World Building-Ashen Children

"An Ashen Child? What's that?" Lord Bartfort asked with nervous expression.

"Ah, excuse my lack of consideration. The name is rather ominous, mostly due to the origin of the term. Your son is just fine."

He let loose a sigh of relief.

"Thank the Saintess."

"Just to clear the air, an Ashen Child is somewhat of an old myth. As a point of interest, the name refers to the concept of an ancient bird of flame and rebirth. The terminology only came to being as the afflicted child often seemed to have aged spiritually before succumbing to the fever or seemingly have memories of a battlefield. The people saw it as a failed rebirth of a Lost One. In any case, the reason I bring up such a myth is that many notable historical figures are rumored to be Ashen Children. The list of people intellectuals currently hypothesize as Ashen Children includes heroes of old and many of the Alzer's innovators. Of course, it is hard to confirm such things since fevers aren't exactly uncommon for children. Many find such attributions of genius to fanciful myth as nothing more than the jealous trying to downplay the success of their competitors."

"And how does my son come into play in this?" the man asked as I had likely lost him in my excitement, a bad habit of mine.

"Your son is far too smart for his age. His lexicon is substantially more developed than his peers, he comes up hypotheses on esoteric/lost magics, he is able to devise experiments to prove said hypotheses while instating controls to more accurately assess the results, and he places safety protocols in order to minimize risks even when he did not theorize the potential for things going awry," I said simply.

"He's farming," he said slowly.

It appears Leon did not inform his father of the details of his daytime activities. Part of me wondered if that was a fault of the father or the son. Or perhaps such a discussion would have been useless since Lord Bartfort would have been unlikely to understand the details anyways.

"He conducts experiments to safely create water out of air. And before you panic, he is not generating water from magic. He determined that water is comprised of two types of gases, and then uses magic to combine the two gases as necessary."

"He found a way?" the father said with a grimace. Lord Bartfort's ignorance made a little more sense now.

"The experiment was a success, but Leon deemed it insufficient for his purposes," I said while hiding the mishap today. No need to give his father a reason to hinder him further. Leon was entitled to choose the lifestyle he wished to have.

"I see."

The father's relieved look made me want to ask why he wanted his son to fail. I decided against such actions since doing so could be considered indelicate.

"In any case, he is already designing another project to get water to his fields. I'm looking forward to seeing what he will come up with."

"... Is that not a waste of his abilities... As an Ashen Child, I mean," the man hesitantly said with a guilty expression.

Ah, his expression reminded me of my father back when the Royal Court was considering me for the throne. A life as a king or as a wandering scholar. Obviously one held far more prestige, but I had chosen the latter.

I smiled as I softly asked, "Is a life pursuing one's dreams ever a waste?"

Side Plot-Olivia

I found myself digging through the attic again after Leon left to go home. I needed to find a magic scroll. One of the really old ones that I remembered seeing a long time ago. The one that I learned when I scraped my knee.

Leon had gotten really hurt today. His test went badly and there was nothing I could do to help him. It was frightening to see my friend hurt so badly. Even though he had warned me, I hadn't taken it seriously until now.

I nearly lost Leon.

I nearly lost my friend.

Rummaging about, I found the dusty chest hidden in the corner of the attic. It had been a while since I had opened the thing. The last time I had opened it was before I had met Leon. Back when I still spent all my time inside while Mom worked the store and Dad was on his voyages. It was a lonely sight.

I did not want to be here again. While it had been where I found comforting, it now made me scared of being alone again.

I quickly opened the chest and pulled put one of the smaller scrolls. The bigger ones had been too hard for me to read before. I'll have to work my way up.

AN

1) Been a long time. PhD program is a massive time sink. Made finding time to parse this out difficult since my writing time is usually when I'm waiting for food, which is usually only good for when I try to put random ideas on paper. This obviously a means Trapped on the Drawingboard gets way more updates.

2) This update was planned to be this short since it is meant to be a side chapter that doesn't necessarily extend the plot. Just a little world building.

3) Little bit of character development for Olivia and her family situation. Also more concrete evidence of what Leon's parents are trying to do.

4) The Ashen Children isn't really meant for anything besides the world being somewhat aware that reincarnators are a thing but not being able to properly understand what's happening. The main extension is mainly that some of the more successful reincarnators are noticed and tagged as such. Reincarnators that get themselves killed doing stupid stuff aren't tagged as Ashen Children since they just look like idiots. Main plot purpose is to give the tea master incentive to keep an eye on Leon.

Review Response

reality deviant: Ashen Children is unlikely to show up in any of my other fics because it's something pretty minor in terms of plot relevance. I would likely only include the term if the information regarding reincanators is revealed as a plot point. Maybe if I were also referencing a highly advanced civilization.

MysticRising: Oof.

partner555: Unfortunately the relevance of other reincarnators is minimal. Was more of a side comment thing to give the master a reason to stick around beyond just his search for the saintess relics.

Pembaca Sampah: Meh, Olivia was still a fairly carefree child until now. There wasn't much she could do to drive the plot in an interesting way aside from getting bullied in front of Leon. Now she has a goal to achieve since the concept of her friend disappearing became a very real possibility. Nothing like trauma to develop a child.