others. Not only was the sign of a brilliant Green crystal fashioned in a diamond-like cut, but the windows themselves were made out of pressed Blue crystal while the exterior walls were decorated with smaller crystals dotted around in a pleasing pattern.

“The jeweler always has the most sparkling house in a good town,” Blue remarked. “If it’s not sparkling, something’s wrong.”

“How so?” Suro asked.

“Well, the jeweler should be using his craft to his fullest—his home will reflect that. If it doesn’t, it means one of many things is wrong. Either there’s a shortage of crystals in the area, he’s not good at his job, or someone in the town’s rulership hates feeling inferior and must have the sparkliest house.”

“Ah. I… never really thought of it that way.”

“Trust me, you deliver letters to enough towns, you start to see patterns. This town is one of the good ones: nothing too fancy, houses are in good condition, and there’s no air of gloominess. City folk might call this ‘quaint.’ “

Jeh looked like she wanted to run up to Suro’s shop. The crystals were shiny, and she took a few steps toward them, but she clearly didn’t want to leave Blue. When Suro and Blue continued walking on, Jeh quickly turned tail and scrambled after them, abandoning the Colorful shimmering beauties.

“I suspect I will be making a lot of strange crystal devices from this ‘quaint’ little shop…” Suro said with a sigh.

“Yeah… about that.” Blue tilted her head to the side. “Why didn’t you object when Vaughan just said ‘hey, you’re part of the project, now?’ “

“Oh, it’s not at all like you think it is.” Suro gazed right into her eyes. “We’ve been friends a long, long time. He’s the one who convinced me to move here to take advantage of the fresh crystals, and it was an excellent choice. He’s given me a ton of crystal core designs for free, and I do much the same. It’s just an agreement we have with each other.”

“Yeah, but… this project is going to be expensive.”

“You’d be surprised how smart Vaughan can be with money for how eccentric he is. He budgets everything so he can always afford the new crystal devices and order things from afar. There’s a reason he doesn’t have much in the way of food variety.”

Blue scratched her chin. I guess you’d have to be good with money to manage explosive tests all the time.

They continued into town, passing by the Sanctuary. The cyan-blue triangle that hung over the archway was much smaller than most other Sanctuaries, though it was still made out of real Colorless precious stones and not painted substitutes that many small towns were forced to use. Its tip pointed upward, to the sky, while its base overhang the Sanctuary’s main entrance, inviting all to enter.

“And that’s where my wife works,” Suro said, gesturing at the Sanctuary.

“Your wife is a Keeper?” Blue asked.

“My wife is the only Keeper in town.” Suro closed his eyes and nodded sagely. “Lila built that Sanctuary with her bare paws just so everyone would have a place to come together.”

“Wow…” Blue said, legitimately impressed. Cats weren’t known for being great builders, even when using fine tools. Her opinion of the somewhat shoddy wall improved markedly. It was a labor of love and devotion, an answer to a town’s lonely cry.

Behind the sanctuary was a relief sculpture carved out of granite. It was clearly a male gari, though it wasn’t colored and the specks in the stone made it hard to pick out details. Blue could make out that he was holding a book.

She approached the relief’s base, finding that the inscription read “Clover Dale, our Founder.”

“What’s the story behind this guy?” Blue asked while using her hoof to keep Jeh from climbing onto the relief.

“Clover Dale founded the town on a whim after feeling like society had ostracized him for his ‘poetic genius.’ Yes, he was a poet, and no, he wasn’t any good. But he staked a claim here and used his family fortune to build a tiny place which he named Willow Hollow. Because it rhymed.”

“I did see willow trees around...”

“Yes, but this isn’t a hollow. The hollow is down in the valley by the river. This is just a mountainside.”

“Ah. So your founder was a moron.”

“Seems that way, but don’t talk like that around the older residents. They’ll bite your face off. They think he’s some kind of unappreciated genius.”

“Noted.”

They continued on their way, passing through a large cobbled area that served as the town market. On special days the area would be packed, but this was not one of those days. Currently, there were only a few stalls; one with fish freshly caught from the river, one with some garden herbs, one traveling trader with a fold-out cart, and a stand with a lot of colorful liquids in bottles…

“You again,” Blue said, huffing at Seskii. “I thought you would have skip—“

Seskii tapped the freshly-painted sign on her stand: “Juice.”

