Chapter 24: 21: Second apprentice?

Eirlathion’s POV

After he finished showing Túeth off, Eirlathion stood in his place for a long time as he processed several complex emotions that he was having to process. He had made the best of the situation as it was, but to compare where he is now to where he was hoping to be he could call this entire day a complete failure. Well, ultimately a failure is what you make of it.

Looking at it from another perspective, he had exposed two problems he was previously unaware of and he had made progress on both of them. In fact, with how much harder Túeth was taking things compared to what he was expecting, it really is just as well that he has to teach Aerien to control her energies now. Túeth was not ready to be left alone with the girls, and Aerien could not be left alone with anyone at this point. So, delaying his trip is inevitable under these circumstances.

Still, this was not good. The longer he waited, the more chance there was for something to go wrong. Well, he would just have to make do with what he’s got. He had Túeth’s situation dealt with for now. She was going home and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. So, now it was time to go and start working on Aerien. Hopefully, she’s calmed down by now and he can start trying to at least teach her not to do whatever it was she was doing again. It would be best to go at it early while she still remembers whatever it was.

There was one problem with this. He had learned from experience that these kids held a grudge much longer than he had heard would normally be typical of a child their age, one of the downsides of the unusual intelligence they had it would seem. This would be a great asset for them once they had matured a little, but as children their unusually long memory was a hinderance to his working with them.

There was no time to dawdle though. He was already set back by the difficulties coming from Aerien and Túeth. Delaying the rate at which he addressed them would just make the matter worse.

Resigning himself, Eirlathion went upstairs to rejoin the children. Four sets of eyes all turned to him at once when he got up there. Thankfully, it looked like Aerien had stopped crying. He let out a sigh and lowered himself to the floor.

“Levin, can you bring Aerien over here?” He asks. Levin’s reaction to this is to turn his head and look down at Aerien with a questioning expression. He sees Aerien give a nod before he starts to make his way over. Eirlathion can’t help but have a self-depreciating smile flash across his face as he begins to shake his head. It seems like her intelligence is already so far along that somehow she’s  managed to get the boy trained to look to her for permission to respond to something like this.

Well, that actually works out better for him. He was afraid she may still be upset at him. Things would be more difficult if she was. However, since she did give Levin her permission it means that she should be fine.

Levin has to put Aerien down in order to stand to his feet, but then immediately afterward he bends down at the knees and scoops her up. Eirlathion can’t help the odd feeling that there’s something wrong with the way that Levin just moved, but he really can’t place it. He wonders about this for a moment as the human who is the size of a mere 6 year old elven toddler struggles to carry the two season old infant. However, he loses his ability to process this thought when a smile flashes across Aerien’s face. Her smile there, somehow seemed it seemed to look satisfied, or maybe the better word would be “approving” of the current situation. With this other strange incongruity, his thoughts are disrupted enough that he has made zero headway in figuring out what was bothering him about the way Levin picked up Aerien when he reverses the process in order to put her back down.

Levin finishes by pulling Aerien into his lap, a process which she helps out with by pressing off the floor with her feet and adjusting herself comfortably in his arms. Well then, time to just engage them and see what happens.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier Aerien.” He said in a gentle tone. While it was not exactly unusual to apologize to a baby for upsetting them and making them cry, the more formal tone he was taking with her as well as doing it this far after the fact were both definitely things you would think were more appropriate to a child who was at least a little older. However, he was not going to underestimate her as anything like a normal baby after the incident a few days ago where she actually went out of her way to confront him in his dinning room about hiding the truth of their heritage from them.

“I’m sorry, I just got scared when I saw you pretending to be sick like that. Do you forgive me?”

Aerien gets a thoughtful expression on her face for a moment, and then responds “whad porgiv-me?”(What does “forgive me”(aspene-amin) mean?)

A silent chuckle shakes Eirlathion’s body and a smile creeps onto his face again. “forgive me means that you are not angry at me anymore.”

(Hmm... yeah, I forgive me (aspene-amin.) I mean! Errr... forgive you (aspene-ile)) Eirlathion simply couldn’t contain his chuckle at this one. This child’s rate of growth, at least in the mental department, was quite startling. However, she was clearly still a child and just learning how to talk, and there were several aspects of that which were adorable even if they were coming about a little fast.

“Really? Well, I’m glad. I actually wanted to teach you something. You know how I turn that wall over there into stairs to my room? Do you want to learn how to turn the wall into stairs too?”

