Chapter – 120 - The Two Months of Buwaanadae

Rihanna was currently going through a crisis.

Technically, she and Beibei were the same person. Yet, despite their similarities, they were also different. The lack of any relevant memories and the grim experiences right at the start had led Beibei to form a distorted view of the world, giving her a much darker and sarcastic outlook. The problem was not how being cruel came easily to her.

The problem was in her attitude. The attitude left a overshadowing darkness in all her perspectives and thoughts, and she felt like a person with bipolar disorder.

Rihanna let out a long deep sigh. She stretched out her fingers, trying to touch the tiny hail stones as they dropped lazily from the dark gray sky. These hail-stones stated that summers were over, and the season of Buwaanadae had crept in unnoticed.

The seasons in this world was as unpredictable as the weather. Two days ago the sun was still shining, broken only by the sporadic rainfalls.

Overnight, the sky turned darker, with light gray nimbus clusters rolling about in the deep blue sky. And the drops of rain had coagulated to form tiny drops of ice. The ice-drops replaced the rain water, showering the ground in the same sporadic fashion.

The horizon had changed to a deep silverish-gray color, and would keep growing and expanding, till it completely took over the entire sky in the next two months. These two months were the time of changing of seasons, the in-between time after summer and before winter.

This planet took 36 hours for rotation, and 4471/3 days for its revolution. As such there were ten months, each consisting of 45 days, with the last month having 42 days. The extra day every 3 years was joined to this last month.

Summers were shorter and lasted for about three months, and was called Periyamae. Peri meant Heat and Yamae was Rain. This was followed by the two months of Buwaanadae, which then shifted to Nanamadae, which meant Cold Winds. This lasted for about 5 months, and then suddenly changed back to Summer without any other transition in between.

Buwaa meant Skies, and Nadae was a term used for Frozen or extremely cold. Literally because the skies and air was filled with these ice-drops almost throughout the two months of seasonal change. Though the onset of Buwaanadae almost always started with the chilliness increasing in the air, the grounds were far more hotter, having retained all the heat of the intense summer for three months. As such the ice drops would melt and disappear even as they barely touched the soil.

It took a long time for the ground to turn cooler, and slowly the water on the soil started growing, turning the ground soft and slightly mushy. As Buwaanadae transitioned to Nanamadae, this water on the ground turned to thick layers of ice, covering the entire lands in a dense silver-white coating.

Rihanna closed her eyes, trying to feel the essence of ice in the drops raining down. Thin streams of silver energy left her finger tips, acting like magnets, attaching themselves to the ice-drops in her vicinity.

One by one by one.....Rihanna took a deep breath and gradually expanded her senses, also increasing her awareness and connection to the surroundings. As the periphery grew larger, the energy streams too expanded, connecting and attaching to more and more drops of ice as they fell from the sky.

Another deep breath to make her concentration more deeper, her senses more focused....till she could see every drop separately and together at the same time. Her senses moved from drop to drop, zooming in and out, connecting to more and more and more number of drops, till every ice-drop all around the area surrounding her was connected to her spiritual stream.

And then she started pulling them in. Slowly increasing the speed and intensity, yet allowing them to move freely according to the waves and flow of the air.

From outside this had turned into a stunning visual. Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny drops of ice, falling from the dark sky above, slowed down in their path, then suddenly froze in their tracks, hanging like shining beads in mid-air. Then silently and wilfully, they changed directions completely, floating and bobbing in the air, and flowing towards the little girl seated cross-legged in the middle of the shaded pavilion.

The hundreds of ice-drops converged to a point before her, floating in the air side by side, making a thin layer of ice before her. An range stream of fire energy slowly merged with the silver ice energy stream, slowly and gently melting the sides of each ice drop, only enough for the drops to merge together and become one larger drop of ice.

This was a very time taking task, and required a lot of patience, and fine control of her energy streams and intensity. Sweat beaded her forehead and neck, a slight frown forming unconsciously over her eyebrows as Rihanna persevered. She had closed all her senses to the outside world. Only the drops of ice remained before her, and she only focused on her streams energy and each drop before her. Thus she failed to notice the cold man standing alone amidst the Valvala groves, silently observing her. A hint of warmth glowed softly in his austere eyes.

