“No, no!” Esmeralda shouted at the balding tailor. “Have you gone senile? How can you make a dress with a waist that tight?”
“But it’s the latest fashion in the court!” The man protested.
“And what’s that fractured fashion? Spilling the organs out of the lady with that meat grinder you call a corset? You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“Excuse me?” The tailor grew red. “How dares a lowly maid refer to me as…!”
“You have overstayed your welcome,” Christie announced calmly. “Out. Now.”
The tailor didn’t make a single sound more after the words came out of Christie’s mouth instead of Esmeralda’s. He simply skittered away like a cockroach.
“Sorry that you had to be referred to as that,” the redhead apologized to her ladylove’s mother once the tailor was long gone.
“That’s nothing, Christina,” the seamstress shrugged. “I was always looked down on because I was a seamstress instead of a tailor; this is nothing new.”
“First, that’s awful,” Christie smacked her lips. “What horrible mentality to have in the profession when there’s absolutely no difference between the two. And second, I told you to call me Christie.”
“Sorry, but no. It feels too weird if I did that when my daughter calls you that. I prefer to be boring like Hasel in that sense. Though it’s infinitely better than calling you Miss Christina or dearest Christina.”
“Yes, certainly,” the nouveau riche giggled. “I doubted I could hear being called by you like that without cringing.”
“Perks of not being raised in a more select cradle, or participating in elevated circles,” the seamstress shrugged and helped remove the awful corset that the tailor had made Christie wear. “I can simply choose not to act formally.”
“Is that why Agatha always talks to me formally?” Christie let out a massive groan once the knots of the corset came undone. Being entombed in cloth was somehow worse than being entombed in stone.
“Agatha?” Esmeralda chuckled. “Not at all. I can’t read my daughter’s mind, but I can guess that if she always uses a formal dialect when talking to you, it’s because she simply appreciates you that much. She feels the duty to talk to you like a knight might refer to her princess.”
“I am not a princess…” The redhead couldn’t help but blush.
“Of course not,” the brass-haired woman snorted as she finally removed the corset. “You’re a queen to her.”
Christie didn’t have a reply to that statement. It was trivial to tease Agatha, but she couldn’t do that in an argument against her ladylove’s mother.
“Wow…” Esmeralda mouthed as she took a step backward with the corset in hand. “Depths, girl. The corset didn’t do you any justice. You’re bigger than me or Diorite.”
“Really?” Now she was feeling conscious.
“I mean, Cordellia was already stacked, but if you add Hasel’s height into the equation, you really, really came out on top of everything.”
It was incredible how red Christie was getting, considering she was clothed and only her silhouette was visible. I think I am beginning to understand a bit of what the mock sapphire feels.
“But bigger than Miss Diorite?” The redhead inquired. “She is quite big herself too.”
“Diorite is broader than anything else. All in all, her breasts are small; it’s just the width of her torso that makes them look big. And mine are… somewhat big. Not that much, just about right for my height. But you… Christina, you are even bigger for your size.”
Christie embraced her body. “Really?” Now she was really conscious.
“I mean, that’s something you can see yourself in,” Esmeralda chuckled and passed her one of the dresses that were hanging with pins. An unfinished piece. Gingerly, Christie accepted it and started dressing herself with the seamstress’s help. “If anything, I don’t know how you aren’t dying from back pains. I’m still youthful, and I have a bad day or two here and there.”
“Well, I have always been in pain due to my agates, so if there was something, I doubt I would have felt it.” She said softly.
“Oh, I’m so sorry for bringing that up.”
“No, there is no problem.” Christie snickered. “I actually do not know why I have said that.”
“How come?” The seamstress looked at her, her hands stopping from moving pins around.
“Could you keep this a secret?” Esmeralda nodded and the redhead started. “I have only noticed this recently – well, some years ago now – but my agates hurt me. I always thought it was fatigue, because I was breathless most of the time when I was young, but it is now clear to me that it was pain. I was a weak and sickly child; even walking up the stairs was a daunting task for me on some bad days, as you have said. It was only after I got my recent growth spurt and I started training my body that I realized that the pain could be fixed, not something unavoidable.”
“So you haven’t told this to my daughter?”
“No,” she swayed her head. “Not because I am scared or something along those lines, but just because it did not cross my mind. I have not even told my dearest father. I truly believed this pain was something everyone experienced until not that long ago. In that sense, I had internalized and ignored the pain because it was just a part of life.”
“But not anymore,” the seamstress said softly.
“Not anymore,” Christie nodded with a slightly tired smile. “I do not think I would have put two and two together if it were not for Agatha. She lived painlessly yet exerted herself hard enough to bring pain just for the sake of bettering herself, which simply motivated me to do the same. A mostly unconscious decision, but a decision nonetheless.”
