Jadis wasn’t surprised that she had ended up back in her bedroom with Sabina after their time in the forge. They had worked up quite a sweat, after all, so a wash and a change of clothes was in order. That Sabina would take the opportunity to initiate a more intimate encounter while they were alone together in the private bath of the suite wasn’t a shock either. There weren’t too many circumstances Jadis could think of where she wouldn’t gladly take the opportunity to toy with her smith girlfriend’s overly sensitive body. What Jadis did feel some astonishment about was just how nonchalantly Sabina had taken the news that Jadis’ soul had been reincarnated.
After washing up a second time from their bout of bathroom fun, Jadis had brought Sabina to the bed and cuddled with her enchanter lover. Mostly because she had wanted to cuddle, but also because she had wanted to tell Sabina the full truth about her origins. Jadis was seriously considering marriage with Sabina, or something close to it in Oros terms, however it all worked out, so she wanted to give Sabina the same level of trust that she had her other lovers. Aila, Eir, Kerr, and Thea knew about her otherworldly origins, but Sabina and Bridget hadn’t been told yet. So, after a brief conversation to prepare the smith for the info-bomb, Jadis had laid out the truth in as direct terms as she could.
Sabina’s response was… Sabina.
“Oh. That makes a lot of sense.”
Jay stared at her bronze-skinned lover who stared back at her with a placid expression. That was it? No rush of questions? No verbal flood of stumbled words? Not even a shout of surprise? The lack of response made Jadis think that maybe Sabina hadn’t fully comprehended what she’d just been told. So, Jadis tried again.
“Sabby,” Jay started, “Do you understand what I’m saying? This body was made by D. I was a human from an entirely different world until I died and my soul was put here by D. I wasn’t born a Nephilim. I’m not from a mountain village. I wasn’t even born on Oros.”
“Yes, I understand,” Sabina nodded solemnly. “And it makes sense.”
Jay exchanged glances with her other self resting on Sabina’s opposite side. Yup, she looked as confused as she felt. Not sure how to move forward with the conversation, Jay tilted her head and hesitantly asked the first thought to come to mind.
“And that’s all you have to say…?”
“What else is there to say?” Sabina replied with such a matter-of-fact tone that Jadis’ brain almost short-circuited.
“Did Aila or one of the others already tell you about this?”
“Oh, they know?” Sabina asked. “I suppose that makes sense too. Of course you’d tell Aila and Kerr and Eir and Thea. Did you tell Bridget and Alex already? What about Sorcha?”
“Uh, Bridget and Sorcha don’t know,” Jay responded, her brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t even know how I would approach the subject with Alex. My soul being from another world might be a little too high concept for her right now, considering our language barrier issues.”
“Maybe,” Sabina shrugged, “but she’s getting really good at talking in short sentences now. The more you talk to her, the quicker she learns. I think she’d probably understand after a few tries, though you might have to get creative with the whole ‘other world’ part of the explanation. Maybe use the moon as an example?”
While Jadis appreciated the practical advice Sabina was giving regarding Alex, she was still caught on how utterly easily Sabina had taken to the idea of her being from another world. She was talking like it was such a non-issue that Jadis was beginning to doubt herself and wonder if she was making a bigger deal out of it than she should.
“You don’t have any questions about me being reincarnated?” Dys asked from her spot on Sabina’s other side. “No questions about any of it?”
“Oh, I have millions of questions,” Sabina said as she rolled over to face Dys. “More than I can probably ask in a year if you gave me the time. All I’m saying is, I’m not surprised that you were reincarnated and are originally from another world. I mean, the whole trip to Kalters Wall was supposed to have been so that you could look for any surviving members of your village, yet you didn’t spend any time looking for them. We didn’t even try to go wherever the remains of your village should have been, which would be the first place I would start if I was looking for survivors. Instead, you were focused on finding the Dryads and barely even mentioned the village during the whole trip. You never talk about any of your family or friends from the village, which could just be because of grief, but you don’t act like you’re sad except sometimes you look a little homesick, which I guess is kind of sad, but that’s not the same kind of sad that people who’ve lost their whole village in a horrible demon attack act like, which I know from experience because I’ve met people like that and you don’t act like them.
