As Nova was walking over to the table she saw several things, including some small coins, one of silver and a significantly smaller one made of gold. There was also a potted plant as well a couple of different rocks, a small pile of dirt that Cobre brought in from outside, a glass of water, a hand fan, and… a dead fly?

  “Okay before we begin I want you to look at all these items, and tell me if you see anything special about any of them.”

  “How exactly does that help determine my affinities, its just a bunch of random stuff?” As Nova finished speaking, her eyes landed on the small piece of copper pipe. At first she didn’t quite understand what caught her eye, but as kept watching it seemed to be little green particles floating around the pipe.

  As Betty watched her staring at the pipe, a smile slowly spread across her face. “Ahh a copper affinity, tell me, what color are the motes of essence that you see?”

  “What color? Are copper motes supposed to be green?” Nova said, a little confused. “If anything, I would be expecting brown or something.”

  “Well yes, normally copper essence would be brown. However It appears that this copper pipe has started to oxidize, so the copper essence is mixing with the air essence and turning it from brown to green.” Betty explained. “Any decent Allomancer or even an Aeromancer would be able to separate them rather easily. Do you see any other motes coming off the other items? How about the fan, do you see anything coming off of it?”

  Nova looked at the fan, it just seemed like an ordinary hand fan. Although the piece of copper pipe looked pretty normal to her too until she noticed the motes of essence. With that in mind, Nova focused even harder on the fan. After a few moments of staring at it and feeling a little silly, she finally said, “No, I don’t see anything special about the fan.”

  “Good, you’re not a liar. You don’t see any essence because there isn’t any to see. Cumulus himself wouldn’t see any.” As Betty finishes speaking she picks up the fan and starts waving it. “How about now?” Almost immediately Nova began to see small, almost see-through motes of essence in front of the fan.

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  “Yeah, I can see them, but they’re almost completely transparent. There’s also not very many of them.” Betty responded with a slight chuckle, “Did you expect this little fan to produce a lot of essence?”

  “Now that you know what air and copper essence look like, let’s see if you can separate the oxidized copper essence into copper and air.” Betty said as if it was simply the next logical step, but Nova wasn’t quite so confident. I mean she had literally just learned about essence, and now she was expected to manipulate it. Nova honestly just hoped that essence couldn’t explode.

  Betty began to give her instruction. “Now concentrate on the motes you see around the bit of pipe, as you focus on them remember that that is the product of two essences. Now when you’ve done that I want you to imagine them separating back into the two components that make up oxidized copper.”

  “Ok, I’ll try but no promises, I’ve never done this before. I’ve never been to this world before either.” Nova started to look at the green motes around the pipe, and as she watched them she reminded herself that what she was seeing was two different essences. She imagined that they were a grilled cheese sandwich (probably because it’d been a few hours since she’d eaten anything and she was starting to get a little hungry.) She imagined grabbing the essence on either side as if it was a grilled cheese, then she imagined pulling the grilled cheese…errr… essence apart. A few moments passed and all of a sudden about half of the green motes suddenly separated into the almost invisible motes she’d seen from the fan, and some.. other essences.

  The essence that Nova presumed was the copper essence that Betty had been talking about was absolutely beautiful, it was if the essence wasn’t just the color brown, but rather that it was the concept of the color brown. As crazy as it seemed, Nova figured that her favorite color was now whatever this color is. Nova stared at them for a second, they felt as if she could just reach out and touch them. She reached out her hand to brush against the motes of copper, as her hand passed by them they turned into actual tiny pieces of copper.

  Betty couldn’t believe her eyes, she’d heard that Tier 4 mancers could coalesce essence just by coming into contact with motes of their affinity, but she’d never thought that it was something she’d witness for herself. After all, Tier 4 mancers were as rare as gold to most of the population. “COBRE, GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW!” Cobre, who was standing right there watching the whole time simply put a hand on her shoulder. Betty jumped from her husband scaring her, she looked up at him as they heard the sound of tiny copper beads falling as Nova’s hand passed through the motes of copper essence. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Cobre looked at his wife and as tears fell from her eyes, he remembered the reason he fell in love with her. She saw the beauty in absolutely everything, even him.

  Cobre looked at the young human in front of him and said “Young lady, in all my days I’ve never seen a Tier 4 Mancer, it’s an honor to be the ones to tell you that you’re probably one of the strongest Allomancers in Phosphus. I wouldn’t even begin to be able to afford a fair wage for your help, best I can do is give you some training with your copper affinity, can’t help with air though. Obviously you can stay in the wagon and join our meals, as far as pay best I can offer is thirty essence a day. When we work that is, does that sound fair to you?”

  “Sure, I guess, I have one question though. How do you pay someone in essence when it’s literally everywhere?”

  “With Arck crystals, of course. How else would you pay someone? You do have an Arck crystal don’t you?”

  “Arck Crystal?”