Lingual Concepts

“So, Jeh…”

Jeh looked up from the walnut she’d been gnawing at. Apparently, the nutcracker Blue had provided her made it too easy, seeing as it lay almost unused at Jeh’s side with a few cracked walnut shells around it. It didn’t look at all out of place in Vaughan’s backyard.

Blue tapped her hoof. “You’re getting better at understanding, yes?”

“Me word yes!” Jeh jumped to her feet and gave Blue a silly salute. “Word bit!”

“Right. So… Jeh, I want you to try to understand. Understand.”

“Understand.” Jeh nodded with determination, furrowing her brow.

“We want to go up.”

“Up!” Jeh pointed up into the sky.

“You want to go up? Question?”

“Up! Yes!” Jeh jumped up and down with so much power she started making imprints in the soil.

“Going up is dangerous.”

The light of understanding left Jeh’s eyes. “What?”

She sure likes that word, Blue thought. “Dangerous. Peril, pain, not safe… uh…” None of this appeared to be helping Jeh with any context. “Deadly? Precarious?”

“You word fail.”

“No, you word fail.”

Jeh crossed her arms. “No way.”

Blue took a moment to realize she wasn’t using that phrase in the usual manner. She wasn’t saying there was “no way” for her to fail at language, but that she had “no way” to find the words. Which meant she was jabbing at Blue since she knew the words and still failed.

At least, that was Blue’s theory, judging by what she knew of Jeh’s personality.

“Let’s try again,” Blue said, locking her eyes with Jeh.

“Again.” Jeh nodded in preparation.

“We want to go up. You want to go up.”

“Yes. Fun up!”

“Going up is hard.”

“No stop me!” She mimed the motion of punching through a wall. Then she actually punched a wall with enough force to make Blue wince, but as always Jeh didn’t care whatsoever.

“We need you for tests.”

“Tests?” The understanding in Jeh’s eyes was gone again.

Blue sighed. “Vaughan! I’m not a linguist, I can’t do this!”

“Sure you can,” Vaughan said from his bench where he was smoothing off the edges of a Yellow top. “Jeh clearly knew how to talk at one point since she’s learned this quickly, you’ve just got to remind her. It’s only been a week, did you expect instant results?”

“How hard can it be to ask ‘we want to use you to test dangerous things so we don’t die in the process, are you okay with this?’ “

“I think she’d be fine. Might not even realize it’s dangerous.”

Blue tossed her mane back. “That’s the problem, she might not even realize. We can’t just use her like this without her permission, we’re not the King.”

“You could write to him…”

“And get her conscripted into the army?” Blue huffed. “That would go so well.”

“Not for the army…”

“I’m talking about her Vaughan! She is just a kid.”

Vaughan glanced over at Jeh, who had returned to eating her walnut. “We don’t know what she is.”

Blue frowned at this. “I poured over your tomes, looking for any known attribute that matches this one. There are a few that come close. Agar can fuse themselves back together after being cut while certain reptilians and amphibians can grow parts back rather quickly, but they are nowhere near as fast as hers. Plus, they all experience pain. And don’t look anything like humans.”

“A shapeshifting race*?”

*”Race” as we think of it isn’t really a concept on Ikyu. Humans with different colored skin or unicorns with variations in their coats are just considered different varieties. The more accurate word would be “species,” but the direct translation of that word is used only for differences in animals, plants, and other types of life. The word translated “race” can also be translated as “person species” or “spirited species,” but in general the cultures and languages of Ikyu do not think of people as anything like animals or other forms of life. “Race” is used here for convenience’s sake.

“Unlikely,” Blue said. “All known shapeshifters don’t work like she does, and she’s not a complex Purple illusion, simply being around arcane devices would interfere with that.”

“So she’s a mystery that shouldn’t exist. Interesting.”

“Very.” Blue sighed. “I’ve been able to ask her if she knew where she came from. So far, it seems like all she has ever known is the forest.”

“Yet she knows what language is, how to hold silverware, and what saluting means.” Vaughan chuckled. “Little bundle of mysteries.”

“Probably got lost when she was six or something.” Blue clicked her tongue. “I can’t be spending all day trying to teach her words. I need to find a tutor.”

“Go talk to Suro, I’m sure he knows somebody.” Vaughan set the Yellow top into a spin. He had balanced it properly and got it to spin seemingly perfectly. In a few minutes, it would fall down, revealing its currently imperceptible flaw, but that was fine. The concept was proven: it was possible to balance them.

“Suro…” Blue tapped her hoof. “Jeh, let’s visit Suro.”

“Suro!” Jeh rubbed her hands together malevolently.

“Do not pull his tail.”

“Do not pull his tail.” Jeh gave Blue a thumbs up.