“Juice?”

“Yes. Juice.” Seskii held up a bottle with a strange line and hook with a dot symbol on it, sloshing around a red liquid. “For instance, this is pure cherry juice. Delicious and nutritious! Not even pretending to be a potion!”

Blue raised an incredulous eyebrow.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot, earlier,” Seskii continued, extending a hand. “Hi, I’m Seskii! Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

Blue wasn’t sure how to proceed in this situation, but Suro bailed her out. “I am Suro, the local jeweler. This is Jeh. We don’t know who she is.”

Jeh walked up to Seskii with wide eyes.

“Why hello there, little one,” Seskii said with a charming smile. “Would you like some of this cherry juice?” She held out the bottle.

Jeh nodded vigorously, swiping it from Seskii’s hands and chugging it down.

“H-hey!” Blue stammered. “She can’t pay for that! I’m not paying for that.”

“It’s free,” Seskii said with a dismissive hand.

“What?”

“I said it’s free. Can’t a girl give another girl some juice and increase the happiness in the world without being questioned?”

“But… you…”

“Am a no-good potion-selling charlatan, I couldn’t possibly give a child a free drink with no ulterior motives.” With a grin, she tossed a bottle to Blue. “Here, have some blueberry juice, also on the house.”

Blue’s immediate question of where the heck is she getting all this juice? was pushed aside once she realized her “gift” was also a joke. “…You’re a riot.”

Seskii winked. “I try my best! Anyway, don’t let me keep you any longer, I think this has gone on long enough. You have somewhere important to be!”

“Right, Ripashi,” Suro said. “Thank you, Seskii. Will you be staying in Willow Hollow long?”

“You’ll see me around,” Seskii said with another wink.

She likes winks too much, Blue noted. She only half-heartedly joined Suro and Jeh in waving to Seskii as they moved off, leaving Town Square and approaching the other end of Willow Hollow. Here, the cobbled path gave way to the forest floor and a small cabin.

“Ripashi should be home,” Suro said, bounding to the cabin. He lifted his paw to knock…

“Hark! Intruders!”

Three arrows struck the ground at the feet of Blue, Suro, and Jeh in quick succession. Blue reared back in a panic, instinctually sending out a blinding flash. Suro only sighed and shook his head. Jeh poked the arrow like it was a cute little toy.

Before any of them could say anything else, the carcass of a bear fell out of the trees, crashing onto the ground right in front of them with an unceremonious thud.

“Argh!” the voice called again. “I told you to stay!”

Jeh poked the bear with the arrow she’d picked up. “Bear…”

The owner of the voice descended from the treetops, landing with a burst of air strong enough to push Suro’s small form into the cabin door. The newcomer rose to his full height, towering above all present. His feathers were a soft, almost oily black, and his claws were the texture of rough obsidian. He wore nothing aside from a strap over the shoulder, on which a quiver hung. A specialized bow was currently held in his wingtips, designed so the digit-less wings could manipulate the string. The weapon was drawn with an arrow pointed right at Blue’s shimmering horn.

She took a defensive posture, looking around for rocks she could throw at the qorvid.

“Ripashi!” Suro shouted. “You can’t keep doing this!”

“Nonsense!” Ripashi shouted, throwing his head back in a laughing caw. “All who enter my domain become my prey!”

“Ripashi, Blue here is contemplating throwing a boulder at you.”

“Bring it!” Ripashi declared, standing up on one claw so he could use the other to motion that Blue should advance.

Blue grabbed his remaining foot with her telekinesis and pulled it out from under him, flopping him unceremoniously onto his back.

“Blue!” Suro hissed.

“What? He was being a—“

“Qorvids have hollow bones, you might have broken something!”

“I… oh.” She folded her ears back. “I’m so—“

“Apologize for nothing!” Ripashi declared, flapping his wings to right himself once more. “Most prey runs screaming in pathetic terror! You fought! I admire that kind of stupidity!”

Blue was stunned speechless by what, to her, sounded like inconsistent nonsense.

“And then there’s this little one, stabbing my bear with an arrow!” He gestured at Jeh. “No fear at all…”

“Why do you have a bear?” Blue asked.

“Well, I’m the rang—“

“I meant in the tree.”

