Dazien watched quietly as Teal worked at the desk while periodically poking Phoenix’s aura as she sat nearby focusing on trying to weave her auras together. She was still stuck on the first part of trying to deconstruct it into metaphysical strips and it was very slow going.

  It was equally fascinating and horrifying to him to watch the tailor use her own hair as an unending supply of thread. Her control over the strands was mesmerizing and he couldn’t even begin to comprehend the level of multitasking that must have been involved as she created fabrics, tested them, unwove them, then shifted the actual composition of her hair. It was a void black currently that seemed to match the clothing that Uriel had been wearing earlier.

  He was caught off guard slightly when she asked him, “Does he like other colors?”

  “What?”

  “Colors. Void naturally goes to this black, but does the Void Mage want them to look different like his torc.”

  Dazien smiled softly when he realized what she was asking. “His name is Uriel, but for as long as I’ve known him he’s preferred wearing black. I don’t think he particularly cares one way or another about other colors…” He paused for a moment before clarifying, “Except red. He strongly dislikes wearing that color. He even disliked it when I wore it. I used to have this really nice cape a frie—”

  Daze stopped suddenly when he realized he had almost called Murinah Ruwena his friend. At the time, he thought she had been… when they were still young. Looking back, he now realized she had simply been a younger and more manipulative type of purple creeper obsessing over him.

  “Well, someone who thought it looked good on me,” he corrected. “At least, she liked when I wore her House’s colors. I got a different purple colored one after I realized the red was giving Uriel some bad flashbacks.”

  “What color cape do you normally wear now?” she asked, and he wasn’t sure if she was actually curious or trying to make him practice controlling his voice more.

  He chuckled at the thought of wearing one now, though, and said, “I haven’t really worn one since I left the temple of the Parent, but I’m fairly fond of black and gold colors for my clothes to accent my natural purple.”

  Teal seemed to nod absently, her eyes never leaving her work as she seemed to settle on a type of hair thread to continue her work with. It was hard for him to wrap his head around the idea of what she was doing with it. His own hair had been stolen and sold for Bits, and here she was doing the same thing to herself. He wanted to try and understand and finally settled on asking, “Is everything you sell all made from your hair?”

  She nodded again, and he quietly added, “Don’t you… doesn’t it make you feel a bit like you’re just an object? Something to be bought and sold?”

  “No. I don’t sell hair, thread, or fabric. I only sell fully finished and heavily enchanted goods. I utterly refuse to supply other crafters or beings with raw materials. The second I were to step away from that, I am certain that I would have people coming in droves to bug me.

  “I’m the only one who gets to decide who or what my craft is made for or sold to. If someone attempts to force it, then I kick them out. I am not an object or a sheep. Even if I were, garbage Casters attempting to bug or buy me could not afford to anger a future Obsidian Caste sheep,” she replied firmly, taking Dazien slightly by surprise. He almost wanted to laugh at her imagining herself as a sheep but found her confidence of reaching Obsidian Caste to also be a rather telling statement. She hadn’t acted like someone hoping for it, she said it as though it were an inevitability.

  Dazien idly ran a hand through his short hair as he thought about what she had said and trying to figure out how to phrase his next question when she spoke again, “My hair powers are an advantage that I would be dumb not to use and cultivate further. How I use it is what matters. Just like your own Shininess.”

  She finally glanced up to look at him, though her hands and hair never stopped moving as she asked, “Do you value your Shiny self?”

  “What?”

  “Does your powerset show that you value that part of yourself? Do you have things that synergise with it? If you do, then at least at some point, your soul did value your Shiny Talent. If I were you, I would learn to value it more and turn your Talent into a strength you can take advantage of.”

  “You think we should take advantage of ourselves?”

  She tilted her head at him, an ear flopping to the side as she simply answered, “We are the only ones who should. We are the only ones who get to determine our own worth.”

  It was only about an hour after they had arrived that Teal had finally kicked them out of her shop so she could focus working on the rush ordered cooking gloves after asking them a few more specific questions about how Uriel cooked things. They were now taking their time strolling through the city, letting Dazien get a chance to look around more, but he still seemed more subdued than normal, so Phoenix asked, “Are you still tired from the eclipse?”

  “Not so much now,” he replied. “Lady Saiya helped me sleep soundly before you came in. I’m just thinking about what Teal said about controlling and leveraging my Shininess. I’m wondering how some things during my life might have been drastically different if I had more control over it before.”

  “Like Murinah not killing me out of some obsessive jealousy?”

  He gave a sad smile. “Or the others she murdered for the same reason. I can’t help but wonder if Martin might still be alive if he hadn’t fallen for me.”

  “I’ve heard that name mentioned before a few times,” she replied. She eyed him cautiously before asking, “Can you tell me more about him? It sounded like you were in a relationship with him?”

  Dazien nodded. “Yeah. We actually knew each other for years before courting. He came to the temple of the Parent when I was about six. He was two years older than me and dead set on becoming a combat Caster.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  He got a fond smile on his face as he reminisced. “I was actually the one to recommend that Monk Nemor adopt him as her Protégé.”

  “So, he joined Warrior’s clergy?”

  “Yeah. He was thrilled at the chance. Monk Nemor funded his training and would have given him his Aspects… if he had lived long enough.”

  At his frown, Phoenix prodded further trying to get his mind off that depressing end, “So how did you two actually end up together if he was off training to be a warrior?”

  “It was when we were older and I was training with Warrior himself,” Dazien replied, the smile coming back to his face. “Martin was so jealous about that, but our little friendly rivalry got a bit carried away one day when we were sparring alone.”

  He glanced down at her for a moment before adding, “I’m not sure you’ll quite understand, but we were both attracted to each other, and wrestling around on a training mat can make your hormones do some crazy things sometimes.”

