The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 473 - A Philosophy Rooted Deeply In Excess: Mortal
Installation of the cultivator tool in her eye socket took only minutes. Applying a lubricant - that the heiress told her *not* to ask too many questions about, deft fingers then lifted her cleanly restored upper eyelid before pressing in the prosthetic eye. While holding it in place, her other hand pulled the lower lid out to allow the existing ocular muscles to pop it all into place. Where there was a hollow sense before, now there was a pressure... a fullness that would take a bit of time to grow accustomed to.
Most of the time was spent carefully making sure that no uncomfortability was present. Asking her to blink and get used to it as best she could. Eventually, the first time human ocularist rubbed her own eyes, sniffled, and smiled encouragingly... as she tugged, ripped, and lodged the willing spirit into an initial linkage toward the rituals within.
"Alright, we are ready for the first calibration. Nothing yet, right?"
"Just the same darkness."
A sharp sigh led to the girl in her yellow dress - one of them that her mother sent which had not yet been... repurposed for its cloth - to sit down on her mother’s thigh. Half a week was enough to find and impose boundaries with the other two women. Enough to feel ’safe’ outside of her usual silver dress and to allow Elua that kind of show of appreciation to the woman for her attempt to provide her some ’normal’ comforts.
"I had no hope that I would get so lucky. I know how to make the mind see things my own spirit creates, but this is different. This will take some time."
"I can give you that."
Pulling her eldest close again, something she had complained about once already for the chair was not really designed for two people to snuggle on - Yatrel stroked the hair of the ’teenager’. Colored just like her husband’s, but birthed from her own body. She was never unsure what she felt for the girl... only unsure how to move forward productively.
"So why don’t you talk a little more while you work? Tell me stories, little windstorm."
"...When did whirlwind become windstorm?"
"Well, you aren’t spinning in place at home anymore, dear. But you are still having effects blowing at the backs of others. What else should I call you?"
<⦑ <⦑ <⦑
The river was three miles from their rural village, for reasons that had never been well explained to her. Young Uvraneht made that walk twice each day, with clay containers yoked across a shoulder pole. Weight that seemed to grow heavier with each step on the pre-evening plod back... and wasn’t exactly nothing, even empty, when she left in the morning the first time to forage for edibles
Her arms ached from dunking and dragging them back on shore. Her back protested because the uneven pole and wobbly clay vessel had been made by unskilled hands. And the sun, it beat down on her with the same indifference it showed to everyone toiling on the continent below it. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖
She was only ten years old. Even though she had known nothing else, the young girl was already exhausted by the simple act of living day to day. Even more when she saw one of the lonely, elderly men collapsed by the side of the road. From the looks of it, he had tried to make the walk for water himself despite increasing sickness. Now, his clay lay cracked across the dusty earth, never to hold water again.
Uvraneht stopped and stared at him wheezing for minutes. Yet she felt nothing but irritation. That she would have to make a choice between ignoring it like everyone else had... or like he had because he was too proud. Seeking help from neighbors who barely had enough energy for their own survival during the harsh summers of the year was a choice, she knew that much. Because her mother and father had explained it to her.
She set her buckets down and struggled to haul the old man to his feet. Gave him one of her family’s valuable vessels without any word - and more importantly, half her night’s work in water - and sent him stumbling back toward the village. Following behind with a now even further uneven pole, she was sure either he or she would likely drop one of them. And knowing she would return after dark by taking the time to follow behind, to take back their clay after he poured it into his home’s container... she regretted everything.
Her father found her that evening, slumped against the side of their house. Too tired to lift her arms and hang the sweating pot of chilled water off the ground. She had been thinking the same thing the entire walk back. As she passed other villagers who pointedly did not meet her gaze. As she thought of a world that was made up of people who could make these sort of walks trivial - cultivators who could carry a couple hundred gallons of water for an entire village without breaking stride.
Humans who never did provide help to anyone, as far as she could see.
"Why do people help others if no one helps us when we need it?"
Her father settled beside her as she questioned this, his own long day evident in how carefully he lowered himself to the ground. He wasn’t a well read man - and was as far from a philosopher as he was a swordfighter. But he mulled over what she was asking until he thought of something he felt was true.
"You help others when you have excess. When giving doesn’t break you. I heard what you did."
Even though she’d never been beaten - or even yelled at for anything she didn’t deserve - she still flinched. Because she knew she risked something that only partly belonged to her. And his hand fell exactly on that single empty container she’d brought back.
"You decided you had enough. Chose to spend the spare. That’s all."
Uvraneht turned that over in her mind, as she also thought about how itchy her hair was going to be without washing tonight in that second gallon. She had no inherent desire to help the old man - she didn’t particularly even like him after he had taken a lying village boy’s side two years ago. But she had stood there in a position to help, and so she did.
And it was because she was still unhappy afterwards that she didn’t understand. That she felt anything similar to the cultivators she also inherently disliked, who had more excess than they could know what to do with, bothered some part of her. But she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Except scratch her head and groan while standing up. Her mom would have something for dinner ready inside.
Her father could get up himself... she was sure he had more ’excess’ energy than she did. Though the words he spoke did still resonate with her. Throughout her life, when she felt secure at all, she did give various charity to others. Not out of virtue - but only because of a surplus of whim.
It was a cold sort of goodness that looked at the world in divisions rather than as a whole... but it was the only kind that her environment, and basic mental framework, could ever build.
