Chapter 12 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 12: The Nightingale's Past 08
What is space?
The dimensions of the world are composed of alternating time and space, intangible, yet omnipresent.
Space can be infinitely large, and also infinitely small. Small ones make up large ones, large ones can separate into small ones, leaving behind countless spatial nodes...
Countless evenly distributed light points appeared before her eyes, suspended in the air.
Lucita reached out to pluck one and examined it carefully in her left palm, then opened her right hand, where an identical light point appeared.
That was an imitation she had condensed with her mental force.
She swept away the spatial nodes before her, used eight light points to pull out a small square space, stretching until the spatial walls were infinitely thin and the space volume was only the size of a palm.
After thinking for a moment, she added one more spatial node to the center of each of the six walls.
The spatial walls suddenly doubled in thickness and looked much more solid.
Before she had time to feel pleased, a distinct sense of compression came, and the small space suddenly began to tremble violently, then collapsed and dissipated into the air.
Lucita was stunned.
The space of this world was complete and whole. Forcibly clearing out a vacuum area and filling it with a manually created rudimentary small space simply couldn't withstand the compression caused by the world's self-repair.
Moreover, space nested within space was against the rules.
She watched the light points before her restore their complete, even arrangement, then thought for a moment, took off her wooden nightgown cufflink, and tried to stretch out a space inside the solid carrier.
If clearing and reshaping wasn't feasible, try strengthening and expanding.
The spatial nodes inside the cufflink were small and dense. She pressed the nodes she created into them, merging with the original nodes, supplementing the spatial nodes' energy. This way she could use these nodes to pull out a larger space inside the cufflink.
In the end, she created a triangular pyramid-shaped space of about half a liter in size.
Establishing a space inside a solid object consumed enormous mental energy. She spent all her effort on expanding the capacity and had no strength left to stabilize it, so she simply made the most stable structure possible to keep it from easily collapsing.
After finishing all this, Lucita's mental energy was nearly exhausted, with occasional sharp pains in her head. She filled the cufflink space with lake water, and only then did she let out a sigh of relief.
She glanced at Garcia, still no sign of leaving.
It was already midnight.
With the container issue resolved, Lucita had some leisure to turn and observe this lake.
The banks were lush with grass and flowers. On the moist ground near the water's edge grew clusters of yellow daffodils, violets, and vetiver irises, with pristine white buds extending between their slender leaves. Whether from years of the lake's moisture or not, these flowers and plants emanated waves of cool fragrance. Breathing it in seemed to have a special effect of refreshing the mind.
Lucita moved her nose.
A fragrance?
Aside from "death" and "life," she hadn't been able to smell anything for several days. Suddenly catching this faint fragrance left her surprised and uncertain.
Every time she smelled something since losing her sense of smell, the result had been rather uncanny.
She waited a while but noticed nothing changing. Garcia, however, had already turned to leave.
She quickly followed, then hesitated for a moment and turned back reluctantly, pinching off an unidentified white flower bud and placing it in her front pocket.
She lowered her head and sniffed, it really was a floral fragrance, carrying a slightly bitter astringency, fresh and pleasant.
Fresh flowers wilted easily. She had originally wanted to take another button and open up a small space, but she truly had no strength left to manage it, so she could only carry it with her for the time being.
On the way back, Lucita gradually began to smell various other scents.
The smell of rotting wood, the scent of bird feathers, the sweet fragrance of bluebells in the flower beds, even the fishy smell of the sturgeon-eye lamps and the wheat fragrance from Teresa's bakery. All the hidden and unhidden scents mingled together and surged into her nostrils. Everything was growing, and this spring night suddenly became vivid and delightful.
Her sense of smell had returned.
But—how had it returned? And had her nose ever been this sensitive before?
No, did a normal person's nose have this kind of sensitivity?
Lucita despairingly discovered that ever since she had woken up and arrived in this place, her body had never been normal.
She opened her cufflink space and sniffed the lake water stored inside, it was still the same grassy scent. This special scent that only she could smell, at this moment, actually brought her a sense of security.
Garcia returned to her bedroom to continue sleeping. Nothing strange happened again. Lucita lay in bed but couldn't fall asleep for a while.
Since returning from the lake, she had felt a floating, elevated sensation, as if the entire world had lifted a barely-there veil and become wholly real before her.
Her overly acute sense of smell immersed her in this world in an unprecedented way, as if her body had become intertwined with all manner of scents.
Thump, thump, thump.
Her heart beat intensely. Blood was pumped from her heart and flowed quietly through her vessels. The blood vessels buried beneath her skin were bluish-purple. Her skin was warm and soft. Her hair, washed the day before, gave off the scent of soapwort.
I am alive, she thought inexplicably.
Some indistinct colorful light points gradually appeared in her field of vision. Unlike the spatial nodes, they weren't stationary, they drifted around through the air. She wanted to touch them as she had touched the spatial nodes, but always felt a layer between them, unable to touch anything solid, as if it were all an illusion.
Ever since she discovered her several innate talents, looking at the world was like having several extra pairs of eyes. When using healing arts, she could see the points of vitality on everyone's bodies. When using hypnosis, the mental world she connected to was vast and boundless. When attempting to create a space, she could see the spatial nature of the entire world, that everything was supported by spatial nodes.
All of these she could not only perceive but also influence through her mental force, thereby manifesting special abilities.
