Sayaka rested on Weiss' shoulder as they headed to the library. Weiss could barely contain her excitement. She was still trapped and she knew it, but having unfettered access to a library was a dream come true. She'd always wanted to get lost amongst the rows and rows of books that lay in the manor's most tantilising room for her. She really did want to spend all day in a library if given a chance.

Eventually, they reached two massive wooden doors. They looked heavy but Blake pushed them open with ease. Weiss practically vibrated as they passed the threshold and she wasn't disappointed. Bookshelves towered over them and it looked like the entire room was a good three stories. "Wow…" This put even Schnee library to shame. She could probably spend an entire lifetime in here and not read all of these books.

"Is it really that impressive? We have four libraries like this so it's pretty normal for me." Blake shrugged.

Weiss nodded. "This is more books than I've ever seen in my life. I can't believe you have four libraries like this. And I can come here whenever I want to?" That boggled her mind. She had access to all of this at her own leisure.

Blake nodded. "As long as you aren't in lessons. You're free to use it at your leisure. Just be warned that the earring won't be able to translate a lot of the older stuff. But that still opens up more than a thousand years of documents for you. If you want to go further back, we can get you a scholar's charm." Language did change over time, so she supposed it made sense. A scholar's charm, huh? She didn't want to be restricted by anything.

"Could you pick one up for me at some point? I want to read as much as I can." She didn't want to only have one section of books available to her. She wanted to read everything if she possibly could. This was an absolute dream come true for her!

"Sure. We can't spend too long here now, but you can come back after we finish with the beauty consultant. Does that sound good?" Weiss wanted to stay and bury herself in the books, but she couldn't. She would have plenty of time to do that in the future. She was curious about magic and wanted to learn about it. So she would probably end up living several centuries… That…was still a terrifying prospect for her… Not be able to see Winter often…

Oh Holy Father. She would massively outlive her sister. How was she supposed to cope with that? She didn't care about Whitley. He was nothing more than a mini reflection of the president with no redeeming qualities. He really was. But Winter had saved her to the best of her ability even if her plan had gone south in the end. Weiss had still ended up betrothed. The president, however, had won out over Winter in terms of timing.

"How about we head to the consultant's?" Weiss wanted to whine at the suggestion but she nodded.

"All right." She could always come back later. Blake had said it was okay. "Should we go grab all my stuff?" That would be a bit of a walk. It felt like it took ten to fifteen minutes to get from Point A to Point B in this house. Even Schnee manor wasn't this big.

"Let's." Blake turned around and left room. Weiss cast one more glance over her shoulder before following the other girl out of the library.

§

The visit to the beauty consultant's took a while. They had to take a number and sit in a waiting room for a while. Weiss was incredibly bored but Blake had brought books with her. "Want one?" the girl offered.

They were all religion books with titles that didn't interest her. "No thanks." She had no real interest in religion. How was she supposed to keep herself entertained? Blake could have at least warned her about the wait so she could bring something to do! She'd never had to wait on something at least in this manner before. She'd had to wait for something before like dust journals to come out, but she'd never had to wait in a specified waiting room. This was absolutely horrible!

But eventually, Weiss was called in and she was run through the gamut. It was an hour and a half of questioning about ingredients and goals for her skin and haircare. It was pretty intense, but she was able to keep up pretty well, at least.

"Two and a half hours and I'll have your list done. I'll include stuff for every season too." And, with that, she was pushed out of the office with Blake.

"So what should we do with the next two and a half hours?" Weiss looked at Blake, completely lost. She was so used to having lessons that she didn't really know how to kill time. She was at least done with the wait… All of this was so horribly foreign to her… At least she would hopefully be able to start lessons in the next few days.

"Well, we don't want to miss the snack with my parents, so we'll probably have to cut things a little short here in town. We should probably grab you a pearl while we're here and we can also grab a scholar's charm too." That sounded reasonable. She really was trying to meet up to the standards the Belladonnas were setting for her. They had still kidnapped her but she was trying. "We're also in the artist's area, so if you want to look for decorations for your room if you'd like." Weiss tilted her head at that. She could decorate her room? That felt strange. She'd never been allowed to do that before.

"That should help kill time." There were a lot more shops in this part of town than the other one. It was bright, bustling, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. How odd. How could so many people be smiling and talking to others? She had never quite seen anything like it before. This was definitely a lot different than the other part of the city they'd been to.

They walked into a store, showing off a bunch of scallop-shaped devices. "Welcome, girls! What can I do to help you?" A woman stood behind the counter and waved to them. Weiss offered a hesitant smile and dipped her head. No need to be rude. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Yes, ma'am. We need a pearl for her and to get it set up." Blake offered the woman a slight bow. The woman blinked though she didn't say anything. "Of course. What all features do you need?"

"A basic model will probably more than suffice. She really doesn't need anything it should look nice." Weiss wished she could have more input but Blake would know more about this than she did. "We are nobles, after all."

"Of course. Right over here." The woman directed them over to a certain display case. It was full of scallop-shaped devices of varying size and color. Some were pitched black, others white, others iridescent shimmers. A very light purple one really drew her attention, though. "Has one caught your eye, miss?"

"That one." Weiss pointed to the shimmery purple one. It reminded her of her favorite dress from Schnee manor. Aside from the iridescence, it was almost the exact same shade. Plus, it bore a similar design to the watch she'd gotten.

