Sometimes people didn’t know how badly they’d been hurt by something. Unaware that their lives were in danger.

A brawler might take one too many blows to the head and not be aware till he lay down, to rest, never to stand again. A soldier might take a fatal cut or catch an arrow and not learn of it, till he’d almost bled out.

An alchemist might slowly be poisoned to death whilst working in her lab, each breath bringing her closer to the end.

Sometimes people thought they were fine, when they really weren’t. And that was the case for Van.

She’d thought she was prepared, she’d thought was resigned. She’d believed she had resolved herself, putting her focus on the future rather than thinking on the regretful past. .

She thought that she’d somehow accepted how her life had fallen apart in just a few days time, leaving her jobless, homeless, and unexpectedly married.

And granted, she was well aware that the way things had turned out, were far from the worst possibilities that could have come to pass.

She could have been captured. She could have been forced to sire some legal inheritor for her troublesome wealth, and then subsequently passed of the same “disease” that her mother had died of.

But she didn’t and for that she was indeed grateful. But at the same time...for someone who highly valued predictability, for someone who generally needed to have control in her life, everything that had passed made for quite the heavy blow.

Heavier than she knew, the weight of it slowly sneaking up on her till some time after she and Edwin were inside his ship and she just suddenly found herself feeling exhausted.

Dead on her feet, but in a vague sort of way, like she knew she needed to lie down, but couldn’t really find a place to do it.

She asked if the ship had a bedroom and Edwin answered to the affirmative telling her to follow the lights on the floor.

Which she did, half hypnotized by the pulsating rainbow trail that flowed out from underneath her feet. Running just a few feet ahead of her, like an over eager dog.

Eventually the light disappeared, stopping at a blank wall, or rather what she thought was a blank wall. She stared at it, not knowing what to do, had she reached out towards the wall, the wall would have opened up revealing the room inside.

And were she not so preoccupied she would have realized that there was in fact a slight door shaped recess in the wall to indicate that such a thing was possible.

Not knowing what else to do, she stood there lost for a few minutes, just staring till she saw there was one nearby door that was indeed open.

She stepped through it and found herself in a room with a great swirling pool of roiling blue- silver. Frothing like a troubled sea.

Naturally, she wasn’t so far gone that she’d assume that this was Edwin’s version of a bedroom, the boy wasn’t “that” odd. And even if he was, she trusted that he’d at least have the common sense to know that this wouldn’t be what she meant when she asked for a place to lie down.

Which begged the question of what the pool actually was.

She stood at its edge, as if mesmerized till suddenly and inexplicable she found herself with a burning desire to know. Remembering how Edwin said that the ship was a part of him, she only felt a “little” self-conscious as she talked to the empty air.

“Hey, Eddy, can I ask you something?”

The room hummed, and then Edwin appeared from within a blindingly bright doorway.

“ You called?”

She rubbed her eyes, some remnants of the light from the doorway still burnt into her retinas. Half of her wanted to ask, just what that light was, and why it looked so damn inviting, but the rest of her was still obsessing over the pool.

“What’s this pool?”

Edwin looked at the roiling silver-blue waters, mulling over his answer. It wasn’t that he was considering whether to lie or not, it was more that he wasn’t sure how to even begin explaining the mechanisms and science inherent in his person, to someone from a comparatively primitive world.

She of course was looking at the water as well, and it was like that moment where one is standing at the edge of the roof of a very tall building, and a very dangerous, very insidious little voice starts asking why you can’t take just a few more steps forward.

“Well, uh...so within my personage, there are these...elements. They make me stronger, they make me faster, they make me smarter. Their pretty responsible for who and what I am and they ensure that instead of getting weak with time, I’m always getting stronger.”

“Okay…” said Van. Finding Edwin’s explanation mostly believable.

“Yeah, so, this pool is pretty much just entirely made up of those elements. And when I’m in it, it further boosts my body’s ability to improve itself, heal itself and maintain itself.”

Van nodded, understanding the gist of what he’d said, feeling too drained to worry about the fact that she was probably missing some underlying aspect of what he was saying.

“So this is a pool filled with the stuff that makes you stronger?”

“Er...r-, right.” Edwin. Slowly getting a sense that something was off about the young woman beside him.

She leaned over the edge of the pool, staring at her tired reflection,

“So, what would happen if someone who wasn’t you were to get inside the pool?” said Van.

Edwin actually paused to consider, his expression thoughtful.

“Mhm….Well, in that case I suppose it depends on their classification.”

“Classification?”

“Without getting too tangled up in the details, this is a pool of pure creation and destruction. Non-friendlies and hostiles would probably be ripped apart, dissolved like in acid, or I don’t know...lava?…”

The first warning that Van wasn’t in her right mind probably should have come to her when heard that found herself not horrified, or at least slightly more wary from what she’d heard.

