The room downstairs from the nursery became a madhouse of all the important people in the village the moment they found out about our new nymph friend. Strangely enough, one of the things that seemed to spark the most heated debate was the name that she wanted to be called by. She actually chose the English word for her race. Yes, her name is literally “Nymph.”

The elves seemed rather tripped up by this, especially when she declared it was us who named her. Not exactly true, but I suppose it is true we were the only ones she could have gotten that name from. She even called herself a nymph to our faces.

The elves found this entirely inappropriate, and insisted upon calling her “Sikitii.” But, apparently, that was literally just the elven word for “nymph” in the first place. Some sort of cultural thing it seems. Nymphs are not supposed to get names until they grow to their adult forms.

According to what I gathered from all these talks, a nymph, or “sikitii,” is something of a child form for tree spirits. Their adult state is called a “lukis” in Elvin, which nymph quite helpfully supplied is the Elven word for “dryad.” She didn’t supply this information by telling us, though. No, I got to figure that one out when she stated that this was no big deal, and that when she grows up and becomes a ‘lukis’ then she will change her name to Dryad which, in her mind, made everything good.

Really. What a mess. Well, at the very least we all got clothes out of it. Nymph lived up to her promise.

The whole mess with Nymph’s name was not the only strange thing that happened during this whole mess. No, one thing that was even stranger, was right before the large encroachment on our home happened. Ether guy came over in a hurry and gave Catla, our caretaker, a razor, and told her to hide mine and Tia’s hair, and added that if she didn’t think she could, then she should shave our heads. He was apparently very concerned about our hair being seen for some reason.

Tia’s hair was a strange matte silvery color, although grey might be the better term. Not like the old-age greying that is the illusion of white mixed with black hairs, this hair was literally grey. I couldn’t see my own hair, but she is my twin, and Tia, Levin, and Rolwen all confirm that my own hair is the exact same color as hers.

I didn’t like the idea of having my head shaved, and neither did Tia. And with Nymph backing us up, that was that. This means Catla went with her only option, and put us back in those restrictive baby blanket bundles and kept a tight hold on both of us during most of the earlier visits. Later on, she made certain that hats were included in the clothing we got, claiming that we got very cold so our heads needed to be kept warm.

Was there something wrong with other people seeing the color of our hair? This was starting to worry me. It definitely seemed suspicious.

Another thing that happened was that Ether guy seemed to be spinning a bunch of stories to the visitors. The first one he said would have been completely plausible even to my ears if it wasn’t sandwiched between so many other strange things. He told the visitors that Nymph’s ‘early emergence’ was probably a side-effect of the barrier he had initially set up to help contain the boy’s spirit energy, which he insisted was in order to help me and Tia.

Well, that was one of our speculations answered, but not entirely. It also gave me the new information that, apparently, Nymph was not supposed to wake up at her current age. So, whether I could believe his motivation for erecting the barrier or not, it did answer more questions than it raised. At least for me it did, anyway.

After that, though, he started spinning this story about how me and Tia growing quickly was a result of being close to all this dense spirit energy, but that we had some trouble containing our own spirit energy and both go through periods of sucking in the energy from every source like an insatiable monster, and then letting it all out at once. He followed this up by insisting that I was the one sucking in energy yesterday, and Tia was expelling it like me today.

I was baffled by this blatant and rather contradictory and confusing lie. It was certainly not just him being so horribly mistaken that it would be comical. No, it was definitely a blatant lie. It seemed like it was our differences in how we handle energy that allowed Ether guy to tell us apart, and he never seems to get confused about it. So, he was lying and he knew very well that he was speaking a falsehood.

So, when everyone except Ether guy and Catla had left, I decided to actually voice my concerns. “Unuurlu.” (Liar) I said that word, quite simply and directly. I figured I’d said single words in front of him before, and it wasn’t entirely inappropriate for my age to do so either. In fact, it was probably better to start introducing them to the idea of us talking a little at a time at this point.

“Hah?” (huh?) Ether guy responded in confusion when my words got his attention.

“Unuurlu!” I said again, pointing at him this time.

He gave a rather helpless look to Catla and chuckled lightly. “Sisen mein unuurlu amar ra lassu” (It sounds (falsely) like she’s calling me a liar.) he said, getting a nervous chuckle out of Catla as well.

“Ussu nim amar ‘mein iksu?’” (Maybe she’s (trying to) say ‘I see you?’) She suggested. There is definitely something off in her demeanor. She’s giving Ether guy funny looks, and she looks pretty distressed over this exchange as well. Yeah, something’s up.