Blue wasn’t sure she trusted Jeh to keep her word.

~~~

Suro had to be very careful in his work. While he wasn’t a wizard and wasn’t apt to accidentally trigger spells in his crystals, there were many complications with the Colored objects that made crafting with them rather difficult.

First of all, their sharpness could cut through virtually anything that wasn’t another Crystal, a fact that virtually everyone on Ikyu was aware of. However, only jewelers got to appreciate how truly problematic it could be. No matter how reinforced the tool, no matter how hard, it could be sliced by the crystal edge sharper than any knife. The obvious benefit would be to make knives out of crystals, but this didn’t work because crystals themselves weren’t very strong. A long blade could be snapped by a punch from the side.

The easiest way to solve the sharpness problem was to smooth the edges. Jewelers across the land were all well-versed in the art of rounding crystal edges while still making them look sharp and clear, like mundane precious gems. In fact, Suro was doing that right now with a Red crystal. Having already shaved it into a pleasing diamond cut* yesterday, now he carefully ran over it with fine sandpaper. The gem and the sandpaper in question were both held in tiny brass claws that were affixed to rings around Suro’s paws. If something were to go wrong, the Red’s edges would cut through Suro’s tool and not his leg.

*Similar to our “round brilliant” cut which we associate with diamonds, but not exactly the same.

It was one of the benefits of being a quadruped. He may not have had fingers, but he wasn’t in constant danger of cuts like human jewelers were.

Slowly, methodically, he ran the sandpaper along every edge, being sure to come in from the side so the sandpaper itself wasn’t cut. There was no visual change in the crystal’s appearance, but after he was done he tried to cut a small toothpick and failed. The edge had been successfully blunted.

It wouldn’t stay that way for long. Crystals naturally sought to return to the preferred shape of their Color, and all seven shapes had very sharp edges. Purple was the most regular, given its desire to be perfectly cubic, but all of them would slowly return to a lethal razor if left alone for enough time. While it would take decades for a carved crystal to revert to a pure shape, something that just had its edges dulled could become dangerous again in a month.

Most jewelers, Suro included, relied on polish to counteract this problem. He adjusted his tool, taking out a little brush that he dabbled into a bottle of clear, thick liquid that he then painted on the Red crystal’s edges. This part could be done sloppily: but Suro wouldn’t accept that. There should be no awkward blobs or uneven polish; it should be almost imperceptible, while also not coating the faces at all so the crystal could still be used for magic.

Suro had done this a million times before, but he would not rush. Never.

When he was done, he removed his tool from his left paw and held the crystal within it. Moving it along the table a bit, he was satisfied it wasn’t going to cut him and that the polish had done its job: hardening overtop the edges so they couldn’t re-sharpen without pushing the polish out of the way first, something that would take much longer than if it was just exposed to air. The crystal would deform long before the polish wore off.

But, for now, it would be a beautiful gem in a magic ring, perhaps the most common piece Suro made in his workshop. He opened up a wooden drawer and took out an arc of metal with an empty place to set a gemstone. At this point, he put his tool back on and carefully nestled the Red gem within the ring, its point sticking out. He checked to make sure the flat edge was pressed to the bottom of the ring; otherwise, it would not be in contact with the wearer’s skin and just be a pretty rock on a finger.

To be fair, the gem was small. It couldn’t be used for much more than heating up things like cups of tea, but it made an excellent little convenience device for the common person. Very little skill was required to operate a simple ring of heating.

“Another simple one?”

Suro set his completed ring down and removed his tools, unable to hide his smile. “They sell well and are quite convenient.”

“You and I both know you can make much more impressive things.” The voice belonged to a female cat with perfectly white fur and pale red eyes. She wore a cyan triangle around her neck cut from a Colorless gem.

Suro pressed his nose to hers. “Lila, I do make bigger things. Vaughan just has to design a core for them.”

“Where would he be without someone to cut his designs?”

“Oh, absolutely nowhere. The precision required to cut a Magenta repeater that will continue to function as the will is reduced is far beyond what even he realizes.” He pulled out another drawer, this one filled with multicolored crystal cores composed of finely cut crystals in branching tree-like shapes nested carefully in veins of bronze. “Though sometimes I don’t know why he orders some of these. I mean, these are repeaters. Which are well known to be a useless curiosity.”

“I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Suro raised an eyebrow, prompting Lila to laugh.

“Okay, so maybe he doesn’t,” Lila admitted. “I’m just concerned that you’re wasting away in here, making simple, basic devices.”

“I’m fairly sure Blue is going to design something absurd for me soon enough…”

As if on cue, they heard the unmistakable sound of a hoof knocking at the front door.

“I’ll get it!” Four young voices shouted at once from elsewhere in the house. Suro and Lila heard the sound of the door opening followed quickly by a panicked whinny from a lesser unicorn.

“Hey, dad, it’s Blue!” one of the young voices called back.

“Send her in, and keep your siblings off of her!” Suro called, putting his tools away as he did so.

“Do you think that’s actually going to happen?” Lila asked.

“Not in the slightest, she’ll come in here with Miry in her mane.”

Suro wasn’t exactly correct: Blue did, in fact, come in with their youngest daughter, but she was caught in Blue’s tail rather than her mane. Blue was clearly not amused.

Lila gracefully strutted over to Blue and removed her mewling kitten from her tail.

“Thanks, Lila,” Blue said, flicking her tail back and forth to get the hairs back to at least some semblance of sanity. “I don’t know how you two manage so many kids.”

“It’s a miracle,” Lila said, tone completely serious.

“Don’t doubt it,” Blue agreed. “You might want to go check on the others to make sure they don’t try to eat Jeh again.”

“I believe she was the one who offered last time,” Lila said with a twinkle in her eye.

“It seriously can’t be good to eat whatever Jeh’s made out of, even for carnivores.”

Lila flicked her ears in the cat equivalent of a shrug. “I’ll see what I can do to prevent the predatory feast.” With a wink, she left Blue in the study with Suro.

“So, you know people.” Blue sat down on the workshop floor since all the stools around were cat-sized, not unicorn-sized. She was careful not to knock any of the cabinets or specially arranged crystals.

Suro nodded. “I like to think I know everyone in Willow Hollow, though not all are friends. Vaughan would probably risk his life for mine; the Red Seekers wouldn’t be bothered at all if I were to suddenly drop dead. There’s a scale to these things.”

“Geez, most people don’t get to have either of those.”

“You don’t know anyone… ah, I am sorry.” Suro shook his head. “I hope, in the future, you’d come to trust me to take such risks for you.”

Blue smiled awkwardly. “Uh… sure.”

Suro let her change the subject—the girl was not in tune with her emotional state and was not a fan of being vulnerable. It was fine; he’d just wanted her to know he was here and fully intended to be a good friend to her.

“Anyway, I came here to talk about Jeh. You know what I’ve been trying to do?”

Suro nodded. “Ask her a question.”

“Yes, that. That’s not going well.”

“So you need someone to teach her.”

“Precisely,” Blue said. “Someone who knows how to teach language.”

“If Lila weren’t busy at the Sanctuary all the time, she would be perfect. But it’s just her and Akri, so… I think I’ll turn you over to Eifa.”

“…Who?”

“My daughter, one of the town’s schoolmasters.” Suro jumped down from his seat, gesturing for Blue to stand up. “She went to get an education, decided she hated the economic race, and returned home to use her skills to improve this town. She already works with kids, this should be easy.”

“I don’t know, Jeh’s a handful…”

The two of them left the workshop and entered the house proper, where at least seven young cats were clinging to Jeh. She let out a whine, trying to fling them off, but whenever she removed one another took its place.

“They like having someone who can take the claws,” Lila observed from her position on a large cushion.

“Tiny cat fur things!” Jeh whined.

Suro couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for Jeh. She’d known what coming in here meant. The kittens would get her; there was no way out of it… unless, of course, he told his kids to get off.

He decided to wait a few minutes. They were in no rush to get anywhere.

~~~

Jeh scratched at where the kittens had clawed her. When she’d walked into Suro’s home, she’d intended to find him and pull his leg. Technically in line with what Blue had asked, but also exactly what that black cat needed to liven up his day. Instead, there was only a mob of kittens. If she had been thinking straight she would have remembered that this had happened last time she was there, but her mind had not elected to share this information.

Now, she was following Blue and Suro as they walked through Willow Hollow, talking. Jeh spent most of her time listening to the words as they flew back and forth between the conversation partners, catching several she knew the meaning of. “I” “you” “thing” “fun” “words” “learn” “understand.” She filled in the blanks of a lot of other words and managed to get that they were talking about how she needed to learn the language. This made her feel smug—they were so sure she couldn’t understand, but here she was, figuring out the context.

She eventually identified another name constantly being brought up: Eifa. Jeh wondered who that was. Maybe they were going to see her? Or maybe she was just another cat. Jeh had noticed they all had names that came out in two breaths. Suro. Lila. Akri. Eifa. Mouths couldn’t make that many sounds, surely there were more cats than possible names for cats. Was that a problem?

Jeh started muttering the names under her breath, making up new combinations as she went. She drummed up several dozen before realizing she couldn’t keep track of all the combinations in her head. Finding this delightful, she couldn’t help but giggle to herself.

“You okay?” Blue asked, a sentence Jeh understood in its entirety.

