CH772

Ben took extra care getting up to make sure he didn’t disturb Thera. She’d had a long enough day and it had been at most a couple hours since she went to sleep, not the sort of time he should have been bothering her when the morning was sure to be just as full as he applied what levels of stealth he had to leaving the room, walking over to his old one before knocking on the door.

“Mora, it’s Ben, up as promised. Mind if I come in?”

“…If you want.”

Good enough I guess.

He opened the door to the room, finding the boy had at least appeared to have tried out some of the games and flipped through a few of the books, with a couple neatly stacked on the bed he was sitting on the edge of instead of the desk where they’d been left, which he took to be a good sign.

With another positive being that it seemed the boy hadn’t spent his sleepless night alone. While Ben couldn’t see them properly the way Thera could, all of the souls around them and the minds he felt while reaching out with connect revealed that the many spirits who would come to their home had found their new great one, approaching the boy in confusion and curiosity to talk a bit.

Although, based on what he was seeing in their minds, it seemed the talks hadn’t exactly gone smoothly either, difficulties brought forth from the fact that Mora didn’t represent a pure affinity but something new, making it harder for a species that was more typically wrapped up in the nature of their own individual powers to relate to without the eons of history living amongst each other to at least give the knowledge of what being any type of spirit meant.

He wasn’t going to try and look into Mora’s mind again, being caught once was bad enough when he wanted to get along with the boy and Ben would just be blocked off again anyway, but he could only imagine being separated in such a way from his own kind was a whole new issue on top of what his brief upbringing and far more recent abandonment had already left him.

It wasn’t a conversation he thought he’d be able to have until the boy opened up to them a bit though so he instead focused on trying to be positive and friendly, doing his best to create a comfortable atmosphere as he spoke up.

“Well, I see you tried some games and you read a bit, was there anything in particular that you enjoyed?”

“I don’t know, there’s some I might try again if I can.”

“Of course you can. Feel free to play with anything you want to, this is your home now too. And I’m sure this all must feel a bit new to you, is there anything you’d want to talk to me about? We’re going to be the only ones up for a few more hours so feel free to let me know anything you’re curious about.”

The offer got him silence, the great spirit looking at him for a minute without so much as a word before shaking his head and looking away.

“No, I’m fine.”

It was obviously a lie, the boy couldn’t have made it more clear he had something on his mind but if he didn’t want to say it then Ben couldn’t force the issue, instead spending his mana to materialize a stool to sit on to bring him closer to Mora’s level.

“Alright, if you don’t then that’s fine but if you’re just not comfortable talking to me about something you can also always talk to Thera when she’s up later. She’s your cousin and that fact means something to her, she’ll be willing to hear you out.”

Again he was met with silence, leaving him wondering if he was just doing something fundamentally wrong in how he was trying to talk to the child but after only a couple of seconds between them, Mora finally spoke up, curiosity winning over whatever reservations he had.

“How are you doing that so well?”

“Hmm? Doing what?”

“Materializing. Isn’t it supposed to be hard? You keep doing it like it’s nothing.”

“Ah, that. Honestly, I have a few handy advantages to it but it mostly comes down to the fact that I know a lot and I can think a lot at once, it makes it easy for me. Are you interested?”

“…A bit,” The boy eventually shrugged. “Are you making souls the same way?”