The Weight of Legacy

"But that wasn't even the worst part, no! You know what's the worst part?" Malwine sighed a bit too dramatically. While her actual actions did often remind her teacher of her age, it wouldn't hurt to occasionally take advantage of just how much children could get away with.

Veit didn't move from where he lounged, having summoned a recliner soon after she'd woken him up. Considering she'd found furniture to be impossible to store within her inventory, Malwine was very curious as to just where the forester was keeping all this stuff. "No. Enlighten me."

She let out an angry huff. "We didn't even go look for matching shoes!"

The forester's only response was a groan. "…Is that all?"

Malwine took a moment to mull that over. While she'd glossed over some details—for one, outing Ximena would have been rude, so she just got mentioned vaguely as a regular seamstress—she was pretty sure she'd done a decent enough job at covering everything she'd dealt with since their last conversation.

Things like the matter of Gertraud and Thekla's marriage were stuff he was bound to find out about eventually, for all she avoided bringing Benedikt up. She might have also suggested no one should be bothering to look for Matilda, really, which got her an odd look in response at the time. She was probably sharing more than anyone normally would with someone who was technically an employee of the family, but their situation warranted it.

"Malwine," Veit grumbled. "Absolutely no part of that warranted breaking into my home at this hour."

"Technically, I just projected here."

"As if that really made a difference."

The forester closed his eyes then, taking her seconds of silence as a cue to try and fall back asleep. Considering how he'd slept for literal months a while back—not that he knew that she'd noticed that, given how she had actually broken into his house that one time—Malwine was slightly hesitant about actually letting him.

"It really annoys me, though. The trials, I mean," she sighed, picking a topic at random from what she'd just been telling him about. "They're supposed to benefit me, but most of the time, their rules seem so arbitrary to me that they end up annoying me instead. Even the trials where I've succeeded, I've been confused throughout. I don't think a single one of them has gone well. Maybe the one for Kristian."

"From your perspective, the Trait to use for those trials is the problem," the forester didn't deign to look at her as he replied. "Is that the case?"

That's one way of putting it. "I guess?"

"Enough of a problem that you don't want to use it, or regret doing so after you do."

"Yes? Is this going somewhere?"

"Girl, you are a Forger—exactly the type of individual who can change problematic details in Traits."

Embarrassment coursed through her, as she actually hadn't thought of it. "I still don't know how to edit Traits, though. Or how to edit anything, for that matter."

"You have to start somewhere," Veit said, sounding even more sluggish by now. Somehow, he was managing to get closer to falling back asleep all the while they talked. "And again, that Trait is a problem."

Malwine scowled. "I'm not sure if my complaints outweigh the risk of ruining it outright, though?"

"If you ruin it, you can fix it. Make no mistake—I, too, hoped my father's writings would contain all the information you could possibly need, but as they did not, trial and error will have to pepper your path."

I really wish it'd had let me interrogate Teach about Forgery… Malwine shook her head. While Veit wasn't wrong, toying with the idea of altering the Skill would mean spending time analyzing it, and her anger was still fresh enough to potentially cloud her judgment there.

"…On a wholly unrelated note, would your constructs happen to be permanent, or have the potential to be permanent?"

Veit reopened his eyes only to narrow them immediately. "Do I look like a crafter to you?"

"That's quite the leap—I was just asking a question," she scoffed. He was still way too quick to read between the lines, and while that benefited her on occasion, it was annoying to be on the receiving end of it when she wanted to get something.

"Don't bother. You have not a single subtle bone in your body—I would know."

Malwine was too busy processing the fact that Veit might have just made a joke to be offended by the comment itself.

Still squinting, the forester exhaled slowly. "What do you want?"

"Hypothetically speaking, can your creations be moved around before you set them or whatever? And can you make pieces of glass that are all around the same color?"

"Depending on what you have in mind, probably. As for your second point, yes, but why?"

Malwine shrugged. "Cohesion is good to an extent."

"{Mosaic} wants to be colorful."