“Yes!” Jeh clapped her hands. “Fun cat names!”

Suro started explaining cat names, but Jeh was unable to follow the nuanced context. She knew he was talking about names and using his family as examples. Examples for what, she had no idea. He stopped in the middle of a sentence, having noticed she was staring at him blankly. “Sorry,” he said.

“Okay!” Jeh gave him a thumbs up. “You win.”

Suro bowed and returned to talking to Blue, going back to the conversation about Jeh’s words.

Jeh focused on it once again, trying to piece together as much as she could. She had so much she wanted to say, but they wouldn’t understand. Understand. She needed to understand them so they could understand her. That was what she needed.

Blue wanted something from her, something that needed to be communicated, but Jeh still couldn’t figure out what it was. Something about “going up” to that “space” place Blue and Vaughan talked about all the time. Jeh loved the idea, going up was great fun! But there was this word “danger.” Blue always seemed upset or concerned when she said it. Its meaning must have been negative.

Did it mean there were no snacks in space? That was fine, she didn’t have to eat, the strange feelings in her stomach could be ignored easily. Maybe it meant that she would be there alone? She’d been alone for as long as she could remember, temporarily going back wouldn’t be an issue. Maybe it would just feel strange? Couldn’t possibly feel any stranger than getting mauled to pieces by a bear, and that had been fun. Burning? No, that was “fire.” If it had to do with burning, Blue would have used the word “fire.”

Jeh noticed that Blue and Suro had stopped in front of a small wooden building covered in red paint that was peeling off at the edges. A single brass bell hung from a little enclosure on top of the building, the gleam indicating that it was much newer than the building itself.

Suro entered without knocking, both Blue and Jeh right behind him. The interior of the building consisted of a single room with about a dozen little desks in front of a blackboard. The desks were filled with kids of varying ages consisting mostly of humans with a minority of cats and gari. The seat in front of the blackboard was occupied by a gray cat with a tool around her paw that allowed her to write a lot of strange symbols on the board.

Words, Jeh had to tell herself. Those are words.

The gray cat let out a call and all the kids in the desks promptly jumped out of their seats and ran for the door, big smiles on their faces. As soon as they had vacated the premises, Suro and the other cat nuzzled while Suro said something to her. There was a “didn’t” in there, which meant “did not” but that was about as far as Jeh could get with it before the topic changed.

Longer conversations were much better for Jeh. She could piece the context together over a longer time that way. Small snippets were bad for her; at least, for now.

“Jeh?” Suro asked, drawing Jeh’s attention. “Eifa.”

So the cat was Eifa. “Hi, Eifa!”

“Glad something something you,” Eifa said.

Jeh had to take a while to process “glad” to be one of those positive words Blue had listed to stop Jeh from saying “fun” for everything. Everything else gelled as “something” in Jeh’s mind to be remembered later if she ever understood the context. Hoping “glad” was all she needed to get the idea, Jeh grinned at Eifa. “How do?”

“Good,” Eifa said, nodding. “I teach you words.”

Jeh looked to Blue, tilting her head to the side. Why couldn’t Blue teach her? Blue was great, Blue had soft fur, and Blue could shoot bright things out of the skewer on her head. Eifa was just a cat with a thing on her paw.

Blue sensed her confusion. “I something.” Something. Jeh’s eye twitched—this had to be a simple concept.

Blue was having similar difficulty. “Uh… something not something words?”

“Understand?” Jeh offered.

Blue lit up. “Eifa understand words!”

Ah, that made sense. Eifa was just better at words than Blue. Jeh had to admit, that matched the image she had in her head of Blue fumbling over what to tell her all the time. Often resorting to lists of seeming nonsense.

Jeh nodded curtly and patted Blue on the back. “Okay. I understand.” Wait, that might mean two things. Or three. “Uh…”

“Good,” Eifa said, sitting down on her haunches so she was far beneath Jeh’s eyes. “Good words.”

Jeh beamed. “Thanks!”

“Word: ‘teacher.’ Is: me something you understand.“

Teacher. Sounds a lot like “teach,” which Blue says a lot when talking about me understanding. I think… “You teach?”

“Yes!” Eifa lit up, letting out a soft purr. “I teach words, numbers, more.”

“I teach bears!”

“You teach ‘about’ bears.”

“About…” Jeh still wasn’t sure on “about.” Might as well be “something.”

“Teach me about bears.”

“Er…” Jeh rubbed the back of her head.

“Teach me; you understand bears. Words about bears. Bear words.”

“Bear words… Bears brown. Bears big. Bears…” She held up her mitt and pointed at the part with the claw in it. “Uh…”

“Claw.”

“Bear claws!”

“Bears have claws.”

“Have?”

“Word: ‘have’. I have words. Bears have claws. You have hands.”

“Have… I have hands!” She held up her hands and laughed. “I have feet!” She started going through the list she had of every part of her body she knew about so far, and when she arrived at a part she didn’t know, she’d just ask Eifa and she’d lay it out in her nice “Word: word” arrangement that was so helpful.

Every word carried with it a meaning.

Blue stepped in at this point, expressing thanks. She used gestures to let Jeh know she should stay here with Eifa, something Jeh readily agreed to. At this, Suro and Blue left, releasing Jeh to the care of Eifa.

Eifa said something that sounded important that escaped Jeh’s understanding. “They something something understand something something you say know something Blue and Vaughan something something.*”

*Let it be known that much abstraction is taking place here. The syntax of the language Jeh is learning—or re-learning as the case may be—is nothing like English. The language itself is Karli, one of the more widely spoken languages on Ikyu, and one of the few to not be generally confined by the boundaries of race**. It is the most common human language but it actually originated with xolotls, an amphibious cave-dwelling race that found itself in the middle of a lot of other races in ancient times.

**You already know about “race,” go look at the other footnote again.

“Word: ‘chalk,’ “ Eifa said.