“The bear needed to be taught a lesson,” Ripashi growled. “Like all bears do. You see, long ago, when I was but a wee fledgling ranger, there was one bear that wouldn’t go down! It escaped me! The agony was insurmountable and it h—“

Blue coughed. “I think I get the idea.” She glanced helplessly at Suro. Please make him stop talking.

Suro flicked his ears. “Ripashi, Blue here is on an errand from Vaughan.”

Ripashi skittered over to Suro. “Ah, yes, our illustrious wizard! Great choice of home, but not enough trophies. Man lives in the midst of the trees, probably sees good game all the time, but does he use those fireballs of his to any effect? No! He orders oatmeal. Such a shame.”

“Fireball is a useless spell,” Blue muttered under her breath, making the unfortunate assumption that Ripashi wouldn’t be able to hear.

“My girl!” Something in the back of Ripashi’s throat made a clicking noise. “Surely you understand the purpose of the spectacle!?” He struck a pose, balancing an arrow on his beak while holding his wings askew.

“Mm, yes, spectacle,” Blue deadpanned. “Look, we’re here to ask you some questions about arrow manufacturing a—“

“Arrows are the lifeblood of any ranger’s life!” He paused; seemingly dissatisfied with the way he’d worded that.

“—and have some questions to ask you about flight at high altitudes.”

“Well, I can tell you arrows don’t work as well up there!” Ripashi let out another caw-chuckle. “You need high-altitude fletching to hunt the balloon whales properly!”

“Fletching?” Blue tilted her head in confusion.

Ripashi let out a disappointed sigh. He took an arrow out of his quiver and showed it to her. “The pointy part is the arrowhead, the stick is the shaft, and the feathers are the fletching.”

“Ah, yes, the fletching! That’s what I wanted to ask about.” Blue pointed at the feathers with her hoof. “How do these work? I know they stabilize the arrow, but why?”

Ripashi stared blankly at her.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“W-well, I know the effects of fletching varieties!”

“Which are…?”

“…Come with me.” He walked to his cabin door and unlocked it with one of his talons, allowing them into his home. The interior was a cramped mess filled with stuffed animal heads, skeletons, and multiple crates of dried meat that made Blue want to gag. How can people eat that stuff?

“Behold, the cabin of a true man!” Ripashi declared. “Full of trophies, meat, and the smell of triumph!”

Jeh popped open one of the crates and started gnawing on a piece of bear jerky. Ripashi didn’t notice.

“But this way to my workshop!” After crawling over several boxes and disorganized remnants of hunting, they eventually made it to a much cleaner room with all the materials one might need to create bows and arrows: a table with multiple kinds of saws, a barrel filled with wooden rods, a bunch of sharp rocks in a box, a box of feathers (half of which were clearly Ripashi’s own), and a back wall lined with dozens of finely-crafted bows, each with a set of unique arrows.

Ripashi gestured at the arrows. “I have made many varieties and tested them all. I even have this…” He took down an arrow with an arrowhead made out of two Magenta crystals that were alternating flases in a simple loop setup.

Blue let out a low whistle. “An anti-magic arrow.”

“They’re not that hard to make so long as you have materials, though the separation requirement lowers their piercing power.” He gestured at the tip, which was actually two points since that was where the crystals were separated.

“Fascinating…” Blue realized she was staring deeply into the crystal and shook her head. “But not why we’re here. Fletching?”

“Right, right…” Ripashi took down a selection of arrows and laid them on the table. “Behold, the variety!”

Aside from the one that had no fletching at all, Blue couldn’t really discern a difference between the arrows. “Uh...”

Ripashi held up the arrow with no fletching. “This arrow is the fastest one in my collection and has perhaps the best piercing power. This is because it has no fletching: it hits hard, fast, and deadly! But it’s also terribly unstable and likes to start flopping end over end after a short distance. That is why you need fletching: to make your arrows go in a straight line.”

“And you have no idea why the feathers do that?”

“Feathers are the essence of flight!”

“Only partially true. Qorvids like yourself have a flight attribute. And there are flightless birds with plenty of feathers.”

Ripashi narrowed his eyes at her. “…You know a lot.” He let out a caw-chuckle. “No wonder Vaughan has you running around doing his work! Hah!” He tossed the fletching-less arrow aside, returning to the feathered ones. “Now, as for all these, at our current location, the three-feather slightly-tilted design works best.”

