Three Trains of Thought

The trip back from Cammie’s went without incident and it wasn’t long before they had made it back to Vivian’s office-slash-domicile.

“Thought we were going to buy some cheap bracelets for me to break down and hope to get a recipe from?” John queried as Vivian parked in front of the building she had laid her Barrier over.

Vivian tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “Well, since I wasn’t really involved too much in the fighting, I figured that I could go out and buy the bracelets while you guys get some more rest.”

“Sounds good to me,” Aeolia said.

John mulled over her suggestion. “That would give me the chance to try to level Craftsmanship with breaking down the gears before attempting to learn how to make a bracelet. Most likely it’ll cost mana to break things down so having downtime between trying for raw material and going in to craft something would be a good idea.”

“I shouldn’t be that long,” Vivian informed. “Nearest place to buy some isn’t that far.”

John nodded and opened his bag for Aeolia to slip into.

“Hopefully this’ll be the last time I have to do this,” she groaned as she slipped into it.

“We’ll try our best,” John reassured her as he opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Anything we need to know not to touch in there?”

Vivian shook her head. “No. Make yourselves at home.”

“Okay,” John said as he exited the car. “We’ll try not to make too much of a mess.”

Vivian smiled at him before she shifted her car into gear and drove off. John watched her until she turned a corner then walked towards the building. The moment he crossed into the area Vivian’s barrier covered, Aeolia’s slight weight vanished from his pack.

“Can’t blame her for wanting to get out,” he muttered as he gave one last look around to make sure no one was watching then entered the barrier. Like before, he felt his position jolt towards the designated entry point, though this time it was only a slight shift towards the door. Aeolia waited by the door, grown to full height.

“You didn’t need to wait for me,” John said as he approached her.

“A bit rude to just walk in without you,” she countered as she opened the door and walked in. John smirked as he followed her.

“Now to find a place to work,” he announced. “Guess the kitchen will work.”

“Going straight to work, huh?” Aeolia asked. “Not even a little bit curious about what else Vivian has around here?”

John shrugged as he walked towards the eating area. “I mean, I am a little. But I wouldn’t want someone to go exploring my house when I wasn’t there, even if I had given them the okay. Plus, I kind of want to get this breakdown operation out of the way. Got cock blocked by those thugs back at Cammie’s and I kind of hate being so close to starting something then getting stopped.”

“Fair enough,” Aeolia relented as they entered the kitchen. She sat down in the same seat as before. “Plus, I guess it makes sense to get on with the magic so you have time to recover mana before embarking on your endeavor to become a jeweler.”

“Yeah, if this goes well, we can just start selling fine wear,” John joked as he sat down. “We farm up the materials, I craft them into things like rings and necklaces, and Vivian works out clever effects.”

“Might not be a bad way to make some cash,” Aeolia admitted, “but Vivian would know more about that sort of thing. We can ask her about it when she gets back.”

“Agreed,” John said. “Now, time to get to work.”

He quickly deposited the seven gears onto the table, the collection of mismatched metal clanging upon the surface. John picked one up; this particular gear was about eighty percent steel, with copper and iron making up the remaining twenty or so percent. He inspected it for a moment, eyes flicking down to the others.

“This one might make the best test case,” he muttered. “Since it’s mostly one metal, I think it’ll give us a good baseline for what I can get out of these. Plus, levelling up Craftsmanship will likely make the process more effective so I can get more out of the remainder, even if it’s only a small boost.”

Plan set, John cast Craftsmanship on the mostly steel gear and selected the ‘Breakdown’ option.

Breakdown: Destroy this item to collect raw materials or discover how such an item is made. Selected item may yield: steel, copper, iron, zilhavrum. Cost: 15 mana.

“Well, here goes nothing,” John said as he confirmed the effect.

Composite Gear destroyed. 2 units of steel, 1 unit of copper recovered.

Skill level up: Craftsmanship Lv. 2. Increased chance of salvaging materials and learning recipes.