Jeh focused all her attention on Eifa, ready to learn as many words as possible.

~~~

“Vaughan! Vaughan!” Blue shouted, running into the backyard with a cart hitched to her, threatening to knock the human-sized glass jar out of her transport.

“Blue, don’t break that!”

“I have it tied down!” Blue said, skidding to a stop just in front of Vaughan’s top-covered workbench. “Here, check this out…” She surrounded the jar in her magical aura, unloading it from the cart and setting it in the dust next to Vaughan. It may have been absurdly heavy but her skill with telekinesis made it look easy.

He examined the jar, nodding slowly. “You know, for a hunk of glass, this sure was expensive…”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Blue said, levitating out several small crystal cores—the repeaters Vaughan had ordered from Suro.

“Ah, I bet you’re wondering why I ordered useless repeate—“

“No, that’s obvious. This is what you need to see.” Blue popped one of the wheels off the cart, axle and all. She lifted it up in her telekinesis, smiling smugly. “This is going to blow your little mind.”

“Eh?”

Blue levitated the wheel and axle over to him. “Hold the axle on both ends with your hands, leaving the wheel alone.”

He did as asked, feeling a little silly.

“Now flip it around, changing the position of your hands.”

He easily flipped the wheel and axle over with no effort. “Blue, what i—“

“Now hold…” She pushed her magical aura onto the wheel, prompting it to spin on the axle. “Now try to turn it back.”

Vaughan did as asked, trying to turn the spinning wheel back to the original position, but he found it remarkably difficult. It felt as though an invisible force were trying to pull his arms to the side, and it took considerably more effort to right the wheel. “Woah…”

“The stabilizing effect of rotation is so strong you can feel it on this wheel!” Blue stamped her hooves several times in repetition.

“Blue, can you hold it in your telekinesis for a moment?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” She levitated the wheel into the air. For good measure, she gave it more spin.

“Now hold it steady, but let me adjust it…” Vaughan touched his finger to the axle and pushed—finding it difficult to do, but nonetheless he tilted the axle at a slight angle, where it remained after he removed his finger. “Hmmm… It resists, but doesn’t bounce back.”

“Weird…” Blue frowned. “We might have to compensate for that.”

“How?”

“A very… very good question.” Blue set the wheel and axle down, scratching her chin with a hoof. “We might need to use those repeaters of yours, now.” She frowned. “But even if we make something that can fly, there’s no way to know if it’s survivable without… tests.”

“How is Jeh doing with Eifa?”

“Pretty good, she’s getting a lot more vocabulary. Still, Eifa says she hasn’t managed to understand what we want from her yet.” Blue flicked her tail. “That’s the problem with a complex risk—reward situation.”

“The risk to her is nil…”

“By the Eighth, the Arcane Ethics Board will eat you alive.”

“May I remind you that the so-called ‘Ethics Board’ approved zapping a sleeping dragon with Purple-derived lightning?”

Blue blinked a few times. “I’ll make my own Ethics Board. With reasonable people on it!”

“Where are you going to find a reasonable person?”

“Suro.”

“That has the required magic knowledge?”

Blue let out an annoyed whinny, unable to come up with a response to that.

Vaughan chuckled to himself, picking up one of his Yellow tops and setting it spinning. They were amazingly fun. The team just needed to know more about how they could be used.

“Blue, levitate this top. I’m going to throw pebbles at it.”

“…Sure.”

~~~

“Fruit juice!” Jeh said, grinning.

Seskii gasped. “Oh my gosh, that’s right! You got it, Jeh!” She took one of her orange juice bottles and handed it to Jeh. “You’re learning a lot of words!”

“Lots of words are mine,” Jeh said, proud of herself as she downed the drink.

“You’re making a lot of progress with her,” Seskii said, turning to Eifa.

If only she could understand what I wanted her to. Eifa nodded curtly. “Thanks. She clearly already knew how to talk at some point, there’s no doubt about it. Though she seems to be missing a lot of concepts.”

“Like what?” Seskii asked, pouring one of her juices into the other, watching as the colors mixed before her eyes.

“Well, for one, things having to do with time are very messed up in her head. I’ve gotten her to recognize words relating to the present, past, and future rather well, but she seems to have no concept of the difference between a week and a month or a year. Sure, she can treat them like numbers and recite them back to me, but conceptually they’re all lumped together for her.”

“Ah, that’s a strange one. What about pain?”

Eifa tensed slightly. “Pain?”

“Yeah, does she have difficulty with that?” Seskii locked her eyes with Eifa’s. The innocent pink irises made Eifa uncomfortable.

“Wh-why yes, she has difficulty with pain.” Eifa flicked her ears back. “Can’t seem to understand the idea at all.”

“She’s a regenerator, it makes sense.” Seskii took a sniff of one of her own concoctions. Finding the smell atrocious, she stuck out her tongue and hid it beneath the kiosk. “If you could get stabbed through the hand and be just fine a minute later, pain becomes a non-issue.”

“That… certainly makes sense, yes.” But that can’t be the end of it. There’s more than just physical pain, there’s mental pain as well. I have to tap into that. Somehow.

“Sense!” Jeh jumped up, pointing at her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth in quick succession, ending by wiggling her fingers around.

“Yes, Jeh, those are your senses,” Eifa said, giving her a big smile. “Now, we should go visit Lila, don’t you think?”

“Ooh, Lila!” Jeh clapped her hands several times and then set off for the Sanctuary all on her own.

Eifa sighed. “She has no concept of staying with me, either…”

“Girl survived alone in the forest for years,” Seskii said. “Why would she have any problem with wandering off on her own?”

Eifa decided the fruit juice seller had gotten enough words in edgewise today. Eifa bid Seskii farewell and set out to the Sanctuary; the only one in town, run by her mother. On her better days, Eifa liked to think of the simple structure as quaint and full of character. On days like today, she felt disdain over the fact that her mother worked in such a ramshackle hovel that nobody appreciated. Sure, most of the town came to meditation service at the end of the week, but Eifa knew they all wished the Sanctuary was a bit more than just a wall around an altar.

The only nice part about the Sanctuary was the grand upward-facing triangle cut out of cyan gemstones—of the mundane sort, naturally, since Colored crystals were a terrible long-term construction material. It really was a shame that the triangle was the only nice thing about the Sanctuary, and it was smaller than the ones in most other Sanctuaries as well! During her time in the cities, Eifa had seen many immensely impressive Sanctuaries with vaulted ceilings, brilliant windows, and candles larger than people, not to mention triangles composed of smaller triangles in a repeating pattern that found complexity in simplicity.

The singular triangle of Willow Hollow’s Sanctuary was only impressive by comparison with the rest of the town.

As Eifa led Jeh to the Sanctuary, she frowned. Is that… red? Picking up the pace, Eifa ran to the Sanctuary, finding that the walls had been absolutely covered in bright red graffiti. The art was terrible—Eifa was able to make out attempts at flames and geometric symbols in the scrawls, but none of them were quite right. Worst of all, though, was the simple red “X” placed overtop the Sanctuary’s triangle; not even an attempt at art, just an outright blasphemous degradation.

Lila was currently standing on top of the Sanctuary’s wall in her full Keeper’s robes, scrubbing away at the triangle with a soapy rag. The pristine white of her fur and robes were stained with the insulting red, but she plugged away at the cleaning job.

“Mom!” Eifa shouted. “What happened?”

Lila looked down from her position on the wall, forcing a feline smile. “Ah, well, those Red Seekers are at it again…”

“Mom! They aren’t some teenage rascals pulling a prank!”

“Perhaps not, but we must take these things in stride. We made the Choice, after all.”

“So did they!”

“Ah, but they have not yet acknowledged it. And so we must be patient.”

Eifa scrunched up her nose and glanced at the top of the mountain. The sun was high in the sky so she couldn’t see the Eternal Flame, but she knew it was up there. The Red Temple, filled with its blasphemous, violent Seekers. “Why doesn’t the mayor do anything?”

“I’ve asked him not to, Eifa. Willow Hollow doesn’t need that much commotion.”

“Commotion!?” She pointed at Mount Cascade’s peak. “They live up there! There wouldn’t be any commotion!”

“Eifa…” Lila stopped her scrubbing and gave her daughter a long, sad look.

