You decide to do what Mama and Papa suggested and focus on trying to get the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of lessons with an Elder Minaro. Hopefully, they’ll be worth being too weak to defend yourself from Bato, Chuno, and Decavo. At least Wotjeo is excited by the idea of you spending more time gathering. He says tin vital-essence is “yummy.”

You pour all your passion and energy into your cultivations lessons. No longer do you allow your fear of being taught wrong to cause you to waste time listening in on the other student’s lessons or idly meditating. Instead, you practice what you have already learned with every spare moment Elder Minaro allows you to.

According to Elder Minaro, one-third of the group lessons with him are already over. You don’t know how much a “third” is, but you think you are behind most of your age mates and will have to work very hard to catch up. You are always the last person to receive personal instruction from the Elder. During the first part of the lessons, while he is teaching the other kids, you practice the previous day’s lessons diligently. You only stop when he comes to talk you through your new exercise for the day. The Elder seems to have a magical ability to tell exactly where you are in your lesson and what you are having trouble with, so his assistance is always very helpful, but you get very little of it, and he seems to delight in forcing you to work through riddles and other meditative exercises on your own.

All the extra effort you are putting in leaves you mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of every lesson. It takes an extreme effort of will, and Elder Minaro’s hectoring voice, to force yourself to your feet and shuffle to Mina’s lessons after spending all morning practicing your gathering.

Mina quickly notices how little energy you have and tells you: “Meditate with your back against the wall until you’re recovered enough to practice.”

Most days you’re so tired that your attempts to meditate quickly become impromptu naps where you endlessly review what you’ve learned with Wotjeo in your dreams.

Elder Minaro does not seem to take any notice of your new enthusiasm and dedication. Not one word of praise ever slips past his lips. If anything, he is spending less time with you. He only takes a few minutes to give you your new exercise before moving back around to provide more personal attention to the others. You are largely left to practice on your own most mornings and are beginning to fear that even if you win the extra lessons, he still won’t help you much. You trust your Mama and Papa, though. When Elder Minaro does pay attention to you it is usually very helpful, so you continue to work hard and do the best you can.

The days crawl past as you determinedly practice your lessons.

One day Elder Minaro swirls his robes grandly as he paces in a circle, his gaze seeking out each of you in your usual seats under the tin outcroppings along the wall of the cave. He announces. “Your free lessons with me are nearly at an end. Two-thirds of our time together is now complete.” You don’t know how much two-thirds is, but it sounds like a lot, and you think you’re still behind several of the other children.

Elder Minaro gestures for Bato to stand in the middle of the cave. “Take a good look, lazy children. This is what success looks like. Bato is the first of you to become an Ore member of the Silver Bear clan. His progress, swift as it is compared to yours, has been barely acceptable. The rest of you need to work harder to catch up! I don’t know why the Matriarch is making me waste my time trying to instruct students as obviously untalented as you lot. You, yes, even you Bato, are collectively the dumbest group of cubs I’ve ever had the displeasure of teaching. Come here Bato, your lessons have advanced to the next stage.”

Elder Minaro seizes Bato’s shoulder and drags him out of the cave. He does not return to give instructions to the rest of you until near the end of class. You are used to him ignoring you, but it is surprising to see him treat all the other children the same way.

The next day Elder Minaro announces that Felero, the small black-haired boy who was with you when you fought Decavo, has also advanced to Ore-tier. Felero’s companion used to be the smallest and weakest of all the spirit companions, but now he looks to be almost the same size as Decavo’s. Elder Minaro pulls Felero out of the cave and doesn’t come back to give instructions to the rest of you until near the end of class.

***

Two days later, as you are walking down the tunnel leading away from the lesson cave, you suddenly hear a vaguely familiar crackling sound. You follow the sound into a nearby cave. Fortunately, the family that lives there is all out right now. While Wotjeo keeps an eye out to warn you if the family that lives in the cave is returning home, you pick your way through their belongings and over to a white outcropping on the back wall of the cave. You put your ear to the outcropping. This is where the sound is coming from!