Esmeralda chuckled. Softly. Warmly. Motherly. “Quakes and faults, I’m proud of my girl.”
“How about you say that to her instead of me?” Christie giggled.
“No way! I know the little sapphire too well to give her such a confidence boost.” The seamstress said amusedly as she switched the placement of the pins to straighten some parts of the dress. “So there’s no more pain?”
“I would not say that there is not, it is just that I am so used to living with it, like a plugged nose. It was never exactly ‘painful’ even when I was younger, just taxing. Now that I am more well-built and healthier, I can go most time without noticing the pressure, if not feeling it outright.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“That’s nice to hear,” Esmeralda smiled and stepped onto a stool. Even though the seamstress was taller than her daughter, the difference in height was still pronounced enough that she required some vertical assistance to work. “Could you lift your arms?”
Christie did as commanded, and Esmeralda shifted some pins around in the area of her chest. The redhead couldn’t help but smile upon seeing the woman working. They really look alike… Her ladylove became hyper-focused whenever she worked on dresses for Christie – any dress really – and she ignored her as she only had eyes for the dress, but her mother was far more experienced, and even if her eyes shone with the same concentration, she had the mental agility to do some small talk in the meantime.
“Do you want some advice?” The seamstress muttered.
“About my chest or the pain?” The nouveau riche said coyly.
Esmeralda snickered. “About the pain.” Yet her eyes never left the fabric. “You’re young, still growing even; that means you can sustain heavy work better than aging people. You really need to keep working out and solve whatever issues plague you right now, because at some point, Agatecraft will become ever-so-slightly harder. Not by much, barely noticeable. You will just think it’s a bad day. But then, that difficulty just keeps growing and growing. Slowly but constantly.”
“Are you not able to use lithorica?” Christie raised a brow.
“Oh, I definitely can. And far more complex commands than my daughter – even if I have the feeling that advantage won’t last for long – but it’s that difficulty that makes things annoying. When I was young, I could go my whole day using commands, but now I get a stupid headache if I use the Third Stratum for more than an hour. Nothing that I can’t just ignore, but it’s still a nuisance. Especially because I know that it will just get worse and worse. And I’m still young!” She chuckled. “The same cannot be said for Adrien and Diorite. They used to use commands for everything when they were my age, yet in the months that I have been here, they have only used them for things they couldn’t do naturally with their bodies. That’s the truth of this world: there’s a malady called time, and it gets us all. So seize it before it seizes you. And dominate the agates inside you before it’s too late.”
“Seize it before it seizes you, huh?” The redhead hummed. “It sort of reminds me of what my dearest father said to motivate me when I left for the academy.”
“And what was it?”
“Eat the world,” Christie paraphrased with the same cadence and intonation as Hasel back then.
Out of nowhere, Esmeralda’s hands stopped moving. “He… said that?”
“Is there something wrong?” The tall girl tilted her head down to look at the seamstress, and she found an afflicted woman. Tears on the verge of formation.
“No, not at all,” Esmeralda sobbed very softly and recovered her usual composure, though not before wiping her eyes on her sleeves. “It’s just that’s what Fernando used to say. He used to say that he was going to eat the world.”
“Mind if I ask who this Fernando is?”
“My love and Agatha’s father,” the seamstress smiled, her eyes lingering for a moment in a time far gone. “I never shared anything about him with Agatha, and I didn’t have much chance to say more to her last year, and even now… I don’t think I want to talk about him – nor that she expresses much interest – but I’m glad his memory lingers in you now.” She chuckled derisively for a moment before continuing to work on the dress. “So, yes. Christina, heed your father’s advice and eat the world. Nothing would make me happier than that.”
Christie definitely lamented not being able to interact with Esmeralda before, because she had never felt more satiated in a conversation before. Her words felt like a warm and freshly-baked pastry, and she couldn’t have enough of them.
***
There was virtue in lazing around after reaching the holidays when you attended a very demanding academy. But there was also virtue in beating time itself.
So Christie found herself training early in the morning.
Nothing egregious, just a morning jog, but her ladylove’s recent effort with the Fourth Stratum and Esmeralda’s words motivated her to take more initiative. During the previous holiday, she had lazed around, but she couldn’t afford to do so now.
Chilly air entered and left her lungs as beads of sweat dripped on her skin. It was early enough to be somewhat cold, but Christie was wearing a blouse with short sleeves because she knew for a fact that it would get very hot very quickly.
By the time she was done with her twenty daily kilometers, that promise came true.
“Hoh?” Said the mock turtle as he crept on her whilst the redhead rested under the shade of a tree.
“What are you doing here, Fran?ois?” Christie asked with a giggle and pat the stoneshell’s head.
“Hah,” he grunted.
“I see,” the tall girl hummed and nodded. “I guess you have your freedom, but I would have expected you to just sleep in. Mountains do not tend to go on a walk.”