Eifa folded her ears back and hung her head. “I’m sorry. It just… it makes me so mad to see this happen to you and your Sanctuary. You… deserve better.”

“Eifa, what we deserve is already given unto us, everything in this life is a bonus.”

Yeah, well, can’t exactly go back that far, can we? Eifa inwardly winced, hating her thoughts for being so snappy and spiteful. It wasn’t right. “Mom, even so, you don’t have to take this lying down. Surely there’s something you can do…”

“Naturally.” Lila held up the soapy rag. “Clean.”

“Mom…”

“And ask for help,” Suro said, arriving on the scene with several of the kids and a small cart filled with cleaning supplies. The eldest, a black cat named Akri, was in a robe similar to Lila’s but gray—indicating his position as an acolyte of the Sanctuary. He jumped up to his mother and she swung him onto the wall with her, where they both immediately set to cleaning the triangle.

Eifa rolled her eyes, but took a rag of her own. “Dad, can you maybe tell her to… I don’t know, fight back in some way?”

Suro found this idea so absurd he burst into tremendous laughter.

“…Dad, I’m serious.”

“Eifa, Eifa… you know your mother. If she thinks she needs to fight, she will fight to the end and take as many with her as she can. You weren’t around when we first met, but none of those stories I tell are exaggerations.”

“Suro, are you talking about my past again?” Lila called from above.

“Both our pasts, Lila!”

“Just making sure you aren’t making it sound like a grand adventure!”

“But it was!”

Lila shook her head and let out a sad laugh. “You… Suro, you were the only one who can live through all that and call it a ‘grand adventure’ with that dumb smile of yours.”

Eifa rolled her eyes. “Stop flirting over the past you two, I know the story. I… find it hard to believe sometimes, but I know.” She turned to her mother with sad eyes. “I know you don’t want to go back to that violence, but that’s not what I’m asking. You’re not exploiting anyone, you’re not being cruel, you’d be taking a stand for what matters.”

“I am taking a stand for what matters,” Lila countered. “I am taking a stand for peace in the face of adversity. Forgiveness in the face of hate.”

“She’s got you there,” Suro said with a flick of his tail.

Of all the times for this conscience of hers to rear up… Eifa let out a sigh. “Okay, okay, I’ll let it slide. But I’m bringing it up if it happens again!”

“Of that, I am certain,” Lila chuckled.

“I’m not that predictable!”

Suro chuckled. “You’re her daughter, she knows how you think.”

“Really?” Lila asked. “Because I don’t.”

“And that’s why I married your mother,” Suro said, pointing up at her. “That impeccable instinct of hers. Doesn’t even have to think, she just does.”

“Oh, really?” Lila huffed. “Last week you said you married me for my ‘paramount sense of duty.’ Which is it, Suro?”

“Whichever one you want, Keeper of my Heart.”

“Eeeeeew!” one of the kittens squealed, shaking her head. “Talk about something else!”

“Oh, we appear to be agonizing the children,” Lila deadpanned.

“To appease our tiny overlords: new topic.” Suro turned to face Eifa. “So, how’s teaching Jeh going?”

“Well enough, but slower than I’d like,” Eifa admitted. “There are a few things she doesn’t get but… well, why not just try to talk to her? Hey, Jeh!”

There was no response. Jeh was nowhere to be seen.

“…Jeh?” Eifa asked, a sinking feeling developing in her stomach.

~~~

Crystal repeaters were often considered useless devices. While the thought of an arcane device duplicating a spell signature so it could cast forever without anyone to manage it was a brilliant idea on paper, there was a major problem. That problem was that, without an external will driving the process, the potency of the spell wore down to almost nothing alarmingly quickly. The exact speed depended a lot on the sort of spell in the first place, but this limitation enforced all arcane devices to have a user on them almost constantly.

Repeaters would purposefully burn through the spell they had stored as many times as possible before petering out. Rare was the repeater design that lasted for more than a few seconds on its own.

Luckily, for Vaughan’s purposes, he only needed a few seconds. Ever since the repeaters had arrived, he’d been strapping them to his Yellow tops. The cores he’d ordered were marble-like nodules with a simple Orange command: push themselves as quickly in one direction as possible. If attached to a top, they’d drag the top with them. On such small scales, an impressive amount of distance was covered in a few seconds, which allowed Vaughan and Blue to get some data on how things flew through the air while spinning.

He was hoping for even better results today.

This time, he had a Yellow top encased in a little frame made of more Yellow crystal: the top would spin while the frame remained stationary, in theory. He affixed the repeater to the top, let the Yellow crystal spin, and ordered the repeater to release. It flew right into the air and started tumbling almost immediately, coming to an unceremonious landing in the dirt by Blue. The impact knocked the repeater off, at which point it flew right into Blue’s horn before running out of energy.

“Ow…”

“What’s the problem?” Vaughan asked, slamming his hands on the desk. “It’s spinning, but the outside isn’t…”

“I think it has to do with the air,” Blue said. “Remember our experiments with the arrows? By spinning them you create wind, it works both ways. I’m beginning to think anything spinning in air creates a whirlwind around it, and whirlwinds are just naturally unstable.”

Vaughan frowned. “I want to be able to see it while it’s flying…”

“Yeah, well, you already tried to follow it with your new levitator, that went so well.”

“I didn’t crash!”

“These don’t go high enough for you to really lose control.” Blue levitated the top in a frame out of the dust and rotated the interior. She shifted her head to the side, holding it as loosely as she possibly could. She watched as the frame itself started to rotate with the top. “Or maybe our frame is being turned by the top while in flight, or something.”

“We need to spin to be stable, but we can’t cause whirlwinds…” Vaughan pressed his hands to his nose and sighed. “I don’t even… What is it about arrows that work so well?”

“It’s not the fletching,” Blue said, pulling a bunch of papers out of a nearby crate they had been stuffing with data. “I think it’s the shape. Long arrows generally fly higher and straighter.”

“But the tall and thin tops fall over!”

“There’s clearly a difference that occurs when moving through air. Whatever we make is probably going to need to be long and thin, or have some other way to… stabilize.”

Vaughan recognized that look—the slight wrinkle of the snout, the widening of the eyes, the blank expression. She was getting an idea.

“What if… we didn’t worry about keeping everything in line?”

“What do you mean?” Vaughan asked.

Blue picked up the repeater, holding it in front of her eye. “This thing flies straight through the air by itself.”

“It gets diverted by wind…”

“Yes, but what if it could tell if it was being diverted? What if, when the frame it is inside of rotates, it rotates the opposite way?”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “That would be a complicated mechanism…”

“A level.”

“A what?”

“A level. It’s one of the newer things they have at the Academy telescopes, but it’s a remarkably simple little device: it’s a tube with some liquid and an air bubble in it. When it’s laying flat, it’s level. Tilt it to the side, the bubble goes up, it’s not level. It’s very simple, and we could use something like that. Make sure the repeater—or internal push device being run by you or Jeh—is always pointing up, dragging everything along with it!” Blue levitated up the blackboard and started drawing something new on it.

She started with a sphere and placed a repeater inside of it. “We push from inside. No matter which direction this sphere is turned, we don’t tumble; it’s like throwing a ball. The wind rotates it, the core still pushes upward. I’m envisioning some kind of joint…” She drew a socket around the repeater, trying to turn it around in her mind. “Hmm… that’ll be a hard part to make It’ll have to withstand a lot of force and be really smooth…”

Now it was Vaughan’s turn for an idea. “Blue, Blue; why does it have to withstand a lot of force?”

“Well, we have to fly through the air, and it takes a lot of force to move that quickly.”

“Why do we have to move quickly?” Vaughan picked up the new levitator and demonstrated how it slowly lifted him up. “Why not go slow?”

“Go… slow…” Blue scribbled some numbers on the blackboard, performing a few calculations. “Well, it’s simple to pack enough Orange for the journey if you use it slowly. There would be almost no strain on the socket if done properly… Heck, if we did it slowly, you might be able to compensate for the changes in wind speed by instinct.”

“How long would it take to see the curvature, then?”

“Hmm... well, that depends on how good your eyes are.”

“I ran the calculation last week, about 11,000 meters.* ”

*Naturally, Ikyu has about seven dozen different standards of measurement, none of which are very reasonable. All applicable values are converted to metric for your sake, and for mine.

“How did you calculate that…?” Blue asked. “…Nevermind, so, 11,000 meters. Well, if we go up at a rate of a meter every ten seconds, that would be… 110,000 seconds, or 30 hours.”

“A full day?”

Blue smirked. “That’s taking it absurdly slow. It’s probably safe to go at about a meter a second, so 3 hours. 6 if we want to go a little slower. And as for how long it will take to get to the moon at that rate…” Her eyes flipped open wide. “Holy Eights, over a hundred thousand hours. A trip that long would probably exhaust your food supply.”

Vaughan frowned. “Going slow won’t do it then?”

“Actually... I think it will. It will at least get us up far enough where we can perform more tests, figure out how things work with much less air.” Blue clicked her tongue a few times. “In fact, if we go slow, a lot of our headaches may be unnecessary. The old harness design might work just fine if… well, if we can find a way to breathe.”

“Ah, yes, breathing.” Vaughan turned to look at the giant jar they’d ordered and so far done nothing with. “I could just seal myself in there and you could get me out if something goes wrong.”

Blue facehooved. “You really are a moron, you know that? We don’t know the long-term effects!”

“Jeh’s not making much progress…”

“We can continue working with the repeaters for now,” Blue asserted. “Your little dream of going up isn’t going anywhere.”

Vaughan took a moment to scratch his beard. “Blue, was that a joke?”

Blue never got to respond to him, because at that moment Eifa ran into the yard and flopped onto the ground, gasping for breath. “Je-Je-Jeh…”

“What is it!?” Blue asked, galloping over to her. She avoided using Green on Eifa to avoid scrambling her awareness.

“Jeh… she… I think she’s going to the Red Seekers! They…”

“The mountain…” Vaughan grimaced. “That’s not good.”

“Come on!” Blue shouted. “We’ve got to do something!”

“Way ahead of you, Blue.”

“Huh?”

