Inari’s Gift

The next morning, after breakfast, Cera resumed her work on her soul, spending the majority of the day on the task while letting herself heal from her prior experiment.  This continued for several weeks, despite the lack of obvious benefits from doing so.

Eventually, however, she found time to try another experiment.  For this one, she shouldn’t be in any serious danger, though the unexpected could still occur.  Within herself, she began to weave mana into a complex machine-like construct, taking time to split her focus for each component and ensure they held together without changing.

After nearly an hour, she nodded and pushed a cloud of mana through the input section of the amplifier.  While it did technically fail, spitting out a tightly focused stream of mana, it was proof that her old designs should work to some degree.  It appeared she would have to put much more work into creating materials that wouldn’t dissipate as soon as her focus wandered.

In her prior life, she’d been able to convert gaseous mana into a seeming liquid, and from there into a kind of solid, allowing it to maintain shape simply with its own nature rather than requiring continual focus upon it.  Perhaps if she could manage multiple amplifiers, she might manage to change some of the mana, but it appeared a long way off, for now.  She could barely handle a single amplifier at the moment, after all.

Pulling her focus back, she watched as the entire construct rapidly dissolved into wisps of mana once again.  With a sigh, she instead focused her senses inward even further, observing her energetic body’s organs, trying to see if she could hijack any of them to do what she wanted.

In the end, she deemed it too dangerous to try, as she remembered again that she liked her body now, and couldn’t simply replace any damage she did to her energetic body or spirit like she could before, so any harm would transfer to her physical form.

Cera eventually decided to try to work on her illusions for the first time in weeks, sitting down and attempting to hide her outstretched arm.  To her surprise, she was actually able to do so, as long as she didn’t move it.  The illusion failed, however, as soon as she shifted her position, taking a moment to catch up to the change.

Further improvements were clearly required, which was quite annoying after all this time.  But Falron seemed content with sharing his home with her, and she had quite a lot of time that she could funnel into practice and healing.

After her partial success, Cera felt within herself where the controls for her illusions seemed to be, finding that almost everything related to them was restored.  For the remainder, she should be able to heal the damage within a day or two, which she promptly set as her new goal.

Two days later, she once again practiced with her illusions, finding them slightly better, able to hide her arm if she moved it incredibly slowly.  There was still a long way to go, but it appeared that it was a matter of practice now, rather than being too damaged to handle it.

Around this point, she realized she’d forgotten that she wanted to ask Falron about getting a staff for herself.  Not wanting to forget again, she immediately went to find him and ask about it.

As she’d halfway expected, a good staff would be more than the villagers would acquire for free, so she decided to make one herself, though it would be of much lower quality.  The first step was to find a good base material, which should be reasonably possible with the forest nearby.

Ensuring that it was humid outside, Cera left the house and began to wander through the forest, talking to herself to make certain to not surprise any animals that may take offense to being startled.  As she walked, she continued to try to hide one of her arms.  Occasionally, she would put her full focus into it, but otherwise allowed her subconscious to handle the process, and her peripheral vision to observe it.

Some time into her walk, she stumbled across a wolf that simply looked at her curiously from the distance before it moved away.  Smiling at the peaceful encounter, she continued on her way, eventually finding a sapling that would work well.  Swinging her arm through the air, she pulled moisture into a mana construct, froze it into a saw blade, and then began to cut down the small tree.

Not long after, she cut it to size, then began removing the branches.  Soon, she had a piece of wood the proper length for a staff, though it was far from finished.  She turned and began her walk back out of the forest with her freshly-cut length of wood.

As she walked, however, she realized she’d drifted from her straight path and no longer knew exactly where she was.  She wasn’t too worried, however, as it was still relatively early in the day, so she had plenty of daylight.

Eventually, she made it to the edge of the forest, and saw a village in the distance, presumably the one Falron spoke of protecting.  The only question was which direction she should go to find their home.  She sighed, as it would be much easier to just ask someone, but she didn’t want to risk someone turning against her, nor bringing trouble to Falron.

She decided to pick at random, since she lacked better information, and turned to put the forest to her left and began walking.  Given how long he’d been gone when the village had been attacked in the past, she had plenty of time to check each direction, though it might take a while.

Some time later, however, Cera spotted a familiar building in the distance and stepped up her pace, reaching it soon after.  She placed her staff under an overhanging part of the roof and returned inside, finding Falron missing.  With a shrug, she decided to make some food for herself.

While she’d like to continue work on the staff, she knew that she needed dry wood rather than green wood, so she’d have to let it sit for several weeks to dry out properly.  She certainly didn’t want a poorly-made staff, even if it wouldn’t be the best quality due to her lack of skill, so she would do things as best as she remembered how.

Instead, she continued her work with illusions.  Eventually, Falron returned, and she was able to ask him to observe as she tried to hide her ears.  Fortunately for her state of mind, she’d finally succeeded and could hide them even if she moved.  She was far from being able to hide her tail, but at least there was some success.

After another week, she examined her body as best as she could and tried pushing more mana into her flesh.  As she’d hoped, after several weeks of adjusting, she was able to fit more inside before reaching the point of hurting herself, and she swiftly pulled herself back below that limit.  She couldn’t help but wag her tail in excitement at this success.

It may have been taking time, but she could see the future shaping up, one step at a time.

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