“Luna Morgana…” my munchkin let the names slowly roll over her tongue, repeating them a few times, likely to get used to them. Given that she couldn’t see her own eyes without a mirror, I conjured up a polished shard of Ice, allowing her to see the obvious inspiration for the name. The smile spreading across her face told me that the choice had been a good one, following the method my own mother had used for my name, though only the middle name, and I had used for Lia. That, alongside the last name, made it obvious that she belonged to the family, that she was my daughter.

“Now, little Luna, we also need to talk about your conversation with the Lady Hecate. I’d like to know what she told you, and we should go over the notifications you got after your talk,” I jolted my munchkin out of her thoughts, making her focus back on me.

“Mhm, the Lady was a little scary. Nice, but scary,” Luna admitted, shivering a little. Not certain what exactly she had gone through, I hugged her, trying to give her some support. Just remembering the effect Lady Hecate’s presence had on me was enough to make me worry about Luna. I had a variety of effects that increased my, already relatively decent, courage, allowing me to withstand the effect of fear- or awe-inducing effects far better than Luna could. But maybe that idea was born of hubris, did my attributes, even under the effects of my various traits, have any hope to match up against the influence of a deity, especially a deity that pulled our minds into her domain? Thinking about it rationally, that was highly unlikely, meaning that Lady Hecate had been in full control over the effect her aura had on me, and similarly on Luna. Maybe that was for the best, as it seemed that Luna was a little frightened but not really traumatised, at least if her quiet giggles were any indication.

“Now, what did the Lady say? Or did she ask you to keep things quiet?” I prodded, trying to find a good mental comparison. I remembered my mother telling me that no authority figure would ever ask me to keep secrets from my parents and that if one did, it was a good indication that there was something wonky going on, something I should talk about with an adult I trusted. But that didn’t quite correlate to the interaction between a deity and their follower, did it? Did I have any right to interfere in such a relationship, even if Luna was my daughter?

For a moment, I was lost in my mind, mentally going through the two parenting books I had recently acquired and read through. Sadly, they weren’t too useful, as they were written with a stable society in mind, a society in which one could bring up a child in safety and relative comfort. Not for a world in which society had crumbled and the question of where the next meal came from was one that could easily involve bloodshed, where the threat of bodily harm was nearly ever-present and one you had to defend yourself against.

“I don’t think the Lady would mind, she called you my mother, you know?” Luna asked, before adding, “Oh, and she talked about my Grandmother, that you need to talk to her soon. Who’s that?”

“The Grandmother, that’s what I know her as. She might be everyone’s Grandmother, these are her sigils,” I explained, showing Luna the symbols the ritual had destroyed. By now, I had a relatively good idea of what they might mean, though they didn’t quite form a name, they were something remarkably similar. There were references to birth, life, healing and death there, forming a logical cycle, almost like an ouroboros, but not quite. Not a name, but it might be the written version of one, using a symbolic alphabet. I would have to ask the Grandmother about a spoken, or transliterated, version of her name at some point. If I was supposed to be the Mother, I could hardly keep calling her Grandmother, not if Luna already did.

“Anyway, the Grandmother is somebody who has taught me for a time and I respect her abilities when it comes to some types of magic. What else did Lady Hecate tell you about her?” I asked, trying to get back to the topic we needed to talk about.

“She told me that the Grandmother would give me a gift, and that you would give me guidance,” Luna replied, “And that she gave me the blessing to be her Chosen Maiden, what does that mean?” she asked, posing a fairly important question that I couldn’t easily answer. Chosen Maiden could be some sort of special trait or even a class that Luna could gain upon reaching level ten, but given that one aspect of Hecate was the Maiden, I had a feeling that it was important. Just as important as the appellation of Mother the Lady had used for me, and the title of Crone She had called the Grandmother by. If only She could have given me more answers and left me with fewer open questions. But maybe that was just part of what a Deity of Magic wanted, or She might have an additional domain of annoying riddles or secrets or something like that.

“Can you tell me what the notifications you received say?” I suggested, hoping that the system was less cryptic than Lady Hecate. Luckily, it seemed to be the case, though it was a little challenging to have Luna read the notifications to me, given that she was still learning to read. We had to sound a few of the more complicated words out letter by letter but it was manageable. I even turned it into a small lesson, doing my best to teach Luna as we went through the few traits and notifications she had.

The three that I considered the most important were quite interesting. One was called Crone’s Gift, allowing Luna to, for lack of a better word, borrow the affinity of her Grandmother. Or maybe inherit would be a better one, though that would imply the Grandmother no longer had the affinity, which I doubted, given that the borrowed affinity was with Life Magic. We would have to look into what Luna could do with that, sadly I was pretty clueless and had only very few experiences to go by.

The second was a trait called Mother’s Guidance, giving Luna a fairly massive boost, namely doubling the amount of EXP she gained while under her Mother’s Guidance, sadly there was no explanation for what that meant. Did I have to actively direct her, or was it enough to be with her, to teach and train her? I wasn’t sure but given that the second part of the trait said it greatly reduced the strain of growing up on her body, I had hopes that Luna would be able to catch up to the rest of us relatively quickly.

The third, and possibly most important, trait was called Blessing of the Chosen Maiden. The only problem with that trait was that, just like my own blessings, the description was fairly uninformative. It only said that Luna was the chosen maiden of Hecate, without any additional descriptions or explanations.

Other than those three major traits, there were a few I considered minor, mostly because their effects sounded fairly straightforward. One was called Eyes of the Lunar Maiden, granting Luna a curious form of night vision, allowing her to see everything as if the light of a full moon was shining down on it. I briefly wondered what that would mean for other effects that were triggered by the light of a full moon, but pushed the question back, as it didn’t matter at the moment. I was no longer a Lunar Sorceress, so I wouldn’t be able to play around with the combination of Luna’s traits and my own.

In addition to the traits, there was a notification telling her she had received Life Magic Mastery and a few minor attribute gains, mostly a continuation of the clean-up for malnutrition I had already been doing. From the sounds of it, she was now in as good a physical condition as she could be, given her age and exercise. Or in other words, she was incredibly fit for a six-year-old but once she was compared to a teenager, let alone an adult, the differences in physique were simply too much to overcome.

Still, she now had magic of her own to call upon, in addition to the strange connection Hecate had woven between Luna, the Grandmother and myself. I’d have to look into that further, maybe as soon as Luna knew what to do with her Life Magic and had some experience to fall back on. If nothing else, she should level fairly fast, though I wondered what effects that might have in the long run. She was a child but would likely gain the power of an adult, hel, power beyond most adults, within short order. What did that do to the development of her mind, her personality? I had no idea but made a note to keep an eye on it. She was my daughter and if there was trouble, I’d have to help her overcome it to the best of my ability. Hopefully, that ‘best’ would be good enough.