The gear vanished from his fingers and the recovered metals appeared on the table, both as a series of small rectangles. Each looked to be the same height as the ingots John had gotten previously and John’s face contorted in thought as he read the displays. Aeolia caught his musing look and asked, “Something go wrong?”

“Not wrong,” John answered. “But each of these are considered a unit. I figured a unit would be like an ingot.”

He picked up one of the steel units. “This is about the same height as the one I got to make Senka, and the five I got look to be about half the length, so maybe an ingot is ten units. Senka needed one unit for repair, but maybe it’s one unit per a tenth of durability. I’ll need to test that. At least Craftsmanship levelled up and confirmed I can get crafting recipes.”

“Well, as long as things work out,” Aeolia said. “Wonder if what you get back is determined by the item or your skill?”

“Might be both in a way,” John mused, picking up another gear. “Sometimes there’s a limit on how much of a resource you can get and skill level just makes it so higher levels means you get closer to the max.”

Aeolia shrugged. “Won’t know until you try.”

“Fair point,” John said. “Let’s see what level two can do.”

Fourteen mana fueled the breakdown, producing another 1 unit of steel and 1 unit of iron.

“It’s one mana cheaper,” John reported, “and it looks like I either low rolled or that gear just had a low amount of steel.”

“Good thing you’ve got five more gears to break down,” Aeolia remarked, her boredom evident in her voice. She pushed herself out of the seat she had taken and sauntered over to John. She draped her arms over his shoulders, crossing over his chest, her breast pressing into his back.

“I think I’m going to go check out the rest of this place,” she said, her voice close to John’s ear. “Watching you turn bits of metal into other bits of metal just isn’t doing it for me.”

The breath on his neck and the tits on his back sent John’s blood flow southward but he pushed down his arousal to twist his head to look back at Aeolia.

“I’m not going to go snooping through her stuff,” Aeolia quickly asserted, correctly interpreting his stare as one of reproach. “Just going to see where the bathroom is. Maybe see if she’s got any movies or something.”

John sighed, unable to find the will to **** her to remain stuck with him as he broke down the gears.

“I’m not going to stop you,” he said. “I just didn’t want to step over any boundary. First time being in someone’s house without them around.”

A warm smile crossed Aeolia’s features. “You can be such a goodie, you know that?”

Before John could answer, she darted her head forward and landed a swift kiss on his cheek, then just as fast broke her embrace, shrank and flew out of the kitchen.

John brought his hand to where she had kissed him, fingers delicately touching the spot. He shook himself out of his lovestruck paralysis, trying to refocus his mind on the breakdown task.

Even as he converted the third gear into its components, producing another unit of steel and copper, John’s thoughts drifted back to the quick sign of affection. The first thing to cross his mind was the extremely out of order nature of their relationship. Normally, kisses on the cheek would come long before actually sleeping together.

‘I really don’t know much about her,’ he idly thought, turning over the next gear before converting it into two units of iron and a unit of zilharvum. ‘Is that okay? Just the two of us being fuck buddies?’

The notion that the extent of his relationship with Aeolia would end up being only physical left John feeling a bit numb. As lusty as his imagination was, he always thought when he actually got into a relationship, there’d be the usual trappings with it. Seeing movies, going out to eat, cuddling on a couch, those sorts of things.

‘Do I want those sorts of things with Aeolia?’ he mused. ‘And do I want them just because we’ve already hit the physical stuff?’

John thought about what he liked about her, beyond pure physical attraction; her fierce determination and sharp tongue quickly made the top of his mental list, along with her dedication to those she allied with, evident by the lengths she went to track down the Dawnseeker’s killers as well as the pep talk she gave Vivian back in the machine Barrier. A fond smile grew when he recalled how Aeolia bolstered Vivian’s confidence before they had gone to face the boss.

‘I think I do want to give it a go,’ John resolved. ‘We’ve had moments that didn’t involve fucking, so that’s a good sign we could make something of this. And if she doesn’t want that kind of relationship, I won’t push her.

He idly tapped at the table with one of the gears. ‘Now I just have to figure out how to bring it up. How hard could that be?’

