She was lying down in bed, clutching her necklace in one hand and the stone she used earlier in the other. For the better or worse she didn’t have to wear it when everything was so muffled. She though it was a nice change not needing to wear it around her neck. She felt free without it, but also wrong. It was like she had entered another muted world, different from her own.

She played with the stone in her hand, it held a pleasant warmth. It had absorbed the heat from the stove like she asked. She couldn’t outright see how much heat it had gathered, only when it was starting to wane. She hoped it would retain enough heat ‘til it was time to sleep again. Then she could substitute it for a candle and hopefully get one night’s undisturbed sleep.

Her anger had settled, for now. She was betting that the blanket affected her too now when she wasn’t wearing the protective charm. Did the blanket make the world feel wrong, or was it the freedom from the necklace? She sighed, she didn’t know. Both were plausible.

Her mind was bouncing from one thought to another. The unstable experiments, the broken energy gems, the absence of people, the blanket. The experiments failed because something outside affected them and they are sensitive to basically everything in the environment. The gems had been wrecked by either a sudden spike in the energy, or been overloaded. Had it been overloaded; the surrounding earth should have been affected by the increase. Maybe the box could have acted as barrier, or the excess had no effect on the earth at all. She had been mad and hadn’t studied the boxes in detail for clues. She hadn’t seen any obvious signs, on the other had she didn’t know what the effects might look like.

The blanket. She felt there were similarities with her necklace but when she thought about further the properties of the two was completely different. Her necklace cancelled out the resonance, the blanket made it feel like syrup, slowing everything down. She had never heard of anything being able to do that before, not on this scale. She hadn’t dabbled much with minds, it wasn’t really something she was comfortable doing, but she knew that one of the common effects was dampened emotions.

However, nothing explained the missing people though. She had only seen a handful of people out walking, and most of them walked in and out of her house. She told herself she was probably overthinking their absence because of everything that was going on in her head. She can’t know what they do every second of their lives.

She groaned in displeasure and let her necklace fall to the floor. Nothing is making any sense, is what she wanted to say. Who was she to decide what made sense or not. If things don’t make sense, it means that she merely lacks knowledge. The energy gems would normally be in no position to get overcooked, but a higher energy concentration would explain why her experiments were going to hell. A mind witch could, theoretically, put a damper over an area which may or may not explain why her parents were nowhere to be found. She didn’t know how far the blanket reached.

She turned around in bed, so she could pull a real blanket over her. Even without the necklace the house felt empty. She didn’t like it, she was too used to have everyone around here even when they were some distance away. Now she felt so alone even when she knew there were several people on the floor above her. Where was her friend when she needed him?

She didn’t mean to, but she fell asleep.

She woke up along with everyone else in the house as their cores started to resonate with each other. The blanket was gone.

“Stop iiiiiit,” she commanded not caring it was pointless. She took a moment to bathe in the waves to ease her need to socialize. There was no sharpness yet, all waves doused in drowsiness. It had been days since she last had a real conversation with a person and it would take a few more days before he would return. She buried her head in her pillow, tying to wipe away any further thoughts of him. She didn’t like the feeling of missing him, it only reminded her further that he wasn’t here.

“Gods be damned.” People were waking up, shooting noise her way. She hadn’t grabbed control of her thoughts and feeling yet, so she took the incoming waves in full force. While she reached for her necklace she quietly thanked the people that they weren’t as noisy as last night.

She was about to put on yesterday’s outfit when she thought better of it and chose something clean instead. A simple dress would suffice. She brushed her hair and tied it with a leather string. This time she didn’t hesitate to exit her room. She hadn’t eaten anything proper for too long.

Unlike last night, everyone was where they were supposed to be. Her father was sleeping. Her mother was serving people breakfast or standing in the reception. The employed cook, who she considered her aunt, was in the kitchen and her son, the stable boy, was somewhere other than the inn.

“Good, you’re awake. Your potatoes have finished boiling. Serve yourself.” The woman’s happy voice greeted her as she entered the kitchen. She quickly thanked her and gathered her breakfast that consisted of potatoes, beef jerky, hot bread and an apple. She wasn’t about to eat in the main hall with all the traffic there, so she headed out the backdoor she used during her outing.

She sat down on a bench to the right of the door and started eating. There was a light breeze and the sun was shining unhindered upon the fields. She liked the view. Her friend liked the view too. As long as the weather allowed, they exclusively ate breakfast outside. The empty sky was her favorite. What she didn’t like was people butting in during mealtime. Today there was no one who disturbed her, or anyone to keep her company.

She was bored. There wasn’t anything she could do about the energy levels other than to adjust her experiments, but without the gems she didn’t know what to correct it to. She didn’t have anywhere near enough knowledge to figure out what caused the blanket last night. She had never heard abought high energy causing effects on the mind unless it was guided by someone. Her mentor had taught her how to protect the mind, but not how to affect it. At least she knew the sheer amount of energy needed to affect the entire area was enormous, and not easily gathered. She didn’t even know if they were blanket and heightened energy levels connected or separate events.

She took a deep breath of air and enjoyed the moment. Feeling the fresh air circulating in her lungs, it rejuvenated her. Fresh air was without a doubt superior to the stuffed indoor air. She really didn’t know what to do now. She could do a mock-experiment to confirm if the outcome would be the same. But what was she supposed to do with it? If she couldn’t affect the energy, she could try to find out if it came from a certain direction and if it had a center. She liked this idea. Somewhere in her room was the compass she uses to find energy gems. Though she’d have to fix it. She didn’t have the best materials in the world so everything she made had a low durability.

She sat there, silently eating her breakfast. Enjoying the view and savoring the atmosphere. She wished she could take a piece of the sky and set it up in her room. That would be amazing, she wouldn’t need to step out of her room ever. She pushed away the rational part of her thoughts that were calculation the scenario and deeming it impossible in multiple ways. Her brain could be such a killer when was using her imagination for fun.

After helping her aunt with some dishes, she found herself back in her windowless room tinkering with the compass. If one didn’t mind the metal string that was wrapped around the side of the device, it looked like an ordinary compass. Which was good, for it to be of use she needed to be able to bring it with her and something that looked suspicious wasn’t going to help. It wasn’t hard to get it working and she worked quickly. Soon she held a compass in her hand that… pointed north. She whacked it on the table once. Now it turned in a circle, briefly stopping when it pointed northeast, only to make another circle and briefly stop.

She observed the modified compass for some time. It never paused anywhere but northeast. She was a bit baffled, the compass was meant to find energy signatures and point towards them. In one of her drawers she had three energy gems, that she had confirmed not broken, and the compass should have a reaction, but it didn’t even so much as flinch when it passed west. She got up and got the gems and placed them right next to the compass. Nothing. The amount of energy that the compass sensed was overpowering the gems. She didn’t know anything that could do that. Lately there had been nothing but unknowns.

She was happy that the compass worked, she’d have to bring spare parts with her in case it broke down on the way. She didn’t have anything that showed how far away the energy center was, so she had to be prepared for a few days journey. She wished it wasn’t far, but she couldn’t tell. Spare parts, charms, food and water, and a new pair of boots. She sighed, the worst part was telling her parents she was leaving, which meant being face to face with and knowing everything they felt about it. If they could choose, they would lock her up in the cellar.

She would pack everything finished first, if they didn’t allow she could just sneak out. She preferred if they would agree, she didn’t want to inconvenience the whole town if they called for a search. It wasn’t like she was leaving forever.