The Unforgiving Moon

63.

A low whistle passed Lotta's lips as she entered the room. Undoubtedly for the same reason the alchemist seemed to tense. One look at each of us was enough to imagine what had gone on here; one taste of the tense, bitter air.

"I took the liberty of accompanying the head alchemist," Lotta announced. Her voice sounded tender, and I was so happy to hear it. It hadn't fully hit me how much I had missed her, until she stood before me.

Aven motioned for the alchemist to join the table, as Lotta passed to my left. She brushed against me as she walked past, and looked at me as if to stay We'll catch up later.

I smiled back. She seemed herself—her pixie cut was tidy, her skin was free of blemishes, her eyes looked soft and lively.

The alchemist was an older man, roughly a few years older than Benjamin. He wore a dark apron covered in stains, and high, heavy boots. They thudded loudly as he walked, and no doubt served to protect his feet while he worked.

His hands appeared much whiter than his face, indicating he wore gloves often. But now they were bare as he placed the two glass jars on the table before us. One contained pieces of the dark stone, but the other jar... It held a deep, dark liquid substance.

He lowered his head toward Aven before he began speaking. "Thank you for allowing my presence," he said.

Aven dipped his head. "What have you learned?"

All ears were intently focused on the man, on whatever he would reveal.

"The research has been very slow, I must admit," the man said, his eyes nervously glued to the glass jars. "Me and my team had been stuck on it for weeks, with no progress to report. The stone itself doesn't react to anything. Whereas, in comparison with other similar materials, they would burn or dissolve.

"Not this species. Which was very interesting, very intriguing. Everything we put atop it, just slid right back off. It has caused stains all over my laboratory. But no damage whatsoever to the stone.

"But it's easy to work with, to cut it, sharpen it, sculpt it. And when it's very thin, it's very fragile, very breakable. Yet still, it can withstand the most severe of potions without a single dent. We even looked around with a magnifying glass, but found not a single trace of black being removed from the stone."

The alchemist's eyes seemed to light with intrigue, and wonder, and his words started rattling the more and more he progressed in his story.

"But then, we thought to see how it'd react to the most basic elements. It responded to fire, and very interestingly so."

He picked up the second glass jar, the one with the black liquid. Everyone held their breaths.

"It melts, very quickly. And once the stone has melted, it turns into this liquid. With again, most of those same capacities as the stone. But once it's liquid, it doesn't seem to be able to return to stone. We were not able to freeze it, but I would be glad to be sent to the snowy parts of Seeing Moon for the next cold honoring Moons, to conduct further research. I'm afraid we cannot get any conclusive answers on its freezing abilities in the circumstances I can recreate in my laboratory here."

The man truly seemed to regret that limitation to his research, the check of his job he seemed to love dearly.

"That's half a year away," Aven said. "We don't have that time. Tell us what you know now."

The alchemist nodded hastily. "Yes, yes, of course. We repeated the research we had already done on the stone, but we found the same results. The liquid did not react to anything we added to it. But one of my assistants found a remarkable resemblance with another liquid."