Chapter 128: Mizu’s Mother

“You’re telling me she made the entire trip with you without mentioning she was visiting her daughter?” Milo gawked. “How long was she with you?”

“Two, three days?” Talca said. “Odd ride. She brought all her own food, wouldn’t eat anything from any of the stands. Doesn’t talk unless she has to, and I mean that. I almost forgot she was there by the end.”

“Gods. Gods.” Mizu was standing with a clenched jaw and a ramrod-straight posture, trying her best to not look like she was freaking out. “She went to see everything. The water. The runes. Everything. I can’t even put a good face on it.”

“It’s going to be okay.” Arthur was kind of lying now. He still thought everything would be okay on an academic, putting-it-all-on-paper level. But on an emotional level, the woman’s slow approach was starting to get to him too. Even just from her walk, Arthur got the strong sense that every inch of this woman was purpose built. She was, in some way, an entirely intentional being.

I don’t think I planned a single aspect of my own personality. I never thought about that before now.

It didn’t matter a lot what Arthur said, honest or not. Mizu wasn’t hearing any of it. She took deep breaths through clenched teeth and muttered ominously about sediment levels in the local water table and how little she had in place to control them. Off to the side of all of this, Lily was looking between Mizu and the woman, trying to figure out what, if anything, she could do to help. Eventually, even she gave up, and they waited together while the woman closed the last bits of the gap towards them.

“My clan was the most warlike of an already violent people. We destroyed at a rate and with a pace noticeable to our enemies, garnering us a name among their ranks,” the womain said.

“She talks that way to her own daughter?” Lily whispered.

“Shh.” Arthur elbowed her lightly. “Just… shh.”

“Hello, Mother,” Mizu said.

“Hello, Mizu. Your water system failed,” Mizu’s mother said.

It was a flat statement of fact, one that carried no tonal subtext which Arthur could read. It had no more flavor than a computer printout of the same words, boring font and all. And it visibly crushed Mizu.

“Yes,” Mizu said, with no inflections put into the word. Arthur hadn’t heard her speak so flatly since almost the first time they had talked. “I tried to do more than I could sustain.”

“Hmm.” Mizu’s mother didn’t react to that, at least not that Arthur could see. “I’ll get my bags. You can show me what went wrong.”

Mizu’s mother went over to Talca, who had strategically withdrawn back to the safety of his wagon. She went through the unloaded cargo, found a few small leather bags, and looped them over her head and shoulder diagonally before scanning the assembled group of Mizu’s friends.

“We were the storm waves, and we crushed against the rocks of our enemies walls with an irresistible grinding. All we needed for success was time,” Mizu’s mother said.

“Umm… hi. I’m Lily.” Lily looked absolutely out of her depth. Arthur did not blame her one bit.

“Hello, Lily. May I have access to an unused house?”

“There’s…” Lily suddenly snapped back into job-mode, realizing this was something she could do. Arthur was glad for her. Maybe she could focus on her task and survive whatever was happening. “You can use the guest house! That we have. Mizu helped build it. It has furniture.”

“Yes, that would suffice.” The woman turned and started walking towards the town ahead of Lily, who trotted to keep up with her. In the last moments, she turned back towards Mizu and spoke, her voice cutting through the distance as though she were right next to them. “And I will meet you at your main well, after I’ve bathed. In an hour?”

It sounded like a question, but really wasn’t. Mizu nodded mutely as her mother took note of her reaction, then turned and walked off into the distance.

“Gods, she’s going to take a shower. She’ll know everything.” Mizu sat down into a little panicked crouch. “The chemical balance. The concentration of suspended particles. Everything.”

“Should I…?” Arthur reached out his hand speculatively towards Mizu, considering lifting her back to her feet. Onna caught his hand mid-reach and shook her head.

“Just let her work it out for a bit. Trust me,” Onna said.

“Okay.” The group was a few paces away from Mizu, doing their best to keep their voices down as she purged her inner family-demons. Arthur turned around to the others. “Spiky, what was with those greetings? You can’t tell me they were normal. They were almost… aggressive?”

Spiky nodded. “Those were storm wave greetings. A particular clan who fielded a particular group of specialized sappers.”

“Sappers?” Arthur asked.

“They tore down walls. Well. All the history books agree that it was pretty terrifying.” Spiky smiled somehow. “I never thought I’d hear those greetings in person. They aren’t unapologetic once they get through the part where they explain to you that they were hard, dangerous people. But there’s… a lot of explaining before they get to that point.”

“Why doesn’t Mizu do it?” Arthur said.

“Oh, it’s a choice. No idea why Mizu went one way and her mother went the other, though.” Leena cut in. “It’s odd, though. I would have never thought that Mizu came from that particular clan. They aren’t loud, really, because no water elementals are. But they aren’t… soft, I guess? They’re confident people.”