“And, let’s say that they are friendlies…”

“Then the pool would probably make them stronger too, filling them with the same…”elements” that are inside of me, albeit at a slightly lower concentration, since it takes a while for them to fully innundate and assimilate with a new unit….Building them up into a bigger, stronger them.”

Again, Van just nodded. Still staring at her own reflection as if she expected it to speak.

“Uh...huh...Good to know… Now just asking here, what would a wife count as?”

Again Edwin had to think before deciding on his answer.

“An allied unit? Authorized ship personnel? Or maybe just someone who's part of the command structure?…I’m honestly not sure...I’ve never been married before.” he said. Chuckling nervously.

She understood the ally part, and she knew what personnel was, and so discarded the command structure part as half gibberish.

“Again...good to know.”

*Sploosh*

She was in the pool before she even had time to really think about what she was doing. It wasn’t some strange new obsession about being a better version of herself. It wasn’t that her eyes had been opened to the virtues of strength and the suffering inherent in weakness. It was just a simple strange desire to see what that water feel like. A desire to try and literally drown her troubles.

Van jumped into the pool of blue-silver water. And was unsurprised to find that it didn’t feel water. It felt closer to shimmery, shivery air. Thick like syrup, dragging her down and filling her lungs and nostrils. As well as all the rest of her facial orifices.

Some of it poured into her mouth, the rest found other entrances, going through her pores and any other holes it could find. It was like jumping into the sea only to find out that all the water was made of spiders.

At first it hurt, at first the creepy, crawly feeling of insects crawling inside her skin, moving up and down her veins and capillaries was bad enough that she believed she’d finally hurled herself off the precipice of madness.

Then the pain stopped, and a contentment took its place.

As a harried Edwin, hurriedly entered his system protocol to change her permissions, and she floated in the pool as little more than nervous tissue and a few free floating organs suspended in a pool of blood.

He stopped the kill command and ordered a reconstruction, and thankfully between the pools programing that had it scan everything it enveloped before either remaking it or destroying it, and Edwin’s numerous scans of his family members, just in case some kind of health problem turned up that he needed to use nanotech to resolve, was enough that nanites new how to put back what they’d eaten away.

For Van, it was just pain and then comfort and then something beyond comfort. The term womb-like isn’t used very often and for good reason. But that was what this was, it felt like Van’s dead mother had come back from the other side and pulled the girl back inside of her. Letting her be born again.

A period of gestation that lasted for a roughly twenty-four hours time, till she was finally ready to come out.

With a worried Edwin standing by the side.

“.....”

Van climbed, clear headed and refreshed. Not quite understanding why she’d done what she’d done but aware that it was definitely very dangerous and incredibly stupid. From the unhappy and very relieved look on Edwin’s face, she knew that if he were her, he’d be yelling at her. Telling her just how stupid she had been. But Edwin, wasn’t a yeller.

“You’re okay right? Everything’s functional.” said Edwin.

“Nn…” said Van. Not really responding Mostly because she didn’t really know answer to the question.

He pulled her close, and then sort of stumbled back once he just realized that she was naked, since apparently the pool didn’t recognize her clothing as being part of her. Eating it away.

For a moment they both felt awkward because she was naked, and because they both knew she’d done something, outlandishly foolish.

For a few seconds she felt mortified and extremely embarrassed, till it struck her that the other person was her husband, and he wasn’t seeing anything she hadn’t expected to show him later.

Which left only the cause of her nakedness, as a source of embarrassment.

“I..uh...where’s the bedroom again?” said Van. Slightly dazed. And needing to get away to collect herself and figure out what she’d just done, as well as why she’d done it.

Edwin pointed towards the open door and a section of the wall on the other side of the hallway slid away, revealing a somewhat sterile looking but otherwise normal bedroom, complete with mattress, wardrobe and a desk.

“There’s uh..there’s some clothes in the closet, it’s probably not very fashionable but it’s made to be comfortable and it’ll definitely fit.”

“Thanks…” said Van.

Confused and frightened, her thoughts muddled. She wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking, or if she’d been thinking at all.

*****

Now forty-eight hours after losing her mind and finding it again, Vanessa vis-Oddmund sat in front of her former brother and current brother in law.

Wallace hugged Edwin and then he hugged her.

They made small talk, giving vague but mostly truthful explanations of what happened before they left their hometown.

And while all this was happening, a small part of Van was looking at herself, and looking over her actions, and just sort of knocking its head against a wall.

Filled with an intense recrimination because she knew for a very short period, she’d nearly killed herself, and while she was mostly sure that dying hadn’t been her intent, she knew it was a bad choice to have made. Insane. Just simply a mad thing to do.

That it seemed to have all worked out had no bearing on the situation. Van had never before really felt like she was her father’s child, but it seemed that the McBriar madness was an actual thing. Something she’d have to keep a very tight handle on. Yet another thing, she’d have to keep under her control.