“Slightly tilted?”

Ripashi brought her attention to how some of the feathers were attached in a perfect parallel line to the shaft, while others were tilted to the side. “The tilting slows the arrow down a bit, but it makes it fly much straighter.”

“Why…?” Blue asked, more to herself than to Ripashi. “There has to be some reason…”

“That is why you are here! To find out, right?”

“That…” Blue tilted her head. “Was not my intention but I suppose we might end up figuring it out.” Come to think of it, why do spinning things want to stay upright? It’s clear that they do, but why? “What effect do larger feathers have?”

“Increases stability and slows the arrow down more, in general,” Ripashi said. “Not that anyone with an untrained eye would be able to tell a difference between such small adjustments. What a true arrow designer must find is the magic point where the stability and speed are perfect. However, that perfection is never the same!” He pointed at the best three-feather slightly-tilted arrow. “This is the best for this area. But in different areas the optimal design is different! The higher up you are, the larger the fletching needs to be to have the same effect! If we were to go down to the basin, smaller would be bet—“

“Higher needs bigger feathers…” Blue muttered to herself, scratching her chin. “What else can you tell us about high altitudes? Is it… hard to breathe up there?”

“Yes?” He didn’t seem to understand the question. “You always get altitude sickness the higher you go.”

“Is that why you don’t keep flying?”

“Oh, no, you can get used to altitude sickness with enough experience. The only thing keeping us from ascending to the heavens is the lack of air.”

Suro’s ears perked up at this. “Excuse me, lack of air?”

“You really don’t know?” Ripashi leaned onto the table to support himself as he let out a series of joyous caws. “Oh, you silly little ground-dwellers! Of course there’s less air up there! We with the power of flight are always pushing against the air with our mighty wings, getting higher and higher. We need air to go higher!”

“No air…” Blue frowned. “That… that might complicate things considerably.”

“How so?” Ripashi asked.

“Think about it, what do we breathe in and out all day every day? Air! The vast majority of spirited breathe. We need air, and if higher altitudes have less, we might be dying because of it!”

Ripashi tilted his head to the side. “I… what?”

Suro coughed. “Vaughan wants to go as high as possible. She’s here to figure out how.”

Ripashi blinked a few times. “Why?”

“See, I don’t have an answer for that question,” Blue said, lifting one of the arrows in her telekinesis and spinning it around a few times. “But I do think I’m figuring out how to go up…”

Suro nodded. “And this… honestly it explains a few things about why it’s hard to breathe in the deep mines. We just assumed the dust made the air toxic, but… maybe there’s just less of it down there?”

“Clearly, if we are to go up, we need to understand air better.” Blue examined the fletching on the arrow, getting it as close to her eyes as she dared. “I think it is the secret to this whole thing.”

