Growing Lilies

"So, just to go over this again. You can defer to me if you don't know what to say without losing face, because you're under my protection. Don't flash your [Official Seal] or there will be some difficult questions to answer. People are going to give you things, don't feel obligated to return the favor."

Adelina had been talking for quite some time. Lily's head was spinning trying to keep up, but that last bit caught her attention.

"Wait, people are going to give me things? I can't take their stuff!"

Adelina let out a long suffering sigh, and stopped walking to turn to her new student.

"They'll be offended if you don't. They're not going to hand off something they need. But it's a symbol of our place in the hierarchy. You're mine, so people will give you things befitting my status. It's only natural."

Lily made a sour face.

"It doesn't feel natural. It feels like people less fortunate than you being forced to give you things, when they naturally have less to give."

The balaur girl rolled her eyes in return and spat. Lily watched as it froze before hitting the ground. For a second she wondered what it would be like to kiss a white balaur. She shook her head to clear it. It was still shocking how different Adelina's behaviour was when she was in politics mode versus not. A small part of Lily felt a little fuzzy that the girl didn't feel the need to keep her mask up around Lily.

"Look, we can debate the morality behind my culture at another time. For now, I'm telling you what the facts are, and you're listening and learning how to act without offending people. Got it?"

Lily nodded.

"Yeah, fine. I guess so. But I really have to accept gifts?"

"You really have to accept gifts. It's not that hard. I promise, nobody is gonna hand over the only food they have or anything. It's stuff they can spare without much pain to themselves. Often it's more of a symbol than anything."

"I guess that makes sense. I just... don't feel like I know how."

Adelina burst out laughing, and pointed at Lily.

"You don't know how? What kind of idiot are you!? You just hold out your hand, take whatever it is, and say thank you. How hard is that?"

Lily felt her face colour.

"It's not that easy! Don't you ever feel self conscious about stuff like this? I feel like I don't know what to do with my face, or make my thank you sound genuine. Like, how do I make them understand it's appreciated?"

"That's easy. Enjoy and appreciate it, moron. The point of giving a gift is for it to be enjoyed, not to get the perfect reaction."

That stopped Lily in her tracks for a moment. After a few seconds of silence, she continued. That was so transparently true, and also not how she had ever thought of it before. She always felt like gifts put her on the spot and she didn't know what to do to make it okay to accept them. It hadn't really occurred to her that she didn't actually need to make things even in some way.

"I... think I may have fundamentally missed the point of gifts all my life."

---

It only took a few more minutes of walking to reach the gates of Veni. Being honest, Lily desperately wished it had taken longer. It was a nightmare to be here in the first place. She was trying to breathe and relax, but she couldn't help but remember the first time.

Today the guard at the gate was a somewhat short girl. She was wearing a metal helmet with a little spike on top, and had what appeared to be a permanent scowl on her face right under it. The spike actually complimented her somewhat nubbly horns quite well. Her scales were a very light grey with the slightest sheen of blue to them. She was the first balaur Lily had seen with a hint of another color, but she knew better than to bring it up. It was likely a source of mild shame. She perked up a little when she saw Adelina stepping up.

"Miss Nor. Welcome to Veni. Who's your companion?"

"Sabina. This is Lily Flamewalker. You've probably heard about a human around here recently. You probably haven't heard that she's a foreign [Lady]. She'll be accompanying me for a while."

Sabina had been nodding along, and suddenly did a double take to take a closer look at Lily. Lily shrugged back sheepishly.

"I-- Uh. My apologies, [Lady] Flamewalker! I'll spread the word right away."

"Oh. Uh. Please don't worry about it. I was trying to lie low."

Sabina nodded, and Adelina started forward again. Through the gates and into Veni. There were a lot of people around, just like before. Lily smiled watching a little girl chasing a little boy around holding some kind of insect. That was, until her eyes met those of a balaur woman hanging laundry out in the sun. Lily's heart jumped, and she averted her gaze to the ground.

"I can do this. I've got it. I have to get past this. I have to get better."

She whispered to herself. It helped put her a little more at ease. Taking a closer look around, she was surprised to see that balaur were a little more varied than she had really noticed before. She had noticed that scale placement often varied, and that some looked quite different, but as she was really looking at the folk of Veni, she noticed it was more than that. Some had completely human hands, others had claws. A few didn't have horns. One of them had wings, which was really shocking. Although she vaguely remembered clothing made to have wing holes. Then she remembered Adelina having them when she was flying. Could... could she toggle them on and off somehow?