(Huh!?) She responds, looking rather stunned. Levin and, in the corner of his eye, Rolwen and even her sister Gaerien, all look a little surprised as well. As for Aerien, that surprise seems to quickly be replaced by a panicked look. (Ah! Umm... Ok!) She says.

He smiles. The green word is the first magic any elven children are usually taught. It is one of the natural spells that they control, not even requiring them to form any spell vessels in order to use it. A child is simply not ready to begin cultivating spirit energy in order to form it into a spell vessel, but they can still use the natural magic of the elves and practice their control over their mana. Well, that only applies to normal children.

It would not surprise him at all if Aerien was able to figure out how to cultivate at her age. It would likely take a few painstaking lessons of him carefully explaining it to her over and over again, but he was pretty sure she could learn. The whole process for spellcasting with this method was a lot more involved though. Even if she was bright enough to figure it out, it would still be better and involve a lot less of a headache to teach her in the normal order. But first, he had to get down to business about something.

“Alright, but, before we begin I need to ask you a question.”He said with a heavy look on his face. “Just what was it that you did when you were pretending to be sick?”

-

Aerien’s POV

I was filled with some complicated emotions when I had looked up at my mother a short time ago. My eyes were really full of tears at the time. I had only become a little bit upset from being yelled at, it shouldn’t have been enough to make me cry, but it was one of the frustrations of this baby body. My brain had simply not developed the faculties yet to restrain myself on this, and only becoming slightly upset sent me immediately into tears. Despite my more mature mind, I was simply unable to control it.

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Because of this, I was not able to make out her exact features very well. I felt bad. This was the first time I had ever actually seen my mom in this world since I was practically blind when I was born. And, thanks to these tears, it was really little better than it would have been back then. Her form was nothing but a glistening blurry outline. And, before those tears could clear up, she stood up like a shot and ran straight down stairs.

After that, Ether guy who still seemed to be agitated from the apparent scare I had given him by feigning illness a little too well, slapped his hand on the wall and revealed the stairs to his room and then retreated up there. Normally, he would return the stairs to the way they were before after going up. This time, however, he kept the stairs open. It seemed he was agitated and wanted to calm himself down, but if I had to guess at his reasons for keeping the stairs open I would say he was spooked enough that he was doing the responsible thing and keeping an ear out for anything that might go wrong.

After a few minutes, he slowly descended the stairs, looking a lot more composed. He only just barely paid us a glanced to check that we, or more to the point, I, had not done anything else worth concern. After confirming that we were all fine, he continued on to go down to the first floor without saying a single word.

Soon enough, we were able to hear voices coming from downstairs. It seemed like he was consoling mine and Gaerien’s mother. She seemed rather upset from seeing us. I’m not certain how a normal baby would react to this. Most likely, a normal baby wouldn’t even care. She would be nothing but a stranger to a normal baby in the same situation Gaerien and I were in.

In my case, since I had my memories from my previous life, my baby self was actually pretty hurt by this. My adult self knew her reasons and felt sympathetic. Actually, my baby self knew all that as well. We share the same information after all. It’s just that she wasn’t quite as mature mentally as my past life self was, and she couldn’t help but take it personally.

Fortunately however, the double shock of scaring Ether guy so bad he yelled at me and me getting upset over my mother getting scared and running away from me somehow managed to cancel each other out a little. With both emotional events happening one after another, it left my mind in something of a jumble. And then, trying to sort this out, it allowed the old man to address the problem simply by re-asserting a calming meditation. It was an improper meditation that had started this whole thing anyway, so re-asserting a proper calming meditation was really what I had to do anyway.

Things seemed to start calming down from there. I had excellent hearing now, so I was able to perfectly make out what the two of them were saying. This was the first I heard about this talk about Ether guy being a magus. I had already figured out he did a lot of things related to magic, and from what I saw upstairs in his room I knew it was not just a casual thing. So, hearing this was really more just a point of consolodating a lot of things I already knew.

The surprising part was the way the two of them were talking in regards to the subject. It was quite clear from what I heard that there was some kind of caste system in this world, and mages were clearly very high up on it while our mother seemed to be pretty low in the social order. Considering that, some of the more rough things Ether guy seemed to say were explainable. He seemed to be really trying his best. I could guess a little at where he meant to go with the “you’re right, you don’t deserve it” comment at the beginning there, but unfortunately the conversation did not go in a direction that would allow him to follow up on what could have otherwise likely turned out to be a movie drama worthy touching scene.

