After the discussion between the two adults the atmosphere had improved greatly and a new daily rhythm took shape in the small home, with two weeks now having passed since Maple left on her quest for help. The family grew used to the change in cuisine and the new distribution of chores.

  Willow’s reading lessons were going surprisingly smoothly. Maybe it was because of her memorizing the majority of her mother’s stories, but when she was informed of what exactly each symbol meant it was easy to link them to the words and concepts they represented. The main difficulties lay in the edge cases and the more complex symbols not present in her mother’s scrolls.

  It was during one of these difficult moments that the girl began begging her aunt for a brief break.

  She slumped over the kitchen table, mop of curls spreading out around her but mindful of the container of ink near her head, and the still wet brush in her hand. She didn’t know where her aunt acquired the brushes and ink that they were now using to practice, but the girl assumed that her impromptu teacher had a supply stashed somewhere in her own home.

  “Aunt Jieun, can we please have a break. My hand’s cramping up again.” She whined. She had just wanted to learn to read, but her aunt was quite insistent on teaching her to write as well. She had at one point even threatened to teach her numbers and math, but thankfully her father intervened and put that off for a later date when he noticed how upset she was at the prospect.

  She could count just fine, anything more just seemed excessive.

  Her aunt clicked her tongue at another call for a break, but eventually relented. “Fine, do more of those hand stretches I taught you. And don’t slump over the table like that, your hair’ll be a mess if it gets in any ink.”

  As the girl straightened up and started doing the exercises her aunt requested of her, she looked down at her friend on the table observing the writing practice with a surprising amount of interest. Well, as much interest as a small rock could show in anything.

  Willow was still unsure what had caught Phoebe’s attention when she had started the process of learning how to read and write, but the little stone was a constant presence during the lessons even if they themself couldn’t participate. It was a far cry from Eos, who simply cheered her on from their place next to the girl’s heart, but had no interest in the process of learning themself.

  Her aunt tolerated the rock spirit’s presence because they weren’t a distraction and because she was curious about what the spirits her niece had bound were like. Nascent spirits like the candle flame and pebble spirit typically didn’t have much of any kind of personality, but were more susceptible to picking up traits from their human partner. The fact her rock spirit had seemingly displayed an interest in learning when they were so freshly bound was fascinating to the woman. She wanted to attribute it to the spirit already having some residual traits from Meteoros, but from her recollections the meteor spirit didn’t have any such inclinations.

  Eventually Willow finished the hand exercises to help prevent future cramps, but instead of wanting to continue writing she looked up at her aunt and pleaded. “Can you please show me another qi technique?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Jieun arched a brow at her niece's attempt to weasel out of continuing the lesson. She felt that she had been quite clear on her expectations when they had first started. However…

  “Fine, we’re actually far ahead of where I thought we’d be at this point.”

  Willow was pleasantly surprised at that statement, she had been trying to get her aunt to show her something new from the very first day, but she had refused each time. She even showed her reading teacher the harmonize technique she already knew, but that just seemed to make her more reluctant to show her anything. The girl wasn’t sure why, maybe the technique was considered too simple by her aunt’s standards, so it wasn’t worth the woman’s time.

  The reality was somewhat the opposite of the young girl’s guess. When Jieun had seen her niece utilize her spirit’s concept to blend into the environment she had quite a shock. It’s a simple matter to make use of a bound spirit’s energy type, especially since the binders core shifts to match their spirit’s element over time. It’s considered far more advanced to make use of a spirit’s concept to perform a technique, though the woman tried to rationalize it to herself that the concept her niece was making use of would likely aid the user in its use by its very nature.

  However she still felt she had to be careful on what she showed the girl, as she worried that anything she showed her would be quickly replicated. That hadn’t happened with the basic uses of water qi she had shown off while dishwashing, but Jieun worried that was a fluke more than anything else and had stopped herself from doing that again in the girl’s presence once she realized how quickly she seemed to pick up on things. Something basic and safe seemed appropriate for now.

  Willow stared with wide grey-green eyes as her aunt held out her hand and created a perfect sphere of water floating above her hand. It wasn’t the flashiest thing, but it was still neat. Her teacher then seemed to add a drop of ink to the center and the darkness spread through the entire orb.

  The girl tilted her head in thought as she fully parsed what she was sensing. It wasn’t real ink. Just like it hadn’t been real water, just her aunt shaping the energy she produced in her core into the shape of ink. Which led her to a question.

  “Aunt Jieun, do you have another spirit I haven’t met?” Willow had met the rain spirit, Angaebi, that her aunt used to make the pond near her home, but she hadn’t ever heard of the woman having a second spirit.

  Her aunt smirked and answered with a simple “Yes”.

  When the woman refused to elaborate without further prodding Willow asked if she could meet them.

  “They aren’t for polite company.” Was all she would say further.

  Her teacher then asked Willow if she could replicate the feat, with Earth energy preferably, though they moved outside first so they didn’t potentially get a bunch of dirt all over their freshly cleaned floor.

  Holding Phoebe in one hand, the girl tried to create a ball of earth in the other. It was an exercise she was finding difficult. The little rock spirit in her palm didn’t have a lot of energy of their own, and her core was mostly unattuned aside from the layers of yin and yang on its surface. That meant she had to try and attune the ball of pure qi hovering above her palm to earth energy after its creation which was proving impossible.

  Maybe she was looking at this in the wrong way. What if she instead tried to harmonize the two using her yin friends concept.

  First she just had to harmonize with Phoebe using their shared connection and…

  Jieun looked on in horror as her niece turned herself to stone.