~~~

Jeh knew a few things.

One: the “Sanctuary” was not supposed to have red stuff painted all over it.

Two: the fact that there was red on it made Eifa and her mom upset.

Three: something something on top of the mountain was related to it.

So that’s where she was going, to the top of the mountain to stop whatever it was that was painting the “Sanctuary” red. The claws on her bear mitts were exposed and she was bounding up the mountain at high speed.

To most in Willow Hollow, the trail that went up Mount Cascade was considered to be of poor quality and not exactly safe. Only the occasional hiker and the Red Seekers ever took it, and even the experienced took a few hours to follow it all the way to the top. Inexperienced travelers would find that they likely couldn’t make it to the top and back down in the time between sunrise and sunset.

Jeh was not inexperienced by any means. She could have climbed the forested mountain without a trail with ease. The trail made it a pathetically easy journey.

She moved like the wild animals, bounding along with quick, flighty movements—sometimes using her hands as extra feet to propel herself forward, though this was limited in use. Despite living in a forest and mostly observing quadrupeds, it was still natural for Jeh to walk upright. It was what her body was designed for, after all.

As her elevation increased, the number of trees started to go down, revealing more bare rock. Had it not been the middle of summer, there would have been snow on the ground, but Jeh was spared that annoyance. The bear furs kept her more than warm enough from the slight elevation chills.

Near the very top of the mountain sat her destination: the Red Seeker’s camp. She didn’t know that was what it was called, but she labeled the place Red in her mind since the Color was everywhere. There were only five stone buildings and a central fire pit, but every last one of the structures was lined with copious amounts of Red crystal. The buildings were rounded and chiseled out of the surrounding mountain rock, with two of them sharing more in common with a cave than a free-standing building. Naturally, they were painted bright red. The fire pit, on the other hand, was clearly constructed rather than chiseled, with expertly carved stones arranged in a circle, within which sat a raging fire taller even than Vaughan’s cabin. Jeh could already feel the ambient air getting warmer, and she wasn’t even in the camp yet.

She decided to circle around, get a better look before charging right in. There were maybe a dozen people there, all human so far as she could tell, and all wearing crimson robes with hoods that shrouded their heads. Two of the people were at the fire pit, hands pressed to the sides that had Red crystals in them—adding fuel to the immense bonfire, perhaps. Being that close to the flame had to be uncomfortable, but the two remained dutifully at their posts.

The largest building, which had been situated mostly behind the bonfire on Jeh’s approach, had a roof made almost entirely out of Red with a solid Red protrusion coming out the top a bit larger than an adult human. This massive crystal was not cut but had naturally grown into a somewhat impressive starburst of veins.

Jeh wondered how much she could light on fire if she could just touch the massive crysatal. She might even be able to melt rock.

Jeh shook her head—she wasn’t here to blow things up. She’d seen enough to put her plan into motion.

She walked straight up the path into the camp and waved her mitted hands. “Hi!”

The robed individuals all turned to stare at her. A few took off their hoods, revealing a mixture of men and women with absolutely bewildered faces.

“I’m Jeh! You stop… color Eifa and mom cat, please? Thanks!”

The bewildered stares continued.

Oops. I probably can’t talk well enough.

She knitted her brow, trying to figure out another way to get her message across. She made a “meow” sound and drew a triangle in the air. That got a reaction out of them—they all tensed up, though they looked just as confused as before.

A tall woman with ears studded with at least a dozen Red beads approached Jeh. Jeh was fairly sure the crimson of her hair wasn’t a natural color and was dyed with the same paint as the houses. The woman said something commanding. “Something something Red something why something something you here?”

Jeh knew exactly what she was asking and was infuriated that she couldn’t express the answer. “I here… talk words, uh… friends? No, no, wrong…”

“Ukulele!”

