"Well then," said Uncle Albert with a clap of his hands, "Make it quick, I have a shop to run."
"Yeah yeah yeah, your hundreds of customers will probably chase me out if I continue staying, huh." Said Mr. Mayor, rolling his eyes at him.
When a few moments passed without any response, he sneakily looked at me and saw me standing gobsmacked.
With the next sentence, he said to his brother, he tried to reform his shattered pride, "Remember, you're asking me for a favor. Keep that in mind for I for sure will. Why aren't you responding now? Are you ashamed–"
"...quick.", came the soft response.
Their odd conversation or the lack of it made me recall how I had been making conspiracy theories about their secret rivalry in my head and felt embarrassed.
Thankfully, I didn't mention those to anyone else. Their dialogue was entirely out of sorts yet somehow, there was a heartwarming ambiance to it.
After a few more awkward moments, the Mayor turned to face me and asked, "So, before we begin, I'd like to ask this, what do you know about totems?"
Even after witnessing everything and pinching myself over and over to verify that it wasn't a dream, I was still quite disbelieving of the fact that the Mayor was talking to me like a next-door neighborly uncle.
I took some time to process his question and presented a reply hesitatingly, "Totems are… engravings on the body that awaken a dormant potential of humans and allow them to stretch their limits?"
I wasn't sure of my answer and therefore, ended it with a questioning tone. 'Uncle Robert' heard it and responded with an approving nod,
"At your age, that's actually a very good answer. You must have done your research, right?"
"Um, I tried to read some books about totem engravings but couldn't understand anything after a while."
He smiled lightly at my answer and nodded his head twice before continuing,
"You could be proud of that answer. You're right about the totems awakening the dormant potential of humans, but as for them being the engravings on the body, you're wrong.
Before I explain that to you, you must know the difference between humans, elves, and vampires. Do you know what that is?"
By this time, most of my fear and nervousness were already cast aside. At that moment, I wasn't a small-town girl with ambitions bigger than her imagination, but a humble student being taught by her teacher.
I shook my head to indicate my lack of knowledge, to which the Mayor started explaining that to me,
"Most of the people, when asked the difference, would answer that the difference between the three races is their power, and in a way, it is right, but where does their power come from? How does it grow? How can THEY grow but WE can't?
The answer to all these questions lies in two words: 'essence' and 'spirit'. Now, a lot of explanations and rationales have been presented by scholars throughout our recorded human history regarding what those two forms of power are and how they work.
But a very simple solution, one that had been given by the Saints from the Lunar Frask tribe, and has been accepted as the foundation for further research on this topic by everyone is this: 'Essence' is the power, dormant or awakened, in one's blood, and 'spirit' is the power, dormant or awakened, in one's mind."
By this time, my lips were already curved into an 'O' shape. 'Uncle Robert' continued with his explanation,
"Heart, therefore, is taken as the center or the base of one's essence and mind is regarded as the home of one's spirit and consciousness. Spirit is also something that every conscious and living thing has. It is, in a way, responsible for self-awareness in sentient races. Do you understand?"
His question woke me up from my reverie but I quickly pulled myself up and gathered my composure as I replied, "Um-hm, so the spirit is in the mind and the essence is in the heart?"
Gently shaking his head, he corrected, "You're almost there. While one's spirit indeed resides in their mind, the question of what 'mind' is would still confuse you if you don't understand it. The mind can be sensed, the mind can be felt, and the mind is used every day by us from the simplest to the most complex tasks, but to try to gain control over the spirit residing in the mind, we need to access it first.
As for essence, although its origin indeed seems to be from one's heart, it is better to understand it as the energy that our blood contains and carries instead of the power of our heart. Understood?"
He asked again.
This time, I was a little more confident, "So, the essence is the blood energy and the spirit is the mental energy."
He took a moment to understand what I said and instantly applauded, "Energy? That's a very nice way to put it!"