Paley flew back to the city after training his magic in the forest for a while.
"Paley!" Teerom was playing a dwarven dice game called Stubbi with the dwarves. It consisted of calling a number, then throwing a dice. If the dice rolled on the number you called, you'd get a dare from everyone else.
"Do you know how much embarrassment I had to endure?" Teerom asked as Paley landed.
"Did you lose every round?"
"Yes..." Teerom admitted while the dwarves laughed at him.
"The die is rigged, stupid," Aleisar chuckled and walked over to them.
"What?"
"It will never show the number that dwarves call out. We made this game ages ago to mess with you humans and elves sometimes." Candul explained.
"You can do that?" Paley asked.
"Of course! Most dwarves have an affinity to luck magic. Just cast a simple spell on a dice, and you've won the game," Battdur patted Teerom on the back.
"I see. Well, it's getting late, so we better go back. Thank you for taking Teerom in." Paley bowed, shocking Teerom. He didn't expect Paley to put himself in an inferior position to anyone.
"Don't mention it. We're happy to have him." Candul said.
"He's one good builder, I'll say." Aleisar grinned and shook Paley's hand. They nodded at each other and went their separate paths.
"You bowed," Teerom said as they began walking.
"I was grateful." Paley tried to brush it off.
"I haven't even heard you say sorry to a stranger, and you go and bow to them?" Teerom ruffled his hair, happy, "What happened to you?"
"I guess I've changed for the better." Paley sighed, "Can we please fly back? It's nearly sundown. Mom will be worried about us,"
"Let's just run back. Some good exercise won't hurt," Teerom smiled awkwardly.
"...Fine," Paley charged himself up with lightning magic and ran ahead.
"Hey! Using magic is unfair!" Teerom ran after him.
They made it back to the orphanage in about thirty minutes. Paley was gasping desperately for air on Teerom's shoulders.
Jurie was relaxing outside while reading one of Teerom's favourite tales of Aneros. She noticed them and quickly marked the page she was on.
"Hey, guys- What happened!?" Jurie ran over to check on Paley.
"He ran too much," Teerom walked with her into the cottage.
"We gotta lie him down," Jurie tried to take Paley off Teerom, but he got off by himself.
"I'll be fine." He trudged upstairs, mumbling to himself, "This is why I don't use lightning magic."
Teerom sat down beside the fireplace. Jurie quickly went out to get the book she was reading and sat down next to him.
"So, how'd it go?" She asked casually.
"It went great," Teerom sighed and leaned his back against the wall.
"Doesn't sound like it,"
"Well, it took a while to find the right place. Everyone else rejected me either because I'm a peasant or because I didn't have any education. But then, we found these dwarves. There's five of them: Aleisar, Candul, Battdur, Wallas, and Gilray. Coincidentally, they happened to be running a new building company that needed one more person to count as an actual business."
"Are they nice?" Jurie's eyes showed concern. In the books she read, dwarves were brutal pagans who plundered towns and cities in the past.
"Of course they are."
"They seem horrible in Aneros' tale." She held up the book.
"What?" Teerom took the book and skimmed through the first chapter.
"Jurie, this is a fake." Teerom handed the book back to her, "The dwarves bought Aneros to an elven village and set aside their differences to get them to heal him. Come with me," He stood up and hurried to the second floor.
"What do you mean by fake?" Jurie followed him.
"That's not a copy of the original. Aneros' journey companion, Calina Puranima, wrote the original. Who wrote that one?" He lifted the mattress of their bed.
"Aneros," Jurie replied as he took out a wrinkled book.
"Aneros couldn't read or write. He hated studying. He learned magic just by trial and error. Kinda like Paley. Except Paley is super obsessed with learning in any way he can." Teerom handed her the real book, "Here,"
"What's this?" Jurie took the book and gently turned the fragile pages.
"Aneros' tale, written by Calina Puranima. My father gave that to me." Teerom referred to the man who taught him to steal and survive in Rukae (the city of criminals).
"It's so old..." Jurie checked the book out. The cover was crusty and scrunched up, but the pages were in nearly perfect condition. She could see that Teerom took great care of the book.
"I used to read that to my sister at night before I went out. Apparently, it's one of the first copies out there. The book that I stole with Paley was changed a lot since it was written by some noble dude, but that one is completely original." Teerom sat down and watched her with a sincere smile, "You can have it."
"What? No- I couldn't. It's yours." She held it out to him forcibly.
"Come on, the whole point of a story is to be heard- read. Besides, I've already read it a hundred times over. Maybe more." He pushed it back to her. She hesitantly accepted it, holding it tightly against her chest.
"Thank you," She said and swayed with the book in her arms. Her adorable gestures made Teerom scream internally.
The bathroom door opened and Paley came out, sighing as he had overcome a great battle.
"Hey," He greeted, out of breath, "I hope I'm not interrupting anything." He sat down on the other side of the room.
"N-Not at all," Teerom replied awkwardly, distancing himself from Jurie.
"Paley!" Bacha ran up the stairs and approached him. Jurie moved out of the way as she pranced toward him.
"Hello," Paley didn't know how to respond to her excitement.
"Wanna help me make some potions?"
Bacha took Paley outside and near the river where she'd set up a small wooden table and two chairs. Teerom and Jurie followed them, curious.
Bacha pulled one of the chairs and sat Paley down. Teerom and Jurie sat down on the grass next to them. On the table were the herbs that he picked during the camping trip. She took out two bottles, a bowl, and a grinder.
