Hi, Sora-sensei here~

Still no sign of a repentant borrower in sight. *sigh* Oh well. Please keep up your prayers.

Here's a little something to help take the edge off of the cliff-hanger I left last time.

Enjoy~

--------------------------------------

Briar’s unconscious body fell into the seemingly bottomless chasm, picking up speed as it went. After who-knows how far or how long she fell, Briar’s magic bag began to glow.

Out floated the white mana stone, which was now shining with a vibrant pink color. It matched speed with Briar, floating just above her as the glow began to cover her entire body.

Bit by bit, Briar’s fall was slowed down, until, by the time she reached the floor of the chasm, she was serenely floating slowly down, like a dandelion fluff.

All of her exhaustion, her muscle strains from exceeding her limits, and her rebound from severe mana depletion were healed just as easily as if they had never happened.

Then the stone returned once more inside Briar’s bag, its vibrant pink glow, fading to a more pastel pink color, before the glow disappeared entirely.

Briar slumbered on, unaware of any of what had transpired.

------------------------------------------------

“Another corpse, huh? How many has that been? Seven in the past month?”

“A-are you sure he’s dead?”

“Silly, he must have fallen from the surface! There’s no way he isn’t dead, falling from that height!”

“B-but there’s no blood or anything. An-and I think m-maybe I can hear him breathing.”

“What! Lemme see.”

It was at this moment, that Briar woke up, and slowly opened her eyes, which shimmered with a mild golden glow as her eyes adjusted to the darkness around her.

There was a sharp intake of breath. “W-what are you?” Someone asked. This one sounded like a small girl. Briar turned in the voice’s direction. It was faint, but she could just barely make out two figures the size of children.

“…of course, I’m human. But this, where…”As Briar was about to ask, she remembered what had happened before she fell. “Ah, so this is the bottom of that crack in the earth.” She said, finally understanding things.

I probably shouldn’t make a light, if I don’t want to scare them away. I don’t know how long they’ve been down here, but I remember that too long in dark places will create a rather painful light sensitivity.

“How are you still alive?” The older one asked. This one sounded like the older brother.

Briar shook her head, unable to answer. “Actually, that’s what I want to know. I was near unconscious when I fell, so I must have fainted on the way down. By all rights, I should be dead, or badly wounded at least. But for there to be no injuries…” She checked, stretching to see if everything still moved. “Nope, nothing. This is so weird.”

She turned to the two. “So… I suppose introductions are in order. Hello, my name is Briar, it’s nice to meet you~” She held out a hand for a handshake.

The two children hesitated, then the younger one plucked up her courage. “My name is Rien, are those golden eyes real?”

Briar blinked. “They are. They’re souvenirs I got from a particularly nasty illness. Ah, but don’t worry! I got over that a long time ago, so I’m not contagious or anything anymore. Before the illness, though, I was told that I had sparkling green eyes, like emeralds.”

“Heeeh? Green eyes, huh? I’d like to have seen them. I hear that the upper world is covered in green plants everywhere!” Rien said in an excited voice.

“They couldn’t be everywhere, Rien! What about the deserts filled with nothing but sand? What about the oceans full of salty water?”

“Oops! I forgot about those, heheh.” Rien sounded slightly embarrassed

The older brother turned to Briar, and shook her hand.

“My name is Karu. We’ve lived down here our whole lives, but we’d love to hear stories of the upper world! The only one who knows anymore is Grandpa Thur, but he won’t tell us anything unless we bring him something which fell from the surface.”

“Ah! Brother, look! Is this a plant?” Rien asked, holding up a rock which had a few blades of grass clinging to it.

Briar was slightly surprised. Her eyesight, sharp though it was, could only make out vague shapes in this place, which said something for how dark it was. Even her echo-location wasn’t nearly good enough to pick out a few blades of grass amongst all the rubble around her.

“How did you do that? How could you find that small thing in such darkness?” Briar asked.

