The chime bells had already resounded in the corridors for the last time that day when Saia finished her story.

“I didn't want to admit it, but I felt extremely grateful for the house, so I started going to the temple every once in a while. Then I realized I enjoyed talking to him while doing menial tasks around the house. He seemed to enjoy it too, so we became friends.”

Aili had her head tilted to the side, chin buried in the spot where her knees met.

“I'm glad things turned out well for you.”

“I still have a lot to do. I want to go home, eventually. But yes, compared to how I felt when I had to leave Suimer, I think I was lucky enough.”

Aili nodded and looked at the book that was open on Saia's legs.

“Now that I think about it, if Vizena has still about seventy years left, we should find her there too.”

Saia lowered her eyes on the page. She was already looking for her before her mind could decide whether it was a good idea or not. If the book followed the order of the villages, Vizena was before Koidan and Dore.

“I don’t know how she’s called,” she realized as the names passed by.

“She must be the last one of Suimer,” Aili said, scooting forward to see better.

Saia stopped when she saw the face of a woman. She read the description holding her breath, but the text mentioned Tilau.

“I thought Dore was male,” she said, looking further back.

“It doesn’t matter, apparently.”

Saia only looked at the descriptions from that moment on. Her hands trembled when she finally read ‘Suimer’. She raised her eyes to face the portrait.

She was younger than Saia had expected. Like the other monks, she was looking to the side. Her face was long, but otherwise unremarkable. She looked bored at first, then Saia realized it was her natural gaze. The only trace of graphite on her skin was on the cheeks and the top of her nose. Her wavy hair were the only thing defining the contours of her face.

Saia looked at the name on the top: Merea.

“What does it say?” Aili asked.

Saia closed the book.

“Probably some bullshit about how she was good and perfect and absolutely deserving to become a goddess. I don’t want to read it.”

“It could be useful for the speech.”

Saia handed her the book.

“Read it yourself, then. I’ve had enough.”

Aili put it back on top of the pile.

“Do you want to sleep?” she asked. “Because I feel pretty awake, right now. I wanted to read a bit, but we can blow out the candles if you're tired.”

“What do you want to read?”

“Something about magic. I want to learn it, but I have a hard time with manipulations. Actually, I wanted to ask for your help.”

Saia raised her eyebrows.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you already know how to perform one kind of manipulation, so the others should come easier. What do you think about teaching me how to make your snakes fall asleep?”

Saia turned to look at the tank.

“I understand if you're too busy,” Aili added. “Obviously preparing your speech should take priority, and I will help you no matter what. But I would be extremely grateful, and if there's something I could teach you in exchange, I would happily do it.”

Saia looked at her again.

“The snakes are too dangerous. I've been bitten and I've seen people getting bitten: the venom acts fast. And there are no gods here.”

“We could volunteer for some turns together to take care of the sheep. Or find a way to capture some mice. There's a lot of them here, the helpers in the kitchens are always on the lookout.”

“A sheep might be too big, I'm not even sure I can put one to sleep.”

“We'll find out. I'll think of something in case it doesn't work.”

“Alright, then. But I want you to tell me how magic works. I've tried reading that book,” she pointed at the one about the basics of magic, “but it’s boring.”

“It's really not.”

“Whatever, I just don't have the energy to study after work. But magic could be useful, in the future.”

In case the monks wouldn’t listen, and she'd had to attack the goddess herself. But she knew that Aili would have tried to talk her out of it, so she didn't say it out loud.

“I think I can do it.” Aili took the book out of the stack and stared at it for a bit. “You know what, we could start right now. What do you think?”

Saia shrugged.

“Sure. If it's not too complicated.”

“Tomorrow I'll think of a schedule that will allow us to practice without interfering with our jobs.”

She opened the book to the first page. Saia observed her as she silently read, wondering whether she needed to take notes.

“Let's start with the definition of magic. It means manipulating the viss of living beings by using your own. Now, the question is...”

“What is ‘viss’, in practice?”

“Exactly. It's difficult to define, every scholar gives it a different definition. This book refrains to touch on any of them, but I've put some pieces together from the others I've read. Basically, you could consider it... Excess life? An invisible something that every creature produces just by the fact that they're alive.” She sighed. “Please tell me that you got at least the general idea, I don't know how to define it better than this.”