Ether guy walked over to me, still laughing it off, and ruffled my skull-cap covered head. “Uzen nim hanim Asa?” (What (are you) trying (to) say Asa?) “Ra ii sisen unuurlu mein ohm ru?” ((Are) you calling me a liar?)

“Aiiii!” I responded, saying something that sounded like a mix between the elven word for “yes” and a childish squeal at him rubbing my head.

He was left giving me a hard stare. “Asu ra… ohm mein ii tusu ennirrir” (I suppose… it is time for me to start teaching you again.) “Mana uksar ra abzu lati.” (We have to hide your powerful spirit) “As-tirapar ii azusu su ra ohm.” (It (would be) dangerous to you if the other elves found out.)

He exchanged a look with Catla that looked mildly threatening, causing her to shrink back. At the same time, several odd points started to suddenly fit together. It was like the huge missing piece of the puzzle that was gnawing at me had finally revealed itself. The barrier, the lies, this hiding of mine and Tia’s physical features…  all of it was to make my large releases of spirit energy less visible to the other elves. I’d thought that the fact the children stopped visiting when Ether guy started coming around more frequently seemed a little odd.

His motivation for this was unclear, but he said that it was somehow for my protection.

And I seem to have just discovered the final key to earning our freedom from this prison of a nursery, although I most certainly will not enjoy it.

-

“So, you think he is keeping us in here because he’s paranoid about something?” Rolwen asked, as I explained my suspicions that night.

“Well, that certainly has to be part of it going by what he’s saying,” I told him. “I mean, I don’t know about how the Elven culture is about how babies are raised. It’s possible keeping us indoors is part of keeping us away from some kind of harm. There are tribal cultures out there that do not set their babies on the ground outside until they have learned how to walk. But, it’s definitely the reason they stopped letting the kids in here, and why he and Catla got so weird when the other elves all wanted to come and see Nymph.”

“So,” Tia said, “you are going to use that low-grade meditation technique in order to hide the strength of your spirit? I’m not really sure that will work. You’d have to get really good at it before you could do that. I’ve tasted the thickness of these elven spirits, and I can sense that they all use meditations similar to the one Ether guy was trying to teach you. All of their spirits are far weaker than yours. It will still show even if you use the same technique they are.”

“Besides,” Rolwen cut in, “I don’t follow that cultivation world stuff all that closely, but wouldn’t changing cultivation techniques, like… ruin your foundation or something?”

I gave Rolwen a strange look.

“What are you talking about?” Levin spoke before I could.

“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t really know much about Qi-gong, Tai-chi, or Fulan-gong, but I don’t think they work quite like that.” Rolwen’s face suddenly took on a blank glassy-eyed look.

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that cultivation BS in those webnovels is REAL? As in, in the real world!” he said in a near shout.

“Wait, webnovels?” I asked.

“Ah, it’s…” Rolwen sputtered to a stop. “Well, they’re kinda like… if you imagine a book being the same thing as a movie, then a web novel would be a TV series. Except it’s online, uhh… You following so far?”

“I… think so?” Yeah, that explanation of what webnovels are makes sense, but it seems like we’re taking a slight detour. Although, it might actually be a necessary detour. “So, you’re saying that this stuff you’re talking about is in one of these web novels?”

“Not one of them, it’s a full freaking sub-genre of Chinese fantasy. They use meditation to cultivate and grow stronger.”

“Ok, well… I guess they probably based the concept on the self-cultivation disciplines out of China then.” I said, “I don’t know what those Chinese fantasy books… err… series are all about, but the real thing… no, mind you, I’m not too well-versed in this particular field of meditation, but from my limited understanding it’s about building a healthy body and spirit. The term they like to use, though, is ‘cultivating’ a strong and healthy body and spirit, as though you were a farmer cultivating crops. The idea is that meditation, daily exercise, and healthy eating are to the body the same as water, rich soil, and tending the weeds are to farming.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Rolwen said. “I don’t follow those Chinese novels that closely either, but it sounds about the same.”

“Wow, I didn’t realize so many humans on Earth still practiced the magic arts.” Tia commented. “I had thought that the death of the fey on Earth and the disappearance of mana had made all of them stop practicing the strengthening rituals because it couldn’t get results anymore.”

Suddenly, all eyes were on Tia. That’s it, it’s definitely long past interrogation time. Rolwen and I cast a silent look to each other and I could see that we were in agreement. Tia suddenly started getting very nervous.

“Uhh… why is everyone looking at me like that?” Tia said, and looked over to Nymph for help. That reminded me, Nymph was due for a pretty thorough questioning as well. It’s time to finally get a real set of answers to some of these questions that keep piling up, and there are a lot of them at this point that need answering.