Emily, Lisaykos’ study

"Can you see, Holy One?" I turned and looked up at Senlyosart in my spot on the lounge. I had shifted to the left so she could see what I was doing by looking over my right shoulder, which was a lot lower than her eyes.

She nodded, “I can see quite well, thank you for asking, Great One.”

“Revered One?” I twisted to look up at the very senior healer Twipdray, who was a healer’s healer and one who usually took on silverhairs who needed healing. I only knew that she was one of Lisaykos’ four deputies in Aybhas, one who used to manage the two healing chapel shrines in Surdos, which was the second largest healing operation in the kingdom. She was good enough that Lisaykos trusted her with Senlyosart. That said a lot to me because I knew that Lisaykos was very fond of Senlyosart. Lisaykos is the kind of person whose affections are measured more by her actions than by her words.

“Yes, Great One?” Twipdray looked perplexed that I was talking to her.

“Can you see alright?" I asked, thinking the healer was another Cosm too wrapped up in following hierarchy and protocol that she didn't even give a thought about herself or being able to see what I was doing.

“If I lean forward, I can see over your left shoulder to both your hands and the candle, Great One,” she smiled, looking touched that I asked her. Just when I think I’ve figured people out, they go and surprise me.

I looked to make sure the drop cloth over Lisaykos’ precious floor rug hadn’t shifted at all and looked up at Aylem, who had custody of a small pile of glayon vines under stasis. “Aylem, can I have one glayon vine?” She handed one vine to Raoleer who was sitting on the floor facing me. Raoleer handed it to me. I put it on the false tabletop on top of the lounge table. After the pencil affair, which got beeswax in the table, Wolkayrs had made the false top for when I wanted to play with things at his work table.

I’m sure I had people wondering at the collection of objects I had on the table: several thin pieces of wood, some beaver reed skewers, my small steel knife from my belt billet, and a pair of steel snips and steel pliers that I requested from Roaleer last rotation when we were both at the Crystal Shrine. I also had some small worse-for-wear beakers with cracks and chips, some stoppered jars, and a beeswax candle.

I was missing a small copper box.

“Looking for this?” Wolkayrs stepped through the circle of people seated opposite me.

“Fiend,” I chided him.

"I'm going to enjoy this," he winked and stepped back, standing behind Lisaykos to watch. He and I had spent half a bell yesterday before dinner in the basement making mischief together.

“You’ll want to see this, Thuorfosi,” the voice of Hessakos said from the study door. “We’ve both already seen it but you haven’t.”

He had said we. Who was he referring to, I wondered?

“Wait,” Thuorfosi, still in her flying cloak held up a hand, “we mustn’t forget our manners.” He nodded in agreement. They got on their knees and Kamagishi, revealed behind them, got down on one knee.

"May the blessings of the eleven gods be upon you Great and Holy Ones," they said in splendid unison.

“And also upon you,” I was just a little grumpy for having been thrown off my groove. “Please get up and get in here, and save why you're here for later because I'm not going to stop what I'm doing." I threw the three a slightly put-out look and then turned my attention back to the copper box. I tried to get the cover off and couldn't.

“May I?” Raoleer held out her hand with a helpful look on her face.

I placed it in her hand, “open it very carefully and lift the cover off slowly. If you detect any heat or flames, slam the cover back on and extinguish the fire.”

She opened it with care, lifted the cover, and looked inside, "Oh!" She grinned with excitement and handed the bottom of the box to me, putting the cover on the table. Everyone else was trying to see what was inside. I took the leather-wrapped piece of sandstone from my pouch and removed the leather. The stone was still the dark red of the phosphorus I had soaked it in. I picked up one of the matches out of the copper box that Wolkayrs and I made yesterday, checked to see if the thinned copal we used as adhesive was dry, and struck it against the stone. The flame flared into life and then shrank to the usual teardrop shape of a match flame. I lit the wick on the beeswax candle.

“When did you make more matches?” Aylem asked.

“Matches?” Raoleer asked. “Isn’t that Emily’s famous instant fire?”

“In the place I came from,” I held up another match, “I would call this a match stick, or match for short. Calling it instant fire works too.”

“I couldn’t see what you did,” Senlyosart apologized behind me. “How did the flame start? I certainly didn’t expect to see the mysterious instant fire today. Might I...?”

