Chapter 41 - The Seraphim Twins P8
*****
"It's been a while since you've stayed here," Mom said as we sat down at the tea table in her private residence.
"Yeah, you should come back to Gaia more often," Mavel said, "and help me with managing Alexandria. I'm sick of doing it all by myself."
Mom smiled at Mavel and said, "And you, missy."
"Me? What'd I do?"
"Vel and I spent years trying to get you to drop the mother-daughter act. I'm glad you finally were able to let go of it."
Mavel took a sip of tea and frowned. "Looking back on the past decade... it feels so strange. I know what happened, but now that my memory of the pregnancy and birth are gone... it's like I can see everything properly now. Before, it was like a grainy film, and now it's clear." She smiled and looked at me. "I feel like I was being held back from getting close to you. Like I had to maintain a distance. And now our relationship dynamic is sisterly, rather than... the other. And I like it."
I shrugged. "You were obnoxious with the mother-daughter thing. I'm glad you like what we have now."
"I was blissfully ignorant," said Mom, Lanti.
What do I call them? I always call both Mom but...
"You're trying to figure out what to call us," said my catgirl mother.
"Huh?" I froze as I reached for my cup.
"It was pretty obvious. You were looking back and forth between us a lot. Just call us by our names."
I looked at Mavel, made a stick out of mana, and bonked her. "Enjoying this?"
"Pfft. Yes."
"I think it's pretty funny, too!" said another voice from behind me followed by a pair of hands covering my eyes.
"Hello, Larie," I said.
"Aww, you figured it out!"
I shrugged. "Your mana is unmistakable, Miss World Tree."
"Miss World Tree?" Lanti asked.
"Oh hi, Lanti."
"I'm sorry, do I know you?"
Mavel snapped her fingers, and the room around us disappeared, replaced with a view of Eden in Alexandria, specifically from high in the sky near Yggdrasil.
"Thanks, May! Lanti, you know me, but you don't know that right now." She pointed at the tree. "See that big tree?"
"Is that Yggdrasil?"
"Yep! That's also me."
"Sorry, what?"
She shrugged and walked around to sit next to Mabel in a chair she created on the spot. "Hi, Mom."
"You're the tree... and you're Mabel's daughter? I thought... I'm confused."
"Uh, so we're not quite to that point in the storytelling," I said. "She showed up at the end of the second week."
"Can I get the cliff notes?"
"So basically, she showed up and started attending the academy with us. Because it was out of the blue, we had to quickly come up with a story. Rather than need a fake story and lie about it, Mom... Mabel adopted her. Larie has always taken a cat person form, so it also made a lot of sense for the Beast Queen to adopt an unknown catgirl with mana exceeding her own."
"That's right," Mabel said. "I adopted this rambunctious kitten and sent her to the academy with Maya."
"I'd always had a name for my cat person form," Larie said, "but only a given name, which was given to me by Luna. When I came here and Mabel adopted me, I decided to take the name Weltwald not just as an identity here, but permanently. I mean, Weltwald means world forest, and I'm the World Tree, so I thought it was appropriate."
"Okay, I see. You are as much of an anomaly as the other Transcendents."
"Oh, I'm not a Transcendent."
"You're not?"
"Nope! I'm not a human or human-like being. I'm just a big tree."
"Yeah, sure," I said. "You are just a big tree. Uh huh."
"Yeah. A REALLY big tree, okay? Biggest tree there is!"
"Sure. Sure."
"Anyway, my name is Lariette Weltwald. Luna named me Lariette when I was just a sprout with the human form of a baby cat person. Nice to meet you again, Lanti!"
"So you knew me as Eglantine?"
"Yep!"
"I see. Perhaps I will remember soon."
"You could remember now if you go back to your living body," Mavel said. "You should totally do that and come help me in Alexandria."
"I'm managing Atlantis!"
She shrugged. "So go back and forth!"
"Wait, that's possible?"
"Uhh... I wasn't being serious. It's possible, but it's more involved than that."
"I suggest not flip flopping between a living body and a mana body," Larie said. "Your soul will collect darkness with every switch." She looked at me and continued, "On that topic, there's something I want to talk to you and Eli about, regarding Elysium."
"What's that?"
"I want to rebuild the system from the ground up."
I felt my eyes widened and my mouth fall open. "That's not a simple thing to do. Even Eli... I mean Elise, before they split into two, could not do that without significant effort."
"Yeah, I know. It would take me, Luna, and all of you seven stars... or I suppose nine stars now, to get it done in a decent time frame. But you'd all have to come back to Eden."
"Seven stars? Nine stars?" I asked. "What does that mean?"
She looked at me with a blank expression. "I... am going to put those two in your mind scapes through the ringer... they didn't even tell you what the seven stars is." She dropped her head on the table. "I'm not allowed to explain that without Luna's permission."
Knock! Knock!
"Hmm?" Mavel snapped her finger and dismissed the illusory view of Eden, allowing us to see the room around us again.
"Enter!" Mabel called.
The butler came in with platter holding a cup and a pitcher. He placed the cup in front of Larie, and refilled all of our cups. Before he left, he said, "I am at your call, Your Majesty."
"Thanks. I'll call you if I need you."
Once the butler was gone, I asked, "So, you want to remake the system. How do you want to go about it?"
"My first option is to just turn time back to when you were children in Eden. I know there's a lot of grief all of you have over Luma's incident. We could fix a lot of your personal problems along the way."
"You couldn't do that before."
She shrugged. "I didn't know how. I'm not omniscient like Luna. I have to figure it out on my own."
"You're talking about the single biggest mana expenditure in history," Mavel said. "It's possible, but you would have to use virtually your entire store of mana."
*****
Revision: 2025-7-29