  She blushed at that and tried to skip over those details. “So you started dating—er, courting or whatever after that?”

  Dazien chuckled. “Something like that. He was good to me, though. Martin had seen first hand the struggles I dealt with at the orphanage. The creeps that would show up trying to take me. He didn’t want me to ever think of him as one of them.”

  He paused for a moment as his gaze caught on a shop display announcing various personal flying devices. She was sorely tempted to ask if they had a broom or a nimbus cloud for sale even if they might have been the more impractical options.

  When she noticed Dazien looking lost in thought, she asked, “Was he the first lover you ever had?”

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head and beginning to move again. “That was Violet. She was a bit of a whirlwind for my first foray into romantic relationships. She was also a bit older than me and I barely understood what was happening half the time I was with her.”

  “Sounds like she was taking advantage of you.”

  “Maybe, but it didn’t really feel like that at the time. Even when I look back on it, she was just as naive as me in a lot of ways. We were doomed to break up when she couldn’t handle me not being monoamorous. I didn’t even realize that was expected at the time, honestly. I had never had a single conversation about actually navigating a romantic relationship, and she made a lot of assumptions about how I should behave.”

  “So, she got mad at you for courting others?”

  Dazien snorted a laugh. “She got mad at me for even talking to another girl. I was so confused. I think I mentioned before that I don’t really experience jealousy when it comes to people, but Violet definitely did to a rather extreme level. She would yell at me and throw things… It wasn’t pretty.”

  “Well, it sounds like you got out of that nightmare at least.”

  He paused again for a moment before saying softly, “Murinah saw her yelling at me. Violet was irate that I was still talking to other girls when she was the one meant to be my girlfriend. I thought it was fine since it was just my group of friends outside the Parent’s temple. I don’t really see gender much when I interact with people. It’s simply not at the forefront of how I identify people.”

  Dazien ran a hand through his hair before continuing, “That was the last time I saw Violet, though. I thought she was just through with dealing with me and gave up. Apparently, Murinah didn’t like the thought of her being my girlfriend, so killed her just like she killed Martin.”

  “Martin wasn’t like Violet, though. He also wasn’t a girl, so why did she—”

  “To claim me just like all the other purple creepers,” he answered shortly.

  Despite the somber topic, she couldn’t help but ask, “Did Murinah kill any of the others? I remember Uriel mentioning a Xera?”

  He shook his head. “As far as I know those two are the only ones Murinah bothered killing herself. After Martin, I… Well, let’s just say I got a bit freer with my body and didn’t really do serious relationships at all… Not until Uriel.”

  “When he confessed to you?”

  “Yeah. I had actually just come back from a rather poor experience with a more casual lover…” He paused, looking back down at her before carefully saying, “Well, I won’t go into details, but my lover suggested putting me in a position I was very uncomfortable with, and Uriel turned around and suggested that I put him in that uncomfortable position instead. It opened my eyes to him.”

  “And you’ve been in love ever since,” she teased. He chuckled and nodded in agreement, but she redirected, “But Xera came after Uriel?”

  Dazien nodded again but looked more nervous as he glanced at her. “Er, yeah… Exactly how much did Uriel tell you about her?”

  “He just explained how your relationship has always been open to others and that he seemed to have been okay with her. He wouldn’t tell me anything more, but she seemed to help him settle with the idea of you being with others.”

  “Ah,” he replied simply, eyeing her once more before seeming to acknowledge that she wasn’t going to shame him for being polyamorous. “Well, we actually met when I was looking for someone willing to give me a Bit Loan to buy some Spirit Gems. She offered to introduce me to someone willing to take the risk on me and asked me out on a date within the first ten minutes of talking to her. I actually turned her down because of that,” he added with a chuckle.

  “Big red flag as another purple creeper?” she asked with a smirk.

  “That’s exactly what I thought. It was happenstance that I ran into her again in the Market District while looking for a Winter’s Break gift for Uriel. I quickly found out that she was merely a very straightforward person who wasn’t afraid to express her opinions or desires but was also rather lax about other people accepting them or not. She didn’t seem to care in the slightest that I was already with Uriel and even helped me pick out that Storm Dragon statue for him.”

  “So, she convinced you to date her, too?”

  “Basically,” he replied with a laugh. “She was probably the best partner I had when it comes to Uriel’s mutual happiness. She treated him with respect and care.”

  “Did she date Uriel, too? Do you two share lovers?” she asked, before realizing that was probably a bit more personal than she should have prodded. “Sorry, you don’t have to actually answer that. I realize that’s more curiosity speaking.”

  “She didn’t date Uriel,” he answered with an indulgent smile. “And we have never shared a lover, but it’s not against our boundaries. It’s actually rather difficult to find someone that can fit both of us well in that regard. I think that goes for most couples in general. While triads are more common among gemites and in a few other cultures, it takes a lot of luck to let them form organically and even more work to cultivate them into healthy dynamics. Being in an environment that supports it goes a long way, and Tulimeir was definitely not one of those environments.”

  “So, you’re not actually hoping to form one of these triads with him?”

  “While I wouldn’t say no, it’s definitely not something I’m planning on,” he confirmed. “We’re more likely to end up in a chain, where we’re together but with separate partners that aren’t involved with the others.”

  Phoenix thought about that for a long moment, thinking about how Padma had been interested in Uriel before, and wondered what that kind of relationship might look like if they had actually gotten together. If Dazien ended up with this Serenydi princess, too, it would probably end up exactly like he described.

  “Are you worried that Princess Emina won’t be as nice to Uriel as Xera was?” she quietly asked.

  He glanced at her and softly responded, “Yes. He will likely be one of my stipulations for compatibility, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make our lives miserable during that year of courtship.”

  She nodded and muttered, “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”