Chapter: 585 – Impossible

Tala leaned back with a groan, pushing the book away without truly setting it aside. “This is impossible.”

Rane looked her way with one eyebrow raised. “Oh?”

She practically threw her hands up. “Mistress Holly did this in the only way that makes any sense! How am I supposed to make this my own without ruining it?”

Lea shifted from where she was leaning against Tala, knocking the book from Tala’s grasp. “Lea!” Tala caught herself—and the book—taking a quick, calming breath. “Please be more careful, sweetheart.”

“Sorry, mom.” The girl threw out the words while continuing to wiggle. In the last few days, she’d continued to grow and develop, lending credence to Rane and Tala’s choice to keep her with them for the first little while, at least until her new soul-medium was completed.

Only another day for the first viable version.

-That’s hurtfully accurate…-

That delay, however, translated to lots of one-on-one time, and that was alright for everyone involved. That said, it was beginning to wear. Tala’s eye twitched as she went through an all-too-oft repeated little mantra. “‘Sorry’ is for expressing that we wish something hadn’t happened, Lea. Saying ‘sorry’ isn’t taking responsibility. You need to check on the person, then apologize directly and specifically.”

Lea hesitated, then sat up, shifting around to face her mother. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes, my sweet Lea. Thank you for asking.”

“And the book?”

“Yes, the book too.” Tala chuckled slightly.

Lea smiled at that. “I apologize for knocking your book. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings, and I should have been. Will you please forgive me?”

“Absolutely and unquestionably. I love you, Lea.”

“I love you too, mom.”

With that, the heavy girl flopped back against Tala, and she would have knocked the book again, but Tala had somewhat suspected that the girl might move in this way, and so she had guarded against it.

In that moment, Tala had a choice to make as a mother. She could call Lea’s attention to the action, requiring another correction, or she could ignore it and hope the girl would get better in time.

Or… Tala shifted her arm to go around Lea, giving her a squeeze. “Careful, sweet. You almost knocked it again. I love having you near me, even so.”

Lea stiffened for a moment, but when Tala didn’t continue, she relaxed and snuggled in. “Thanks, mom.”

“Thank you, mom. If you are going to express gratitude, it’s worth doing right.” Tala replied without much thought, her eyes returning to the book.

Lea tilted her head back to be able to give Tala a flat stare.

Tala flicked her eyes to look into the gaze that was so like her own expression at times. “What?”

“Thank you, mom, for noticing all my little mistakes.”

Tala rocked back slightly at the heavily implied reprimand couched in sarcasm. Instead of rising to it, however, she leaned forward and kissed Lea on the forehead. “Of course, sweetheart. We are doing our best to help you come into your own as the wonderful young woman we know you to be.”

Lea’s eyes narrowed, seeming slightly miffed that Tala hadn’t engaged her in further verbal sparring, but then she shifted around to stretch up and kiss Tala on the cheek, as Tala had gone back to reading. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Rane was regarding them throughout the interaction, seemingly not willing to interject with how it progressed. Finally, he shook his head, chuckling slightly to himself. “Love you, both.”

The girls grunted in reply, all three of them looking back to their current activity.

Rane and Tala were reading, Terry was off having fun with the sanctum’s chickens, and Lea was weaving together various kinds of rope.

The girl had been… less than enthused with the prospect of reading.

She could do it at least reasonably well, but she felt that it was just so slow.

Alat and Enar had refused to give her any more information dumps after the first night of nightmares, and the trickles that they were willing to provide were nothing compared to what Lea wanted to know and learn.

Thus, they tried to provide her with books, but she was mostly uninterested, at least for the moment.

Regardless, Tala’s mind was mostly on things other than her daughter’s education.

She’d read through Mistress Holly’s notes twice already, Tala’s own prodigious reading speed making the task rather easy. As she’d just exclaimed, Mistress Holly had created a work of art, and Tala felt at a total loss as to how she would recreate the results without copying the means all but exactly.

Still, she had only just begun her studies, and she wouldn’t stop anytime soon.

She’d interspersed her studies of the inscriptions and natural magic schemas with an indepth look at the merging chamber that she’d had installed, while keeping Lea from activating it either on accident or on purpose. She also read through the documentation of the facility, seeking a means of achieving the merge without the aid of the Constructionist-wrought tool.

That goal, at least, seemed like a more promising line of investigation. Merges had been happening for eons—rust, she’d done some ‘unaided’ mergings—and the Constructionist chamber was a newer invention, meant to make the process simpler, more reliable, and easier to direct as desired. Still, she needed those done at her Reforging to be incredibly and perfectly precise.

Alat was combing through the Archive for any available information on merging, and Mistress Ingrit was compiling more privately held accounts for Tala to go through as she had the time.

Well, the Librarian was doing that around her work as an intermediary for Tala in other regards.

For instance, the number of requests to ‘meet’—that being the politer version of ‘study’—Lea had only increased as knowledge of her existence was circulated through the upper echelons of Archons.

That circulation was sadly required to prevent unhappy accidents when Lea finally left Kit, but that didn’t make the other results anything but time-consuming.

Thank you again, Alat.

-I aim to please.-

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There were other minor inconveniences due to Lea’s presence. One of the largest was that they had come to Bandfast, in part, to visit some old friends.

Now, with Lea unable to leave their home, they could only go out individually. Because of that, Rane had met with their old, Bound-level training group on his own.

Tala begged off, citing their new daughter as the reason. The result of that was a plethora of congratulations, and a bit of surprise as they hadn’t ‘even known that Tala was pregnant.’

Rane was still a bit uncertain of how to convey everything, so he’d simply said the equivalent of ‘Yeah, Lea was quite the surprise, but a welcome one.’

They didn’t really spar at the meet-up, as Rane was now quite a few tiers above them, advancement wise. While he had progressed the farthest, he wasn’t the only one who had advanced, as the group had each continued to grow and learn, even if each at markedly different paces. Regardless, he said it was fun for him to catch up with them, even if only briefly.

Mistress Jean was using her spell-projectile constructs to great effect, acting as a regional ‘fixer’ up at the new city site construction zones. She was only in Bandfast to visit family for a few weeks.

She spoke at length about all the interesting fights she was able to avoid with a couple of pulls of her trigger. She’d said it with a smile, and after Rane had given the appropriate response to the humorous retellings, she’d turned a bit more serious and explained that there was something that drew her to the project of reclaiming the land for humanity, and helping to lay the foundations of a city that would support millions over the course of its existence.

She was actually more than halfway Refined after one session, and she planned on doing her second session before taking a less active role in a caravan on the way back to the new city site. She hoped to use that trip to rest and recover before resuming her duties up north.