Chapter 19

Adair finally picked up the last book, titled "The Crystal Bird and the Ice Phoenix." Her first thought was whether this Ice Phoenix was the same type of bird portrayed in the Galactic Empire's legends. If it were, that would open up a whole bunch of questions regarding whether the mythical creatures from the Galactic Empire had at some point existed and whether they also existed on this planet as well.

Of course, it could just be a case of people from different cultures ending up creating the same stories about the same mythical creatures, although ending up with the same for it did seem like a bit of a stretch. Then again, maybe there was a deep-rooted fascination with specific mythical creatures. Adair soon put these questions aside, though. Studies into human nature had been something that people in the Galactic Empire had spent years doing, and even according to the experts on that topic, they had been barely scratching the surface. If she ever ended up in that void of darkness again for centuries on end, then she could possibly ponder over this topic, but now was not really the time.

She began to read the book and immediately recognized it as being very similar to a children's book called "The Tortoise and the Hare." It didn't take long for Adair to read through the book once to check if there were any significant differences between the two stories. Alas, it had followed the same plotline as the version she was familiar with, yet it did have one interesting plot twist. It was the fact that the Ice Phoenix had been depicted as the Tortoise, whereas the Crystal Bird had been depicted as the Hare.

'Does this mean that Phoenixes are not all-powerful birds, and this so-called Crystal Bird is faster, stronger, and smarter than Phoenixes? If this is the case, learning all of this planet's creatures might be significantly more challenging than I thought possible. How am I supposed to not confuse them with the ones from the Galactic Empire?'

Adair then contemplated the meaning of this book. All she got out of it was that you should not act like a jackass to everyone else, as well as that staying persistent for an extended period of time would get a task done faster than doing it really fast in several intervals and then taking breaks in between.

Adair put all three books in front of her again and tried to figure out what they all had in common. Just how they were all connected to the magic that her mom had been able to produce? All she was able to extrapolate from the book was that if you did what you thought was right and did not give up, you could do almost anything.

While Adair agreed that these were good building blocks for building up a person's character if they had nothing else to go on? 'Does this mean to open these books, I need to have these characteristics as part of my nature? Is that even possible for me, after those millennia in that void? No, even if I could change, do I really want to in a way necessary for those books, solely on my assumption that doing so could reveal something?'

'I do hope there is a different way, though if there isn't, I might as well give up trying to learn those books and experiment by myself to create a similar phenomenon now that I know it is possible to do it.' Adair then read through the books several more times, seeing if there was anything she had missed.

While she learned more about the stories, she did not manage to find any deep secrets in the books as she had hoped. There were no hidden passwords or magical configurations explaining how to open the other books. Since Adair didn't find anything, the girl decided to try out what she hadn't been willing to do before. Experiment with the books opening via her blood.

Before she did this, though, her body reminded her that she had spent many hours with them and was therefore hungry. She went back to the bag to get the milk and asked the bear to get the big books out of the bag because for some reason, even though she knew exactly where she theoretically had to pull on the bag to make the imaginary flap open, her hand just passed right through.

She then grabbed a pointy stick and poked her finger until it started bleeding lightly. Adair went towards the closest book and allowed her blood to fall on the books. When it didn't show any reaction, either positive like opening or negative like disappearing, she tried again with the next one. The bear was incredibly worried seeing that, as he thought Adair was ruining the books. However, as Hank noticed that the girl was controlling her self-harmed injury and that the blood merely slid off the leather covers, he went back to relaxing by the fire, not paying attention to her shenanigans.

The blood did not seem to get absorbed into the books, which shocked Adair. Shouldn't books absorb liquid? To test this, she let a few drops of blood fall onto the children's books, and once it touched the cover, it soaked right through the cover, and then she noticed a slight mark on the first page of the book, which was exactly like what she had expected should happen if they were back in the Galactic Empire.

