There was a knock at the door, and then it opened. "M'lord? M'lady? Their Graces have sent for you, it's nearly breakfast time."

  Nathan groaned and started to pull himself upright, knuckling his eyes and squinting at the well-risen sun. I lay on my pillow, heart racing.

  The fuck was that? Why do I remember dreaming, and also remember being the part of me that crafts my dreams? I sat up. I was a cloud? But also me? And... I looked around.

  Silk sheets, oak bed, oak floor. Owl-feather pillow. Marble and steel in the dresser. Cotton clothing and mattress. Gold, silver, water on the bedside.

  Status.

  [ Natalie Harigold ] [ Level 1 Sorceress ] [ Rival ]

  [ Strength 2 ][ Stamina 3 ][ Intellect 9 ][ Charisma 4 ]

  [ HP: 3/3 ][ MP: 9/9 ]

  [ Essence Gathered: Air, Cotton, Earth, Gold, Marble, Nathan, Oak, Owl, Silk, Steel, Void, Water ]

  [ Condition: Untethered Essence (can fully bind Essence 100%, can bind Essence more easily) ]

  Air, cotton, earth, gold, marble, oak, owl, silk, steel, water. The materials I had affinity to were the ones that I had near to me when I slept. The ones that my cloud-soul absorbed, or suffused.

  And now I looked hard at that last line, the condition. The little joke left for me by the goddess before she turned me loose. I have an untethered essence. It lets me gather and bind essence affinity more easily. That dream, that cloud-soul.. that was my essence. Untethered.

  "Natalie?" Nathan said, looking concerned. "You seem troubled." He slid his legs over the edge of the bed, stood up without looking for his slippers. "Very troubled. Sister, are you all right?"

  "I... I think I understand more than I did," I said, sitting up. I shivered, and spent a mana to warm up the air in our room, my hand reaching out to curve the essence how I wanted it. He watched my gesture, and then the instant change in the atmosphere. I flicked through a different sequence, and formed a layer of cotton over me, a bright and cheerful play-dress with silken ribbons and gold-threading across the collar.

  His face was bright with awe and joy. "Sorcery," he gasped, bouncing on his toes. "Oh! Me next! A pirate costume!"

  I didn't want to activate any more essences, but I could keep conjuring the ones I had mustered already. I brought cotton, gold and silk together to shell a pirate costume over his nightgown. He squealed with joy and ran for the door, but cotton shoes did not fit right, and he had no depth perception with the eyepatch- he immediately tumbled to the floor. I went to his side, and my hands and the curved wind helped him back up to his feet.

  "Oh, this is amazing!" he cheered. "C'mon!" And with only a slightly more cautious pace, he ran for the family's dining room.

  I let myself be towed along in his wake, but I had a loose thread that I still had to worry at. I could remember stretching my essence out of my body. And I could remember settling it back inside myself. It felt like a door that I could open or shut. Maybe like an over-filled linen closet- I could open the door but things would spill out, and I would not be able to shut the door until I had put everything back in its place and stuffed them in good and tight. Also, when I had stretched out last night, like a cat after a nap, I remembered doing this many times before. If not every night, then almost every. And so- have I been living a double-life? The essence of me remembers my days and my nights, but in the daytime I forget all about my time as a free essence?

  "Mother! Father! Look what Natalie made me!"

  Oh, we're here already! I cleaned up my expression and put on a smile, and headed for my chair. I could smell waffles and apple jelly, a welcome reprieve from all the rich savory foods yesterday.

  "She made that?" my mother looked surprised, and cast me a look.

  "Magic," I said, wriggling my fingers. "I can work in cotton as well as silk. I need to bind an affinity to leather if I'm really going to conjure clothing though."

  My father did not stop chewing as he looked his son over. He swallowed hugely, and then said "I don't recognize those bracelets and rings."

  "Pirate treasure!" Nathan declared, and slashed at his waffles as if his fork were a cutlass.

  He's only been a rogue for less than a day. I guess he's a natural.

  "Yes, I can work in gold. Silver too," I said, sighing ponderously.

  My mother understood that sigh, but she followed up anyway because some things really need to be said out loud. "You understand that there are some very severe laws against sorcery dabbling in gold or silver?"

  "I know," I said. "But really the only ones worth worrying about are the injunctions against trading, selling or buying with ensorceled coins, and the very serious prohibition against sorcerers binding an affinity to gold or silver. Technically, I was not a sorceress when I bound those affinities."

  There was almost half a waffle on my father's fork, but he paused, mouth wide open. He shut his mouth and set the fork down, and gave me a help-me-understand-this look. "Now, I'm just a very well-educated duke who has hired several sorcerers in my time, went to school with a couple, passed court's judgement on issues of sorcery several times, read extensively on the subject and kept an active interest because my daughter studies magic," he said, by way of preface, "but it has always been my understanding that only sorcerers can bind an affinity to an essence."

  "Seems like it works that way most of the time," I said, "but I've been passively binding essence most of my life. Especially in my sleep. Could you pass the syrup?"

  Both my parents looked very surprised by this. And that was the correct reaction: this is something like saying 'I've figured out cold fusion in my sleep last night and I've already proven it works'.

  "The syrup?" I repeated.

  My mother passed me the syrup. "Hmm," she said. "I suppose I should have known that you would not be an ordinary sorceress."

  "What fun would that be?" I responded, smiling brightly.

  They laughed, I laughed, we started eating breakfast, my father mentioned that at Nathan's advice he was going to start freeing up reserves of dried spices to strategically reinforce market prices.

  I went to visit my tutors, one after another. First was three hours with Lady Puckree, studying history, law, literature and political structure. She was entirely unimpressed by my ability to create and control materials, and more impressed by my ability to summarize and paraphrase the different articles of the Second Archipelago Charter.