“Hoh.”
“Fair enough, fair enough.”
Christie jumped out of her sitting position and lazily walked into a clearing where grass didn’t grow. The mock turtle followed behind her.
“I would have never thought that I was capable of moving twenty kilometers in a single day, even less jogging them, and even lest of all that she would be able to do so in only two hours, but here I am,” the redhead knelt down and caressed the ground. “It is incredible what two years of constant discipline does to a girl and her body.”
It had to be mentioned that she didn’t usually even run twenty kilometers at the academy, as there were other chores that demanded her attention and stamina. She only allowed herself to go all out now that she could just laze the rest of the day after her jog.
There was only a thin layer of dirt on the ground she sat, then it was just meters and meters of bedrock. Christie just knew. She couldn’t tell whether this was an unconscious act of lapiloquia or a delusion of her fatigued body.
“Hoh!” Fran?ois grunted loudly, prompting her to look at the stoneshell.
“What is it, mock turtle?” The monster headbutted her on the arm. “What? Are you envious of the ground?” She giggled and Fran?ois grunted again. “Oh, do not be. I am not doing this because I appreciate the soil; in any case, it is because I hate it.”
“Hah?” The mock turtle tilted his head in confusion.
“So there is this thing called lapiloquia that allows us to command stones, but no matter how much I try, I cannot seem to get it. Which is problematic because I also cannot command my agates, my own stones, so I am without any kind of tools.”
“Hah,” mocked the stoneshell.
“I would slap you if I did not know better,” Christie harrumphed. Slapping a stoneshell could be considered quite literally a euphemism for being mentally challenged. “You are made of stone; do you think I would be able to command you?” Fran?ois took a step backward. “Do not worry, I am not going to try it!” The redhead giggled again. “Not that I think I would be able to do anything.”
Christie took a deep breath and pressed a hand against the ground. It was only a couple of hours after sunrise, yet the crown in the heavens was thrashing harshly.
“It is a bit funny,” she mused with her eyes closed. “Here we are, three lithic entities. One turtle of stone, one planet of rock, and one girl of agate. In a way, we are all one and the same.”
“Hoh…” Fran?ois didn’t sound as convinced.
“Yes, I guess there is a difference…” For some reason, Esmeralda’s words came back to Christie. “We are not all quite equal. You have your stones on the outside, and I on the inside, but still, there is just one difference between us and the world. A malady called time.”
Empires rose and fell, mountains shifted, and oceans might boil, but the world would still remain. Perhaps not unchanged, but still alive.
“Stone, ageless and infinite…” Christie took a deep breath and felt her inner sea tremble, yet it wasn’t out of weakness.
But strength.
She removed the Sleep command from her sea of stones and exhaled as it flowed free like water. There was a reason why she referred to her copious agates as a sea. Out of all the shapes her growing agate could take, it was an organic and smooth kind. Frozen waves in a painting. Both affected yet untarnished by time.
Christie heard Fran?ois grunt, but she ignored him. In an open space, her sea of agates wasn’t that dangerous to humans. But for a stoneshell? The actual sea might even be more dangerous.
The redhead kept her eyes closed and she felt her sea of stones pour out until it reached its maximum range and then were automatically recalled.
There was no Sleep command holding them.
Yet she felt no pain.
Christie couldn’t help but be reminded of that fateful day when she saved Agatha from the behemoth. Back then, she felt liberated because she used untold amounts of agate to make it to her ladylove.
The realization struck her harder than she had struck the behemoth.
The redhead collapsed on her back, her bun freeing itself and spreading like rivers of blood in a sea of emeralds and rubies. She couldn’t help but laugh aloud.
“It is such a stupid thing!” She found herself shouting. “Such a moronic, trivial, and obvious thing!”
Her throat hurt like a thousand stabbings, yet never before had she felt this liberated.
“Grow,” she whispered and the lithic sea obeyed.
Organically, her body was raised into the air, prompting another grunt from the stoneshell that she yet again ignored. Her eyes were closed, but she saw farther than ever before. Her chest heaved up and down in a ragged manner, still not recovered from the long jog and now further deprived of air from the shout.
But it didn’t matter.
For she wasn’t exhausted.
For she wasn’t hurt.
Well, at least not in a physical manner.
For now, a new type of malady assaulted her, though this one wasn’t called time, but hindsight.
“Materialization and mindfulness,” she whispered to herself before her consciousness gave out with the same suddenness of a slammed door.
- Woman finds a book that can gather infinite power and mentally gives her advice on how to break the laws of physics.
- Little prince has a council of five voices, who are alternate versions of him, that give him advice to stop doomsday.
- Cultivator that has a dryad inside of his mind and keeps her company whilst threatening to kill him at the same time.
- Mind mage that gets a god trapped in his mind after some tomfoolery and it occasionally whispers ominous things.
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