The Master had been grinding away his lead types on the coarse paper for hours now, his fingers sore from pounding the brass keys arrhythmically. The occasional key got stuck, and he hit the key with a red sigil and orange hue, summoning oil.
He still was figuring out where the spell got the oil from, as well as automating the oiling process when it ran out.
A gentle chime tinkled at the door, announcing a visitor. The Master disinclined to rise, reached for the red codex atop his desk. From its depths, he retrieved a block of indium, or "chew-tin" as the locals called it. He channelled a sliver of mana, his fingertip expertly restricting the flow like a dam on a river. The metal hummed as it absorbed the energy.
The piston that held the door closed gave way, and a young boy, well dressed in a butler's attire, bowed, and stepped in, holding a tray in his hands.
He set it down on a wheeled table the young waiter pulled in from another side of the room, skilfully evading and collecting the slow but certain progression of the paper avalanche on the floor.
"Kūrrie today, Master," he announced, his voice devoid of inflexion. "Unfortunately, it appears to be our last, barring celebratory occasions."
The Master pivoted in his chair, a sigh escaping his lips. "You're certain?" he inquired, already dreading the answer.
"Regrettably so," the lad replied, his cold façade slipping, "it really is all of burnspice we have left."
The Master, half a decade ago when he was deep in the thicket of the Rantari forest, a pseudo-rainforest far south, which sat on an aqueous mana-vein and quartz labyrinths, he found a plant.
It had a root-stem like a walnut, but with soft orange flesh inside, with an unpleasant smell, the locals used it as a contact poison for hunting rodents.
He had recognised its smell; there was no mistake: chilly. The plant in no form resembled it, but the smell, and later with some courage and daring the taste, was unmistakably of Capsaicin.
He had spared no expense, annually financing the harvesting and shipment of these "Kūrrie" plants from the far south. Unfortunately, replicating their growth, like cultivating certain ginseng varieties from his home world, proved near impossible. Countless gold coins had been sunk into expeditions seeking alternative spices or methods, even financing a young lad's outlandish claim of cultivating them by summer's end. Each attempt was a humorous indulgence.
He missed his mother. The Kūrrie reminded him of her.
In his college days, he'd come home for lunch as often as he could. His dad would make stir fry and his mom curry. They would playfully bicker about his father's supposed culinary prowess, not at all restricted to the 6 dishes he could make, and he, with a mouthful of his mother's curry, would always declare, "This is the only one I'm ever having."
He missed his father too, the silly old man whose love for him shone as brightly as his cooking wished it could.
He looked over to the soy plants growing in his lab, a splash of lively green over the dull tones of greened metal, dusty brick, and aged wood. He was homesick, he had yet to come to terms with the truth, the bitter truth, that despite his best efforts, this was his home now.
He had held on too long, he must let it go, lest the embers of longing turned into a scorching fire of despair that burned him.
Ruri found herself awake at long-dawn. She had overslept! Though it was no hurry just yet, she had hoped to see more of the city, so she wouldn't be hopelessly thrown off when in the capital.
Sometime last night, she had dragged herself out of the tub and onto the pristine sheets, her body drying from the warmth of the hearth. She was glad she hadn't caught a cold, but that had been risky.
While she knew the heal-alls in the city were many and skilled, yet vivid was the image of the old lady with the mole, the one who taught her to sew.
she remembered her dying, laying on her mudded bed-rags, her wrinkled skin colourless and ribs protruding under it, coughing bits of blood and cries from the bottom of her soul — till the cough came no more.
She remembered as a little girl, hiding from the masked undertaker who put the woman's corpse, light as a feather from starvation, in his corpse barrow, to be tossed in the river.
She remembered the squeak of the wheel as the woman's dead, pale hand faced skyward, fingers half-closed as if grasping at life's vanished thread
Putting on a petticoat, bloomers and the dress from yesterday, she sat down and held the shoes.
"These motherfuckers" she cursed, her little toe remembering the pain.