Wait… How is a stone wall making a sound?

You examine the outcrop more closely and decide it looks similar to the tin veins from Elder Minaro’s lessons. Is it tin too? How could you check to be sure? A-hah, that’s it.

You beckon Wotjeo over and sit down underneath the outcropping. You meditate the way Elder Minaro taught you to and gather some of the vital essence from inside the outcrop. When you feed it to Wotjeo, he tells you it tastes almost the same as the tin in Elder Minaro’s lesson cave.

Now you recognize the sound that you can still hear; it is the tin cry Elder Minaro taught you about! Wait, you can hear tin? Isn’t that a little odd? Papa never said anything about this!

You rush back to the lesson room and clap your hands over your ears as you are assaulted by the crackling sound of the tin cry coming from the tin veins all around you. You look around for Elder Minaro, but he’s not there! Annoyed, you back away from the room until the sound fades. Where could he have gone?

Augh! You don’t have time for this; Mina is expecting you for your lesson. You can try to figure it out again after your lesson.

The cave complex is a lot noisier than usual as you make your way to Mina’s training caves. After your lesson (mostly spent napping as usual) you return to the cave Elder Minaro gives his lessons from. He’s still not there! That gives you an idea. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to try it though.

You run back to your cave and wake Papa up to tell him you want to sleep in tonight. He grumbles at being woken up but affectionately agrees. Papa’s strong arm pulls you in close for a hug before going back to sleep. You curl up close to him and are soon snoring along with him.

Papa wakes you up closer to breakfast than usual and you get in only half as much exercise time with him as you usually do.

During your next lesson, you ask Elder Minaro about the noise, and he glares suspiciously at you. “Follow me.”

The irritable Elder leads you out of the room and holds up a lump of tin. He puts both hands behind his back for a moment. When he shows you his hands again, they’re both closed into fists: “Which hand is the tin in?” he asks you.

You can hear the tin very clearly from his left hand, and you touch that hand. He opens his fist to show you the tin lump, but his suspicious glare doesn’t abate. “Again.”

He makes you tell him which hand the tin is in more times than you can count. Lots and lots of times at least. Twice he even had a different, dull gray metal lump in his hand. Instead of crackling like tin it made a very soft snoring sound. Elder Minaro frowns at you and shakes his head: “Only you, butterfly. Only you would perceive vital essence as a sound. Follow me.”

Before he can turn away you ask him “How do you per.. perve.. sense vital essence?”

Elder Minaro glares at you. “The word I used is perceive. Say it with me.

Per

sieve”

Elder Minaro groans at your stumbling attempt to repeat the difficult word. “Close enough. As to your question, the point of half my lessons is to get you to see vital essences. All those visualization exercises I had you do are carefully crafted to teach you to interpret vital essences as glows. All wasted! Sight is the simplest and most reliable sense to use. This is all your mother's fault! Stupid butterfly!”

You interrupt the Elder and stomp your feet while glaring angrily at him. “Mama is the best!”

You shrink back a little from Elder Minaro’s angry glare but press on, determined to defend your Mama. “Please don't call her stupid.”

Elder Minaro doesn’t respond to your request at all, but he also doesn’t call your Mama stupid again for the whole rest of the day. A record of self-restraint for him.

He continues his rant as if you’d never interrupted him. “Guarnicio should never have been allowed to marry her. It makes everything harder! Now I'm going to have to adapt all my usual lessons to deal with your stupid sound sense. Bato sees vital essences. Felero sees vital essences. Why couldn't you?!"

The unpleasant Elder continues to grumble as he turns to face the other children in the tunnel with you. Felero and Bato have been having lessons in the tunnel since they became Ore. He gestures at both of them “You too, follow me, as well as little Pūmiè.”