To Adair, this meant that the materials to make the books were not naturally liquid-repellent, but this could be built in as a security measure to keep things safe. While her experiment had damaged the children's books, she didn't really care. After all, they were children's books, and they had no apparent use besides entertainment, which Adair did not currently need.

What she needed was to find a way to read those bigger stupid books that refused to open. Since there was little else to do over the next month, Adair continuously tried to open the books in many different ways, from thinking about the children's properties and trying to instill in the reader along with trying the opposite of that just in case it was a trick question. She had used multiple sequences of reading all three books in tandem, like the first page of the first book, the second of the second book, the third of the third book, and then the first book again. Unfortunately, it only ended up becoming confusing and wasting a lot of her time.

She also tried drawing circles around the books in the dirt and letting a drop of her blood fall on the circle, checking if there would be anything magical with circles. She also tried other geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, pentagrams, hexagons, septagons, etc. Nothing seemed to work, though, no matter what she tried.

Two months in, she eventually gave up and decided to go to the dark blue tree again to ask if it knew anything about these books. While she did not have high hopes, anything was better than trying out any crazy theories of her. She filled a bottle with lake water and poured it at the base of the tree before the girl wrote her questions in the snow, which still showed no signs of melting, despite lying there for multiple months.

The tree, as expected, told her that it had no ideas about the books. She also decided to ask George something else as well. Since she still had quite a bit of time left for what she had paid for, she began asking other questions. The first question was if its name really used to be George, to which he responded yes to. The next question was, what was the rest of the forest like?

George responded that the trees went on for as far as he could find. He then expanded on the question by saying that there were many different types of trees throughout the forest. He first explained to Adair the type of tree he was and that his special ability was that he was able to plant himself again in multiple locations bypassing a few of the restrictions of the forest. Lastly he told her that he had some telepathic powers.

When Adair learned this, she almost lost her cool. If George was a telepathic tree, it would have been so much easier for her to learn the language of this world if he had taught her, instead of making her write! She could have just spoken the correct answers into her mind instead of her having to learn it the hard way. An added benefit, if George did this, was that she would know what the language would sound like.

In a fit of frustration, she asked about why he didn't teach her using his mental powers since it would have made things significantly easier on both of them; the tree responded with that if he had done that, then Adair would have never gotten the muscle memory of everything. While it greatly frustrated Adair that there was not a more complicated reason, she ultimately accepted it. At least the answer was nothing as infuriating as 'because you never asked.' The tree also said that it cost a lot of energy to use some of the powers that it had and that if he used it as Adair was suggesting and taught her using those powers, he would have to enter a long period of hibernation, which he did not want to do.

Another question that she was wondering about was why did George like the water from the lake so much? Especially since the bear refused to let, her drink it. The tree then paused and responded that it wasn't something meant for little kids. This solidified Adair's theory that it had to be alcohol of some kind.

With there still being some more time for questions, she wished to learn more about the forest's other trees. George responded that he was unaware if they had any native names but that he had named everything that he had come across. For example, he had named those trees around them Lost Tress because they didn't do anything special and were just meant to be used by others. According to him, they had lost their original purpose, although he was also unaware of what that one might have been.

He then proceeded to tell Adair about a type of tree he called Decay Trees. They were pitch black and absorbed all energy from the surrounding areas making anything but them decay. To Adair, it sounded like those trees were just giant like some bandit lords who robbed others to enrich themselves.

George also told her that there were little furry creatures who loved to climb those trees and take the leaves or fruit that they made and hide them. Based on the description, she had first assumed that these creatures were tiny furry treasure hoarders, but she then realized that they were probably more like squirrels and just collected the materials to use or eat later.

She assumed that there had to be a practical purpose to hoard things and not just show wealth or collect shiny things like legends about Dragons back in the Galactic Empire. Unfortunately, her time was up, and now that she had practically determined that the water was indeed alcohol, she did not want to feed George's alcohol addiction anytime soon. Instead, she went back to their home and took her place near Hank, and dreamed about the books magically opening themselves.