My next few weeks went by in a bit of a blur. I felt like my life had more purpose now than I had in the last few months with all the new knowledge of aether working and helping out where I could at the store. Emily would only let me help out minimally around the shop while I concentrated on the studies of her grandfather’s books, but even then we still managed to get the entire back workshop area cleaned and organized so I could start getting more hands on work.
My encyclopedia also grew rapidly as I was introduced to more and more crystals. The main highlights of this were finding crystals that actually caused motion when aether was introduced to them. It turns out these crystals acted in pairs where one side is usually used as an activator which causes the other crystal to move…I learned this the hard way by holding both crystals in my hand and activating them which caused them to fly out of my hands rapidly freaking both me and Emily out. It took me the next workday to fix the hole I left in her shop’s wall.
Besides my constant reading montage, Emily and I continued to grow even closer meeting up every other day. We’d occasionally take afternoon shopping trips for my mom and grab snacks at the local baker. I no longer had to worry too much about people giving me a hard time for my disability since Emily would always be near. She had a knack for getting on people’s good side as she would chat with owners of other stores while I browsed and sometimes I’d even get a local merchant discount...it turns out her shop was the only aether workshop in the market area and her grandfather made a lot of connections with nearby merchants which Emily had now taken over.
Besides our time shopping and Emily pulling out every crystal she could find in the shop, I also managed to find a bunch of common interests between us when it came to our tastes in sweets and snacks. Most afternoons in the shop, we’d finish our lunch and chat about this and that around the town. From here I learned that the local nobility had been in charge of Zandrill for more than 200 years after helping defend the then smaller town from a neighboring kingdom attack. The king of Manriff, seeing the actions of the local noble, rewarded them control of the town which then prospered as a trading hub between the capital Zoheim and the southern port of Weindel.
This blossoming of wealth helped spark the usage of aether crystals for more leisurely uses such as automatic doors and lights in the noble districts. Since crystals still needed to be charged by an aether user, most nobles hired local craftsmen to regularly visit their shops and maintain their equipment. It turns out most of the returning customers that came in the mornings to the shop were servants or store owners in the upper district who came to replace exhausted crystals with Emily’s stock of charged crystals. Emily managed to talk a few local aether workers into charging up depleted crystals after her grandfather passed and in exchange for a cut of the sales. This was a small income for Emily, but through it she was able to keep the store barely afloat.
After hearing about this from Emily, I put all my attention to focusing on crystal recharging which was more difficult than I imagined. It turns out that when your aether control has a larger range like mine was, recharging crystals became quite the exercise...and a bit explosive from the number of exploded crystals shards I had to clean up in the back room. Crystals turned out to be similar to the batteries on Earth with their charging. If you injected too much into them, they tended to heat up rapidly which would either burn my hand or vibrate rapidly and shatter. That being said, this also gave me a chance to increase the finesse of my control and once I found the optimum charging rates, I could set it in my saved designs and select them as needed. With my new found purpose as a battery charger, I tried to make Emily’s life a bit easier by making enough shop savings to cover my lunch expenses in the shop.
The next major changes for me came once Emily brought out a box of metal levers and fittings. From reading through her grandfather’s books, I could tell that these could be joined together to make a few small contraptions such as automatic door openers and lifters. My inner roboticist mind was ablaze with excitement as I imagined making robotic store workers and my own personal mecha to ride in...only to be shut down by how simplistic the devices were. It turns out the goddess was right about the lack of innovation that went on in the world, so far the most complicated design people had come up with were automatic switches that turned on either from low light or someone pressing a button...oh well gotta start somewhere.
I spent the following week in the back room trying to get the hang of creating a two piece lever that would open and close using one crystal as an activator and the second as a mover. After figuring out how to control the motion through my own aether flow, I then setup push activation switches which supplied a set amount of aether to the lever to move it up and down. Eventually when I was proud of my work and after many revisions at home tinkering with my designer software, I pulled Emily to the back room to show off my work.
“So after weeks of reading your Grandfather’s books and playing with the box you brought me, I finally managed to get this to move properly!,” I exclaimed grinning ear to ear. “Look, when I press this button, the lever moves, and when I press the other button it moves back to the start.”
“Oh my...,” Emily said, a bit stunned while poking around my contraption. “It’s just like grandfather’s designs for the remote door.”
“Where do you think I got the idea from? I took a look at his personal journals and found this schematic and wanted to try it out. And on the plus side, I also made it where a person with low aether can still use it since I supplied the aether from my own stores.”
Emily jumped hearing that and pressed the button causing the lever to open up. She then took a step back and sat back on the workbench chair with her eyes tearing up.
“I...I never thought I’d ever see something move again back here,” she cried with tears spilling down her face. Unconsciously I moved close to her and wrapped my arm around her in an embrace.
“It’s been so long since my grandfather passed and I had given up hope. Seeing one of my grandfather's designs in action again...it just makes me so happy.” She reached up her arms and squeezed me tightly. “Thank you Lilly. Thank you for coming into my life and being my friend. Thank you for giving me hope again.”
Still a bit lost for words, I fumbled in response to her. “It’s nothing...I just wanted to do what I could. I didn’t know this would mean so much to you and I’m glad I could bring your grandfather’s design to life again. And also, I would be very happy to continue making your dreams come true like this. You, your grandfather, this shop, they’ve all given me so much. I want to keep being here for you, so if you’d have me can I keep helping out.”
Emily looked up with a crying smile at me and pulled me even tighter. “Of course you can, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m so glad I met you and we became friends.”
With that Emily separated from me and put out her hand with a smirk on her face. “Lilly Hopper, would you do me the honor of becoming my coworker and partner in crime.”
With a laugh from me and a smile on my own face, I reached my hand and took hers. “Emily Knole, I’d happily be your partner in crime and coworker. I look forward to working with my best friend, so please keep taking good care of me.”
Thanks for the chapter
so cute! i love this! aaah the slow burn! its perfect!
Thanks still enjoying this as a change in pace from my usual reading material.
awwwwwwwwwww