Sunica had talked about how balaur were sort of shape shifters between two forms, but most of them didn't know how to control it properly. It made sense that Adelina would be able to swap some. Lily wondered what other parts Adelina could swap in and out.

"We're almost there."

"Uh... where are we going anywhere?"

"A restaurant. We'll be able to sit and talk for a while there."

The building Adelina led her to was one of the nicer ones she'd seen in Veni. A large sign adorned the front reading 'The Buttered Bass'. It was a silly name, but it looked like a fancy place. Well, fancy relative to Veni. It was downright home-y compared to some of the places Lily remembered seeing in videos from Earth. A very well dressed balaur man greeted them as they entered. Adelina spoke up immediately.

"We'll take the private room. We have some business to discuss."

Without a word, the man bowed and led them back to a room that was frankly too big for two people. But, Lily wasn't about to raise a fuss about it. A table was set low to the floor, and a bit of the floor was set deeper to accommodate legs. The design felt strangely Asian to Lily, for a place that was otherwise pretty European? Although, of course, neither were accurate in this world.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Lily followed Adelina into the room cautiously and had a seat at the table by following her lead. This place felt WAY too fancy for her. It was a large mostly empty room, and yet it was extremely clean. Not a speck of anything anywhere. The table had a circular red tablecloth over black wood. It was the biggest splash of color in the room, and Lily realized with a surprise that this is the first room she'd been in in this world where the walls had been painted. And... she got a faint sense of mana from them?

As she settled into her seat, she noticed another thing. The area under the table was heated. It felt blissful! It wasn't uncomfortably warm, but it was so pleasant a shiver went down her spine. She was so transfixed that for a moment she didn't hear the conversation around her. Adelina was speaking to the... waiter? [Waiter]? Some other title?

"Yes, that wine is acceptable. Also bring us the freshest sospeske

you have, and some bread. Also, a kindleberry fruska for us both. Lily, is there anything else you'd like?"

Suddenly, Lily was on the spot. With a lot of words she didn't recognize being thrown around at that.

"Ah, I'm not familiar with..."

Adelina waved her hand to shut Lily up.

"That'll be it for now. I'll coerce my companion into admitting if there's anything else she would like. Place everything on the Nor family account. Thank you."

The man bowed and was out of the room. It seemed strange to Lily that he'd said so few words she hadn't managed to catch any of them. But a moment later he was gone. As he closed the door, Lily noticed a brief flare of mana from the doorway.

She was about to ask about it when she realized something else about the room. For the first time since she'd entered the city, she couldn't hear the sounds of people talking or working or... whatever else made sound. It was almost eerily quiet. She decided to ask anyway.

"So, the spell on this room keeps this space quiet?"

"It's more than that. It also prevents anything we say from making it out of this room. Actually, the quiet from outside is somewhat of a side effect. Our server will also knock and wait for us to open the door rather than opening it himself. It's the only such space in Veni, but necessary sometimes when a meeting takes place here."

That was interesting. Unfortunately, Lily was pretty sure she didn't know enough of this world's magic to really understand the spell. Even as she tried to feel it out, there was nothing to it that she could see, and the structure the mana took was foreign in a way she couldn't describe.

"So... Why are we here?"

"What are you, an idiot? If I'm going to teach you the entirety of how your role is supposed to be performed and also about our culture it would be a problem if we were overheard. People would think you're pretending."

"Oh. I guess that makes sense. Can I practice some magic while we talk?"

Adelina paused to stare at her incredulously.

"You ask me for help and then you don't intend to focus on my lesson?"

"It's not that! I just have a hard time concentrating if I don't have something to fidget with. I need like, something in my hands. In school I always used to doodle. But, working on new spell circles seems like the natural thing to do now."

Adelina sighed in response, but then changed her tone.

"Do you need anything to work on that?"

"Um. Something to write with and something to write on would be perfect. But, I could take any disposable object."

Her companion rose and walked to the door, after a moment of having it open and speaking to someone outside she returned with a small stack of parchment, a brush, and ink. Roughly she dropped it in front of Lily and then took her place on the other side of the table.

"There. Is there anything else?"

"Nope! Happy as can be!"

Lily immediately started in. She actually already had something in mind. It'd been in the back of her mind when she woke up this morning. It was so simple, she really didn't know why she hadn't thought of it sooner.