Jeh twisted the arrow, having it rotate rapidly around its shaft.

~~~

Vaughan approached his supply of Yellow, examining the glass pillar carefully.

“What’s wrong? You should be happy, I’m finally using you for something!” He flipped open the hatch, revealing the sparkling Yellow. The warm glittering was like an invitation to submerge one’s hand into the Yellow sea. Even Vaughan wasn’t dumb enough to do that. With crystal this fine, simply touching the powder would cause multiple cuts all over the skin, embedding thousands of shards into that were too small to see. Relatively easy to treat with Green on hand, but still ridiculously painful.

Instead, he took out a specialized cup made out of Blue crystal. The Color had no significance; so long as it wasn’t Magenta or Yellow it could hold Yellow powder without suffering the fate of a million unimaginably sharp objects tearing it to shreds.

He took his cup of Yellow out back, where he had a very important arcane device set up: a table with a top of solid granite that was heavily scuffed in the center. Vaughan first checked the wind to make sure he wasn’t about to get needled and, satisfied with the calm, poured the Yellow onto the granite slab. Carefully, he folded up two wooden panels from the sides of the table, each of which had a rather large Orange disc laid into it. The left disc was getting a little thin, almost to the point of needing a replacement, but that was a concern for another time.

He checked behind the discs, adjusting the crystal cores there to the starting setting. He took a moment to appreciate the complexity in the design: numerous tree-like series’ of Magenta crystals coiled around the occasional Blue node. Several loops were active, sending small flashes of color to and from various crystals—though it was barely visible, as all properly done arcane devices should be. If the idle glow were bright, such small crystals would not last long.

With one hand, Vaughan gripped a knob. His skin made contact with the Magenta crystal within, and with a willing thought, the table activated. The two Orange discs flared to life, doing what they were instructed to do: push in a very specific way that picked up all the Yellow powder, shaping it into a single, loosely packed sphere that floated in midair.

With his other hand, Vaughan held up an Orange crystal of his own, adding small bits of force here and there to change the shape of the sphere into that of a cone that remained levitating in the grip of the device. Once he was satisfied with its shape, he twisted the knob one tick forward. The Orange discs increased their output, placing pressure on the cone, deforming it in the process. Vaughan used his crystal to reshape it before increasing the pressure again, at which point he again needed to adjust.

And so he spent his time at the crystal press. Over time the cone he was creating got smaller and smaller, but it became smoother and sleeker until, at last, when he turned up the pressure one more time the cone didn’t change shape at all.

He removed his hand from the knob, turning the device off. The cone fell to the granite slab, clattering a bit before entering a lazy roll. It was by no means a perfect cone—the tip wasn’t perfectly straight and the base had a somewhat flat edge. However, it would do for his purposes.

He now had a single Yellow crystal in the shape of a cone rather than powder. Actually, he had several since he’d been making these cones all day: flat ones, wide ones, skinny ones, oblong ones; all just to perform tests on spinning. None of them were perfect, which made Vaughan idly wish he was an Orange wizard so he could apply gradual changes to pressure instead of the sharp adjustments the crystal press offered him. Orange was considered the most practical of the colors for a reason.

Maybe Blue’s attribute is strong enough to do it… but is it precise enough?

As if on cue, Blue rushed into the backyard with a ton of arrows in her saddlebags and Jeh at her hooves. “I’ve got so much information you wouldn’t believe!”

“Ah, Blue!” Vaughan waved her over. “I’ve been working as well. Behold, a functional use for Yellow!” He gestured at the assortment of cones he had created.

“Tops?” Blue asked, walking up to the cones to examine them. Jeh reached out her hand to grab one. “Jeh, no, wa—“

Jeh had already grabbed one and its tip thrust its way clean through her hand. The girl glared at it with mild annoyance. “Bear hand…” She tore it out and immediately started tending to her mitt that had just been ruined.

Vaughan’s fascination with Jeh’s seeming immunity to pain was overcome by his desire to talk about his cones. “Anyway, Blue, I’ve discovered some things about these tops.” He made sure to put on some gloves laced with crystal rings, to prevent his hands from being torn open. “Some tops spin better than others.”

“Which ones?”

Vaughan used his hands to spin up a few of them. Several of them went spinning off in odd directions or flopped right over due to his lack of coordination. “Er…”

With a sigh, Blue levitated each cone back onto the table and started spinning each one elegantly. The really wide and really tall ones fell down almost immediately, clattering to the side. The others performed better, but it wasn’t the middle-of-the-road cone that performed the best: it was one that was significantly taller than it was wide without being a toothpick.

“Hmm…” Blue frowned, taking out an arrow. “Arrows are long, though… but… ah! Something that large wouldn’t fly very far through the air.”

Vaughan blinked. “Blue, we were talking about cones.”

“They’re related,” Blue said. “See, I think I’ve figured it out. Ripashi couldn’t tell me why fletching worked—the feathers—but at least part of it has to do with adding spin to the arrow. Look at these twisted feathers. As it flies into the air, it twists like a screw-pump,* except much smaller and works with air.”

*We would call this an Archimedes’ Screw.

“So they pump air?”

