Chapter 29

"Interesting" was not quite the response that Adair was expecting after having her memories run through. Besides her mother not being in the pictures, another thing that intrigued her, was that the memories did not extend past the first day in this world; it didn't even cover the pregnancy. This made her wonder if there was a block on those memories or if the ability Anahel used just couldn't access that information or maybe something else entirely was going on.

Anahel removed her hand from Adair's head and started muttering to herself in a different language which Adair could not understand. During this time, a crystal panel appeared in front of Anahel, and she appeared to be interacting with it, but when Adair tried to see what was on the panel, it appeared completely blank to her.

The panel finally disappeared after some time, and Anahel asked if Adair wanted to become a demi-god. Out of all the things that she expected to come out of Anahel's mouth, this was not what she was expecting. Adair thought about it and then wrote down on the crystal sheet that Anahel gave her a question asking "what is a demi-god or even a god?" Another brief look of shock appeared on Anahel's face as she was clearly not expecting to be asked this question, but she then realized that Adair did not have any context of what a God was based on her memories.

Anahel then explained that a Gods and Demi-gods was someone who was big and strong and protected their people. This definition confused Adair until she realized that Anahel must have thought that she was just some talented little girl who didn't even hit the age of 5 yet and based her response on that. This made her realize that if she put on an act, she could probably get quite a bit of information out of Anahel without expecting too much from Adair.

There was the possibility that Anahel saw through this farce but it was at least worth a try to get more information out of Anahel.

So Adair then asked how do I become a demi-god? To this, Anahel responded with I will teach you how. This answer did not help her too much, but she assumed that if she accepted this outcome, she would probably not see Hank again or would become a slave or pawn of sorts for Anahel.

She also realized that this offer probably was not given to many people and that there must be something Anahel wanted from her. So if she accepted based on the brief glimpse she read of the books and the fact that someone as powerful as her mom gave them to her, there must be thousands, if not millions, or more people following Anahel. At least this is the case if these gods were similar to what she had become back in the Galactic Test but she was unsure if this was the case or if gods in this timeline were different.

Still this caused Adair to become even more suspicious of Anahel, so she decided to refuse her offer of becoming a demi-god. Anahel then asked "why" and she responded by writing "I don't feel like it." Adair was happy that she was so young because if she was older she figured that she would have to give a better answer if she was older which she didn't really have.

Anahel then said if you answer one of my questions, then you can ask any number of questions, and I will answer them. Or I can give you anything you ever wanted as long as you answer my one question. For a moment she was tempted to ask for an implant and other devices back from the Galactic Empire but she quickly shot this thought down since Anahel saying this confirmed Adair's original idea that this god or so claimed god wanted something from her, so she doubled down and wrote again that she wasn't interested.

Adair was slightly worried that Anahel would force the matter, but all that happened was that she looked disappointed. She pulled one of the crystal feathers out of one of her wings and gave it to her, saying, if you ever wanted to accept my deal, just say Anahel while holding the feather, and you will come back here.

And with that, Adair disappeared from the area and appeared back on the hard ground. The first thing she checked was if Hank was still nearby, and when she confirmed that he was and sleeping at that, she assumed that little to no time had passed since she went to meet Anahel. She then went to look at the books and found that all the books were fine except the 8th one which was just scraps of paper. She also realized that these scraps of paper had sentences on them, but none made any sense. She tried organizing them in different patterns, but in the end, all they were random words and sentences that did not make any sense, so she just put them into the bag along with the crystal feather.

She then thought about what Anahel offered and wondered if she should have asked more questions to better understand the power structure of the universe or at least what was being offered. Still, she had decided to just refuse and leave because while Anahel seemed pretty sane, she did not want to risk being trapped like what happened back in the Galactic Empire after failing the Galactic Test.

She then wondered if she could become a god on her own and if she could or even wanted to. She also wondered how many "gods" there were and what the different categorizations of gods were. Anahel seemed pretty powerful to Adair, but she was the weakest god in existence for all she knew. But, of course, the inverse was also possible, and she just turned down the most powerful god in her current universe.

If she wanted to, she could return with the crystal feather, but since she already made her decision, even if it was a quick one without much thought behind it, she decided that she would stick by it. At least for the time being until she knew more about the power structure of this world.

Now that she finalized her thoughts on that matter, she fell asleep. In the morning, she asked Hank if he noticed anything strange last night, but he responded with no, but should he have? This confirmed that either Hank did not notice she was gone or only her mind or thoughts went to meet Anahel.

Then after they ate their food for the day, they made one more loop around the abandoned village, and once again, they noticed that nothing seemed to be alive and that there were no traps. So they decided to explore the village. They first explored the outer buildings. The first buildings they explored neither of them could they easily explore inside the buildings. This is because Hank was too big, and Adair's wings were too wide to move through the buildings. Hank had tried pushing down a few of the walls on the buildings, but the grey bricks held fast and did not fall over to Hank's pushing.

The few buildings with collapsed roofs, Hank was able to look over the sides of the walls and inside the buildings. When Adair asked what he saw, he described the basic floorplan of the building, which was a two-room building with one room being bigger than the other. When Adair asked if anything was inside the buildings, he responded that there were some loose bricks.

As they continued to explore, they found around a dozen house-like buildings in various conditions ranging from just the foundation in place to little to no damage at all. They also found a well in the middle of the town that appeared to be the main water source for everyone in this village. When they tried to use them well though, it appeared that the bucket or whatever brought up the water either disappeared or was destroyed.

They did not find any living or dead animals or grains or any food. This made it very hard for Adair to date when this place was last since there were no bones or reason why someone would leave this settlement.

So while this place could be a shelter for the next storm, they would quickly run into the problem of not having any food since they did not have enough food to last them throughout the storm. So after a few days of exploring the whole village and not finding any food, they had to decide if they wanted to go look for another or stay in this one and explore the surrounding area looking for food.

In the end, they decided to stay in the current village they were in and tried to find food in the nearby area. This is because they had no idea where the next village was, and they did not want to get trapped out in an unknown area when the storm hit. So they decided that the first thing they needed to do was fix the well to get water out of it because if there was no water, then one of the major reasons for them staying in this village was gone.

So while Hank was trying to make a bucket, Adair was busy collecting the tall grass in the grasslands to make a makeshift rope to drop the bucket down into the well. While it was difficult to cut down the grass, at least it was flexible enough to be woven into a rope which Adair did after several days. During this time, Hank was having quite a bit of trouble figuring out how to make a bucket with wood and bricks.

In the end, Adair made more grass rope and tied it around a wooden box to somewhat allow a liquid to be held in it. Adair did not doubt that it was going to leak a lot, but at least now they could test if there was water in the well or not.