To Jeh this sounded like a perfectly reasonable name for the short, robed creature that came out of one of the cavern-like buildings. It was slightly shorter than Jeh, and when it removed its hood, Jeh wasn’t sure exactly where to look: its head was green and lumpy, with eight eyes spread at all angles around it. These eyes had multiple compound segments of an obsidian color that, all together, made up for well over half the volume of the being’s actual head.

When it spoke, it spoke with a strange buzzing from various mouths that ringed its head. Jeh was completely unable to understand it.

Ukelele approached Jeh, holding out a limb—though its limb was so short the sleeve completely covered it. Jeh felt no fear, she was actually a little curious about what it was doing.

Then, so imperceptible that she almost missed it, Jeh saw a burst of Yellow from inside the dark of Ukelele’s sleeves. For a brief moment, Jeh felt the essence of Ukelele, but she wasn’t able to retain much since the sensation of seeing out of eight eyes at once was a lot to take in. Just as she’d come to accept the new view of the world, the connection ended, and Jeh was standing in front of Ukelele as though nothing had happened.

Ukelele turned to the tall red woman and spoke something to her. The woman’s face contorted in rage. She turned to Jeh, small embers bursting out of the Red in her ears. “You something something Sanctuary!?”

“Uh… yes?” She tilted her head to the side, expressing confusion.

“Get her,” the woman ordered. Immediately four of the others rushed Jeh.

Morons.

With a giggle, Jeh jumped into the air, landing on the tallest one’s shoulders. She took her bone out of her hair and whacked him with it. Dazed, he stumbled into two of the others, but the fourth grabbed Jeh by the ankle. For his trouble, he got a slash to the arm. The bear claws were not the best-kept weapons in the world, but they struck with enough force to draw blood.

The fiery woman let out a shriek and produced a long Red crystal. Jeh felt the skin on her left arm start to burn and char. It was an interesting sensation, and not one the wildlife in the forest had ever attacked her with. She took a moment to appreciate the appearing and disappearing black marks on her arm.

“What!?” the woman shouted.

Jeh gave her a wink before throwing the bone at her forehead. The woman stumbled back, dropping her crystal onto the ground—at which point Jeh swooped it up and bit down on it with her teeth, making contact with it. She pointed one of her bear claws threateningly at the woman while giving just enough will to the crystal to make it glow slightly.

“Mmmmnnghh,” Jeh said. She hoped her intent got through.

“No!” the woman shrieked. She must have had more Red hidden in her robes because at that point a new flame appeared—condensed into such a small point in front of Jeh that it exploded. The shockwave knocked Jeh back, forcing the crystal out of her mouth. Dazed, she took a moment to get her bearings, but that was all the others needed to pin her to the ground. All four of her limbs were stuck, and no amount of screeching and yelling from her was going to get them off.

She may have been strong, but she was small and outnumbered.

“Throw her something the something flame!”

Jeh had no difficulty parsing that. They were going to throw her in the fire.

My bear furs! I worked hard on these! She resumed her struggles in earnest, but it was to no avail. They carried her over to the crackling bonfire.

“Wait! Wait!”

Jeh blinked—that was Suro’s voice. She craned her neck upward just in time to see a black cat’s paw grab a rock and pull the rest of Suro into full view. The journey up the mountain had not been kind to him; a branch stuck out of his ear, one leg was cut pretty badly, and there was mud all over his left side.

“…Suro…” the fiery woman growled.

“Jeh is a kid!” Suro called, following it up with something Jeh couldn’t parse, at which point Suro and the woman entered an argument that Jeh was unable to follow besides the fact that the woman kept insulting Suro for some reason. It looked like she wanted to cut him up into cat-steaks, and Jeh had no idea why she didn’t.

Then Jeh heard loud shouting from somewhere in the distance. She tried to listen to it, but the sound of Suro’s argument drowned it out. It wasn’t until one of the other robed individuals tapped the woman on the shoulder that it became clear what the sound was.

Blue and Vaughan.

Shouting at each other.

While flying through the air on a tangle of ropes, a levitator, and what appeared to be a blackboard with one of the ropes tied haphazardly around its base.

It was clearly a very haphazard construction—if it could even be called a construction—but it had done its job.

As they flew overhead, the blackboard smacked the fiery woman in the face, knocking her over. The force on the rope attached to it removed what little control Blue and Vaughan had on the levitator and the two of them came crashing down, landing painfully on the rocky mountain crag.

Vaughan emerged with his scepter held high and an aura of Green surrounding him—undoing all the bruises and tears in his coat the landing had caused.

Oh, so that’s what he was supposed to do when he crashed the first time.

Vaughan aggressively pointed his scepter at the fiery woman and said something.

The woman, still rubbing her head, glared at him with an intense fury. She started shouting again.

Unlike Suro, Vaughan had a suitable response to this. He slammed his scepter onto the ground, mingling Red, Orange, Blue, and Magenta together. Several Red crystals lying around the camp levitated into the air and started moving in circles, directing their points at the robed individuals. The Red crystals began to generate points of heat in front of them, at which point the Blue crystals activated, increasing the rate heat was stored by such a margin that the burning spheres became blue-hot.

The woman held up her hands in surrender. The people holding Jeh down released her.

Vaughan nodded in understanding. He ordered all the balls of blue heat to release upward, filling the sky with a beam of energy that, for a single moment, heated up the surroundings far more than the bonfire ever could.

Blue let out a low whistle, saying something to Vaughan that was presumably witty, but all Jeh got was “never” and “you mad.”

Suro started talking again with a calm, disarming voice, gesturing with his tail that they should go back down the mountain. Vaughan nodded—but he never got to say anything. Instead, Blue let out a shocked gasp, pointing at the giant Red crystal. “Morons!” Ah, Blue’s favorite word. “Something something big!” Then there was the word “dangerous” again.

She was upset about it being big, and it was associated with “dangerous…”

Something in Jeh’s mind clicked. She looked down at the blood on one of her bear mitts. Oh. Danger. That thing that happens to other people. That’s what it is.

As Jeh felt rather smug with herself, Blue stopped herself in the middle of her rant and coughed awkwardly, letting out what Jeh identified as a hasty but insincere apology. She telekinetically picked up the levitator and the mangled mess of ropes still tied to it. Without examining it too closely, she trotted over to Jeh, hastily herding her back down the mountain. Suro joined them.