She almost let a retort out at that, but her own {Legacy} felt like it had behavior patterns at times, nevermind that it wasn't supposed to be something that could think. If he said one of his Affinities just liked being colorful, who was she to question that?

"Can it be colorful in a muted way then? Something light green or blue?"

The glare she got in response wasn't a 'no'.

"Thank you so much, Veit," Malwine said before he even agreed to anything. "Just give me a bunch of pieces, about, uh," she motioned around one of her fingernails, "this size? And solidify them or whatever once I'm done?"

Still squinting, Veit exhaled slowly. "Why are you like this?"

With a wave of his hand, small shards of glass practically rained upon the floor before her, somehow landing smoothly. As soon as the pieces stopped appearing, he closed his eyes again.

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"Rude," Malwine pouted, kneeling to examine the pieces. Shit, this was as far as my plan went. How do I turn this into… the thing?

She eyed the shards before her for far too long, trying to figure out how to go about this. While she'd had a general idea of what she wanted to gift to Thekla, actually making it would be a whole different story—especially without any real tools. She briefly considered asking for Veit's help, but the moment she opened her mouth, the man let out a single exaggerated snore.

Petty much? Malwine rolled her eyes, but chose not to disturb the forester for the time being, and he remained suspiciously silent from then on.

She straightened and started wandering around the room, accruing the necessary [Toll] to allow her double to open drawers. Veit has to own some haircare stuff. One of the last drawers she checked did contain some ceramic objects that at least vaguely resembled hair rollers. Eh, close enough.

Miraculously, at no point did Veit interrupt her to ask what she was up to, despite the fact that she had very much not been silent about it.

Picking one of the rollers out, she placed it on the floor before the shards of glass. It took some finicking as she laid her hand upon it, trying to position her fingers to match what she had in mind. Once that was done, Malwine followed it up with a shield around her wrist. Being able to play around with the form of her shields continued to be a blessing. The first attempt was a bust—not quite aligned properly. By the sixth try, she could see the workings of a shape she could at least deal with.

Now, on to the difficult part… She positioned the first piece around the roller, barely being able to keep it from immediately falling off. As she tried to add the new one, something became clear—there was no way she'd be able to put this together alone. Malwine just couldn't keep the glass from slipping away while she tried to make this.

…It looked like Veit's naptime would have to come to an end sooner than expected. "Can you solidify these into one piece as I go?"

The man awoke with a groan. From his expression as he looked at her 'work' so far, it was clear that he wasn't impressed. "Do you just want me to do everything for you?"

"Nah—you can just contribute."

"You—" Veit's gaze landed upon the potential hair roller. "Where did you get that?"

"I needed something to put the pieces over!"

"Sweet Devils, do I need to tell you everything?" the forester actually stood up then, briefly swaying on his feet. "What are you trying to make?"

"Something I saw on a book back in Beuzaheim. It looked pretty enough for a hairpin or something."

"And I take it this," he gestured vaguely at the shape she'd made with her shield, "is the object you wish to mimic?"

"Yep," Malwine nodded.

"Fine."

To the side of her hand, a spherical piece of bone just came into existence. Thinning and growing, it matched her depiction, if imperfectly so.

What followed were increasingly detailed requests as Malwine felt emboldened by how he kept actually doing what she asked.

"It needs to be a little shallower there."

"This part's too wide…. No, like this."

"Can you add grooves where I tell you to?"

"…Any chance you can somehow make it so the shards can be pressed into it so I don't have to wake you up every time I need something to stay in place?"

"Also, can I have a pair of tweezers or something? Actually, can you give all the pieces some raised points so I can hold them with the tweezers? I'm guessing you could always just smooth it all over once it's done?"

An exasperated Veit crumbled back into his recliner after the construct was done, not even bothering to address the matter of just what Malwine had gotten him to make.

It's almost a shame that this can't be a part of the final thing, Malwine sighed.

She'd have to be careful with her placement, as whatever Veit had done to make this moldable wouldn't allow the construct to bounce back into its original shape if she wanted to change something.