"Of course, you can, Holy One," I took the fresh match I had picked up and the stone and turned so Senlyosart and Twipdray could see both my hands. I struck the match head across the sandstone and then held it up while the flame started. Then I blew it out when the flame burnt down too close to my fingers.

“Amazing, I couldn’t detect any magic at all,” Senlyosart looked at me in wonder.

“It’s just several different potions acting together,” I shrugged. “The trick is in mixing the potions, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, looking happy.

"You are most welcome, Holy One," I smiled back, happy that I had made her happy. I did like Senlyosart.

I turned back to the glayon vine, which was getting older by the second, and tried to squeeze the sap out but didn’t get far.

"Let me," Huhoti took the vine from me and pulled it between her thumb and forefinger, as the sap dribbled into the beaker. She handed it back to me while trying to rub the dried latex off her fingertips.

I put the vine down and handed Huhoti a rag and the stoppered bottle of olive oil, “put some olive oil on the rag and it will clean the sap off your fingers.”

The mood in the room shifted and I looked up at the astounded faces of Lisaykos, Aylem, Hessakos, Twipdray, Kayseo, Kibbilpos, Thuorfosi, Wolkayrs, and Kamagishi. The sight of so many Cosm gathered in one spot made the butterflies in my stomach jump. I ignored them for now.

“Olive oil will clean off glayon vine sap?” Thuorfosi asked. “Really?”

“You didn’t know that?” I asked back. “I thought everyone would already have figured that out, seeing that the trainees go out to harvest the vines every year.” Then it sunk in that they really didn’t know. I ended up holding my head as I shook it.

“Emily, dear,” Aylem said in a voice that was a mix of both patience and amusement, “you did it again.”

“I’m still having a hard time thinking that the sap has value,” Lisaykos scowled. "Glayon vine has to be hung for several rotations to drain all that nasty white sap out or it clogs the hollow channel in the middle of the vines," she pointed out, “which is the only reason the vines have any use at all and then only for healers."

"So no one buys or sells the vines? Only the healer trainees harvest it?" I asked.

"It's commonly considered a weed, Emily,” Aylem explained. “It grows in the poorly-drained soils on the worthless ground next to the lava fields owned by the Crown between Aybhas and Esso. Only the healers have a use for it. The Crown permits the healers to harvest it because it has no value.”

“You may want to negotiate the rights to vines drained of their sap, Lisaykos, before that worthless land appreciates in value,” I went back to the drained vine and slit it open. There was a network of fibers on the inside and a green fibrous skin on the outside. The inside network could be scraped off but the outside resisted removal.

“Does the skin fall off or does it dry in place?” I asked.

“It dries in place and turns light brown in color,” Kayseo explained.

“Huh,” I snipped a piece as long as my hand off the end of the vine and held it next to the candle flame with the pliers. It started to droop. Then part of it began to melt, leaving behind a fibrous framework from the inside channel behind. I grabbed a square of wood and held it under the melting vine to catch the drops until I had several drops collected.

I waited until the drips on the wood were cool. Then I peeled the blob of melted vine off the wood and squeezed it. Next, I pulled at it, trying to get it to stretch in any direction. Satisfied, I looked up at my match-making partner.

“Wolkayrs, can you get me a piece of paper and a pencil, please?” I enjoyed the look of realization on Aylem’s face while I waited. I just grinned back at her.

“Here you are, Great One,” he stepped through the circle of chairs and passed the paper and pencil to Raoleer, who then gave them to me.

I took the pencil, held down the paper, and scribbled in circles manically. "Everyone sees this mess?" I held it up and showed it around, remembering to show it to the two Cosm on the lounge in back of me. I put it on the table, held it down, picked up the crepe rubber I had melted, and erased a streak through the middle of my penciled mess.

I held it up so Aylem could see it first.

“I’m sold, Emily,” she nodded and smiled, “it’s definitely rubber.”

“Wait,” Kamagishi held up a hand, standing with Thuorfosi and Hessakos behind the circled chairs, “does this have something to do with the name?”

“Yes, it’s called rubber because of its property of being able to erase, or rub out, pencil marks,” I confirmed. “Now, Raoleer and Huhoti, can I ask the two of you to get the sap out of those glayon vines the Queen has under stasis? I would like you to fill this beaker as fast as you can.”

“That’s doable,” Raoleer replied, “but why fast?”

“It dries very quickly, see?” I pulled up the thin film made by the white latex sap that Huhoti squeezed out just a few moments ago out of the beaker. I stretched it and let it relax. Then I pulled it over my face and had fun listening to the gasps.

