Chapter 27
In the evening, she had planned to analyze the data from the day in the library. But after sitting for a while, she felt restless - worried that Sylas would ruin her living room. So she packed up her things and brought them into the living room. As she entered, Sylas gave her a warm welcome, with Titus happily running over, meowing and rubbing against her legs.
The person playing chess with her, Hyectra, said, "Madam, you finally came, I was planning to call for you later."
Xerath closed the door. "What's wrong?" She drew a complex zigzag line in the air with her slender, fair fingers, and a Earth Child appeared with a rumble. Xerath found a place to sit on the sofa, and the Earth Child crouched down in front of her, becoming a stone platform. Xerath placed everything on the Earth Child's shoulder, which was flat enough for two people to sit on, let alone a book, a few pages of paper, and an ink bottle.
"The little miss asks me every half an hour, 'Where is Xerath, will she come to play tonight?' Oh, so adorable."
"I didn't!" The little girl denied it softly, her face turning red. She looked at her own toes and caught Xerath looking at her. She quickly lowered her head again.
Xerath nodded coldly and said, "But I have some work to finish tonight. If I don't do it now, I won't be able to play with you. So, why don't you play with Hyectra first?"
Sylas nodded eagerly, but unable to bear the embarrassment, she finally rushed into the arms of the water lord. Hyectra gently patted her back.
She whispered, "You can't... you can't tell her! In the future... never!"
"Oh, okay."
"You promise."
"Yes, I promise. This will be our little secret from now on."
"But she already knows!"
"The archmage won't mind."
"Sob..."
Xerath could actually hear and silently curled the corners of her mouth. She was always loved and disliked strongly by others, so this level of attention wasn't a big deal, but people can't help but put on a cold face towards those who like them. Xerath was glad to see this outcome, as it would greatly help with her experiment.
Sylas and the Water Lord's game progressed to Connect Four, as the name suggests, it's a game where the first one to connect four in a row wins. The difficulty of controlling the pieces and the board has increased, leading to some explosions, but Xerath had positioned ripples in front of her in advance, so her entire set of equipment remained unharmed. She didn't even wet Titus' cushion.
This not-so-quiet environment certainly affected her thinking, but the archmage deemed it necessary, better than having the living room destroyed again.
But as time passed, another challenge gradually approached her: putting Sylas to sleep.
A couple of days ago, she reluctantly allowed the little one to sleep in her bed, but the archmage needed her own private space. She now had two options: the first one was simply allowing Sylas to sleep with her every night until Virgil found a buyer. The second one was figuring out a way for Sylas to sleep on her own.
At first glance, the first choice was much easier. Sylas was a very well-behaved sleeper and wouldn't disturb her. However, Xerath had a strange insistence when it came to personal space. In short, the owner of the mage tower would never allow her habits to be forced to change for someone else.
"Sylas, it's time to go to sleep," she closed her work notebook and gathered all the draft papers onto Earth Child's body. Sylas reluctantly stood up and the water lord took the things from Xerath's hands and walked out.
Sylas held Xerath's hand as she was pulled towards the guest room. After supervising Sylas's bedtime routine and helping her change into her pajamas, Xerath lifted the covers and let her lie down before turning to leave.
Instead of turning left upstairs, she went downstairs to the library and found a book called "Elemental Chronicle: A Simple Guide." This book didn't belong to her, but to Hyectra who had been serving her for twenty years. The material was very unique, with thin layers of shale and some kind of metal woven together, and the writing had wedge-shaped strokes that conveyed a sense of elements. Thankfully, this was a popular book intended for general language readers, otherwise Xerath might not have been able to understand it.
When she pushed open the door, she met Sylas's surprised gaze. The little girl was sitting on the bed without Xerath noticing. She asked, "Can't sleep?"
Sylas nodded, but then shook her head. Xerath chuckled, took off her magus robes and placed them on a chair, saying, "Please lie a little more inside, I need a spot."
Sylas quickly made room, and Xerath lifted the covers and sat on the bed. "If you feel cold, you can lean against me." Touching others didn't disgust her as much as she had imagined, perhaps because people naturally lowered their guard and disgust towards children—there was a paper that supported this view—or maybe it was simply because Sylas herself was a likable child, not to mention her natural affinity for the mysterious elements made them naturally close.
The little girl gently leaned closer and nestled beside her.
"Considering our individual independence, I hope you can sleep alone, but I also understand that sleeping alone can be lonely. From today onwards, I will accompany you in your room until you fall asleep. I'll read you some stories, though they might be a bit boring... My collection doesn't have any stories specifically prepared for children." After she finished speaking, she lowered her head to look at Sylas, but her emerald green eyes sparkled with pure joy, as if having someone with her was enough.
Xerath felt a little uncertain and could only touch her hair. Then she cleared her throat and said, "I want to tell you a story about the elemental world. Would you like to listen?"
"Yes!"
Afraid that the previous story might be too boring and make her refuse to listen to any more stories related to the book, Xerath skipped the introduction and flipped to the Chapter on "fire," saying, "Four elements gather in our world, and there are many interesting things here. So elemental creatures have the opportunity to come to our world and explore. Typically, a child of fire would choose to become a chef."
"Chef, fire, Elvis."
"Very good, you remember its name. There is a fire child named Flem, who came to this world from the Elemental Gate, ready to embark on a journey as a chef. It passed through the desert of the Elemental Gate, walked for ten days and nights, and avoided many spatial fissures before reaching a small village on the edge of the desert.
It entered the human village and found a tavern. Just as it was explaining to the tavern owner that it wanted to work in the kitchen, the wood on its head ignited its hair, and the whole tavern went up in flames. People panicked instantly, and someone came in from outside throwing water and sand. Flem got scared and could only escape in the chaos."
Sylas eagerly raised her head and said to Xerath, "It just, wants, to be a chef."
"That's right, it just doesn't know how to interact with humans."
