Chapter 59 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 59: Harvest and Hibernation 03
"Can you still feel the power of space?" Lucita propped herself on her elbow and looked into Delphine's eyes.
Delphine nodded without hesitation. "Of course. I am the origin of space."
Lucita considered: "But your body — the origin of space itself, didn't it merge with the world after you left the dragon's fall?"
"I understand the power of space by nature," Delphine said. "That has nothing to do with whether the body is present."
Lucita sat up, leaning forward until they were face to face: "Can you use the power of space right now?"
Delphine didn't know why she was asking, but she still raised her hand and pulled out a cubic pocket of independent space, only for it to collapse almost immediately under the pressure of the surrounding world-space.
Lucita, looking through the spatial layer of the world, watched the entire process of its creation and dissolution.
She straightened up abruptly, took Delphine by the shoulders, and said in a voice that couldn't quite contain its excitement: "Then why don't you try making yourself a body?"
Delphine looked puzzled.
Lucita laid out her idea.
Delphine's original body had never had a human structure to begin with. It had simply been the origin of space taking on a human appearance.
In other words, her body had been made entirely of spatial energy.
Which meant that since she still understood the laws of space and still possessed the power to manipulate spatial energy, since she had a complete self-image to work from, and since she had once experienced having pure spatial energy as her body, then in theory, she should be able to construct herself a body just like her original one.
Once she had that, even if it was only a human-seeming form, she would be able to do many things she currently couldn't.
Like being seen. Being heard. Being touched. Having a hug from someone other than Lucita…
Lucita described this idea with animated gestures. Delphine's eyes grew brighter with every word.
She nodded along, and held out a finger, drawing a clumsy stick woman figure in the air.
Simple as it was, it was genuinely remarkable. The stick figure was three-dimensional, and at Delphine's direction, it took two steps before slowly dissolving.
Lucita stared.
Watching Delphine's process from start to finish, she finally understood what “innate spatial comprehension” actually meant.
Normally, opening a space required anchoring it within an existing stable spatial structure, to avoid the pressure of the surrounding world-space and ensure the new space could persist.
Lucita's storage necklaces operated on exactly this principle.
Trying to build a new space directly inside the world-space like this would usually cause it to collapse immediately under the surrounding spatial pressure.
But Delphine's stick figure, though it too had dissolved, had shown Lucita something that looked like real hope.
Lucita's approach was to drain out the spatial nodes from a space and force her own structure into it, like a pebble lodged in a current, a visible foreign body interrupting the flow.
But Delphine had instead created a new current, attempting to join the main river.
She hadn't tried to change the world's existing spatial structure. She had tried to delete and reposition nodes within the existing spatial structure, forming a shape embedded inside the original space.
Those nodes weren't fixed. They shifted position as Delphine directed, creating the illusion of the figure “walking”.
In truth, every single spatial node in the stick figure had been replaced countless times during its motion, like a current of water trading molecules with the river it flows through, second by second.
And that was only an incomplete stick figure.
What if it were a complete human form?
No wonder she was the origin of space…
For Delphine, during the few days she had taken on human form in the dragon's fall, she must have been sustaining herself in exactly this way, which was why she was already so fluent at it.
Lucita's eyes were bright with insight, as though something had just opened up in her mind.
Delphine, too, clearly saw the possibility. She pressed her lips together, and a hopeful light came into her eyes. Then she closed them.
This time, she was serious.
Summer afternoons rarely had wind. Still trees, drifting clouds, the sun bleaching everything into a kind of overexposed unreality.
But now, there was a faint stir of air.
Grass blades trembled softly. So did the tips of Lucita's hair, her sleeves, and her fringe.
Delphine's translucent outline was reflected in Lucita's eyes, her short hair moving faintly, the hem of her skirt lifting in a slight arc with the breeze.
Her eyes were closed, but her hands moved with precision, tracing through the space in front of her.
First, the whole body: a just-sprouted, not-yet-grown adolescent form, one hundred and sixty-seven centimeters tall.
Then the modest chest, the slightly rounded belly, the long waist, the legs that looked a little short against the upper body in proportion.
She had a long neck, a rounded head, and an artist's hands, fingers with distinct, elegant knuckles.
This matched her mother's hopes for her. Her mother — the original Delphine's mother — had always wished she would follow in her own footsteps, and become a renowned painter.
Then came the refinement of the face.
A slightly elongated and slender jaw, eyes set wider apart than average, full lips. A young, unformed face.
She drew herself short chestnut hair, just to the ears. A white wooden-collar blouse. Dark brown mid-length trousers stained with paint. A pair of worn brown short boots with the nap rubbed away, clearly having walked many muddy roads.
This appearance was not originally hers. It was the real Delphine's everyday appearance, as her mother had described it again and again, holding that bone flute, in all her prayers.
And now she had inherited all of it. These images were bound to her now, inseparably.
The only thing that differed from the real Delphine was a pair of gold pupils.
Everything else about her was the shadow of another human being. Only those eyes, unique in the world, testified to her already-dead origins, the remnant glory of the dragon race, rotting now in the pages of history.