The woman pulled the pearl out and handed it to Weiss. "Does she know how to use it…?" She asked Blake.

"I'll show her later." Blake's cheeks were a faint pink. Was it really so embarrassing for her to not know how to use it? Weiss didn't want to cause any distress. But she legitimately didn't know how to use the device.

Weiss opened it and saw a physical pearl on the inside. There were no buttons or anything like on her scroll. Sure, they weren't physical buttons, but she understood how to use them. This was really quite a bizarre device. How did one use a device that had no buttons at all? How had Blake called Turi earlier when nothing had happened?

"We'll also need an advanced model." Blake shifted a bit as the woman's eyebrows raised. She said nothing but took Blake over to another case. She picked out a white shell and Blake paid the woman. Wait, what? No haggling? But Blake had made it sound like haggling was an important part of the shopping experience. She'd seemed to have been enjoying it when they went to the other market. What was so different that they weren't haggling?

The two came back a moment later and the woman extended her hand. "Let me see your pearl and hand." Weiss looked at Blake who nodded and extended her own hand. The woman put their hands together and the pearl beneath them. Weiss felt a strange tugging on her soul then it ended. "There you go. Have a nice day."

They stepped out of the shop and Weiss looked at Blake. "What was that about it?" She didn't understand. It was utterly bizarre. What was the tugging on her soul? How did the pearl work? She did not understand any of this. Magic was bizarre. She really didn't like it. It made no sense. She wanted to go back to where things actually followed logic.

Blake's cat ears twitched slightly and she opened her own pearl, a dark purple one with golden highlights on it. She pressed the physical pearl near the hinge and a screen popped up. The screen showed numerous pictures of different people. What? So the magic could replicate hard light dust? Interesting. "Pearls operate off soul bonds. You can contact anybody you have a bond with. But if you don't have a bond with somebody, you can create an artificial one with them. That's what the last bit was."

Weiss opened hers and pressed the pearl, a picture of Blake appearing. There were four greyed out rectangles. "What are those?"

"They indicate soul bonds you have that you can't contact yet. I suspect most of those are your family. Two are definitely your parents, one is definitely your sister, and I suspect another is your brother." Weiss frowned at that. But she didn't have a relationship with Whitley. They were always at each other's throats. They hated each other.

"But I don't know my mother and I hate my brother."

"Parents are given soul bonds—they happen regardless of if you want them to or not. Plus, not every bond a person has is positive. As long as strong emotions are shown to another or two people spend a lot of time together, a soul bond will form. You can hate someone all you want. The bond can be the most toxic in the world. But a bond will form. There's nothing to tell the soul a bond has to be positive to form." That…made some sense, she supposed. There had been a lot of strong emotions between her and brother though none of them good. She was always glad when he got sick because it meant she didn't have to hear his whining, sniveling voice for at least a couple of days. She was free of his everything while he was cooped up in his room.

"I see." The only bonds she had were with her family… Blake had a screen of three rows and five columns. How did she have so many soul bonds? It didn't make any sense. Some were grey rectangles though. "What about those rectangles on yours?"

"Oh, they're animals." Blake pointed to one. "You can form soul bonds with animals too. But since most animals can't use pearls, they don't show up. Once you bond with Sayaka and Dorosi, they'll show up on yours." That also did make sense. Animals did have souls. Aura breeds were more than proof enough for that. She supposed the last square on hers was Neige. She had spent a lot of him and care about him a great deal…

"If you want to call someone, all you need to do is bring up this window and touch the person's picture. But once you get used to manipulating your soul, you won't need to use it. Until then, though, you can use the base method. You can also send chapters to people." Chapters? What the heck were—

Blake flipped to a screen of what looked like text messages. However, Weiss frowned as the keyboard looked nothing like the QWERTY arrangement she was used to. It was a jumble of symbols she didn't recognise. Apparently, the earring didn't work on individual symbols. Blake apparently saw the distress on her face because she switched to another keyboard. "You can set it to anything you want. Go into the setting and it can glean what you want out of it." That was something at least. She would be completely out of luck if it wasn't customisable. How could anything work for her when she didn't have access to the fae language naturally?

They started walking and Weiss couldn't help but ask what was bugging her. "Why didn't you haggle with her? You made it seem like haggling is incredibly important to fae commerce." She really had. How could she ignore something so important? Nothing about this world made any sense to her. First some things seemed important then she ignored it. She was trying to understand but Blake was making it hard to at times.

Blake blinked, her ears twitching a bit. "Oh. This is the artist's quarter. We believe our artists should make a living, so we let them set their rates. We don't try to take away from their lives. Artists put labor into everything they make and they have to factor in materials too. You can't haggle away labor and materials. Artists run higher prices than merchants but it's worth it to support independent creators." Huh, she had never thought about artists that way before. They were seen as expendable in Atlas. She'd heard the president rant about unreasonable rates from artists in the past. She supposed they did need to make a living too…

They quickly ducked into another shop which sold jewelry. The shopkeeper brought them over to a case of scholar's charms. Weiss settled on a pretty moonstone choker that would match her outfits.

"With that done, we can window shop for about—" Blake looked up at the sun. "Actually, it's already three. We might wanna head back to the house. We'll be a little early for snack, but we skipped lunch and I really want you to meet my parents." Weiss bit her lip. She was so scared of this but it was inevitable. She couldn't avoid Blake's parents forever.

"All right… Let's go…"