The Weight of Legacy

It wasn’t that Adelheid disliked her new Affinities. It was nice to have no empty spots on the Mana Sources panel. And she had even said ‘thank you’ to her sister a bunch of times! …But they didn’t make as much sense as the ones she’d had since forever. {Missing} and {Implicit} had four numbers by now. Four digits, like how Hildegard called them. The highest of those Sister Malwine had grabbed for her from her great-grandma was barely over 600.

…Maybe—just maybe!—it was because Adelheid didn’t like {Yore} very much. That wasn’t the same as disliking it, no matter what she’d heard about antonyms. No! It was more like having both fruits and vegetables in front of her while stealing from the family table. She could eat either, but if she had to choose, she’d go for the fruits. She liked fruits. That was what it was—it wasn’t happening for her with {Yore}, even though she still could and did use it so that the numbers went up.

Even though there was nothing wrong with it, she’d never gotten to the point where she could like it outright.

Probably because it got… sad. {Yore} was weird like that. That was the only way to put it. For {Missing} and {Implicit}, Adelheid had understood them always. They had been with her all her life and she didn’t need to think about them to use them. She wouldn’t say this to her sister, but she hadn’t really gotten just why Sister Malwine complained so much before… Using her Affinities was the same as moving a hand. She just did it.

Now, Adelheid got it—even if she still kind of got what the Affinities were about just by thinking of them. {Implicit} would just start buzzing at her until she figured it out.

{Yore} was about loss. That wasn’t something Adelheid had known before she got to the Mortal Esse, not really. Or maybe she’d gotten it from listening to Hildegard right before then. But that didn’t matter.

It wasn’t the fancy {Legacy} her sister had tried to explain one or two times before giving up. {Yore} was about the past, yes. Adelheid could guess why her sister had been confused and asked if they might be like each other. But it wasn’t the same.

This Affinity she now had from her greatgrandma was about the past that was gone. It’d already gotten its goodbye, and it’d be missed. But it’d stay that way. The only thing that was left was remembering it, kind of.

When she walked, Adelheid took steps forward, and she could walk backwards if she tried, even if turning around would be easier. The same happened when she moved from one place to the other. She could always just return.

{Yore} was a past that couldn’t be returned to. It couldn’t be brought back, either. That was what made it so sad. It was like how she’d felt about her family when she’d found out someone had taken them away from her before she’d even been born. Life would have probably been less sad back when they’d been around, but they would never be back.

Still, she’d made the numbers go over 600 by now. Adelheid wondered if she should keep going or if she should try to make them all be closer to {Missing}, but that probably wasn’t going to happen. Even {Implicit} hadn’t caught up and Adelheid liked{Implicit} even more than she liked {Missing}!

She almost pouted then. Sister Matilda was next to her, reading a book, so Adelheid tried her best not to pout to not distract her. She’d learned that from her big sister and now she kept doing it.