Delphine's finger curved slightly at the corner of the figure's mouth, and guided it into a natural smile.
The figure showed no sign of collapsing.
She directed it to take two more steps. It walked steadily. The only perceptible difference was a faint, constant breeze that seemed to follow with each step. Otherwise, nothing was out of place.
This current flowed as though it had grown from the river itself.
She did not open her eyes, but asked in a slightly unfocused voice: "Lucita?"
"Yes," Lucita said. "It's well done, exactly like you. I'm watching. It's fine. Go ahead."
Delphine nodded, pressed her lips together, and let her formless self fall forward into the new body.
A ripple of light, like a wave, spread out.
Delphine opened her eyes.
In that instant, those golden pupils, arriving at last into the world, sent a small tremor through Lucita.
Delphine tried to take two steps, clearly not yet accustomed to this newly created body. She stumbled and fell on the ground.
"Ow." She brushed the dirt from her hands and knees.
Lucita laughed.
What she heard was a real voice, carried through the air, not that blurred sound coming from some other layer the way it had always been before.
She laughed, and leaned down with an outstretched hand: "Welcome to the real world, Delphine."
When Linnea woke up, an unfamiliar face filled her entire field of vision.
"Ah!" she cried, flinging an arm out to push Delphine away, but her hand passed straight through her body, meeting only air.
"I did tell you not to get that close." Lucita lazily spat out the blade of grass she had been chewing.
"I was just curious." Delphine touched her own nose. "A real live mermaid! Are her teeth pointy? Does she have gills behind her ears?"
Linnea stared at Delphine in alarm, about to ask Lucita what was happening, when Delphine introduced herself: "Hello! I'm Delphine."
"Delphine?! Why can I see you now?" Linnea's mouth fell open in astonishment.
Delphine gave her a deeply mysterious smile, and said mischievously: "Guess."
As evening drew near, they needed to be back in town before sunset.
Lucita herded the sheep and made a deliberate detour to Sylvette's shop, where she paid a generous price for a frozen deep-sea flounder, then stopped at Ida's to pick up some farmed boar meat and a jug of milk.
This had to do with her recent cravings.
The vegetables and fruit she'd eaten in the human world had been fine enough, but the meat, without spices, was quite another matter. Some of it had barely even had the bloody flavor cooked out.
She had been nearly frantic with meat cravings lately, and the condition showed no sign of easing.
Dinner was steamed flounder and pan-fried meat patties, with warm milk.
The flounder needed little preparation. Its flesh was naturally smooth, springy, and delicate, leaving a lingering aftertaste that needed nothing added. Once it was steamed, Lucita scattered fine shreds of green onion over the top and poured over a spoonful of sizzling hot oil. The fragrance bloomed with the sharp hiss of oil meeting fish.
Then the meat patties.
The patty ingredients had not been cheap this time. Ida's newly available farmed boar meat.
Wild boar had previously come only from Mavis's mountain hunts, unprocessed, carrying a gamey smell.
Over the past couple of years, Ida, who had studied animal husbandry, had come up with an idea: she had the free-ranging male boars castrated before raising them.
After three years of this, the first batch of castrated males had finally come to market. Compared to their wild counterparts, the gaminess was indeed gone, and the texture had become considerably cleaner. People immediately began to appreciate the particular qualities of boar meat.
Its greatest virtue, compared to other meats, was its abundant fat. It rendered gloriously in the pan, sizzling and fragrant in a way that was impossible to resist.
The farmed boar had become an overnight sensation throughout the town. The trouble was Ida was currently the only supplier. Scarcity drove the price up, and buying even these few pounds had made Lucita genuinely wince.
But Ida's monopoly wouldn't last long. Soon enough, everyone would know the secret: the castrated boar is the good boar.
In the not-too-distant future, this ingredient would undoubtedly find its way onto every table in town.
But for now, back to the present. This precious small quantity of boar meat was treated by Lucita with the respect it deserved.
Mixed with chopped spring onion and a few other seasonings, then wrapped in dough that had been worked to its full elasticity with the help of a half-cooked bun casing, it came out with paper-thin skin and a juicy, springy filling — a large, gorgeous stuffed patty.
Finally, the milk was warmed. That was dinner.
For Lucita, who had gone without spices for so long, as well as for Violet and Linnea, who had been eating out for a full month, it was a deeply satisfying meal.
As for Delphine, her body was incorporeal, untouchable even to human hands, let alone food.
Fortunately she had no particular appetite, an ethereal little spirit subsisting on wind and dew, and was at this moment hanging from a branch of the wisteria tree in the back yard, perfectly absorbed in watching a cicada, barely breathing.
The cicadas sounded raucous in the daytime, but in the deep night, their continuous sound filling the silence, they somehow made the night feel quieter.
The sturgeon-eye lamps were put out, one by one. People drifted into their dreams. The tireless Delphine dissolved her spatial form at last and floated beneath the wisteria tree, entering her own deep sleep.
Another night, well slept.
On such a lovely summer evening, it seemed as though everything was moving toward new life.
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