Saia thought of the waves and the buzzing feeling she felt inside herself every time she put the snakes to sleep or awakened them.

“I think I do.”

“Good. Humans are intelligent enough to control their own energy to some extent. It's theorized that some other animals could be capable of doing that too, but nobody has actually witnessed it.” She turned the page. “The viss has four properties, but we can only manipulate three of them. The first one is the imprint, also called ‘emotion’. It’s a trace of the state of being of the creature that produced the viss. It manifests through subtle changes of color, even if human eyes aren’t able to detect them.”

Saia thought about the light rotating inside Zeles’s sphere.

“It’s not subtle at all. Gods are golden when they’re awake and blue when they’re asleep.”

“Hold on, that's interesting,” Aili said, patting around on the bed. “Where's my graphite?”

She found it and wrote something on a piece of paper.

“I’ll look into that, but you have to keep in mind that gods are created by the monks, so a lot of rules don’t apply to them.”

She put the graphite away.

“Manipulations can alter this state of being. The concept is similar to what you do with your snakes: you evoke an emotion in your mind and push it onto them through contact with their bodies. Or a piece of them.”

“Sleep isn’t an emotion.”

“I’m using the term in a loose way, ‘state of being’ is more correct. The more complex a creature is, the more difficult manipulations become. That’s why it’s relatively easy to make a snake fall asleep, but you’d have to use a lot of viss to achieve the same result with a human, or even a cow. It helps to be already in the state of being we want to impose on the other creature. Think of it as faking a yawn to make someone else yawn.”

Saia looked at the tank.

“Why does it work with scales, though?”

“This brings us to the second property of viss: the channel. Every piece of the viss that a creature produces is still connected to that creature, even when it detaches and is left somewhere else. The viss on your snakes’ scales is still connected to them even when they’re not attached to their bodies anymore.”

“So I can manipulate them through that channel?”

“Yes, even if it requires more energy than touching them directly. You have to cover the distance that separates them from the scales, so to speak. Since it’s a piece of their bodies, the viss inside it is more durable, so it doesn’t get influenced by your manipulation. Potentially it could last until their death if you don’t purposefully neutralize it.”

“Why do they stay asleep, though? And why do they have to wake up if I lose consciousness?”

“Because when you push your viss onto them it still retains a channel through you. Part of the manipulation is also feeding it subconsciously, keeping alive the imprint you gave it. You have to choose to wake them and give them a different emotion, if you want that imprint to disappear. The same thing happens when you fall asleep: the channel is still there, but it’s not being fed fresh viss anymore and eventually all the viss you left on the snakes gets replaced by the one they naturally produce. Zeles hasn’t explained that?”

“No, he just showed me what I was supposed to feel and I tried until I got it right. He didn’t wake up when I fell asleep, though.” She saw Aili’s expression and sighed. “Gods are different, got it.”

“Nobody knows how to manipulate the channel,” Aili continued. “You can’t take a piece of viss connected to a sheep and tie it to a boar, or even to a different sheep. You can only neutralize it by removing that piece of viss, for example by inglobating it with your own until it’s completely diluted. There are other techniques, but they’re not talked about in this book.”

Aili moved her finger to another point of the page.

“The next property is intensity, also called ‘data’. It’s not discussed much, but apparently the viss of a creature contains information about the creature itself. It’s possible to store any kind of information into a piece of viss by changing its intensity based on a code you decide in advance, but it’s a complicated technique for humans. And it’s not explained here.”

“What kind of information about the creature?”

Aili shook her head.

“It’s not specified. It also says that the decoding of this data had just started at the time this book was written, so it’s a pretty recent discovery.”

Saia nodded and gestured for her to continue with the explanation.

“The last property is movement. The viss inside a creature moves in a pattern specific to that creature and its species. It only stops when it’s left on objects, as creatures leave a small quantity of viss on everything they touch. But the key point is this.”

She tapped on a specific line with her index.

“If you force enough viss to follow a specific pattern, you can obtain various effects that are only limited by the quantity of viss you use. In other words, you can do pretty much anything if you have enough viss and know the patterns to achieve what you want.”

Saia leaned forward.

“Wait, I'm not sure I understand. What do you mean by ‘anything’?”

