Grinning to myself, I reached into my newly christened Magic Bag, pulling out one of the many artfully decorated rocks I had stored within. The bag wasn’t yet acknowledged by the system as a magical item, but it allowed me to put things in that were larger than the bag, as long as I could hold them while pushing my hand into it without damaging the bag itself. According to Lia and Sabrina, it looked utterly hilarious watching me push long objects into the far-too-small-looking bag, or push my entire arm into it.

The bag itself was fairly simple in its design, there was an inner pouch, holding nothing but darkness and some of my hairs acting as threads, made in such a way that the pouch would never open but remain in perpetual darkness, making sure that the hairs were never exposed to enough light to sever their connection into the shadows. Those hair were connecting the physical bag to a second, larger, bag that I had folded up and put into the shadows. The hairs were all around the opening of that larger bag, acting as a connection between the smaller bag I was planning to carry and the larger bag hidden inside the shadows. Putting items into the shadows within the smaller bag deposited them into the larger bag, allowing me to carry them without feeling the weight.

At least that was the idea. I would need some more testing to make sure the idea worked, which was why I had only placed unimportant items into the shadows. My current test objects were simple rocks I had picked up, decorated in such a way that I could identify individual rocks and have a good measure if the shadows were damaging the physical items in any way. I had no idea what prolonged exposure might do to them, even using my hair, and thus a connection to my physical and spiritual self, was something I worried about. But I felt that using them gave me the best chance of success, especially as I had made sure to fill the individual hairs with as much Darkness Astral Power as I could, before plucking them from my head. It was the same process I had used to make my concealment cloak, which still worked quite well, despite constant usage for over two months. Hopefully, things worked out similarly with the bag, though I had a feeling I was missing something. Otherwise, it would hopefully be recognised as a magical item by the system, allowing the use of Identity to give an idea of what it was. For now, it merely came back as a normal item, nothing more than a bag. Boring, mundane trash.

Though, maybe that was for the best. In the current iteration of the bag, one had to be able to reach into the shadows to access what I was carrying, making the thing quite secure, at least if it remained stable. And unless people saw me reach into it, why would anyone think it was more than what it looked like? Even assuming we came across people able to reach into the shadows, I wasn’t in the habit to put my hand into any patch of darkness I could find, certainly not into every pocket or bag. Far too much work, though now I might want to consider it.

Even looking at the bag with my magical sight gave only very, very vague results, I was able to detect the hairs but I was unable to recognise the opening into the shadows, as it should be. Darkness was wonderful to obscure things, it even obscured itself, at least it seemed to me that way. Or maybe there simply wasn’t any innate magic and the whole thing would fall apart as soon as the magic within the hairs was depleted, though if that was the case, the thread I had used previously would have fallen apart immediately.

Time would tell how successful my first serious attempt at creating a magic bag would be.

But before that time could come to pass, there were other things to do. Namely, check over my newly acquired munchkin and head out, to go back into the city and find a few monsters to hunt down. Sabrina wouldn’t be able to participate, she simply didn’t have a way to stay safe while striking our foes, nor was she able to remain stealthy enough, so we’d have to be rather careful.

“Mom, can you tell me why big sis only goes out at night?” Sabrina quietly asked, as I was finishing up my experiment with the magic bag, looking over my stuff to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Lia was in the next room, still training, and my munchkin had tried to sneak over to me, though I had no doubt that Lia had heard her, I certainly had.

Reaching out and pulling her onto my lap, I considered how much to tell her.

“Well, it’s a little complicated,” I admitted, trying to find a good way to explain Lia’s state without frightening Sabrina. Though, did I really have to be delicate, couldn’t I simply use my own condition to explain? Or would that frighten her even more, if I explained it as a condition Lia had gained because I adopted her, mirrored from my own condition, gained because of a jealous old busy-body?

“You see, during that horrible night two months back, when everything changed, Lia was terribly hurt. Before that night, her name used to be Chantalle and she wasn’t my daughter, she had other parents,” I explained, getting a nod of understanding, “Her parents had almost given up hope, she was that badly hurt, but I managed to help her. Only, I couldn’t restore who she used to be, I could only help her move forward, that is how she turned from Chantalle into Lia.”

I paused for a moment, trying to find the right words, “Sadly, when I gave her a path forward, we broke a few rules, I shouldn’t have been able to do what I did. Regardless of those rules, I managed, at least to a point, but by breaking those rules I also changed something within Lia, she lost the ability to move under the sun.”

“Oh,” Sabrina nodded, obviously not fully understanding what I had told her. But then, she was only six, so maybe that was normal.

“You just need to know that it’s part of who Lia is, just like I can’t stand direct sunlight but instead both of us can easily move around in the darkness. All people are a little different from each other, just some of them have greater differences than others. It’s like the colour of my skin, the specks of light in my hair or my pointy ears. Those are all things that make me different, but none of them makes me better or worse than other people,” I tried to explain it with other words, floundering around to find the right ones. It was similar to the talk my parents had given me back in grade school about tolerance, that all people were unique and special in their own right. Their talk had helped me a little, but the lessons of adults had only provided sparse comfort when confronted with cruel children. If anything, my mother’s lessons had made me closer to her, providing the comfort I was missing in relationships with my supposed peers.

Maybe it was for the best that Sabrina wouldn’t have to deal with that. I certainly had no idea how to best prepare a child for the cruelty of other children, nor for the apathy of their educators.

Shaking away those old, morose thoughts, I focused on the munchkin before me, realising that she simply accepted my words. Her easy trust brought a grin to my face, making me wonder if I had been that easy to convince.

“Now, munchkin, that’s a bit of a secret, you know? You shouldn’t talk to others about the things you see Lia or me doing, they are only for our family,” I added, trying to impress on her the need for secrecy.

“Mhm, okay,” she nodded again, looking eager, “You said that big sis wasn’t always called Lia, right? Or Carlia, right?” she asked, her mispronunciation of Carnelia’s full name making me chuckle a little.

“Her name is Carnelia, it’s for a beautiful red gem, one that can have the same colour as her eyes. Just like I’m Jade, named for my green eyes,” I explained, carefully enunciating my older daughter’s name. Luckily, Jade was quite simple to pronounce, even if I had yet to hear Sabrina call me that.

“Carnelia,” she carefully repeated after me, taking a few tries to get it right with a bit of help from me. When I finally nodded, she gave me a wide smile of triumph, before speaking again.

“You said that Carnelia had a different name before she became your daughter, right?” she asked, continuing on when I nodded, “Will I get a new name, too? So I can be your daughter?”