Timestamp: 65th of Fall, 522 A.V.
The new mother was roasting alive. She didn’t know what was going on with her blood and what Shiress called her baby body instincts, but she was dying of the heat. She’d tried to take a swim, a shower, and even had tried altering the air around her to cool the humidity and temperature using Reimancy. It seemed like such a frivolous notion, using her djed for her own comfort, but there was nothing else she could think of to do. Taz needed relief and she needed it now.
That last bit helped a small amount, but not enough to bring her any comfort. Khari was ten days old now, and a little person all in her own right. But she definitely wasn’t overly warm. The baby barely wore clothing and when she did it was just to protect against mosquitos and fly bites when Tazrae was running low on insect repellent.
The other problem Tazrae had was that the Ixam hatchlings were bored and driving her nuts. She must have had a good collection of a dozen by now, most of which were Bree’s babies unless she misjudged their colorings. Well, there were one or two that were golden or varieties of gold, so Taz had to say Sunny had some in there as well. The little albino male was curled up at her feet and seeing his bright white hide gave her an idea. There was one thing she missed about Riverfall at this sort of time of year. She missed snow… bright beautiful white snow the color of the little albino’s hide.
Taz wondered, as she gently rocked Khari on her shoulder, if she could as a Reimancer with air and water, create snow. Concentrating, she extruded Res, sent it spinning up, and tried to figure out how one exactly made snow. Did she cool the air and run water through it? Did she try and form snowflakes already whole? Taz thought the latter might work easier than the former and she pictured how she’d seen snow… delicately falling flakes interlocking in a thousand million different patterns.
She tried visualizing this, locking her will into the Res and crafting snow from what she’d studied melting on her palm. The Res bucked and undulated, trying to form what she’d seen and understood snow to be, but it was confusing. How does one get tiny beautiful flakes, all individual and all flying around like snow? Taz had a hard time wrapping her brain around the idea and had to back off when the Res formed something that was cold and wet and looked nothing like snow.
The Innkeeper should have been at the Inn busy, but the day before, she’d made enough food to cover the whole day today, leaving Jaelis in charge to do the serving if anyone needed any food. Her guest rooms were empty at the moment, and she was grateful for that because it gave her free time. Free time, however, made her restless and anxious so she had to do something to get the hatchlings to leave her alone and keep Khari entertained enough to actually go down for a nap. That way, her mother might actually get a chance to nap as well.
Taz couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept at all… not a night, not even a four-bell nap in the afternoon.
She might be overreaching. The snow might be above what she could do. But the effort of it distracted her as she rose from her seat, gently dislodging the albino hatchling as she tried again. Rather than start out complex, she backed off to something simpler. Ice. By the Gods, as hot as she was couldn’t she just make ice?
Taz extruded a bit of Res again, letting it float up in her signature sunset coloring and swirl in a ball above her palm. She grabbed ahold of her will and reinforced the Res to be as the ice was.. cold hard frozen water. The ball formed instantly, swirling above her palm under the force of her desire. The ice ball held its shape nicely as Taz let it slowly sink down and rest in her palm. Then she swung her arm back, whistled sharply, and sent it flying. Half the pack of hatchling Ixam were after it in a heartbeat, instinctually chasing anything that seemingly ran from them.
Meanwhile, Khari squawked with infant indignation at the abrupt motion of her mother hurling an ice ball for the pack of hatchlings.
