Chapter 52
Part 10
“And, though we don’t want to make our apology seem in any way insincere, and we don’t want to
seem like we’re making excuses, but we think it’s only fair to point out that we were being supervised.
Quewanak was watching us. We didn’t even have to ask, because Quewanak is always watching us.
And we’re pretty sure if anything had gone wrong, he’d have had Hilsith here and alert a momentter.
He would have had a perfect psionic record of what we’d done, and she’d have it by the time he got her
here. And besides that, all of you really are great teachers. There wasn’t really any danger, because we
really weren’t working beyond our training and abilities. We knew what we were doing, and Hilsith’s
evaluation confirms this. We were just making us more like Valentia, which seems perfectly safe,
unless we’dpletely bungled the whole thing. And we’d have noticed something going wrong long
before it got that bad. We took it really slow, and did each tiniest possible step one by one, and
checked that it was good before we did the next one.”
“I understand, son, but emotions aren’t logical.” Mark told him, and looked to Helemia to include her in
what he was saying. “As far as the state of Alilia’s spirit is concerned, her only other child died just a
short while ago. We brought him back, but that was four dayster, long enough to have hurt Alilia so
badly that her soul may bear the wound for centuries. She’s understandably terrified that she’s going to
lose him or one of you again. So you scared her even more than you did me and Talia.”
He paused, and some of his own anger and irritation became apparent. “And you managed to do the
one thing, the one thing that could scare us like that! We can save you if you got sted into nothing
but scattered dust and mist, we can save you from almost anything, but a whole bunch of extremely
tiny brain injuries? Who knows? You wouldn’t be injured enough for the Resurrection to work on you,
you might not even be injured enough to affect you in any way, but I’ve already learned enough about
Healing to know that even the tiniest brain injuries can have a huge effect, from insanity to a lifetime of
seizures and convulsions, orplete personality change, or loss of specific mental abilities, or loss of
control of part of your body, or internal organ failure. Even your innate magic Healing won’t work if
you’ve messed up any of the parts of your brain that make it work. Considering what you were working
on, a permanent impairment of your ability to use magic would have been the most likely side-effect,
which would have been heartbreaking enough. And with the injuries being as small and as many as
there would have been if you’d really screwed up, there’s a good chance that no Healer in the world
couldpletely fix you again. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we wouldn’t have been as scared
if you’d cut all three of your heads clean off!
“And on top of all of that, avoiding mistakes caused by unexpected events isrgely a product of
experience, and at less than two years old, you still have almost none of that! I’m sure you think you
checked for every possible problem, but I can guarantee that in twenty years, you’ll have thought of at
least five things you could have done better and safer in your operations tonight.”
“Please, don’t argue about it.” Alilia said as she wiped her eyes and tried to pull herself together. She
took a deep breath and stepped back from Talia, holding Valentia, and faced the twins.
“Look, I really am very proud of what you’ve aplished. Awakening Valentia’s psionics and your
magics are both amazing acts of brilliance from all three of you.
“But please, just promise me that you won’t do anything more to physically alter your brains, at least
until Hilsith deres you to be fully qualified as professional Healers. And even then, please give me a
bit of time to prepare myself for it! I’m just too damn old to take that kind of an emotional shock again!”
“I promise.” Valentia told her, wiping her own tears, just as the twins said;
“We promise, Alilia.”
“We really never meant to cause any problems, and we never thought we would.” Helemia added. “But
Father’s right. Not really thinking about how it could affect everyone else was the mistake we made due
to ourck of experience. We won’t let it happen again.”
“All right. I ept your apology.” Alilia said, took a deep breath, and put a smile on her face.
“Now, to return to what I had nned to say after I woke you three up this morning, and that is; Happy
birthday Valentia! You are one year old today, and I am very proud of you, and I love you very much!”
“Thank you Mother, I love you very much too!” Valentia giggled as she and Alilia exchanged a hug and
a kiss.
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Then she went around to everyone else and gave them hugs and kisses as they wished her happy
birthday and she thanked them.
Then she returned to her breakfast. She and the twins ate for almost an hour before they were finished,
then they begged off on the pic lunch trip their parents had nned, and slept until mid-afternoon.
Valentia had made it in that she didn’t want a huge birthday party in the gathering hall like the one
the twins had arranged for themselves, but the guests at her party were more than enough to fill the
public areas of their house, so the event spilled out into the yard.
As she’d expected, she was given a set of arms and armor that matched what the twins had been
given in every way, and since she hadn’t asked anyone to not give her presents, she received many
other gifts as well.
The evening ended with her and the twins casting an impromptu fireworks disy a third of a kilometer
above the settlement,plete with glowing and shing lights of every color, lightning, ribbons and
loops of fire, multi-colored explosions, and multi-colored fireballs that expanded with widely-varying
speeds from barely-growing to almost-exploding. Sometimes it seemed almost random, sometimes it
formed beautiful and abstract symmetrical patterns in the sky, and asionally simple but pretty
pictures were formed in the maelstrom. The thunderous noise of it all seemed to shake the ground at
times, drowning out the apuse and shouts of amazement from those who watched.
Finally, Alilia had to call out psionicly; “Enough, my darlings! It’s very beautiful and impressive, but if
you don’t stop soon you’ll expend yourselves to exhaustion.”
She received the mental equivalent of a nod, and the children finished up with an incredible barrage for
a finale.
The three of them giggled as they took their bows, but by the time thest of the guests had said their
goodbyes and left, they were almost asleep on their feet. Their parents put them to bed early, and they
were asleep before they were finished with goodnight kisses.
“There’s one area in which our children have already far exceeded us.” Alilia softlyughed as she sat
down in the kitchen for some tea with Mark and Talia. “Being showoffs!”
“True.” Talia chuckled. “They don’t seem to have inherited Mark’s humble traits at all!”
“Ah, they’re just kids.” Mark said with a proud smile. “I showed off every chance I could get until I was
about twelve. But by then I was bigger than most of the men in Shinosa, and I got the feeling that they
started to resent it. Besides, about then I started my formal apprenticeship as a Ranger, and the whole
‘honor of the corps’ thing got to be pretty important to me, pretty fast.
“I’m d we’re here now though. By the time we go back to the wider world, they’ll have had enough
years here to do all the showing off they want. I’m sure there’ll be enough public curiosity about them to
ensure they get far more attention than they’ll ever want, even without showing off.
“For now, I’d like to go over everything they didst night with Valentia’s psionics and the twins’ magics
and brains. I’d like to understand it thoroughly, if I can, and I doubt I’m up to it by myself. Would you
“Yes, I wish that also.” Alilia nodded as she closed her eyes, Linked with them, and cast discrete
Readings on all three of them to iste and rify everything they’d learned from the children on what
they’d done.
They stayed upte, examining and discussing it psionicly, and the entire household sleptte the next
morning.