"So, to return to what we were speaking about before, let's talk about gifts. Not only are you going to have to get used to accepting them, but there is a protocol about what to do with them as well."

"Yeah? Like, what hand to hold them in or what?"

She started with an outer circle. Inside it was the heat to mana glyph. Across from it was going to be a smaller circle. She left it unfinished for now, so it wouldn't start lowering the temperature in here.

"No. It's expected because I have a claim on you that anything you are given benefits me as well. This is pretty simple for things like a treat. If someone hands you a piece of bread for example, offer a bite to me. I'll usually turn you down, and then you're free to eat it. If it's something that doesn't break down like a small carving, simply offer the whole thing to me and allow me to turn it down. I will most of the time."

"That seems... needlessly complex. Why not just give you things themselves?"

"They will sometimes. But, more often they'll offer something to us both."

"Well okay, but why not just offer you two of whatever?"

In the smaller circle she was adding detail now. It was such a silly idea, but it was going to be cool if it worked. Actually, her eternal flame spell had given her the idea. With its weird extra glyphs that didn't really add anything. She added two nodes to the smaller circle. One that would put mana into an object, and one that would remove that small amount of mana from the object. Finally, she connected the smaller circle to the larger one, and included an AND gate. Now, mana would only flow through the whole circle and activate the heat to mana spell if mana was flowing from the smaller circle. A capacitor was a final touch, making sure that only enough mana to run the gate continued from the smaller circle.

"Because this reinforces and affirms our places in society. They are all under me, so, anything they gain should flow upward. You are also below me, but above them. It's an acknowledgement of where we belong."

"I still don't like that. Those people aren't lesser than us. If anything I belong so low on the ladder I'm underground."

Adelina spoke up again a little frustrated.

"I understand that your personal values don't align with my culture. But you're being quite rude about it. I did not make these rules, and those people themselves will be offended if you don't act accordingly. You aren't protecting them from anything by being like this. You're just acting like you're better than us."

"Better than you? Don't be--"

She stopped. No. Adelina was right. She felt like the lowest thing on the planet. But she was still being stubborn about knowing what is right and wrong. But she DID know this was wrong. Why should people poorer and in more need pass things up to people who were already wealthy? It was just like that in her world, and it was bullshit there too. This was just even more explicit about it. At the same time, these people didn't choose the society they were born into any more than she did. If Adelina was going to be in charge one day, maybe she could fix it. But being a brat about it to her while she was trying to teach Lily wasn't going to convince her.

"I'm sorry. I'm in the wrong. We should talk about this another time, if you're going to be in power one day. But, right now I'm your student, and you're doing me a favor. Can we just pretend I wasn't an idiot?"

Adelina smiled.

"If you tell me what that spell you're working on does."

"Oh, this? Oh you're gonna like this. Do you have any spells you can cast in here that won't do damage?"

"Mmm. Yeah?"

"Wanna try it out for me?"

"Yeah!"

Lily directed her to come sit close by. Then pointed to the smaller circle on the paper.

"If you put your finger right there, touching the paper, the room will get colder. But also, you should be able to cast better. Be careful, it can make things so cold it might hurt even you if you hold it down too long."

Adelina looked at her warily, and bit her lip. Was she... nervous? Lily almost had to laugh at that, although her own experiments with magic had often been dangerous. But this one didn't pose that sort of risk. All you had to do was remove your finger. Adelina pressed the 'button' and her eyes went wide. Lily could feel the mana moving through the circle. Perfect! It was a good amount more than her attempts to draw ambient mana. Heat wasn't a limited resource in this world after all. Well, not on this scale anyway.

"I can feel it! Mana is flowing into me! H-how? Is the spell not consuming it to make it cold?"

Lily shook her head.

"No. See, cold isn't a thing. It's the absence of a thing. Like darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat. So, the spell is consuming heat, and turning it into mana."

And likely accelerating entropy in a very slight way she thought to herself. But, that sort of thing was unpredictable, and this was a tiny change all things considered. Then she realized Adelina was staring at her like she'd just sprouted wings. Well, no. That'd be normal enough in this world. She was looking at Lily like... something else.

"So, you're telling me that this spell-- The one you drew over the course of a rather short conversation-- can create mana from nothing but a heat source?"

The room was quickly growing colder, and Lily realized that it wasn't just because of the spell.