Opal

After another day of reading through the three different opinions of source, Angel realised that there was too little information about Jess Queen's personality and personal life. It had already been 248 years since Jess Queen's death, and if any information about his personal life had been know then, it had been lost through the ages as his achievements overshadowed anything else he had done.

At first he felt slightly disappointed that he had wasted nearly two days of reading and analysing Jess Queen when he could have had been studying about various stones instead, until he realised that even if he hadn't gotten to understand Queen's character, by assembling all of the information he had gathered of his actions, he would be able to in that way, piece together his personality, and then his Tapestry, since the Tapestry was often the most crucial part of the mind.

Of course this was nowhere as useful as it could have been if he had gotten to understand Jess Queen's character immediately, since although he considered himself clever, he knew that he couldn't possibly understand what actions meant what unless he dedicated even more time to reading books of psychology, even if it was only the summary and simplest information about Stone-Dwelling behaviours.

Therefore Angel listed this as useless, since it was certainly not as helpful as he had thought it would be, and he had been irritated when he realised this.

However, he understood that although it wasn't as useful as he had thought it would and could be, he did nevertheless have more information about Jess Queen, and more information was always more helpful, since nothing was ever the full picture, and at times information that was previously thought to be useless could become the most helpful of information.

So although he decided to stop studying about Jess Queen's mind, he put Psychology : crucial later | part of 2nd goal | helpful ? onto his notebook.

Then, he decided to go back to the Temple of Sky.

There he prayed to the Being of the Nights and Skys, and slumbering in a pile of blankets and cushions he had placed, watched the walls move, getting sleepier with each moment.

For a few moments Angel tried to resist the temptation of falling asleep, then his eyes closed and he fell asleep.

—————

'Oh, how wonderful!' The woman with the beautiful dark lush hair and clear voice beckoned forward, opening the beautiful doors made out of tree. 'Do come forwards, darling.'

Angel—child Angel—nodded and stepped forwards, walking into the room.

A pair of cold eyes stared at Angel, although for the first time Angel felt the concern and love behind them, and he wondered at how he could have possibly ever been afraid of the caretaker before. After all, that was his job and duty—to guard and protect the twenty-five of them.

And then, just when he was about to run forwards, Angel stopped. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong.

'What's the matter, darling?'

Angel looked up at the woman with the beautiful dark lush hair and clear voice and saw nothing but contempt and disgust in her warm golden eyes.

And then Angel smiled and hugged her, feeling his weak bones seemingly creak with the movement. 'Nothing.'

He glanced backwards, at the door, which was now closed, locked, and when he looked in front of him again there was nothing there in his arms—simply dark, empty nothingness.

The woman was gone and all that lay in her wake a giant, beautiful gleaming round stone. He looked up again and saw that the caretaker wasn't the caretaker at all but rather a withering, slimes creature akin to a snake in its movements as it slithered round and round the caretaker's skeleton, taking away all feeling, emotion and opinion, making all that was the caretaker's its.

The snake-like-creature was sucking the life out of the man Angel had thought so formidable—from the bitter gleam of his Tapestry that stretched across his mind like a map, he had little more than a few days left to live.

And then without another glance backwards Angel started to run. He ran away from the pale, shining snake and its body, and he continued running until he—

—————

Angel shuddered and woke with a gasp, realising that he had fallen asleep without meaning to. The next second he felt himself shiver as he felt cold sweat now frozen gleam across his skin.

Then he tried to remember his dream, but no matter how hard he strained his mind, it was to no use, as he couldn't recall anything that had happened.

Because it was useless to try and remember something that he couldn't possibly remember, he put dream | strange | can't remember down in his notebook and went back to the library, this time looking for books of stones.

—————

'Dear sister, I suspect that for once you are losing.'

The female of the two said nothing and held up a pale yellow piece that faced off against her indigo piece before placing it at the very back of the board, where the frozen piece then started to massacre and soon all eight grids became indigo.

'Not so,'spoke the female of the two. 'After all, the most loyal can be driven mad and tamed, and the most defiant beaten and made loyal.'

The male of the two nodded his head. 'You make a fair point. Shall I take it as such that I am not to win after all?'

'You may.'

—————

Angel found out that because the only stone known to Stone-Dwellers was the cold black stone of the prison they all lived in, the seemingly different types and colours of stone accessible were actually the black stone grown in different conditions as the stone had to be kept in soil that, too, was specially bred.

Not only did the stone need to have the Thread of Maturity woven in, the soil also needed the Thread of Eternity woven in to ensure that it wouldn't wither away as the newly created stone grew. The soil was in fact a much more challenging problem, as that required for all of the broken threads to have the Thread of Eternity woven in.

Because of this, there were few batches of eternal soil in the city, as they had to have had come from the black stone, which, after ten years of deliberate weathering and conditioning, reduced the hard black stone to soil.

However, this was still faster than weaving threads into all of the broken threads of soil, as that would have taken thousands of years.

This caused the production of stone to be extremely slow, and only the inner sections of the city able to afford stone that was in different colours and materials.

Considering how the Queens were a prestigious family, despite having only a small estate and manor at first, it wouldn't have cost much for them to have bought a stone.

Angel also found that the three most common types of stone manufactured were diamond, obsidian and ruby. In fact, the three had became the only stones sold, with no mention of the shimmering stone that had been the heart of Jess Queen's Tapestry.

So Angel continued searching for the material that had been the heart of the Tapestry. 

In another book he found drawings and descriptions of stones of the past—back when the Stone-Dwellers hadn't yet been cast down into this abominable stone prison by the Being of the Nights and Days. The book was merely one of the many adapted copies of the original, as it had been written more than a thousand years ago and the language use and punctuation would differ, as well as their method of drawing.

The book, named 'Stones Throughout History: Life in the Medievals Through the Tale of a Stone to Present' showed many drawings of various hundred of stones in different shapes and carvings, strangely unmoving and in-expandable, and also wrote of peculiar people wearing a shiny stones's preference to stones as household items.

Although there were hundreds of stones, Angel managed to quickly find all diamond, ruby and the shimmery stone named opal. From bits of the text he skimmed through, Angel understood that at the time, all three had been widely popular.

Deciding to come back to read further on opals as he had already spent all of the afternoon and early evening in the library, Angel headed to buy some food and head back to the temple.