  Next, lunch. Nathan had us in stitches regaling an amusing anecdote about small children giving nicknames to grandparents.

  But after that I had three hours with my magister, Nukhail. He had heard about my birthday breakthrough, and was ready with a whole parcel of new warnings and teachings not to overindulge, and to monitor carefully how much of my affinity I would use. This was the most dangerous time for a sorceress, at the very beginning when they were still figuring out limits and did not yet have an instinct for when to pull back. Also, as he pointed out, the fewer affinities a sorcerer has, the more likely they are to be influenced by it. To be safe, I should start actively gathering other affinities so that I can diversify and not be led so strongly by any one influence.

  "How many would you recommend?"

  "It would depend," he creaked. He was the human equivalent of an ancient oak that threatened to fall in every windstorm but never quite tipped over. Unfathomably old, gray, and massive. The tallest man I'd ever seen in Hearstwhile, but every movement he made was accompanied by sound. "Depending on how strong your affinities are. If they are rather mild still, you probably only need two or three. If they are well-convicted, four or five. If they are of the maximum affinity, at least seven I should say."

  "They are at maximum, and there's at least a dozen," I said.

  "Well, that's what you had been telling me, but now that your powers have activated, what do you feel?" he sounded rather smug.

  "I feel like you're not a very good listener."

  To prove to him that I had those affinities, I curved air and steel, I crafted cotton and silk and gold and silver, I called earth and marble and owls. And then I ran out of mana. But he was shaken, clutching at the tabletop with crackling knuckles. "Nine mana?" he shook his head. "At your age! Oh! Ohh! And so many different affinities as well. All of them, you say, strong enough to convert?"

  "If it was safe to try, I have enough affinity to transform myself into any of them," I assured him. With plenty to spare, I kept to myself. It would not reassure him.

  I explained about gathering affinity in my sleep. I explained my dream. And then, with his cautious coaching, we decided to take the next step.

  "You should probably lay back just to be certain," he said, nodding me towards the couch in the corner. I was almost swallowed up by it, it was made for his towering bulk and I was not built to his scale. I lay back, just a couple of feet away from the fireplace that put warmth into the room. Magister Nukhail liked it warm, the cold got into his joints. Even though we were only just past summer time, he wanted at least a low fire banked in the grate.

  I lay down. I crossed my hands over my stomach. I closed my eyes. I unlocked the door.

  The gauzy cloud of me started to seep out, bulging out of my body, slowly decompressing. I looked back to my body, laying on the daybed, and I tried to make movements. First, the jaw. Open. Then, position the tongue. Then, a constriction of the throat during an exhale.

  "I."

  "Th."

  "Ih."

  "ngk."

  He interrupted me to repeat. "You think?..."

  "I."

  "Gah."

  "You think you've got it?"

  "Yee."

  Now that I've established communication, I lolled over the edge of the furniture, carefully. I made sure to keep my body fully enshrouded with my essence, since we did not know what would happen if I did not. Probably nothing good, what we were doing here was not meant to happen. But the far edge of my tendrils caught at the fireplace and extended into it.

  The iron of the fire-grate was the easiest part. The flames were slippery, I had a hard time finding them before they moved away. The cedar wood of the logs felt... complicated. But the iron? I could immerse myself there and study it from the inside. It was easier because it was a cast iron, it was made of repeating structures like crystals. But not just the atomic structure or the material properties, I needed the character of cast iron. Yes, I did need to capture things like weight and color and melting point, ductility and frangibility, but also what it means to be iron. Metaphorically, metaphysically, ontologically, occultically.

  It would have been amazing to pick up a new affinity in an hour, but it was not to be. I had years to get this. And the cedar, and the fire itself. Someday, I'd shoot fireworks into the sky. I compressed myself back into my body, organized my thoughts and parts, and opened my eyes. I explained what I could to Nukhail, and he was astounded that I had started advancing one of my affinities right there, in the course of an hour, with no further preparation, in an ordinary environment with no great significance.

  When our time was up, he looked exhausted. He took this job for a quiet well-paid retirement, not brand-new innovations in the field.

  Shows what he knows.

  I stopped by the dining room for teatime, Mother and Father wanted to know about my session with Nukhail. Nathan had taken some time with my civics assignments and had some thoughts about the top stroke of my scripting. I told him to quit picking on me, and then we threw peas at each other whenever Mother and Father were not watching.

  My last tutor of the day is Professor Quethron, who mostly helps fill in my knowledge of natural philosophy and science. I've taught him about genetic typing and gravitic constants, he's taught me taxonomy of plants and weather patterns. He is pissed at me because he knows I'm holding out on him. Well today, I hold out a little less.

  "Professor," I said, as I walked in. "Today, I propose a new project."

  "And what would that be?" he returned instantly. A very pointy man, he reminded me of a shrew or a vole, but his mind was five times sharper than his nose.

  I gave him a big smile. "Let's harness lightning, you and I."

  Quethron is good with his hands, a dab hand at assembly and design. So when we went to the manor's steward for a lump of magnetite, plenty of copper wire, and some gearing, we were able to finish construction within the hour.

  "Sign your name on it, Professor, some day this device is going to be in museums," I said, as he secured the thing to a wooden frame for stability.

  He scoffed, and then I started turning the handle. The basic shape was like a vintage pencil sharpener, a hand crank on one side, a bunch of gears to control the movement, and then a lot of spinning at the far side. But then an insulated wire carried a charge away to a ground point, with a tiny air-gap for a spark to show up.

  He scoffed, but he seemed curious enough to see this through. And when we got our first spark a few minutes later, he jumped about a foot in the air. Then he grabbed pages and started iterating: proof of concept was done, now we're building for scale.