Vaughan stayed behind for a moment, pointing his scepter aggressively at everyone just to make sure they didn’t try anything—then he, too, descended the mountain.

~~~

“I know danger now!” Jeh said, rushing into Eifa’s home.

Eifa lived in a two-room cottage, so anyone bashing through her front door in the middle of the night could easily see her jump out of bed with a shriek, claws bared to take on whatever it was that threatened her. Jeh almost got slashed across the face, not that she would have minded.

“J-jeh..?” Eifa stared blankly at the shape in the doorway lit only by moonlight. “What... Why…” She took a moment to reduce her vocabulary to Jeh’s level. “Why come night?”

“Trip done! Mountain done!”

“...Vaughan and Blue?”

“Yes! They tired.”

“Ah.” Eifa glanced at the stars outside. No kidding, they had to get back down…

“I know danger now!”

“You know word danger or danger?”

“Word. Danger not me.”

“…Danger not you?”

Jeh lifted up her bear claws and cut a massive gash into her arm, demonstrating her bloodless regeneration once again.

“Many dangers,” Eifa said, placing a paw on Jeh’s leg. “Strange dangers.”

“Danger not me.” Jeh clicked her tongue, tilting her head in thought. “Blue want danger things.”

She’s about to understand, here’s my chance. “Blue danger you.”

“Blue danger Blue,” Jeh countered. “I not-danger! Blue, danger.”

No, kid, come on… “You avoid danger.”

“Nah. Bear claws fun!”

Eifa failed to see the connection. It’s too late for this, but this is unimaginably important. If she doesn’t understand… “Blue danger things you.”

“Blue not-danger things me,” Jeh countered, folding her arms.

“But she… Jeh, you not do danger things!”

“I do danger things!” Jeh shouted, her smile vanishing. “I. Do. Danger. Things!”

“No, you don’t!” Eifa held out a paw wide. “They’re taking advantage of you!”

Jeh tilted her head at “advantage,” frown deepening.

“Jeh, you do you want.”

“Not-danger things!”

“Jeh, you don’t understand…”

Jeh put her hands on her hips and let out a harrumph. “I understand!”

“You don’t. I—“

Jeh stamped her foot in frustration. Then her eyes lit up—an idea had come to her. Immediately, she ran off into the night, leaving Eifa alone in her home.

I can’t let her go. If she wakes up Blue or Vaughan, they’ll think… Eifa pulled her coat off a wall hanger and threw it over her back. She rushed into the night air, pursuing Jeh. She was significantly slower than the girl, but it was clear that the girl was heading to Vaughan’s cabin, so she didn’t exactly need to keep sight of her. Still, if Vaughan was awake…

This girl is going to throw her life away because she doesn’t understand. She has rights! She shouldn’t just…

Eifa pushed the thoughts out of her head and continued sprinting along the path to Vaughan’s cabin. She very quickly ran out of stamina, being forced to come to a slow walk punctuated only by shallow breathing.

It occurred to her that she was essentially in the forest in the middle of the night. Granted, predators usually didn’t come this close to Willow Hollow, but that didn’t mean she was completely safe. However, picking up the pace was not an option—she just wasn’t an athletic cat like her parents. She hadn’t been on great adventures. She was an academic…

Jeh returned faster than Eifa had thought possible, holding a large Yellow crystal in her mitts. She removed a mitt to hold the Yellow in her bare hand, pointing it at Eifa.

Yellow… Eifa frowned. She is supposedly good at magic. Thi—

Jeh established contact between them. Eifa had felt the influence of a Yellow crystal before, but that had been a jumble of emotions and had left her feeling nauseous afterward. This… this was far beyond that. She felt the desperation and the frustration of Jeh, as well as the inherent confusion behind those feelings. After this, however, she saw things. A hand being cut off, a chest being stabbed… the sensation of drowning… all of which were interposed with laughter, smiles, and the idea of fun.

Eifa broke off the connection herself, gasping for air.

Jeh nodded to her, flipping the Yellow crystal over in her hand. “You, danger. Me, not-danger.”

“You… do understand.” Eifa sat down on her haunches. Slowly, she lifted her head, looking into Jeh’s eyes with her own. “How can you… want this?”

Jeh took a moment to think about that one. “Going up sounds fun. Lots not-danger fun.”

“Fun? Is it…”

“Blue wants. Blue nice.” Jeh smiled warmly. “Do not want Blue danger.”

Eifa let out a sigh. “…You win.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Eifa rose back to all fours and put a paw on Jeh’s leg. “Go to Blue. Tell her.”

“…Learn words?”

Eifa nodded. “I teach words.”

“Yay!” Jeh lifted Eifa up in her arms and hugged her tightly. Eifa, unlike most cats, had learned to accept the tendency of larger creatures to pick her up and squeeze. She had never learned to like it, but for the sake of those she taught she bore the indignity.

Jeh set Eifa on the ground and ran back to Vaughan’s cabin, whooping the whole way.

She’ll wake them up long before she arrives. Eifa couldn’t help but chuckle. Still… can’t believe she’d throw everything away like that… I don’t understand her. Eifa snorted. Maybe I’m the one who needs to be taught a thing or two.

With her tail held high she walked—slowly—back to Willow Hollow, forgetting entirely about the potential predators in the forest.

Luckily for her, there was only one such predator nearby, and it had no interest in having a tiny cat for dinner. But it watched her from the trees nonetheless.

Eifa passed by the bones of the moose it had eaten without noticing them, despite the fact that the remains were neatly stacked around the tree in a somewhat ritualistic manner, with the skull directed right at the path.

The predator decided that maybe it needed to move them before daybreak, when a lot more passersby would be able to see them…

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT!

I am not a linguist and there are probably a ton of inaccuracies in how I portrayed language. I rest easy knowing that the above is already “translated” from a language far removed from English.

As for the spaceflight aspects, Blue and Vaughan discovered rightfully that things spinning in air create whirlwinds, and whirlwinds cause a lot of imbalance. There’s a reason rockets are tall and thin rather than wide, and that’s because it’s the best shape to get to orbit while passing through the atmosphere.

However, they have stumbled across something we on Earth never got to consider: the option of going slowly. We did not have access to Orange crystals that could generate a force in any direction. We had to concern ourselves with things like fuel, exhaust, and the like that ensured we needed to leave the atmosphere quickly. They have the option to go slowly, levitating out like a balloon.

The way it works is like this: on the surface of Earth the force of gravity acts with an acceleration of 9.8m/s^2, ie. for each second the passes, an object will fall 9.8 m/s faster. The force this exerts is equal to the acceleration times the mass of the object it is acting on. (This is the potentially familiar F=ma equation, otherwise known as the simple form of Newton’s Second Law.) If a force is provided that perfectly opposes gravity, the object becomes effectively weightless. If the force pushing up is just a little stronger, then the object begins to float upward.

It’d be an effect similar to that of a hot air balloon, except it would be able to continue floating up out of the atmosphere and beyond so long as you kept pointing the force straight.

As always, though, the “going straight” part is the issue. However, unlike designing a gyroscopic rocket from scratch (which was Blue’s first idea), the levitating method requires a lot less precision. You can just point vaguely up and get a similar effect. Sure, you’ll also move sideways a little bit and the most efficient direction is directly upward, but the fact is there is now room for error.

And if the force pushing the ship is situated inside at the exact center of mass, then there will be no torque that sends it into a spin. All the spin will come from the exterior atmospheric wind, which, well, is its own problem.

You may note that all the work on tops and gyroscopes might be for nothing. This is how science and engineering work: you try things out, and, more often than you’d think, you get a negative or useless result and have to throw it away, moving on to something new.

And sometimes you miss the obvious answer that’s sitting right in front of you, like using the “completely useless” Yellow crystals to facilitate communication of ideas to and from a child who doesn’t know how to speak.