“No. Well, yes, uh, words.” Blue shook her head a few times, collecting herself. “When a screw-pump turns, it moves water up it, but it remains stationary. However, if the water were moving, it would push the screw around. …Come to think of it, that’d require the screw-pump to be completely submerged and…”

“Blue, calm down. I think I get the idea. It goes through the air and the feathers make it spin.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“So, basically, the spinning-top and arrow-feather idea were the same idea.”

“Well, they might have different effects… for instance, if we rely on the top, we have to spin before we fly upward, while if we have large fletching we can start spinning while in flight.”

Vaughan stroked his beard. “Hmm… and we will need to test more to find out which is best…”

“I’ve got more than that, though.” Blue trotted over to her blackboard and levitated it up—Vaughan was not sure how it had fallen down this time. “I found out something very important from Ripashi. There’s less air the higher up you go.”

“What?” Vaughan tilted his head to the side. “How does that make any sense?”

“Think geometrically.” Blue drew a circle on the board. “This is Ikyu. Arguments about its exact diameter aside, we know it’s more-or-less a sphere. Now, let’s imagine we could see air like we could see water.” She drew a ripple around the circle. “This is one layer of air.” She drew another one above it. “And this is the next one. Now, if, say, there was the same amount of air in every level… you note that this inner circle is smaller than the one above it. Thus, naturally higher elevations would have less air because there’s more space it needs to fill!” She drew a little square in the bottom right corner and looked back at Vaughan, smug.

“Less air… we breathe air.”

“Yeah, we do,” Blue said. “It also means trying to flap like a bird will be useless since they push against air to fly. High enough there isn’t much to push off. Why, there might as well be no air somewhere as high up as the moon.”

“How are we going to survive?” Vaughan asked.

“Divers bring air down to the depths of the ocean, we just need to bring our air up there.”

“How, though?”

“I...” Blue clearly hadn’t thought about this before. “Maybe we just get a person-sized jar and seal ourselves inside?”

It was Vaughan’s turn to look smug. “I’m pretty sure that won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Toxic air is a real problem in the mines, and one way to get toxic air quickly is to cram a lot of people into a small shaft.”

“Suro said he thought that was because of the mine dust… but he wasn’t sure.” Blue blinked a few times. “Yeah, we need to test the effects of air on people. There’s apparently ways to die that have nothing to do with falling and cracking your skull open on the ground.”

“Question. How do you propose we test the effects of air?” Vaughan tilted his head.

“Seal ourselves in a jar and see what happens?” It took all of a second for Blue to process what she’d just said. “Agh, that’s unimaginably stupid! It’s just asking for death! Maybe we can use animals?”

“I think we all know that animals and the spirited are very, very different.”

“Yes, but, we need a way to test these things! How are we going to test stuff that might kill us and not die in the process?”

“I…”

The two of them got the same idea at the same time. Slowly, but surely, they turned to look at Jeh, who was currently sitting on the ground with one of the long Yellow cones in her hand, drawing with it.

“Hey, Jeh…” Blue said, cautiously.

“Hmm?”

“Would you like to… help us go up?”

Jeh tilted her head in confusion, but nonetheless kept a pleasant, sweet smile on her face.

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Blue, while a genius, is working on a very limited understanding of the universe. She’s on the right track but she has made some woefully incorrect assumptions.

First of all, yes, fletching does in fact make arrows spin. Any sort of crosswind, even on straight feathers, will induce a rotation in the arrow. The rotation is part of the stability, but not all of it: what fletching mostly does is create friction within the air, making there be more drag at the back of the arrow than the front. The net effect of this is that the back of the arrow follows the path of the front more closely.

More interestingly, though, Blue assumes there’s less air at higher elevations because there’s more surface area to the globe of Ikyu. She has just barely begun to consider the idea of vacuum as a potential concept, and as such thinks the atmosphere extends to the end of the universe. In reality, the surface area has little to do with the density of air at various altitudes (though it clearly has some effect). The atmosphere is denser at lower elevations because there is more air stacked on top of it that pushes the rest down due to gravity.

Of course, Blue doesn’t even have a concept of gravity yet, so she’s a long way from even thinking about this as a potential explanation.

Now, there is one obvious question: why do spinning things not want to tip over? The simple answer is the “conservation of angular momentum.” A spinning object has angular momentum in the direction of its spin axis, and if it were to tip over, it would be changing its angular momentum, which requires a force acting on it. In our lives, that force is generally gravity pushing down on it, trying to overcome the angular momentum. In space, there’s basically nothing acting on a spinning object, so it’s likely to spin forever.

There are complications with making spinning objects go perfectly straight, but they haven’t run into those yet.

The clever reader might ask another question: why is angular momentum conserved? And that… is a much more complicated question that involves a lot of force diagrams and a counterintuitive understanding of what a spinning object even is. I might explain it at a later time if it becomes pertinent, but for now, here’s a Vsauce video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHGKIzCcVa0.