“I can see that.” Arthur looked towards the town, where Mizu’s mother was still visible, walking with her head high at an absolutely steady pace. When she wanted to look at something, she would pause and take in the town in a deliberate, measured way. “Hoo, boy. This is going to be a whole thing, isn’t it?”

—

It was three or four minutes before Mizu managed to gather herself, and then another few to get her to the plaza, where Arthur packed her full of calming tea and cookies while there was still time. It would upset whatever weller-skill-enhancing tea effects she was currently under, but it seemed worth it.

As Onna gave her pep talks, Arthur went to work making a tea for Mizu’s mother. There was only so much to say in this situation to help Mizu, and he had already said most of it. Onna was giving a different version of the same messaging, but in a very aggressive Onna way.

Out of things Arthur could actually do to help his girlfriend, he decided to do what he could to start making inroads with her mother. Even in the worst-case scenario, he thought, tea usually helped with things.

Hopefully, this won’t be an exception.

The only problem with the process was that he had no real data to work with. Most of his skill with pinpointing what drink would work for any given individual came from Empathetic Brewer, but that only worked when a person was comfortable with him knowing those kinds of things about them. Mizu’s mom wasn’t. She was a brick wall that only let out information by choice, and she hadn’t chosen to let Arthur see past that wall. At all.

“I need to get down there,” Mizu said. As Arthur finished perhaps the most guesswork-based tea he had ever created, Mizu stood up and straightened her clothes. “There are a few things I can do to make it look better. Not much, but some.”

“You feel better?” Arthur asked, putting his hand on her shoulders and looking at her eyes for whatever information he could find there.

“As good as I’ll feel. Let's go.” Mizu exhaled long and slow.

Mizu strode towards the well, looking slightly different from what Arthur was used to. Her movements were always a bit calculated and smooth, but now they had a sort of restriction to them. She had turned inwards, somehow, not exactly afraid but somehow a bit more separate from the world. Arthur knew this because he had seen it before.

She’s more like when we met. Before everything changed and she made friends.

Arthur followed along in worry as they walked down to the well. Once there, Mizu disappeared into the depths without any comment at all, and before too long, the sounds of needles scratching on the wall started seeping into the air around them. He really did wish he could help, or that Mizu’s mother hadn’t identified Lily as her chosen helper and tour guide for the morning. Still, Mizu had welling under control. Most of the time, anyway.

“There,” Mizu said, down in the pit. A sudden glow issued from the depths, then died out just as quickly. “That should do something, at least.”

“You can make runes that quickly?” Arthur asked.

“No. This is more of a one-off,” Mizu said. “It’s good for a day or so. It’s powerful, but limited, and doesn’t work with other runes. Centuries ago, the whole world ran off runes like that.”

“And now?” Arthur asked.

“It’s for camping when the water is suspect. They still teach it to new wellers, but nobody uses it for anything outside of emergencies.” Mizu looked at her well and sniffed. “This seemed like one.”

“About that. How did that go? Back there with your mom, I mean. I couldn’t really tell, besides what was said.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be able to. I can’t, either.” Mizu kept looking at the well, distractedly doing what Arthur recognized as her mental calculations that were, in some way, almost always related to water. “She says what she wants to say, and it means exactly what she wants it to mean. You can’t read between the lines. There isn’t anything there to read.”

“Oh.” Arthur was relieved. “I thought I was just being dense.”

“You probably were.” Mizu gave him a half smile. “It just doesn’t matter in this situation.”

Arthur smiled back, glad to see her lighthearted again. Then the smile on her face died, and before he turned to look towards the town proper, Arthur already knew why. There, striding towards them with all the roughness of finely polished glass, was Mizu’s mother.

“Hello, Mizu,” the woman said.

“Hello, mother,” Mizu said.

“This is the well?” Mizu’s mother looked down in slight confusion. “It’s very small for a primary source.”

“It is.” Mizu nodded weakly. “There are going to be dozens of other sources, each with their own enchantments. They…” Mizu struggled to find the words. “They talk to each other. To coordinate production. They’re mostly controlled here, by the primary well.”

Her mother nodded, then saw the drink in Arthur’s hand. He held it out towards her weakly. She took it, raised her eyebrows slightly, and took a drink, then raised her eyebrows more.

“This enhanced my weller skills,” Mizu’s mother said. “All of them.”

“It’s good tea.” Arthur didn’t know how she knew the exact effects from just a sip. Most people didn’t, or at least didn’t say so if they did. But he wasn’t about to get in the way of this conversation to explain just how good the tea really was. “I can tell you more about it later if you like.”

Mizu’s mother nodded, then looked back down at the well. With some level of visible concentration on her face, she bent down and touched the stones. Arthur wasn’t the most majicka-sensitive person, but even he could feel something going on in the air as he did, like the majicka was getting both roiled and drained at once.

“I thought so. You haven’t solved the conflict between the communication runes you’d need and the pressurization matrix. It’s no wonder this exploded, Mizu. How did you propose to keep the water going where it needed to be?”