“So maybe you’re just a very different personality and react to grief differently, which kind of makes some sense because you are so focused and unbothered on the battlefield by terrifying stuff that it might carry over to other things, but with how you behave with everything else I didn’t think that was the case. You could also just hate your family, which would be sad, but then I don’t think you’d have even suggested looking for them in the first place. Then there’s the fact that you don’t know anything about being a Nephilim, or being an avatar race, or talking to the gods or Lyssandria or however all that works, even though you are clearly old enough to have learned that sort of thing from other Nephilim if you were raised in a village by them. Also, even though growing up in a remote village does give a good reason for why you don’t know much about anything in the empire, you basically don’t know anything about anything that’s normal like status sheets and leveling and magic beasts, but at the same time you also have knowledge of all kinds of things that I wouldn’t think a remote village would know anything about like indoor plumbing and spring suspensions and politics. I mean, you hate politics, but the fact that you even know about politics enough to hate them is weird for someone who was supposed to have grown up in the middle of the mountains.
“There are tons of weird little things you say, phrases and references to stories and things that none of us have ever heard of. Plus, you write in a completely unknown alphabet. Like, it’s not even an offshoot of Imperial or some dead language that no one uses anymore, it’s just completely different from anything I’ve ever seen. And you write well, too. You speak well. You’ve got a weird accent, but you’re educated. You use big words and know how to apply them like a noble, even if you like to curse all the time. Also, when you curse, you say “God” a lot. Not gods, God. Singular. Which god? There are nine. Well, ten actually if you count Samleos, but he’s not part of the reckoning for most people to worship, but anyway, everyone says ‘gods damn it’ not ‘god damn it’ because there are multiple gods. If you are calling on just one god to curse, you’d say ‘Valtar damn it’ or something like that.
“So, thinking about it, you come across as someone who is well-educated yet ignorant to many ordinary things that a person with a good education should not be unfamiliar with, you also have a weird speech pattern, weird language, and knowledge of things that probably don’t exist on Oros. Combined with your shaky backstory, I'd say yes, it makes sense that you were reincarnated by Destarious from another world.”
Jadis was speechless.
Just how transparent had she been? She knew she wasn’t the best liar in the world, but she thought she’d done a decent job of keeping her most sensitive secrets hidden from others. Apparently not. With how Sabina put it, she felt like she may as well have just worn a sign around one of her necks explaining her otherworldly origins.
Then again, no one else had ever confronted her. Not even Vraekae. Certainly the intense magistrate would have at least approached her in private about her origins if she had any suspicions that Jadis’ story was a lie. Sabina spent a lot more time with Jadis than Vraekae. That probably had a lot to do with how the smith had picked up on things that others who weren’t as close wouldn’t notice. Still, with how Sabina had laid out all the flaws in her backstory, Jadis felt like she was going to need to be a lot more careful. Especially if she was going to be rubbing shoulders with people like Prince Kestil or other nobles.
“So, when did you figure out I was reincarnated?” Dys responded to Sabina’s explanation, having finally found her voice.
“Oh, I didn’t,” Sabina shook her head. “My running theory was that you were actually raised by a secret clan of Dvergr somewhere under the mountains, which would explain your language quirks and why you have some unusual knowledge. I figured you didn’t want to tell anyone about it to keep the Dvergr safe. But like I said, your explanation makes much more sense.”
Jadis couldn’t help the shout of laughter that exploded from her three selves.
“Sabina, never change.”
“Why would I change?” the smith asked as she sat up so she could look down at Dys in confusion.
“You wouldn’t,” Dys grinned. “Now come here, I want a kiss.”
Sabina yelped as Dys pulled her down on top of her, her exclamation transforming into laughter as Dys began kissing her all over.
“I want a kiss, too,” both Jay and Syd added as they moved in from the side, adding to the swarm of kisses and doubling Sabina’s laughter.
