Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Silverlake stood silently, mulling the deal in her head. She frowned and grimaced to herself, occasionally breaking into indecipherable muttering and strange gestures. Zorian watched her suspiciously, worried that she was trying to slip in some stealthy spellcasting in all that nonsense, but it all seemed to be completely innocuous. Well, as innocuous as that kind of unstable behavior could be, anyway.

"I have a question," she finally said. Zorian motioned her to continue. "Earlier, you told me that wild story about this month endlessly repeating itself and how I lose all memory of it while you don’t. Wouldn’t that mean that everything I gain in this deal is illusionary, while everything you gain from it will actually stay with you?"

"I thought you didn’t believe in that," Zorian remarked.

"Let’s pretend I do for a moment," Silverlake said without batting an eye. "Am I wrong?"

"You’re not wrong," Zorian shook his head. "In the grand scheme of things, this deal heavily favors us. Everything you gain will be gone at the end of this month, while the knowledge we gain and the unlocking of my soul perception will stay with us for future use."

"Then… don’t you think it’s stupid to tell me that?" Silverlake asked him curiously. She didn’t seem to be actually angry, merely interested in the logic he used to arrive to his decision. "I mean, I don’t actually believe that nonsense you’re spouting, but if I did, it would make me totally unwilling to accept this deal of yours."

"I’m thinking towards the future," Zorian told her calmly. "It’s not possible for me to absorb your pocket dimension creation skills in less than a month. We both know this. I will be coming over here with this same deal again and again, and I’ll need to continue from where we left off in the previous restart. I might be able to fool you at first with lies of having learned the basics from someone else, but that will quickly get untenable. At some point, I will have to explain how I know skills that are obviously yours… even though you don’t remember teaching me."

"Well, that’s all good but… how does this help you right now ?" Silverlake asked expectantly.

"Right now would be a good time to discover something I can use to convince the future you I am telling the truth," Zorian said. "You might not believe me, exactly, but you’re clearly willing to entertain the idea for a time… as your current line of questioning amply proves."

She scowled at him, but he ignored her displeasure.

"Basically, I am hoping you will eventually tell me something that I can show off to your future self in order to convince her that the time loop is real and we really have met before… even if she has no memory of it."

Silverlake stared at him for a moment before breaking into cackling laughter.

Zorian sighed. He really didn’t see what was so funny about that.

"Boy, you are madder than I am!" She finally wheezed out, punching herself in the chest a couple of times to get her laughing under control. "Anyway, I accept your deal! And since I’m in a good mood right now, I’ll throw in a reward for you! You want a secret? I’ll give you a good one. The reason I need those grey hunter’s eggs and the body of a hundred-year-old giant salamander is because I’m working on a potion of youth."

"You’re trying to stave off death from old age?" Zach asked, surprised. "Wow. That’s an incredibly advanced skill. I heard from Zorian you were a master alchemist, but I didn’t know you were that good."

"Silly boy," Silverlake chuckled. "I’m not trying to stave off old age. I already have that ."

They were both struck speechless at the admission. An immortal!?

"Ha ha!" Silverlake cackled. "Surprised, aren’t you? Yes, I could persist like this indefinitely. Don’t get fooled by my dashing good looks – I’m positively ancient."

"How ancient?" Zach asked cautiously.

"It’s impolite to inquire about a lady’s age," she said with mock bashfulness. "But it’s a three digit number, I can tell you that much. Anyway, I did a fine job of stopping time from ravaging my body, but this isn’t good enough for me. I want my youth back. And with those spider eggs you brought me, I’m only one step away from that goal."

A short silence descended on the scene, Zach and Zorian being at a loss what to say about that.

"Pretty good secret, isn’t it?" Silverlake said.

She told them all this just so she could brag about how amazing she was, didn’t she?

"Yes," Zorian coughed. "Yes, it is. Anyway, about this trade…"

"Come back here two days from now," Silverlake said dismissively. "You came here completely unannounced, so you’ve caught me completely unprepared. My house is a total mess right now, completely unsuitable for entertaining guests. I need to get some extra chairs out of the basement, dust off the furniture and maybe prepare some refreshments. I think I still have some of that mushroom cake I experimented with a few years back. I know that sounds a little dodgy, but it keeps really well and it gives you such wonderful dreams…"

"The eggs stay with us until we meet again, then," Zorian warned her, completely ignoring her banter.

"Hmph," Silverlake scoffed. "Fine, be that way. Paranoid brats. Make sure to stash them in a dry, dark place with plenty of ambient mana around or they’ll get ruined and the deal will be off!"

"I’ll keep that in mind," Zorian nodded. The eggs were a lot simpler to preserve than he feared, then. "Just to make sure, this thing is safe, right? The eggs won’t hatch in a few hours and release a bunch of tough little spider monsters everywhere, right?"

"No, no, no… well, they shouldn’t …" Silverlake said, hesitating slightly.

"We’re stashing them well away from any populated areas," Zach said decisively. "And when we go to retrieve it, we’re sending one of your simulacrums in first."

"Hey!" the simulacrum currently present protested.

"Stop that," Silverlake snapped at them. "It will be fine. Trust me."

All three of them gave Silverlake an unamused look, clearly telling her how they felt about her reliability and trustworthiness.

"Kids these days, no respect for their elders…" she muttered angrily. "Well, off with you then! Go away. This has been such a pleasant meeting thus far, it’s best to end things on a high note. Don’t forget to bring gifts the next time we meet! Honestly, I can’t believe you two came to visit someone and didn’t even bring them a bottle of brandy or something. Don’t you know that gift-giving is an important tradition? No, don’t answer that, I was just lecturing you, not actually asking you for your opinion. Go. Shoo!"

And thus their meeting with Silverlake ended – with her shooing them away like a bunch of naughty cats loitering around her backyard. Still, they’d largely achieved what they came for, so Zorian was happy.

He just hoped she was actually going to keep to her end of the bargain.

When Zach and Zorian came to visit Silverlake again, she was standing next to a humble cottage, messily butchering a pair of giant brown salamanders. These were smaller specimens, incomparable to the giant that had tried to eat Zorian so long ago, so Zorian assumed they were not the sort she needed to complete her potion of youth… but apparently she still had some use for even younger salamanders. In any case, she welcomed them with a wide smile and an immediate demand to hand over the spider eggs. They did so, patiently waiting as she ignored them entirely for over a minute in favor of inspecting the eggs for damage and whatever else she was looking for. She ushered them into her cottage, which proved to be less of an actual cottage and more of a disguise for the entrance to her pocket dimension.