Wandering Agent
patreon
Elevation of Mana Chapter 86 Sharing Secrets
🕑 Added 2023-12-17 11:36:35 +0000 UTCOf course Isha did want to see my workroom. I secretly suspected that a lot of people wanted into that particular room, but were too polite or too patient to ask. Nobody went down there other than me, not Chien, not Ida, no one, but I was going to let Isha in, at least this once.
She looked on in wonder as I opened the door. It was a large stone construction. I'd had to replace this door multiple times already, and though it was decidedly a door, if you didn't know where it was it would just look like a wall, another safety measure.
“You know there are lots of people who could lift that right?” she asked as I moved it out of the way.
“It's locked in place, if you don't push with magic on the inside in just the right places then it won't open,” I answered.
“Then break it down?”
“Atal could I'm sure, or someone very strong, but even Larus would've had a hard time breaking down this door.” That was the truth too, it might look like stone, but the inside was far more complicated, and I had a ready source of steel nearby.
I was given a small chuckle as she followed me down the stairs. Oddly stairs were fairly common in this world, though the majority were a little more oddly shaped than mine. It wasn't hard to cut things like footholds into stone with a bit of magic, so people had, and I'd done much the same with my own.
With a wave I let the lamps that kept this place lit, the small oil-soaked wicks springing to life at my call. They shone their light upon wonders that countless people in Atal would dream of, huge amounts of sparkling metal, carved wood, and even my proto-computer, the copper wires now dormant as it lay off to the side.
Generally I expected Isha to ooh and aah over the many things I'd built and mounted on the walls all around, but she never failed to surprise me, instead walking over to one of my tables and looking at it with disdain.
“What is this?” she asked, pointing to the wooden tabletop.
“A table?” The elves of this world had tables, often stone or wood blocks that had been propped up on stands; I even had a couple. Taller surfaces were often parts of whatever they were built into, like the tops of stoves or the edges of my forge. A simple wooden table wasn't normal.
“It's wood, and smooth, and tall,” she pointed out, running her hand over the surface. “Very smooth. Why don't we have any of these upstairs?”
I had to stop and blink for a few moments. My house was decorated much as most elven homes were. There were a few low tables, enough for people to sit at and work or eat and keep their stuff off the ground, but not like this one.
“Is, is this important to you? Not all the, you know?” I motioned to the racks of tools and metal gadgets.
“Yes, yes Elian, I know you're fancy, but we could use these,” she answered, crossing her arms over her chest. “Nobody would have to bend down to work, and these too.”
She picked up the wooden stool beside that table and held it up. This was something that actually wasn't common. There were a few large stone chairs, like what Atal used for a throne, but wooden stools like this weren't, as most people just sat on the ground.
“They're for sitting on right?” Isha asked.
“Uh, yeah?” I was a bit confused by the direction of this.
She tried it out, plopping down on the stool and placing her hands on the table, looking quite satisfied with the result.
“Do you have any more things like this? Wait, where do you sleep down here? I know you do sometimes.” Her thoughts were not at all what I'd expected, so I just pointed her to the bed I had. It was a rope bed, piled up with some leather cushions filled with soft plant matter. She promptly laid down there too, ignoring the fact that I was getting more and more flustered by the moment.
“Isha?” I said tiredly.
“One of these too, I want one of these. Why would you not build one of these upstairs? It's so soft! That doesn't make any sense Elian!” We still slept piled up in a shaped section of limbs and boughs, which had its own charm in my opinion. Apparently my opinion was wrong.
“Isha, I didn't bring you down here to show you furniture. I brought you to show you my work.”
“You have no idea,” she answered, marching up to me and poking me in the chest with her tiny pointer finger. “You don't know what things you make are impressive because you're always off in your own head. Sure, you can make lots and lots of pretty things that do work, but we can use these, right now. Nobody would even want to steal them, and we wouldn't need to hide them or anything like you do. Did that even occur to you?” she asked.
“I... perhaps I should think more about what I share, but these aren't important to me, so I never did,” I answered after a time. “They seem normal, so I ignored them.”
“Now that you're thinking, share the normal things you think of more. What was it you thought I would want to see?” she asked.
Slightly relieved I showed her a few of my tools. Those were not all that interesting, but she did look harder at the various samples of materials beside them. There was really nothing like sulfur or aluminum. The latter of which got a lot of attention, because it was shiny. Though the most attention was given to the diamonds I had sitting there, with Isha picking one up and spinning it a bit in the light.
“I thought you might like those,” I chuckled.
“You could buy anything you want with these,” she answered, shaking her head. “But you don't care do you?”
“Not really.”
Isha totally ignored the computer, more interested in the copper wire than in what it was doing when I showed her.
“So what, it can count? Does it do anything else?”
“Not currently, but it could. In time I could make it do all kinds of interesting things, make math easy, answer complex questions, work though massive amounts of information in seconds.” She just gave me a blank look.
“But it just counts? I like the copper string though, can I have some?” Her words wounded me deeply, perhaps in time she'd come to see how cool computers were, but not today it seemed.
“Wire, and yes, I'll make you a bit.” That would be easy enough to explain, and there were a few fun things she could probably do with it.
“Thank you. Does it really need a different word though?”
“Yes, yes it does, and it is called wire.” My unhappy response got her to put her hands up placatingly.
Finally I took her to my latest work, something that even if she didn't understand I hoped she would like. I'd put a lot of work into these, a massive quantity of magic for each one. The little rack that held the grain sized mana crystals suspended in diamonds shone when I pushed a bit of my magic into it.
“Pretty, I like these better than most lights.” After confirming with me she picked one up, and I could see her push a bit of magic into the small crystal, the center of it beginning to shine with a soft yellow light.
“Glad I finally made something that impresses you,” I joked.
Isha put down the little rock and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me closer until our lips met.
“You impress me all the time, just not always in the ways you think,” she said softly.
“I'm glad to hear that,” I smirked, kissing her again.
“You know, since you're sharing things with me, there's something I'd like to show you too.” With a quick series of pulls the ties holding her hide dress fell away, the garment fluttering to the floor. “We just needed somewhere private.”
With a little tug I was pulled over to the small bed, her eyes smiling as she pulled me down to it.