She got out her knife, she cut one of the threads of the stitching that held the shoe on its soles, gently pulling the rest like laces, widening the shoe. She knotted the open threads so that they didn't unfurl and put the damned things on
'I can tolerate this for now' she proclaimed.
Straightening her hair the best she could with her fingers and with a damp towel held near the hearth, she was ready to set off and headed downstairs.
Handing the room keys to the receptionist, she sat down, looking at the now deactivated mana- light. She could see the patterns clearly, all but the ones covered by the fixtures that held it up.
She recognised the power routes, the zigzagging lines with large dots as endpoints, and the mana drain, what took in the mana when the inscription was on, a seven-sided polygon, with circles at each corner, was recognisable too.
What shocked her slightly, was between the Clouds overhead darkening the room and the window blinds being partially covered, small teal sparkles, quite dimmed, had surrounded the tracks, as if they were on!
Can it somehow save Mana and use it later? How does that work? How much can it store? Can you draw more from the air? It did absolutely nothing to remedy her countless questions, only fuelling the fire.
She soon walked out, before anyone went to her room and found the sheets and robe missing.
Stopping at the bakers, she got herself some hard bread for later and some white loaf to eat on the journey, for the small price of two coppers!
Her supply of these beautiful copper coins, these little darlings she was fated to part with, was dwindling. She walked half an hour to reach the Hulpshire square, where a slight bustle had already begun, early and ready for the persistent Stern, and the many hours it held its place in the blue sky. The Stern had many clouds to oppose it today, providing the land dwellers momentary comfort as they covered its shine.
Further down, she spotted a carriage agent, in his little stall, waiting for customers. She had asked the prices of all but the hotel in her brief visit earlier, and she held on to a bit of regret not doing so too.
Walking up to the stall, in virtually a straight line, and holding her chin high, she announced to the lanky man, "A ride to Aurelia, carriage." She said, holding her suitcase in a refined manner over her knees, shoulders taut.
"Ah, madam, it'll be our pleasure." He replied with a grin, smelling money. " we are reputed to be the fastest and safest! We only charge 20 coppers one-way."
She had seen this coming. Taking 12 coins out the her money pouch, tucked away in her dress skirt's inner pocket, she replied,
"Surely you take me for a child. Here's 11 and a copper to get the mare some hay. Hand me the ticket at once." She said, the raised arches of her lips hiding the mad laughter inside.
Dejected but caught, the man wrote her ticket and she skipped along to the city gate, near which the stables were.
It had been three days, Richard was sleep-deprived from looking after the plants, and the patchy fixes were too unreliable to leave the Acamias to; they had begun to sprout.
He sat there, slicing apples with a white porcelain mug of what looked like mud, in the light of the long-night moon and the bronze oil lamp. It was two more hours until the next watering before he added some ash. These strange little plants were first found in large quartz mines, fed by the relentless drip of groundwater and refracted Stern-light from the gigantic monolithic prisms. They thus evolved no roots, taking water in from the stem as it dripped from the crystalline ceilings of the glass caves they called home.
This environment was extremely difficult to replicate. It would cost an incredible amount to get tubes made from smiths. Harder yet it is to then mount overhead, have water somehow end up in the pipes from the wells, and have it drip the correct amount and salinity of ash: all 32 hours of the day.
They grew scarce, too. He would have never undertaken something so big if the first batch hadn't grown in the greenhouse. The man from the capital had paid full price for the batch, with another 25 gold to cultivate more, and demanded a continuous supply.
That was the least of the benefits. He promised a full scholarship to the 3rd Northern Academy if he managed to grow them. You see, Richard had a little trick up his sleeve, one he found experimenting that made it possible for him to even try, and have a shot at the academy. It was nothing short of genius, Sue had said, and her compliments were few and precious. She didn't brag about it, but she was the Fief's herb master back in the day.
He spliced water hyacinth stems, only a slice of them, doped in saltpetre and silica, and attached it with great precision between the stems of the Acamias. This reduced the watering time from every minute to once in a few hours.
"I'm going to learn Arcane botany", he committed to himself again, getting up for another round of watering, testing and checking on his little babies, despite their refusal to stay alive.