I sat there, my face stuffed full of what I think was some kind of ice cream. I’d never really had any, but if it looks like ice cream, tastes like ice cream, and quacks like ice cream, it’s probably ice cream. I was chewing it - so far as you can do such a thing to a soft substance - but otherwise probably looked like a startled deer.

  “It’s sorbet,” István said, sprinkling the remains of whatever he crushed onto the plate. Drat, I should have known, it didn’t quack.

  I hastily swallowed, now ready for whoever demise he had planned for me. Looking at the dust on the plate I asked, “What was that, and why was it interesting that I could tell… whatever it was I could tell. That you turned reality down a little or something.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” he said, smiling at my explanation. “That was a presence suppression tool. Anyone trying to listen in on us can’t hear us now, and anyone who didn’t already know we were here now has very little chance of finding out.

  I wasn’t going to lie, that did sound pretty cool. Like hide and go seek in pill form. Or something else small. I hadn’t exactly seen what it was he was holding before he consigned it to its fate as a sparkly plate decoration.

  “So here’s the gist,” he continued his explanation, snapping my focus back to him. I was partway through giving the probably-pill a name and a backstory. “You’ve got a Mote.”

  “A Mote?” I repeated, not really getting it.

  He seemed to be searching for words. It occurred to me then that some of his ‘hiding crap from Charley’ vibes might be because he didn’t speak what he had called ‘the common language’. I mean, I had my not-ice-cream and I was still breathing, and he seemed like he wanted to explain stuff to me. I’d probably breathe some more after that too.

  Unless he fed me more. I was full. ‘How did I eat that much’, full. ‘Back when Gran had her own house and we could go visit’ full. full. It’d been a while, so I wasn’t about to complain. But yeah. No more food please.

  “A Mote is a form of power,” he finally said. He held out his hand. In it, there was the scale from earlier. “I bought this one from Viktor, as I have rite of first refusal for artifacts. Do you recall what categorization this had?”

  “Water,” I said, without missing a beat. Not that I remembered, or anything. For some reason, looking at it now, it was super obvious. There was a tiny blue glow it somehow, shaped like a water drop. As though I could see through it, but it was still quite solid at the same time.

  “Good memory,” he replied, and I didn’t correct him. “This is a water artifact. When I got my Mote, it was a fog. Some people get snowflakes or other things.” He held out the artifact and a blue glow enveloped his hand. The artifact matched the glow, then just seemed to… well, into a stream of particles, a mist of sorts that spiraled around his arm until it reached to his core, where it vanished through his shirt. The location seemed to match where the warmth I had was earlier. He had closed his eyes at some point.

  “I’m building on my Mote, using the energies from the artifact. This won’t work forever. There’s a ceiling to what you can do with this approach.” He smiled at me, “Luckily, I’m still a ways off from that limitation. Viktor is closer, but they still work for him as well. He also gets a little bonus from rift extractions like the one we did yesterday.

  “He’s got a Fire attribute, as you likely guessed. He saw an ember when he got his Mote. What did you see?”

  “A candle flame.” István seemed surprised by that. I wasn’t sure how it was different from an ember or anything else. But then again I was completely new to all of this.

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  “That’s… different,” he stated. I waited for a followup but it seemed none was coming. I kept waiting and eventually he coughed into his hand and continued. “Either way, let us continue. You can use energies from the artifacts to build on your Mote. You help it to be a stronger version of itself, and that feeds back into you. From what we can tell, there was once another way to grow them, but we’ve lost that.”

  He sighed, a deep affair that left him looking a little deflated. “To be honest with you, there is something fundamentally wrong with this world. It does not seem to make artifacts any more. We can tell by looking at historical sites that they used to appear naturally. So we get them from the rifts. There’s more to it than that, but you’re not strong enough to hear about the rest for now. It will just be dangerous for you.”

  “So where do the ones in the rifts come from, then? Or is that, like, danger stuff?” I asked.

  He reached in his pocket again. I looked a little askance at the action, but hey, still breathing. He pulled out something that I immediately recognized. Apparently he’d bought this one as well. Hopefully it hadn’t cost much.

  “Remember this?” he asked, holding it out to me.

  “Oh yeah, the one with the deeeeeeeeeer,” I said, drawing out the vowel a bunch. “You know… cause it’s wide.” I trailed off at the end under his stare. He gave me a look as if he was wondering how many flights of stairs I’d fallen down as a child.

  Apparently I was over the whole breathing thing, since it seemed to be a prerequisite to me saying stupid stuff.

  “Uh, yes. That one.” He pointed to the edges of medallion where there were inscriptions. “Do these look like any characters you know of?”

  “No, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the brightest tool in the shed.” I said, feeling guilty about it, “So I’m probably not your best bet to begin with.”

  “You are fine, Charley… you should be less harsh on yourself. You’re one of the few people I enjoy being around at work, so you’ve at least got that going for you.” István said, which did make me feel a lot better. “If it makes you feel any better, this is not the first time we’ve found artifacts that are clearly from other societies. Most of them have writing that at least looks passably similar to known languages. We suspect that they come from older civilizations and have gotten lost in some sort of transient space just outside our world.”

  He sighed again, “But we don’t know. There’s not a lot of historical records anymore. We have a huge gap in our understanding of history.” He pauses again, with that ‘debating my next words’ feel. “Honestly, I think someone destroyed them on purpose. The damage is just so… There was another gap of silence. “But you didn’t hear that from me and I can not prove any such thing.” It seemed like he was happy to share his secret with someone, because he perked up after that.

  He pointed at my dish with the spoon from his now empty dish. Had he been sneaking bites the entire time and I just didn't notice? “You should really finish that before it melts.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice.

  He actually walked me back part of the way. It felt very sweet, especially once I noticed that he seemed to go in the exact opposite direction once we parted ways. “Walk safe, see you tomorrow.” I waved in reply and continued towards home.

  The wind had shifted, and the city smelled less burnt than usual. I could see one or two stars though the haze that covered everything. I had a full tummy, and was even still breathing. What more could a girl ask for?

  Well, fuzzy pajamas. But I was about to get those, so the trifecta would be present. I could see the little house we had in the distance. It sat with about a dozen others, single story dwellings that were a step above hovels, sometimes literally as they covered a receding hillside in the noises and lights of human habitation. The burnt smell mixed in with various food scents and the acrid smell of poorly handled waste, both household and sometimes human.

  I’d never really noticed it that much before, but being at the restaurant with István helped me become a little less noseblind to it. Hopefully Alessa could pick up another job, with a less creepy boss, and then we could move out of this area. Probably a pipe dream, but hope springs eternal, as they say.

  As I got closer, I noticed that something seemed off at home. The lights were off, which was unusual for this time of night. I picked up my walking pace, then turned that into a run when I heard a scream and saw a misshapen shadow pass by the doorway, retreating into the night.

  Panting hard, I crossed the threshold. In the dim light, there was a large dark blob in front of me. I hesitated for two seconds, as my night vision adjusted. My breath caught in my throat.

  It was a body on the floor.