But now this world before her eyes, she could only perceive it faintly and hazily, without being able to exert the slightest influence.
Moreover, she had three foreign bloodlines in her body and had already discovered all their corresponding talents. Now, sensing more of this world, what kind of power was floating in it?
She took that flower bud from her nightgown pocket. The flower was delicate, having been plucked not long ago, the petal edges were already showing some curling and bruising.
Within the bud dwelled a faint cluster of colorful light points, which seemed to come from the same source as those light points floating in the air.
She tried sensing through her mental power, still to no avail.
By this point, her mental energy had been depleted to nothing. After this attempt, another sharp pain came from her mind, and the fatigue suppressed by excitement swept over her again.
She pushed down her confusion, set the bud aside, and pulled the cotton blanket tight around herself.
The next day, she was woken by the sounds of children playing outside the window and neighbors exchanging greetings. It seemed the sun was already high in the sky.
Fortunately, when she opened her door, she ran right into Garcia, who had also just woken up.
The two tacitly ignored the slight awkwardness.
She briefly explained Garcia's sleepwalking situation to her, took one of her round flasks and poured in a large portion of the lake water, then quickly left Iris Street and knocked on Mavis's door.
Mavis hadn't gone into the mountains to hunt. She had been staying home to accompany Sophia all this time and was visibly looking much more haggard. Hearing Lucita’s reason for coming, intense light immediately burst in her eyes. She took the flask and thanked her repeatedly.
“Sophia barely recognizes me lately,” Mavis said with a sigh as she led Lucita inside. “She sleeps longer each day. The way she looks at me feels more and more distant, almost like an ordinary nightingale.”
Sophia lay on the small wooden bed Mavis had specially made for her, placed beside her bedroom bed. When the two came in, she was still sleeping.
Mavis picked her up and rubbed her head. Sophia opened her drowsy eyes.
Lucita made eye contact with her and knew Mavis hadn't been exaggerating at all. Compared to the humanlike inquisitive gaze from their first meeting, Sophia's eyes now were clear and vacant, almost indistinguishable from the ordinary birds in the forest.
Fortunately, when the lake water was brought out for her, she still showed an instinctive longing.
Birds drink water very slowly. The two patiently held the cup until it was completely drained.
Sophia seemed dazed for a moment, swayed her body twice, spread her wings and fluttered onto the bed, then actually burrowed into Mavis's blanket.
"Sophia!" Mavis called out anxiously.
But then the blanket gradually bulged into a human shape, startling Mavis so much that her hand reaching for the blanket froze.
At that moment, a golden-haired head peeked out from the edge of the blanket.
Sophia's green eyes still held the confusion of waking from a deep dream. Her golden hair was disheveled, and her bewildered expression made her look just like that naive child from years ago, as if untouched by any passage of time.
She looked around in unfamiliarity, then turned her gaze to Mavis and smiled clumsily: "Don't cry."
Mavis startled and wiped her face, only then realizing it was already covered with cold, wet traces.
Even though Sophia had cleverly burrowed into the blanket first, Lucita still felt an inescapable awkwardness facing her wrapped in the blanket without a stitch of clothing.
Tactfully, she went outside and pulled the door closed, leaving the space for this ill-fated pair of friends.
She sat outside for quite a while. Lucita tried opening the cufflink space and discovered that at some point the space had already collapsed.
Now it was just an ordinary wooden button.
This was to be expected. Her spatial ability was still very unpracticed. That the space she'd constructed for the first time had maintained stability long enough for her to successfully bring the lake water back was already an extraordinary stroke of luck.
After a while longer, the bedroom door was finally pushed open, and Mavis walked out with swollen eyes.
Seeing Lucita, she turned her back again, took a breath, and when she spoke, her voice was still thick with congestion: "She knows how you got that water that turned her back. She wants to talk to you, is that ok for you?"
Lucita happened to have questions she wanted to ask as well. She took the opportunity to stand up, patted Mavis on the shoulder, and entered the bedroom.
Sophia had already changed into Mavis's clothes, a light brown plaid cotton nightgown. Her uncut golden hair had been tied in a low braid with Mavis's cotton cord and hung to her chest. She sat casually on the edge of the bed. Her figure still had the look of someone not yet fully grown. Wearing Mavis's clothes, she looked somewhat baggy, with the cuffs and trouser legs folded up several times.
Seeing her come in, Sophia stood up to greet her, eyes curving into a smile: "Hello, Lucita. I heard from Mavis that you brought that flask of lake water back from the forest. Is that right? Thank you so much."
Her way of speaking was just as innocent and childlike as she looked, not at all like the Sophia that Mavis had described, who once fought her way out of the city, but more like the child Mavis described at their first meeting, the one who tried to frighten people with naive lies.
This was understandable. This child wasn't yet an adult by elven standards.
Lucita couldn't help but soften her tone: "Don't mention it, Sophia. Actually, I have many unresolved questions about that lake. May I ask you about them?"
"Regarding that lake, I think I might know a little." Sophia answered straightforwardly: "Among the elven race, it's considered a semi-open secret. Every elf knows it, it's just not easy to spread outside. You could ask any random elf and get an answer. It's just that I heard because of me, my clanspeople haven't set foot here for ten years, so you couldn't ask anyone."
"More than five hundred years ago, when the elven race was still flourishing, that was the sacred lake where blessings were bestowed upon every newborn member of the clan."
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