Some moments later, after Jadis and Sabina had settled down, they spent some time talking about their lives. As promised, Sabina had many questions about Jadis’ previous life and Earth in general, though Jadis had her own questions about Sabina that she wanted answered and so used the opportunity to ask them.
Sabina’s father, Gallo, was a widower, her mother having passed away when she was just a child to a plague that hit the northern borders of the empire. Her father was from Volto originally but had moved to the empire so that his wife could be closer to her family since he had none. He was a well-regarded smith in the city of Glanum, the place where Sabina had grown up, and while he wasn’t an enchanter himself, he worked with many enchanters and so possessed a great deal of knowledge on the subject.
Sabina had sent him a letter when they had arrived in Eldingholt with the hope that he would be able to visit, though she hadn’t heard back from him yet. The border with Volto was a long way from the imperial capital, so her letter likely hadn’t even reached him yet, even with the express service she had paid for.
Jadis had to explain quite a bit about Earth in general to Sabina, particularly regarding the lack of magic. The fact that magic didn’t exist was such an incomprehensible idea to the smith that she had a lot of trouble processing it. More than the idea of other worlds existing, as it turned out. Jadis coming from a different planet that was populated exclusively with humans? No problem. Jadis coming from a place where magic didn’t exist outside of fantasy and therefore enchanting isn’t real? Impossible.
“But if you don’t have magic, how are you powering the clock tower?” Sabina motioned wildly with her hands, clearly having difficulty accepting what Jadis was saying was true. “You have to have some way of powering the internal mechanisms! Even if your people figured out some way of making highly refined mechanical constructs, you still have to power them with something or they won’t move! Don’t tell me they are using people to manually turn the gears or something like that, are they?”
“No, no,” Syd laughed. “It’s not manpower—well, actually, the way watches were originally made, they were designed to work off of springs that were held under tension. You’d use a small key to wind the springs inside of the watch and that would let the watch function for long periods of time. I’m not sure if that’s how they handled clock towers back in the day; this is all before I was born. Nowadays, or, I guess when I died, everything was powered either by electricity or combustion engines. Often times a mix of the two.”
“Right, electricity,” Sabina said skeptically. “That power that isn’t magic yet it does everything magic does.”
“It’s not magic!” Syd insisted with a grin. “It’s physics and chemistry. Magic does way more things that would be considered completely impossible back on Earth. I mean, look at me! This whole three-body thing is absolutely in the realm of impossible dreams. It’s just, people much smarter than me figured out ways to harness the fundamental forces of nature in order to make our lives easier. We didn’t have magic to rely on, so we found other ways. Well, my ancestors did. I certainly didn’t contribute anything to our technological progress.”
“But how does it work?” Sabina pleaded, still not understanding. “Why would electricity cause gears to turn? I’m certain that if I had a wizard blast some lightning into a collection of gears it won’t get those gears to turn.”
“No, that wouldn’t work,” Jay agreed. “An electric motor involves wires and magnets surrounding a central shaft that can turn. Um, this isn’t the easiest thing to explain, I only have a layman’s knowledge here. Maybe if I drew some examples for you?”
“Yes!” Sabina perked up. “One moment! I’ll get some paper!”
Scrambling up and away from Jadis’ arms, a naked Sabina ran across the room to gather up some writing supplies. Jadis admired the passion Sabina had for crafting, as well as learning new things, but at that moment, seeing Sabina standing completely unclothed while she rummaged around looking for paper and something to write with, other kinds of admiration were stirred inside of Jadis.
She’d have to show Sabina how motors worked quickly, Jadis decided. Then they could spend a little more time getting sweaty together. Later, if her mad genius lover wanted more knowledge from another planet, Jadis would happily give it to her. She trusted Sabina would make good decisions with any tech ideas she was given. Besides, as Jadis had to admit, she really didn’t know much about the inner workings of many technologies. How much could her meager knowledge really affect the progress of science on Oros anyway?
…Probably far more than she could even begin to anticipate.
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