“It’s something Rien is good at.” Karu said. “She can tell based off of the essence that each things gives off. Me, I’m lucky if I can distinguish a mushroom from a wall, but she can find anything if she knows what its essence looks like.”

“Essence?” Briar asked.

“It’s what makes things alive from not alive” Rien said, turning towards. “You’re really pretty, Briar. Your essence is all sparkling and bright, almost like Grandpa Thur’s. It’s a pretty blue color, too.”

“Hmm?” Sparkling? Blue? Things clicked into place for Briar. “Rien, can you see mana?” She asked.

“Ah! Grandpa Thur asked me the same question. What’s mana?” Rien asked. “Grandpa Thur wouldn’t tell me.”

“It’s more or less the name we upper-worlders give that sparkly blue stuff that you see.” Briar said. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!” Rien agreed.

Briar switched to her mana vision, and suddenly, she could see a lot more. Kind of like a heat-vision, the two in front of her glowed with a sparkly blue light. The rock walls showed up black, but there was something on the walls which glimmered with a sort of mild light.

Moss. And mushrooms, like they said. Briar thought, finally examining her surroundings. The area around her had faint sparkles, probably from bits of grass and bugs that fell from the surface.

“Ah! Your eyes, they’ve now turned a pretty color! I always did like green. It’s not golden, and it’s not blue, but it’s sort of got both inside it.” Rien observed.

They don’t just turn blue in her sight? But, that’s ridiculous, mana sight only works on mana. And that’s always a blue color…Unless…unless there’s actually a different kind of mana out there which does have a golden color?

Briar put the thought aside for later as Rien grabbed her hand and tugged her in the direction of a side tunnel.

“Come on! I want to introduce you to Grandpa Thur.” She said. “He’s really nice!”

And, like that, Briar was led down into the earth.

-------------------------------------------

Laura sat there, staring languidly out of the window. Her cup of tea had long become cold, while Master Thales explained what had happened to Madam Rothema. Helen had cried herself to sleep, earlier on, and so was sleeping on a nearby couch.

“My my! It seems that girl has gotten into more trouble than she bargained for, this time. I suppose you’ll give her a huge scolding when she returns, won’t you, Gerard?” Madam Rothema said, near perfectly at ease, as she sipped at her tea.

“You’ve got that right! Honestly! If she hadn’t made it so that my hands were full, I could have rescued the whole lot of them!” Thales grumbled.

“How can you say that?”

The two adults turned to look at the girl who was staring at them, with dead eyes.

“You saw! You saw her fall down! You know that anyone falling from such a height wouldn’t be…can’t possibly still be alive!” Laura said, remembering that moment with horror in her eyes.

“Why are you talking like she’s still alive? Do you think I’m such a child that I can’t handle the truth!?”

“My, my! No wonder why you haven’t touched your tea, dear.” Madam Rothema said as she turned to glare at Master Thales. “I can see you didn’t have the decency to tell her, did you?”

“Um, er…In all the general chaos, it kinda slipped my mind.” Thales looked away, slightly embarrassed.

“Tell me what?” Laura asked, unblinking eyes focused on Master Thales.

Thales took out a case from inside his cloak, and opened it. Sitting on top of a plush dark red velvet background were two shining blue gems. Silver plates indicated Laura and Thera’s names. In front of them.

“I had Madam Rothema make these for me.” He explained. “While I don’t really understand everything that goes into them, they monitor your mana signatures. You could say that they’re a kind of tracking device, except they can’t tell us where you are. Instead, the gem turns red if you are seriously hurt…and in the case of death, your gem would shatter into dust. The fact that Thera’s gem hasn’t shattered-”

“Means that she’s still alive!” Laura interrupted, her eyes once more coming back to life. Then tears formed once more in her eyes, but these were tears of relief. “What’s with that, I thought she was gone forever!”

She began wiping the tears out of her eyes with her hands. When she was finished, she stood up straight.