Still, at least she wouldn't need to risk hand cramps just to give her idea form.

As she tried to arrange the pieces into some semblance of a pattern, Malwine found she couldn't deny this was somewhat fun. While it went far from perfectly, she'd have dared guess this was actually pretty good for a first attempt.

"What in any Devil's name are you making?" Veit asked, glancing at her work from where he rested.

"I told you—I saw this in a book, and it looked pretty," Malwine stuck to her admittedly flimsy cover story. "Anyhow, since you're awake anyway—can you make these better follow the curvature of what I had to work with?"

Doing as she asked, the forester tipped his head.

"Great, that's exactly what I had in mind. Now, for the difficult part…"

"Difficult for who?" Veit shot her a glare.

"Both, probably. Can you remove most of the bone, specifically everything that wouldn't serve as grout between the pieces, and solidify that?"

Malwine could hardly contain her joy as the bone behind the glass faded from existence, leaving her with a piece that looked far much better than she'd expected it to. A small scallop shell, or at least the glassy representation of one. She wasn't done yet—not quite—but this was already much better than what she could ever have hoped to pull off on her own, and she hadn't even actually asked him to do most of the work. No, obviously, the forester just handled the materials. I did all the work! …At least most of it!

"This, this is it. What I saw in the book!"

Her teacher examined it for a moment.

"The shell of some animal," Veit said with a shrug—at least as much of a shrug as he could manage while lying down. "If you expect me to identify it beyond that, you are overestimating both my knowledge and just how awake I am right now."

"Boo."

She'd figured choosing something she knew could be found in books, yet would be hard to identify for most, would be the best choice. For all this world held reverence and fear alike towards the sea—at least under the waves—there didn't seem to be widespread knowledge about what normal, harmless beaches were supposed to be like. Similarly to how having a pier in her core somewhat helped her stave off most of the admittedly justified dread people felt towards the sea, something about having a seashell for a hairpin soothed her.

And that was the point, wasn't it? Malwine found herself liking this thing more and more… even if that just sealed the pin's fate.

Not to say she wasn't happy about how this turned out—of course she was. "Can you make the glass lighter in hue, and more… iridescent?"

That got a strange glance sent her way, but the requested changes made the variations in color across the glass pieces easier to ignore. No one piece fully match the other, but now it all looked tasteful—intentional—instead of jarring.

With that done, Malwine made her best attempt at puppy eyes. "Do you have any hair pins I could attach this to? Preferably something matching?"

She was basically asking him to create the pin—presumably, his resignation ran deep enough that he decided not to argue, as a u-shaped pin was unceremoniously dropped before her a second later.

After she had positioned it, Veit somehow connected the two items, leaving them to look as if they had always been contiguous.

"Perfect. Thank you," Malwine said, and this time, she meant it. She gazed at it, pushing forward only to find there was no response. "…Uh, Veit. Why doesn't any panel show up when I try to identify this?"

Not all objects in this world had panels pop up for them, of course. It seemed to only be a feature in items that interacted with the system in one way or another, but not all of them were functional. Something made like this felt like it should probably meet whichever criteria determined that sort of thing.

"Do you want that to have creation data?" Veit raised an eyebrow.

Malwine blinked. Oh. "…Fair." She shook her head, unwilling to let that damper her satisfaction at the work they'd done here, and got up. "Can you send this to my real self so I can put it in inventory?"

With a wave of his hand, the hairpin vanished. Coming up with an excuse for how she got this would be quite the ordeal, but with her gift prepared, all other concerns about it felt secondary for the time being.

Yes—Malwine wanted this hairpin. It appealed to her, and not just aesthetically. Having made it herself—even if with some help—certainly played a part there. In more ways than one, this object had value to her now, and if she'd interpreted what Hildegard had said to Adelheid correctly, she'd gotten the point of this right. Even if she'd made it for the explicit purpose of 'gifting' it to Thekla, she liked it.

I mean. There's nothing stopping me from using it in the meantime, if I can weave that into the cover story somehow…

A few months still stood between now and the wedding, after all.