I opened my eyes, fully rested, but didn’t stand up. Instead, I petted the reptilian creature beside me. In response to my affectionate strokes, Cobaltio stretched in the cushion and let out a high-pitched whine that amounted to a yawn. I lost track of time as I stared at the canopy above, thinking about nothing. I let out a sigh. There was so little to worry about that I felt for a moment that I could simply lay back and watch the leaves flutter in the breeze for eternity. That feeling of serenity passed to me by the memories of another person...

Inevitably, I regained my thoughts and stood up. Cobaltio followed in turn, mimicking my movements. It then walked beside my feet and looked up at me. Like a herbivore, his two eyes didn't move in tandem, moving of their own accord.

I wondered what the difference between monsters and animals was-a strange question, to be sure. I hadn’t ever thought about it much because monsters look and act so different from animals that someone could tell between the two on a passing glance but...functionality, there wasn’t any substantial difference. Monsters were stronger, seemed more alien, awarded more experience, were almost always predators, and made better use of the system than animals, but the only direct difference in classification between monsters and animals was their connection with the system.

Where did they come from? How did they proliferate despite being nearly exclusively predators? Why was their system different than animals? All questions I didn’t have an answer to.

I shook off my contemplative lethargy, only to realize why my pet was looking at me. Ahh, food. I pulled another chunk of cobalt from my pack and began chiseling away at it. As the shards flew off, Cobaltio leaped and snatched the shards in midair like an eager dog. He could eat the chunk on his own now, of course, but I gained entertainment seeing him perform acrobatics for the food, and he preferred eating in small shards, so it was a mutually beneficial exchange. I smiled contently as I finished off the last shard. Technically there wasn’t any reason to feed him daily rather than all at once, but I liked the satisfaction of slowly lowering the weight of my pack as he ate. I only had two more chunks left though, so the weight was negligible at this point. I decided I would finish feeding him the last ones by the end of the day.

After performing some daily maintenance and refilling my flask of water at a nearby spring Maladrain had found yesterday, I began my first session of teaching Cobaltio how to use his [fire breath] on command. The first hurdle I leaped over was getting him to actually do it. To do that, I figured I could make him remember what he had done the previous day by showing him the corpse of the monster we killed. After leading him to it, I lit a fire on it, and pointed to it, tightening my [life coushion] collar when I did. Cobaltio simply looked at me with a frighteningly human expression of distaste. Perhaps he disliked that he was near a corpse? Either way, I continued.

Thus, I began a rigorous regiment of weird expressions and signals in an attempt to make Cobaltio understand what I wanted him to do. I pretended to blow fire at the corpse, I clapped my hands, I pointed to it, I stomped the ground while pointing at it really hard, but all my following actions resulted in a dumb, baby-eyed stare from my pet. Something about the way it stared at me put me on-guard...it had seemed to lose that prideful aura it always exuded and instead stared at me straight in the eyes with a dopey look. After giving up, I stared him down in annoyance, with no particular goal in mind. In response to my stare, it averted its eyes and chuckled in an unnervingly human way. Was it mocking me? After a brief flicker of frustration aimed at my pet, I shook my head in disbelief and walked the other direction towards our camp, finished with my attempts

A second later, I froze as an explosion rang out behind me. I slowly turned around, only to see Cobaltio in the same pose, looking the other way in disagknowledgement of me, with a charred, sweltering corpse of a bat in front of it. Did Cobaltio just...act indignant towards my attempts to train him? No way, right? I walked beside him, my face still marked with surprise. Cobaltio looked towards me, only to jump in surprise and take a few steps back when I stood directly above him. He couldn’t hear, so he might have thought I didn’t notice what he’d done. Well, whether or not my pet was being a little rebellious, he deserved a treat.

As I fed him, Maladrain jogged to my location, “That violent noise woke me up! What’s going on, Saya?”

I aloofly pointed to the charred bat, quickly resuming the shredding of my pet’s breakfast.

“Oh, [fire breath]. He learns quick.”

I nodded.

“Good job...But could you maybe try not to wake me up with violent explosions in the future?”

The next few days were uneventful. I finished feeding Cobaltio all the cobalt I’d brought with me, much to his dismay, I continued my sword practice, I pieced only a small portion of the foreign memories together, and I was tutored a bit about monsters. We were closing in on a small city I had been to once before, Hannem.