“Literally anything, as long as you have the pattern. The scholars of magic are still studying them, so I don't know how many patterns exist.”

Saia thought about Vizena disappearing forever in a circle of viss, statue and temple and all.

“How can I move the viss? How do I apply these patterns?”

Aili sighed, turning the page once again.

“Human beings don't have this kind of power, unfortunately. Gods do, on the things that are part of their territory. The best we can do is applying patterns by building them into an object.”

She got up and took a tunic out of the wardrobe. She turned it inside out, showing the waves and spirals of the purple string.

“That…?”

“Is a pattern, yes.”

Aili brought the tunic with her onto the bed.

“Tools with patterns need to be activated by a person through their viss. How the pattern is created is specific to the kind of object it’s being applied to, but there’s always a point of contact from which the energy can enter. For tunics it’s near the collar.”

She pointed at a clump of purple string. Saia looked down at her own tunic.

“Why there?”

“Because there are some points in the body where the viss moves closer to the surface and sometimes flows out of the skin. They are neck, hands, wrists, feet and ankles. So in this case, the pattern is always a bit active because of the energy that comes out of our necks.”

“It’s a pattern for what?” But the answer came to her before she had finished the sentence. “Heat. They're warmer than they should be.”

Aili nodded.

“And that's without pushing viss into the pattern consciously.”

Saia pressed the palm of her hand against the purple dot and pushed her viss forward like she did when awakening a snake. Her chest, arms and belly became immediately hotter, and the effect started to spread on the rest of her body. She lowered her hand.

“Impressive.” A sudden thought made her raise her eyebrows. “I think the binoculars of the sentinels have a pattern.”

“Really?”

Saia told her of the grooves and how the view had changed when Gaila had touched them. Aili took notes on everything.

“This is so cool. I'll look into it.”

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand. If a person manages to manipulate my emotions, could they control me until they fall asleep?”

“No. People are conscious of the discrepancy between their thoughts and their emotions. You need to use a lot more viss to keep the manipulation running.”

“So if somebody tried to manipulate me through magic, would I notice?”

Aili made a big yawn before answering.

“Sorry. Well, I'm not sure, but I think it depends on how expert they are, or how different is the change they want to force on you from your normal state of mind. You should look out for thoughts that don't seem to belong to you, or sensations that make no sense, like feeling extremely active out of nowhere in the middle of the night. And obviously, don't leave around anything that comes from your body.”

“Are permanent changes possible?”

Aili had looked half asleep up to that point, but her eyes went immediately wide.

“Oh, I really need to tell you this.” She rubbed her cheeks with both hands in an attempt to wake up. “With manipulations, it's impossible. No imprint lasts forever, no matter how much energy you put into it. They could last for a very long time, though, depending on how much energy gets used, and whoever does it should never lose consciousness for the whole duration.”

“That's not very reassuring.”

“But if you eat a big enough quantity of viss, or better, something that contains it, it could become part of your body. And this... You won't believe it, I feel so stupid that I didn't get it before. This is how animal people were born.”

Saia blinked.

“What?”

“Why do you think they eat parts of the animal they take their traits from?”

Saia thought about Lihana and her family, wondering how they were surviving without her. But even if she was the best sea snake fisher, she wasn't the only one. She decided they were fine and tried not to dwell on it.

“I thought they were just born like that and it was a sort of family tradition.”

“They're not the only ones. The teacher and his family have to drink goat milk every day, and sometimes eat goat meat too.”

“I didn't know that.”

“I only found out about it because they invited me to dinner a couple of times. I've always been the teacher's favorite.”

Saia glanced at the stack of books.

“I wonder why.”

“There are a lot of families of animal people around the villages. I think I've seen pretty much everything, from sheep people and cow people to heron people and crab people.”

“That sounds cool. We didn't have them in Suimer. They probably didn’t fit Vizena’s aesthetic for the village.”

“Write that down, it'll be useful for the speech. Anyways, I've always thought it was a matter of health. I've talked with the heron people I was telling you about, and they said that they always felt dizzy when they went for a long time without eating heron eggs, and they knew of family members who had even worse symptoms. But they didn't know of other reasons.”

“So the answer is... Magic?”

“Almost. When you eat a living creature, or something that belongs to it, you also ingest the viss it contains. If you do it often enough, with the same animal species, their energy slowly becomes part of you. That's why they develop animal traits over time.”