"I can mix in the zinc oxide and the sulfur while it's still liquid. If it will still pour, then I wanted to try and get it into this form I made before it solidified," I held up a block of talc schist I had carved into the upside-down shape of a rubber end for a crutch. "Then we can try to use the recipe Galt gave me. If I had some ammonium solution, I could use it to keep the sap from drying. It would take a trip to the geysers east of my former home on the other side of the Great Cracks to fetch the rocks to make ammonia. There's been too much happening to try arrange that."

The mood in the room became strange, nervous even, and a little tense. Kibbilpos was shocked. Aylem had her hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide. Kayseo look startled. Kamagishi was biting her finger trying not to laugh. Lisaykos looked like she was in pain. Wolkayrs and Thuorfosi were looking at me in sympathy. Raoleer was grimacing with her eyes shut. Huhoti was looking at me with a sad smile waiting for me to notice her.

“What?” I demanded.

“The last time this happened and I said something, you arranged to make the end of my slag stick explode.”

“Only because you said it was cute," I snarled. "It was not cute. It was frustrating."

"It was cute, love," Huhoti explained because she knew she could get away with it. It's part of the give-and-take she acquired after melting rocks and pouring slag with me. It’s part of the fellowship of metals geeks thing.

“When you forget about everyday magic solutions,” Huhoti smiled with understanding, “you look so vexed. Your eyebrows make a vee and you purse your lips. When you're frustrated with magic users, you stamp your foot, and if you had any magic yourself, the whole place would burn down."

I leaned back against the lounge, crossed my arms, and gave Huhoti a disgruntled look, "alright, Revered One, what incredibly obvious everyday piece of magic did I miss just now?" This sort of thing really did annoy me. It was their everyday magic, not mine. Damn Cosm. At least Huhoti had the knack of teasing me out of my ire, understanding that my worldview had zero magic in it.

“We can cast stasis on the beaker we squeeze the sap into to keep it liquid, Em,” Huhoti smiled apologetically.

“Oh.” If I had a hole to go down and vanish, I would have. I got to be an idiot about everyday magic again in front of a room full of silverhairs trying to be tactful and polite in front of the token Coyn revelator. It was not a great moment for me.

“Yep,” Raoleer remarked as if she was taking notes on an experiment, “there’s the vee in the brows, followed by the pursed lips. Excellent observations, number two.”

“Any time, number one,” Huhoti replied in the same observational voice.

I glowered at them. They grinned back at me.

“I brought the termometer,” Raoleer offered a peace offering.

“Thermometer, not termometer,” the energy it took to maintain all those vexed looks at the terrible mekaner twosome was ebbing fast.

“There’s only one problem,” Raoleer looked at me with sympathy. “You forgot to add a measurement hole for it in the mold you made. We can’t put the termometer into the sap which would solidify around it when we apply the heat to the rubber mix.”

I groaned.

It took two bells to make the crutch end. Kayseo was impressed that the crutch tip didn’t slide at all on the tiles of the shrine’s floors.

By the time we were done, I was drooping. I was surprised when Twipdray scared the crap out of me when picked me up without warning and placed me in her spot at the other end of the lounge.

She leaned against the arm of the lounge instead, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you, but you look so tired and I’ve been sitting all afternoon, Great One, while you’ve been standing.”

“Thank you,” and I meant it even if my heart stopped for a few breaths. I looked at the three who crashed the rubber demonstration, “so why are you three here?”

"Galt gave me a dream command as his high priestess to be a witness to the demonstration of his revelation," Kamagishi remarked. "Can I take some of this stuff back with me?" I had a vision in my head of Kamagishi spending a whole day writing with a pencil and then erasing everything she wrote just because she could.

"I was coming home as scheduled, now that my brother and sister are on the boat leaving Ark'kos with furniture for my new house," she had her arms wrapped around Wolkayrs and was leaning her chin on his bald head. They were looking very much like the young couple in love. It was cute.

“I was flying here to say hello to my mother,” Hessakos smiled, “after dropping my son off at Manse Gunndit so he can spend two rotations with his favorite cousin, milking cows and herding sheep and learning how to ride a horse. The three of us landing on the south balcony at the same time was just one of those odd coincidences.”

He smiled at me with a hint of mischief, “Great One, if you cooked up a wad of rubber that was completely round, do you think you could make a ball that would bounce?”