“Master Thales!” She said, her old enthusiasm returning. “Please, teach me how to become strong! It doesn’t matter how hard the training will be, I need to get stronger so that the next time we meet, I won’t lose to that girl!”

Master Thales sighed. “It can’t be helped. Prepare yourself! This sort of training will be harder than anything you’ve ever experienced!”

“Yes, sir!” Laura replied.

As the two left, Madam Rothema chuckled to herself. “My, my. To think that they’ve gone and forgotten Thera’s little apprentice in their enthusiasm.” She sipped her tea as she sat and waited for the sleeping girl to wake up.

-----------------------------------------

“All we ever eat is mushrooms and moss soup, unless we can find some fallen upperworlder’s things. One time, we found a bag of really wonderful stuff that Grandpa Thur told us was candy.”

“We enjoyed it bit by bit until it finally ran out.”

“You will not believe how yummy it was! Nothing like the food we normally eat.”

“They also have this hard, chewy red stuff that Grandpa Thur says is ‘Jerky’. I wonder how they make jerky? It tastes way better than moss! And there was one time that…”

Briar was being led down through the network of underground caves while listening to the two children chatter away. But her interest in the conversation dwindled as she thought she saw a red glow up ahead.

She even switched off her mana vision for a few seconds to check, and, yes, it was still there! Rien and Karu noticed where she was looking.

“Isn’t it pretty? Grandpa Thur said that it looks a lot like the sunrise and the sunset. That reminds me, what does the sun look like? Is it really a great big shining ball of light that hangs in the sky? Does it really change colors? Is it really hot? But, if it’s really hot, then why does Grandpa say that the upperworlders get cold in the winter time? Please tell me!”

Briar smiled down at Rien. “But there’s so many questions!” She turned to Karu, and joked, “Hey, which question do you think I should answer first?”

“None of them. Every time you answer a question, she’ll have a million more questions stemming from that answer.” Karu replied with experience.

“How mean! I’m not really like that~I just want to know everything!” Rien sulked, shoving against her brother. But, he being used to it, didn’t budge.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough, you two!” Briar clapped her hands like a school teacher.

“If you want, I’ll try to answer your questions, but there will be some rules, okay?

Rule number one: You are only allowed to ask one question at a time. It is always best to give one answer at a time, instead of two or three, because the answers will end up getting jumbled otherwise.

Rule number two: Only after I am finished answering one question, can you ask another question.

Rule number three: I reserve the right to refuse to answer certain questions based upon my own jugement.

Rule number four: since I am only human, I don’t know everything, so sometimes I will answer with ‘I don’t know’, and you will have to accept that. Does that sound fair?”

The two nodded their heads.

“Okay, whose question shall I answer first?” Briar asked. Instantly, Rien’s hand shot up, and she was straining on her tiptoes to raise her hand a bit higher.

“How about Rien? What’s your question?” Briar picked.

“I have so much to ask! Let’s see..hmmm….Ah! I’ve got it! My name means ‘the sound of dripping water’ what does your name mean?”

“Hmm..” Briar thought about how to explain it.

“You know how your Grandpa Thur wants you to find plants form the upper world? My name is the same as a particular kind of plant up there. It’s a bush and has rows of sharp thorns that are there to keep people from breaking and damaging it. But, if it grows well, then every year, at a certain time, the most beautiful flowers in the world will bloom from it.”

“Really? What are flowers?” Rien asked.

“Not so fast, Rien. It’s your brother’s turn to ask a question.” Briar said, turning to Karu. “And what is your question?”

“Are there really lots and lots of people up there?” The boy asked. “So many people that they can’t be counted by the fingers of my hands unless I were to count until they fell off?”

“Well, yes, that’s probably right, but where did you get that idea from?” Briar asked, shaking the idea of fingers falling off of hands.

“When I asked Grandpa Thur, that’s what he told me.” Karu replied.

“My turn, my turn!” Rien said, waving her hands gleefully.

“Okay, what is your question, Rien?”

“What are ‘flowers’?”