“So they eat those animals because they want to become more like them?”

“It's more complicated than this. According to the Treatise on Hereditary Traits of the monk Ludunus, animal people were born in ancient times, when humans found out that eating the same kind of animal repeatedly could give them traits that were helpful when looking for food, for example, or defending themselves from predators. But the longer they did it, the more these traits became an integral part of them. And I'm not just talking about the outside: their organs, their hearts and veins, became partially animal, all because of the influence of the energy they were eating. But their bodies weren't able to produce that kind of viss on their own, so they had to keep eating these animals, or their organs would start to malfunction.”

Saia glanced at the tank. The light of the candles made the water reflect on the wall at her left.

“It has something to do with the data that viss contained,” Aili continued. “It had the necessary information for those modified organs to function properly. The problem was that their descendants had the same animal traits. Watered down in some cases, if the other parent didn't have them, but they still had to eat animal viss to survive.”

“And they can't change? Isn’t there a way for them to stop, if they want to?”

“Well, for most of them it isn't a big problem. They're proud of what they can do. The teacher's older kid has a wonderful sense of balance, they can climb any surface and jump higher than most adults. But I know of some people who decided to stop eating their animal's meat. They had to do it gradually and endure a lot of pain. Some of them couldn't even if they wanted, or they'd straight up die.”

“And what happens if a goat person and a snake person have a child? Would they have traits from both?”

“No, as far as I know animal people who eat different animals can't have kids with each other if their traits are very pronounced. If the traits are weak, their kids have the potential to settle for either one of their parents’ animals, depending on what they eat most, but after a certain age they can’t change anymore. I've met a girl from the crab people whose dad was a cow person, and she didn't have any cow traits whatsoever.”

“I can only imagine what lunch must be like in their house.”

Aili smiled.

“They're pretty accommodating of each other's differences. Even if a lot of the time humans without animal traits who marry an animal person end up becoming an animal person too, since it's easier to just eat the same food.”

Saia remembered her time at the cave, when she had to eat snake meat every day.

“You know, I think I've experienced something similar when I was living outside of Lausune. I could feel what time of day it was even without looking at the sun, or even opening my eyes. I don't know why, but different parts of the day had a different feeling, a different... Smell?” She shook her head. “I don't know how to describe it. I've always thought it was more a series of coincidences than anything.”

“It's a very useful skill to have, especially in this village.”

“Yeah, but I've pretty much lost it. And I have no intention of going back to eating snake meat every day. I think I've had enough for the rest of my life.”

Aili put a hand on her chest.

“As a Lausunian true and born, your words pain me immensely.” She returned serious. “But maybe it has helped you in more than one way. Maybe your body is used to sea snakes' energy, and this is why it's easy for you to manipulate them.”

Saia shrugged.

“Maybe. But I think it's mostly because I've practiced a lot. I was so scared you would’ve found out about Zeles that I could only think about becoming a bit more powerful to help him better.”

Aili made an incredulous smile.

“You were scared of me?”

“No. I mean,” Saia rolled her eyes, “I didn't want anybody to know about him losing his powers, and you were so close to discovering the truth with your crazy theories that I was scared you would've found out about everything.”

“And then what? What could I have possibly done with that information?”

“Tell it to someone.”

“If you had explained the situation, I would have helped you both. I don't want to see Zeles die either.”

“I didn't know that. You do realize it would have been a pretty big risk, right?”

Aili nodded.

“I understand. If it's of any consolation, I wasn't that close either. Before we met the monks I was genuinely starting to entertain the idea that you were a goddess.”

Saia snorted, and Aili let out a short laugh.

“I know, but that's where my theories bring me sometimes.” She stopped, making a yawn so big her head touched the wall with a soft thud.

“We should sleep,” Saia said. “I'm tired too.”

Aili nodded, sliding under the sheet.

“It was an interesting conversation.”

“Thank you for telling me all this stuff.”

“And thank you for opening up about your past. You'll destroy that debate, I promise.”

Saia gave her a bitter smile.

“I hope so.”

“Goodnight,” Aili said, then blew on the candles until all it was left was darkness, a faint trace of smoke in the air, and the splashing of the snakes inside the tank.