Well, real life really does rarely work out that way. At least my mother didn’t seem to dwell on it too much. Although, it was really hard to tell exactly what WAS going through her mind given how closed off she was being, and how Ether guy’s somewhat forceful attempts at getting her to come out of her shell were failing miserably. In the end, all his efforts just seemed to be cut off with a response that I, as the old man of my past life, had somewhat expected. But, still, that didn’t stop my self as 6 month old Aerien from feeling a little hurt by it.

In the end, it seemed he somehow managed to convince her to come back later by actually offering to make her his apprentice. However, I also heard a very interesting term during all of this. “Heaven’s fall.” Something about that term gave me a very uncomfortable feeling. It was definitely the name of some kind of event that happened, and with a name like that it was clearly a huge event. However, the most upsetting part about hearing that term was definitely that I couldn’t come up with any good way to start asking about it in order to get more information.

I was still rolling this term, “Heaven’s fall,” around in my mind when Ether guy came back up. He seemed to have a rather serious expression on his face and took a seat on the floor, and then asked Levin to bring me over to him. Levin performed excellently, bending at the knees in order to not strain his back as he was picking me up. This was not a thing a normal 2 year old toddler would do, but despite the risk doing this in front of Ether guy posed, I couldn’t help but appreciate the kid for this.

I settled myself into Levin’s lap after he had brought me over to Ether guy. Considering that he only asked to have me brought over and wasn’t including Gaerien, I could guess that he probably wanted to talk about the thing he just saw when I had screwed up my meditation. Before that though, he asked if I was still mad at him. He had used an Elven word I had never heard before. I could probably derive the meaning from the context. In fact, I had a pretty reasonable suspicion of what it meant already, but I quickly decided that it would be best for the cover we were still keeping up if I were to just do what a normal baby would do when hearing a new word for the first time and ask him what it meant.

After we got through that, the next thing he said really surprised me because it completely defied my expectations as to where this conversation was going. He asked me if I wanted to learn how to do the magic that revealed the stairs to his room. In a slight panic I managed to put my thoughts together, and then I immediately gave the obvious answer. Of course, if he was offering to teach me a new skill like that which would probably be pretty essential in this world then I was going to be quite willing to learn it.

He seemed pretty satisfied with my answer, but his face quickly went back to being serious. Here it comes then. [Alright, but, before we begin I need to ask you a question.] He said. [Just what was it that you did when you were pretending to be sick?]

Yep, there it is. This is the question I had been dreading. I couldn’t just answer with something about disrupting my meditation. There was absolutely no way I could justify a 6 month old knowing about meditation, but I was having a hard time coming up with a reason inside of my cover to avoid answering.

Well, here it goes. ([I don’t know! I.. I just wanted to do what you said and make myself look sick!]) I said, my voice going a little higher than I had meant it to as I could feel my body threatening to start crying again. ([I’m sorry,]) I pouted. Well, that was actually a more believable performance than I had thought. For once the ease with which this body starts to cry seemed to be working in my favor. Well then, hopefully that worked and he won’t press the issue further.

[Well... Ok then. How about we forget about doing that for now? I’ll deal with it if someone else comes into the house, you go ahead and try to be your normal self. Don’t try to pretend to be sick again.]

“Mmm..” I croak out a sound of acknowledgement. This turned out well. It seemed like he wasn’t going to press it. However, it was a little upsetting that my whole idea had backfired like that. I had hoped that he would allow us more freedom if we could fake being sick well, but it seemed that was likely not going to happen now. I was going to have to apologize to Levin and Rowen later.

Suddenly, Ether guy had a surprised expression on his face and he was looking over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs. That surprised expression very quickly turned dark and serious. [Well, it looks like someone is at the door.] He said. [It is not your mother this time, so I need you to all stay up here and be quiet. But, remember what I said Aerien. Don’t do what you did before again.]

Author's note

Got this one out a little bit later in the day than usual. I had a lot of distractions with Easter yesterday, and didn't manage to write. I had to fill my obligations to the subscribers before releasing this.

Anyway, things are starting to calm down now. It would be a bit of a mess to keep tensions as high as they were for the last two main-series chapters. There will be a lot of expanding outward beyond the immediate vicinity of the twins in this act as well, so expect to see a lot more of the situation into the village and other things going on around them from now on.

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