"I kinda forgot which ones are which. Do you know?" She asked.
"If I remember correctly..." Paley hovered his finger over the herbs on tissues.
"This one's Somum," He began pointing and naming the herbs, "This one's Retaxa. This one's Sanami. This one's Muaffum. And Purpuris." He named them all correctly.
"Let's see if you're right," she took out a herbology book and flicked through the pages.
"Wait, why'd you ask me if you could've just checked?"
"To test you. You're my student, after all." She grinned and confirmed, "Yep, you got them all right."
"What kind of memory do you have? I'm surprised you could remember all of them," Jurie commented.
"That's Paley for you." Teerom patted him on the back.
"Thanks." Paley sat back on the chair, "So, what're you making?"
"I'm making an upgraded version of Facimut Pulveris." She picked up the Somum and Retaxa and placed them in the bowl, "Can you grind these for me?" She handed him the grinder.
"Facimut Pulveris?" Paley asked as he used wind magic to squash the herbs.
"Laze powder. Facimut Pulveris is its real name. Turns out that the powder I was making was highly toxic to the skin because there was too much Retaxa compared to Somum." She said nonchalantly, "Can you heat it?"
"It was toxic?" Paley touched his face to check.
"He *has* been looking different lately." Teerom and Jurie stared at his face, trying to look for what was different.
"It's his eyes!" Jurie finally noticed, "They're wider now compared to the:" She imitated him from a few months ago by letting them relax. Pretty much, she made a resting bitch face.
Teerom thought that Jurie's cold face was hot.
"It's good, though. You look less like you're gonna kill someone." She joked, but Paley took it personally, "I'm sorry." she quickly apologized when he looked down gloomily.
"It's fine, so, what do I do next?" Paley finished heating the bowl, slowly turning the crushed herbs inside into a fine powder.
"That's it. Infuse it with magic and put some on your face. Make sure to envision what you want your face to look like." She suggested. He held the bowl and focused his raw mana through it first. Then, he envisioned his face.
Of course, he wasn't going to get it the first time. He was trying to learn an entirely different type of magic. But, after a patient few minutes, the powder began to glow a soft white.
"Nice! That's what it should look like," Bacha picked up a tiny amount on her finger, then rubbed it on his cheeks, forehead, and chin. His face began to transition slowly. It felt strange. Like someone was pulling it in different directions with chopsticks.
Once it finished moving around, Paley was no longer his old self. Every trace of the hardened cold boy was gone. Now he looked much fresher and kinder.
"How do I look?" He asked all of them.
"You look great," Jurie commented.
"But it feels so weird," Teerom trembled uncomfortably, "You've changed Paley. Whatever happened to you, I'm happy you're getting over it. Not that you even remember it." He laughed nervously.
"Thanks," Paley, for the first time, grinned, showing his teeth. Jurie and Teerom were taken aback by it.
"You really did change," Teerom said, jokingly rubbing his shoulders nervously.
"Don't worry about them," Bacha began preparing the next few herbs: Sanami and Muaffum, "I love your smile," She added water to the bowl.
"What're we making now?" Paley asked.
"Healing potions. For you, when you come back all tired after training," She gestured for him to boil the water. When Paley came home after a gruelling session of training his magic and body, Bacha and Amasha were always the first downstairs to eat. Followed by Rauba, then everyone else.
Amasha was too busy indulging himself in the food, but Bacha always saw how Paley slightly limped or moved with care to not hurt his sore body. Madella saw it too. In fact, she was the one who advised Bacha to do this for him.
"This is all for me?" He asked.
"Mhm." Bacha took the Purpuris flower now and rubbed it until it broke off into sprinkles on the boiling herbs, "They say purple is the colour of love and passion. You're always helping us out, so I wanted to do something for you. Purpuris flower makes everything feel better." She explained.
After a few more minutes of boiling, the potion was finally finished. The herbs had brunt away inside, releasing their effects in the water. Bacha held it up to Paley.
"Thank you," He tried it. It tasted amazing. The potion was somehow cold and minty despite being freshly boiled and cleansed his mind itself. But his soreness didn't go away. It seemed that healing magic was ineffective on Paley for some reason.
"Wow, I feel so much better. It's like I was never tired." He lied to keep Bacha happy.
"Can I try it?" Teerom and Jurie asked excitedly.
"It's only for Paley!" Bacha pouted.
"Come on, wouldn't you want more people trying out your great potions?" Paley asked. At least Teerom and Jurie would have some use for it.
"Okay, if you say so..."
Jurie was the first to take a sip. She downed half of it and left the rest to Teerom, who, without realizing, drank from the same spot she put her lips to.
"Ahhh," He sighed, "That's so good." He felt all pain vanish from his body.
"Don't worry about running out of ingredients. We can always get more." Paley said to lift Bacha's spirits. She nodded agreeably.
Teerom noticed that Jurie was staring at him with her wide blue eyes. And an intense blush on her face.
"Did you want some more?" He set the bowl down.
"N-No..."
Paley laughed lightly at their romantic awkwardness and stood up.
"Well, I'm gonna go clean the house." He walked towards the cottage.
"I'll come too," Teerom began to get up but was quickly put back down by Paley's air magic.
"There's no need. You stay here." He disappeared into the cottage, leaving Jurie and Teerom in a state of awkwardness. Bacha, on the other hand, was in glee. Excited to go to the mana zone and collect herbs.