I had gone to Hannem when I was ten and still dreaming of what I would do once I went into the world. When I got there, I was dragged along with my parents while they did some paperwork in person. I never bothered asking what that paperwork was since I was grouchy from the trip, but I did do an in-depth interview with a guard in the town. Interviewing was a hobby I often used as an excuse to learn more about fighting, so I chose whoever I thought I could learn the most from. He was a young man of twenty years old, Runark, and complained about how low the ‘salaries’ were for the guards. Apparently, people in the city valued coins a lot more than we did in my small village, and being paid enough of them was a matter of having freedom or being restricted. He earned only enough to buy the necessities for himself, with little to spare, so he was stuck living with his family in the same house. He’d quite happily vented his frustration to a ten-year-old girl.

My family had lodged at an inn. During the nighttime, I’d decided to sneak past my family and tour the streets on my own. My village was usually quiet during the nighttime, but the streets of Hannem were bustling, even during the night hours. I was excited to see what went down at that time of day, unrestricted by my enshelterment, and set down the streets.

The first place I visited was a massive mansion on the outskirts of the city. It was a huge, sprawling building laid a significant distance away from any other buildings, filled with paths and gardens, and taller than any building I had seen before, boasting an entire 4 stories. Not only that, in front was a strange metal pole that came from the ground and lit up at night, which I later learned was called a ‘lamppost’. While I was busy gaping at it, a nighttime guard had walked to me and insisted I wasn’t supposed to be on the lawn of the great Yutalon mansion, so I scurried off. Nobles were the last people you wanted to anger.

Then, I went to a strange place called the ‘skill refinery’. I had read about it from a seemingly random piece of paper on the side of a restaurant that said ‘Refine your skills and knowledge! Hannem Skill Refinery is the premier academy for increasing your skills, levels, and magics at a quick pace, sign up today!’ I’m not sure why it was stuck against a wall, but it was useful nonetheless. Although the paper said it was on the west side of the town, I didn’t expect the insufficient directions to be enough for me to find it.

Low and behold, it was. The building was difficult to miss. It was a fairly large building build of wood, as one would expect, but it had glass windows, a bright lamppost in front, was three stories tall, and in front of it, they had several displays with papers that outlined the greatest artisans the refinery had raised when it was still known as Hannem academy. Apparently, they altered the name after it was burnt down a decade ago. They even had a few paper pamphlets that described the training the ‘refiners’ underwent, describing it as an ‘easy, fast, and effective’ training that usually involved doing a task over and over again until your skill rose a tier. I still didn’t know what an academy does though, is it the same as a refinery?

After finding that, I made my way back to the inn. I couldn’t find any other place I wanted to visit, as asking the people walking down the streets with my slate was...intimidating, so I just called it a day. As can be expected, I was even grouchier from lack of sleep the next day.

Memory:

Zatchel was nowhere to be seen as I pretended to make snow angels on the bare ground with a pouty look on my face. What a meanie. I’d played a simple prank on him, and then he just blew up on me and ran to a corner to cry! Hmmph, See if I care!

...

...

...

I waited an entire day on the ground, but he didn’t come back. Well, he sure wasn’t giving up easily. I sighed. What a crybaby. I guess imitating his mother’s voice to make him think she was unfrozen was a little too insensitive for a joke...

I sat up with a sigh. Well, time waits for no one...well, no, that was false. It waited for us, and us alone. Still, although I had the patience to spend a full twenty-four hours on the ground, I got bored eventually. So, I stood up and walked up to the castle. I climbed to the fourth floor, where Zatchel’s mother was frozen in her bedroom. I opened the door and saw Zatchel tucked in a corner with his eyes closed.

I stomped the ground, which quickly woke him up from his sleeplike trance, the quiet of our frozen world finally broken again.

What do you want? He said, tears pooling in his eyes upon seeing me.

I sighed, spending a moment pulling enough goodwill from the depths of my soul to overcome my reluctance, then I signed, I’m sorry.

That doesn’t make it fine...

I smiled at our shared timid nature. Neither of us wanted to admit we overreacted until the other made a move. I walked close to him, his frozen, richly garmented mother only a few feet away from us. I kneeled down and spread out my arms, then waited. For a minute, Zatchel silently cried without acknowledging me, then with seemingly no warning, he leaped at me, and embraced me in a hug, letting out all his sobs and cries as he rested his head on my shoulder. I teared up too, and silently mourned with him over our world, frozen and lost.

I miss her...

And so do I...

We might never see the light of day again, but as long as we were together, we could cry, cry, and cry to our heart’s content, never a mile from another’s embrace.

Feb 29-Mar2