As each drop melted and joined together, she would remove the heat and increase the ice energy to freeze back the water edges. Drop by drop, a shimmering and translucent curtain of ice drops slowly formed, expanding by engulfing more and more drops of ice, till it was almost as large and wide as a wall.

Rihanna released a deep breath, and a dense white puff of fog emanated from her open mouth as her hot breath merged with the cold and crisp air. Her tightly closed eyes fluttered open, and she blinked rapidly to get used to the bright light. Then she looked before her to inspect her creation.

There were dozens of scrolls and records on cultivation and skills and techniques now lying inside her storage rings. These were mostly the legacies of the Stryae clan, while some were copies she had made from the Sect's library in the dimension.

This was a method from the legacy she had inherited. It was the first step to cultivating the Guiding Weapon.

Of course the method was not exactly like this, since it was made for cultivators with spiritual root. She was trying to develop her own method using the given path. She didn't know if her method was incorrect, or if it was genuinely taxing, but she could realize her own limitations and weaknesses as she worked with this method for the past few days. She could find so many flaws and weaknesses every time she tried working on this method.

A rather thin but continuous wall floated in the air before her. The drops of ice had merged with one another at the edges, yet through the thin layer of outer ice crust, one could make out each drop remaining separated from each other as well. The ice drops themselves were far more dense and cloudy in color, whereas the joining layers were very thin and semi-transparent. It reminded her of bubble-wraps.

Rihanna let out a very fine wisp of fire energy, just allowing to brush past the surface of the ice wall, and the front layer of the surface gradually melted into shining, clear water, barely clinging onto the rest of the ice through sheer cohesion.

This clear layer of water, hanging in the air, reflected her image. The clear, bright eyes stared back into her eyes, as if both the real and the shadow were trying to delve into each other's mind. After a long moment, she finally pulled away her eyes from the reflected eyes, to take a look at the rest of the body.

When she entered the dimension, she was almost 12 years old. Almost six years later, she had only just crossed the age of 13! Almost 6 years inside the dimension space, had only led to a difference of a little more than a year in the outside world.

She had not realized it inside the dimension, but time passed in a different flow outside the dimension as compared to the flow of time inside the dimension space. Strangely, both inside and outside, the time lapse since the dimension was created was 200,000 years. Yet, the time they had spent inside the dimension was close to 6 years, but the time they had gone missing in the outside world was only a bit more than a year!

She could understand that time was just a measurement the distance covered, and it could be relative. Also the size and placement of the planet in this space, and the dimension which was as small as a speck of dust compared to this planet, might very well affect the movement of each, and hence the time calculations.

She truly understood too little of the universe to make logical deductions. However, that only increased her wonder and admiration for these people. This was not a technologically developed world, but that did not stop them from developing a far broader understanding of the workings of the universe and dimensions. After all, the dimension space itself had been created by the ancestors of this planet!

Rihanna let go of the streams of energy connecting to the ice drops, and the entire wall of ice crashed on the ground. The thin encasing holding them together melted even before hitting the soil, and hundreds of ice-drops sprung free, falling and rolling on the ground for a minute moment, before melting into water and soaking into the ground.

An warm and intensely comforting touch pervaded her senses, as she felt a large hand settling gently on her head. For a moment, the warmth was so strong and familiar, that Rihanna couldn't stop the shaky breath, as her eyes closed on their own. Every inch and breadth of her senses only wanted to soak itself in this comforting warmth, clinging onto the deep sense of familiar warmth and closeness.

Mayaroubo stared at the closed eyes, the eyelids fluttering softly against the pale cheekbones. His eyes kept moving all over her face, trying to etch in every dent and rise of the fair skin over the soft bones, the crease of the eyes, the lines by the lips, the shape of each ear and eyes and nose and mouth.....

He took a large deep breath and hurriedly looked away. A feeling of conflict kept churning within him, and the gentleness beneath his deep eyes slowly returned to their usual frost as he turned his head away.