He leads all three of you into his lesson cave. Back in the cave, the tin cry is so loud it is almost painful and you have a hard time paying attention to anything else. Elder Minaro announces to everyone that you too are an Ore! Even with his words mostly drowned out by the horribly loud crackling cry of the tin all around you, it makes you feel good! Only two days behind Felero and one more behind Bato! Elder Minaro moves you out into the corridor with the other two Ores and spends most of the day working with you to turn down the volume on the sound from the vital essence.

You are in high spirits after both making Ore and getting so much of the Elder’s personal instruction for once. You skip all the way to Mina’s cave complex.

After your lesson with Mina that for once you were too excited to sleep through, you hurry back and find Elder Minaro’s lesson cave empty again today. Exactly like you’d hoped. You get as close to the cave as you can stand the sound and then sit down to practice your newest lesson on how to block out your vital essence hearing when you don’t want it distracting you.

From now on you resolve to spend only less of the night with Papa and with the extra time, you’ll come here to practice your lessons from Elder Minaro. You wonder if the extra practice time will let you catch up to Bato and Felero? You can’t count above three yet and don’t know how much time you have left. You feel like you are nearly out of time though.

***

Bato is the first to get enough control of his vital-essence sight to be able to move back into the tin cave without being overwhelmed. Felero joins him the same day. Chuno has been in the tunnel with you for many days now. Two days after Bato and Felero move back into the cave, Decavo finally joins you in the tunnel outside it.

At the end of the lesson after that, you try moving back into the tin lesson cave yourself. The crackling cry of the tin roars incessantly in your ears, but it is a dull roar, and you can pick out most of Elder Minaro’s instructions over it. Elder Minaro having to adapt his lessons to your unusual vital-essence sense has cost you a day, but you think you’re finally ready for the next lesson.

Elder Minaro disagrees and sends you back into the tunnel.

Two days later Elder Minaro finally lets you back into the lesson cave after you convince him that you’ve reduced the sound to the volume of a quiet whisper. “Marginally adequate. I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything better from a Butterfly.”

He grumbles a bit more and you do your best to tune his insults out. “Continue to work on it on your own time. A true madra manipulator should be able to detect vital-essences from at least half a day away as well as turn their senses on and off at will. A clever opponent could deafen you right now with nothing more sophisticated than an unfocused blast of madra.”

For all your hard work, and cleverness in finding a way to practice on your own, you’ve only fallen further behind. You love your mama, but a disloyal part of you can’t help but wish you had the same vital essence senses as everyone else. If only you saw vital essence you wouldn’t have lost so many days to Elder Minaro having to convert his lessons to your unusual vital essence hearing.

You have a hard time falling asleep that afternoon, even with Papa’s comforting bulk beside you. You’ve hardly slept at all when Mama wakes both of you up for dinner.

After dinner that night you ask Mama for advice on how to hear vital essence.

Mama looks at you in surprise. “I don’t know growllita. I see vital essences as halos.”

You ask “What’s a halo, Mama?”

Mama thinks for a moment then cuts an apricot in half with one of the stone knives she carries everywhere. Inside the apricot is a large seed, with the flesh fruit surrounding it. Mama points to the yummy fruit part of the apricot. “A halo is a ring of light around or over something. Kind of like how the flesh of the apricot makes a ring around the seed, but made of light. That’s how I see vital essence, as spheres of light around the physical object the vital essence is in.”

You ask “Is that how all Crystal Butterflies see vital essence?”

Mama slices a bite-sized piece off the apricot and feeds it to you. “Yes, growllita. Most of them do. My old tribe doesn't spend much time developing those abilities because our vital essences are always around us. The sun provides an endless stream of Light vital essence and the wind is never truly still. It is always in motion. Just like you."

Mama rubs her nose against yours and smiles at you, then feeds you another slice of apricot.

You’re glad it isn’t Mama’s fault you have weird vital essence sense. But if Papa sees vital essence, and Mama sees vital essence how come you don’t? You ask "Mama I hear vital essence but can't see it. Does that mean I'm broken?"

Mama hugs you close and kisses you many lots of times. “No growllita. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are a wonderful little girl.”

Mama tickles you until you laugh so much you forget all about your worries.