Despite the increase in courage fighting monsters had given him, that task caused a knot of fear to settle into his gut.

Aeolia’s exploration of Vivian’s place wasn’t simply to familiarize herself with the layout or to snoop. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Cammie had said something to John and Vivian when she embraced them, her sharp eyes picking up the green glint of a wind spirit by each of their ears during their hug, and she just couldn’t get her head straight with John sitting near her.

“Stupid Cammie,” she muttered as she flew up to the second floor. “I just know she was teasing them.”

She landed at the top of the stairs and returned to full size, walking the remainder of the way to the nearest door. She opened it, revealing an empty room, far from the first one she had seen on her little exploration.

“This is the fourth room that’s just empty,” she said quietly as she closed the door. “Did Vivian really not take anything personal with her or buy anything new when she set up shop?”

The next room was the same, completely barren. The final room, Vivian’s bedroom, was thankfully furnished, joining the kitchen, office and bathroom as the only rooms with something in them. Though, even to Aeolia’s spartan sensibilities, it was quite bare. A modest bed, small desk, decent sized dresser and a single door closet were the only features of the room, and Aeolia had to fight her minor inquisitive impulse to venture in and explore the closed closet. Her will held strong and she closed the door with a frown.

“She did say she was tight on funds,” Aeolia softly said. Seeing how much Vivian had neglected her personal wants to focus on her aspirations left Aeolia more impressed with the redhead. That thought caused her conversation with Cammie to return to the forefront of her mind and Aeolia let out a small groan.

“I am not good at dealing with this shit,” she lamented. “Maybe I should just take ‘a wait and see’ approach. I know John was checking out her ass and I don’t think Vivian minded John’s arm around her waist. Maybe things will just develop naturally.”

She jumped into the air and shrank, wings flapping as she flew back downstairs.

“In the meantime, a few pokes here and there couldn’t hurt, could they?”

The clinging incense burned Vivian’s nose as she stepped into the eastern themed shop, a series of windchimes signaling her entrance.

‘It’s always odd to see how much mundanes get almost right when it comes to magic,’ she mused as she took in a poster detailing the chakras. ‘I wonder if it’s some holdover from before Gaia began enforcing her separation or recent Abyssals risking destruction by bringing the mystical knowledge back in small, harmless bits.’

After a brief moment of thought, as she ventured towards a table of jewelry, Vivian decided she leaned towards the former, as mundane folklore had long featured beings and concepts that were at least somewhat true. She let her musings on the overlap between mundane beliefs and Abyssal reality fall silent as she began to sift through the assorted bracelets displayed.

‘It can’t be something too thin,’ she thought as she pushed aside several narrow bands. ‘There needs to be enough space for me to inscribe the arrays. Oh, this could work.’

She picked up a sterling silver bracelet with thick links and a series of disks fixed to the outside. Vivian brought it closer, a critical eye imagining an array on the disk.

‘Might be a tight fit, but I think I can get the arrays into a space this size,’ she thought, eyes shifting back to the table. ‘Looks like there are a couple of these. I should get all of them, just so there are spares in case John’s ability takes a few tries to produce a schematic. And if that fails, I can try to put the array on this. The material isn’t the best for durability, but it should work fine.’

Vivian gathered the bracelets and headed for the checkout. As she waited in line, an errant thought crossed her mind, ‘I hope Aeolia doesn’t mind the design.’

She tried to imagine the winged woman wearing the bracelet, and her treacherous mind made the scene far more intimate than it would be and Vivian felt her face flush.

‘Stop thinking like that,’ she chided herself, banishing the fantasy. ‘She and John are together.’

Her mind flashed back to the diner, where the pair had cuddled up during their spirited conversation, and melancholy settled over her.

'Get your head in the game,’ Vivian thought as she approached the register and handed the bracelets to the cashier. There’s more important things to focus on.’

Burying her feelings, she paid for the bracelets and made for her car. Time was wasting, and it would be better to focus on improving their odds against the malevolent faction than to dwell on unrequited feelings.