“Thank you for helping us, Princess.” The spirit she’d asked to speak for the rest told her once she was done healing all of those who needed it.
“It’s no problem and if anything like that happens again I’ll be happy to help, but why did you come to me?”
“Because we believed you could help.”
“I mean, why did you come to me instead of asking one of the great spirits? They’d typically help you all, wouldn’t they?”
“Ah, yes but none are free.”
She didn’t know how true that was, or at least how much of that thought wasn’t just coming from their own view of things. Thera knew that her father regularly guarded Anailia but he was pulled away often enough that he should have been able to help and while both her aunts Funa and Lux had tasks that kept them busy she didn’t think they’d be too occupied to help either. Then there was her newest uncle Ogilt who was just guarding Ben’s experiments but almost certainly could have left for the few minutes it would have taken a being of his power to deal with that level of threat.
Although, I guess he still doesn’t seem mentally well enough to be one of the top choices and as for the others, well, Salinoth is the only great spirit that dedicates the whole of his time to the seas and Incedis has his family and I don’t really care enough about the last three to know what might keep them busy. I guess I don’t even have a clear enough idea about what my dad and aunts do to say they weren’t doing anything important right now either.
“Okay,” She said aloud after thinking it over. “If anything like that happens again, for any spirits or elements or fairies, let me know. I’ll do my best to come and help.”
“Yes yes, if I can I will help but just remember I can’t teleport, I’ll need some of the space spirits to give me a hand each time. Speaking of, could I be sent back to where you all found me?”
“Yes, of course!” A spirit told her, motioning the only space spirit in the crowd to open a portal for her to pass through. “Thank you again, princess. We won’t forget this!”
“Don’t worry about it, this is just what I should be doing.”
She stepped through from there, back to the city she’d been only a little before and back in front of the waiting gate, freed from her adoring crowd, at least mostly. Through the gate it had made came the single space spirit that had been among the rest, waiting quietly by her side until she spoke up.
“Hello there, is there something else I can help you with?”
It didn’t react at all at first, waiting in silence until Thera tried again, this time speaking with her mana.
“Hello, is there anything you need, little space spirit?”
That perked it up and forced Thera to wonder if it simply wasn’t yet used to interpreting a language carried through sound instead of mana as it moved just a little closer to her, cautiously speaking up as it did.
Stolen novel; please report.
“The others say you’re our princess,” It began, with Thera nodding.
“That’s what they say.”
“What does that mean?”
It was a question she wished she knew the answer to as well. It still felt like they’d decided that almost randomly to her and she’d never been able to get a clear explanation as to why. She was their princess because she was their princess, or at least so she’d been told until she’d given up asking. For one of the space spirits though, the only spirit group that hadn’t been on the world when the decision had been made, it must have been nothing but confusing, made all the more so if it had taken the time to learn about the different hierarchical structures that existed in the world.
Spirits didn’t have kings or queens, it didn’t make sense to consider her a princess, at least in any way that mattered. While her father was a leader of sorts to the earth spirits, she understood that the relationship was more complex than that in ways that all of the great ones even seem to struggle with explaining and while she was the first who could really be said to share a bloodline with one given her position as the first half spirit, that shouldn’t have mattered for anything.
When she’d been born she’d been a curiosity to the spirits more than anything. Not good or bad, simply a being that shared an unusual relationship with one of their great ones. It wasn’t until significantly more recently that a change had occurred in how they viewed her, bringing her from a curiosity to something far more beloved.
But with the spirit asking, she saw a place to try her luck again, a counter question on her lips without much thought to it.
“I don’t know. What do the other spirits have to say about it?”
She was hoping for any answer a bit more clear than the circular logic that she was their princess because she was their princess, but it seemed that was a hope to be dashed once more.
“They say it’s obvious and the rest of us will understand soon enough.”
Okay, I’m never getting a real answer.
Trying to find a bit of acceptance of that fact in her heart, Thera held back a sigh and instead did her best to give the space spirit before her something a bit more substantial, seeing that it was clearly still curious.
“I don’t know for sure, but it might be because I help them,” She explained. “I give them my mana when they need it and that helps them grow their numbers and I come to their aid like you’ve just seen. Other than that though I really can’t say beyond my relationship with my father, who you’d know as the great earth spirit.”
It was the best she could do at least but it seemed to perk the other up a bit as it regarded her more closely.
“If you help us then will you help me?”
“If I can then of course, what do you need?”
Aside from being supplied with mana, she didn’t know what else she could do for any spirit besides just talk but she was at least willing to try as she wondered what problems a space spirit could have. She was used to all of the other affinities that existed on the world by that point but space spirits were still new, she didn’t actually know what sort of issues or concerns might bother them until the one with her said the most obvious.
“Our great one isn’t well. Can you change that?”
What else would a spirit want? Their love for their great ones was no little thing and the request was no simple one either. Thera didn’t have it in herself to undo millennia of trauma and self-hatred, she didn’t know if that was something that could ever be fixed, even if millions of years passed for the immortal being.
“I don’t know if that’s something I can do.”