The next day, Rylan splurged on some fresh sheep's cheese at the market, and brought it to his family's home. Leahna showed up shortly after he did, and together they started on some cheesy garlic flatbread.

Their cooperation still left something to be desired, but there was an infectious giddiness in the air, and Rylan found himself smiling even as they dumped the first, lightly charred attempt out of the pan.

"Maybe we should turn it down a bit after adding the cheese," Leahna said sheepishly.

"Probably," Rylan agreed.

Now that they were getting along, there really was just one problem, one irritant, left.

"Ah," Artoran sighed, gently strumming his gittern as he stared up at the ceiling with a blissful smile. "The power of the written word... I feel a new song coming on. I just think I have a lot of guidance to offer to today's youths, you know? Perhaps it shall be about how much easier life gets when one stops questioning the wisdom of one's elders..."

Rylan groaned and started to turn around.

Leahna grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him, shaking her head. "It's best to ignore him when he gets like this. Denying him the attention he craves is the only way to get him to behave like a sensible adult again."

"Ah yes, adulthood, what a beautiful topic suggestion, Leahna!" Artoran crooned. "What really separates the youth from the adult, hmm? Is it but some arbitrary number of years, or is it something more profound, perhaps a kind of insight?"

"I see what you mean," Rylan stated dryly.

"Try not to pay it any attention; he'll get bored of his own immaturity soon enough."

"Maturity, indeed," Artoran continued, unperturbed. "Perhaps best described as the ability to see through the petty deceptions of our day-to-day, into the deeper nature of the grand struggle against our own mortality, from which emerges a sense of what truly matters—actually, that's pretty good, let me write that down... Ehm, Leahna, my sweet, sweet daughter, could I have a quill and some paper please?"

"Depends. Will it shut you up?" However, even as she asked this, Leahna was already rummaging through one of the drawers and pulling out an inkwell and some stationery.

"That would be ideal, yeah," Rylan agreed, not hiding his smile. "I do need to concentrate on my Skill now."

"You got it, son!"

Shaking his head, Rylan bent back over the stove. Just as he was about to activate his Skill, however, he caught a flash of yellow from the corner of his eye.

He perked up and opened his mouth to say something, but then changed his mind.

This was simply too good an opportunity to ignore. So instead of speaking, he subtly beckoned the little spirit.

In response, Izzy came drifting over, reaching out with a tendril to convey a sense of curiosity.

Rylan used that same connection to send back some suggestions, and her curiosity quickly turned to playful joy.

Humming happily, Artoran dipped his quill into the inkwell. But as he was about to start writing, a light gust of wind blew the sheet of paper just out from under it.

Artoran froze, blinked, then reached for the paper and pulled it back.

As he was about to put his quill down again, however, a slightly stronger gust caused it to slip out from under his fingers and flutter off the table onto the floor.

As Artoran turned to look over his shoulder at the shuttered windows, Leahna glanced at Rylan, wide-eyed.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He shot her a wink.

"How odd," Artoran muttered. "Ehm... Leahna, dearest, could you grab that for me, please?"

Leahna did a commendable job of hiding her smile before she rolled her eyes and bent down to grab it. "Honestly, daddy; I just handed you this."

"Yes, yes, sorry. Thank you."

Leahna turned back to the stove with a smirk, clearly still looking at the table from the corner of her eye.

Shaking his head, Artoran placed one hand flat on the piece of paper. However, right before he could put his quill down, a sudden sharp gust of wind blew the writing implement straight out of his hand, causing it to smack into the wall beside him.

Artoran gaped at the streak of ink on the wall.

Rylan and Leahna absolutely lost it.

"You!" Artoran sputtered. "How are you doing this?!"

"I'm... not," Rylan managed to bring out.

Unbeknownst to Artoran, the actual culprit was flying triumphant circles over his head.

"It's... well, it's not my place to tell you," Leahna said. "This is Rylan's story."

Rylan glanced over at her, smiling. "Actually, I'm a little busy. So why don't you introduce her? In fact, go ahead and introduce both of them."

Rylan lifted his hand. A split second later, Arphin appeared with a pop.

[Oh boy, oh boy, I finally get to meet your father; I have so many questions for him!]

'Oh yeah?' Rylan sent back as he handed Arphin over to his sister, who accepted the spiritgear with reverence. 'Like what?'

[Like if he takes naps in weird places too!]

'I think that's just me, Arphin...'

Shaking his head, Rylan turned back to his flatbreads, but he kept an eye on Artoran's flabbergasted reactions at the things Leahna was gleefully sharing with him.

Once things had settled down a bit again and Artoran had settled into a conversation with Arphin, while Leahna was using a crumpled ball of paper to play fetch with Izzy, Rylan turned his attention fully to his cooking and started to apply his Skill.

He'd been working hard on trying to isolate the source of the restorative effect, but so far, without much luck. He'd tried twisting the little mana nuggets into various different shapes, but apart from changing the rate at which energy was released, that didn't seem to do much, so he was kind of stumped.

He'd asked his father for advice as well, but Artoran unfortunately had no experience with any Skills like Cooking.

At some point, Izzy got bored of fetching the little paper ball, and came to play with the hot air above the stove.

A little tendril reached out to touch him, showing him images of the mana nuggets, with a sense of confusion.

"I'm training my Skill, Izzy," Rylan explained out loud. "Or, well, more like trying to figure out how it works, really. It's..."

He fell silent as he felt more than saw Izzy reach out and grab one of the mana nuggets, and start pulling on it. He could feel his Skill resisting the deformation, but after a brief hesitation, he actively tried to relax and allow her to play around with it.

Izzy stretched the mana nugget out and squeezed it, handling it with surprising grace. Or perhaps not so surprising, as she was an entity made of pure Quintessence, and therefore probably interacted with the world around her mainly through the application of mana.

Rylan studied her interactions with interest, growing more and more convinced that Izzy's skill at mana manipulation put his own to shame. Despite this realisation, he was still shocked when she somehow pulled the mana nugget inside out, and revealed its contents.

His breath hitched at the sight of what looked like little mana pearls made up of complex runes spilling out.

The tiny things flew all over the place, quickly deteriorating and falling apart, but Rylan had seen and felt enough, especially with Izzy sharing her findings.

That's the restorative component! The mana nuggets aren't just little clumps, they're vessels!

Well, no wonder changing the shape didn't help. Unless... what if he could make the nuggets bigger, so they could hold more of those little pearls? Couldn't he perhaps nudge his Skill into filling up all that space with more restorative pearls? Or bigger ones?

Master Gullfeather taught us that the surface of a container scales more slowly with size than its volume does. If I can make this work, I could change how much of my mana serves as the vessel, and how much actually helps to heal!

The longer Rylan thought about it, the more convinced he became that the additional energy supplied by the Cooking Skill could almost be considered a side effect of the mana nuggets delivering their delicate contents and then falling apart.

Now, let's see what happens if I try to make them bigger...

Rylan left the Hawktalon home in an excellent mood, feeling like he'd finally made some tangible progress towards his next Augmentation for Cooking.

He'd made sure to praise Izzy endlessly for her help with the discovery, of course, and she'd preened delightedly.

Perhaps he'd overdone it a bit, as Arphin seemed a little sulky. Oh well. He'd find an excuse to heap some praise onto the sensitive spiritgear later.

When he turned the corner into the street The Knackered Hag was on, however, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Two bright green glows had appeared in his vision... and they were inside the restaurant.

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