((Everyone with synesthesia experiences it differently. Just don't read my experience as a monolith :3))
~POV Ja'far~
After finally finishing his report, Ja'far decided he would be the one to tell the Prophet about King Sinbad's request for everyone to have dinner together. Sin had been acting a bit strange ever since the revolt in Balbadd -especially when Mori was involved. Ja'far had caught him zoning out more than normal and many times the only thing that could get his King to focus was news on Mori's improving condition, and after learning that news he was able to get more done than normal. It wasn't like the boost he got after making progress on a plan. It was different. Ja'far couldn't tell how it was different but he knew it was. This wasn't like Sinbad at all -not when it came to guests and definitely not when it came to women.
This could be something that the Prophet was causing on purpose. Mori seemed naïve about the gravity of the decisions they had to make daily, and she seemed like she was easily swayed by Sin just like many other women; however, there were a few moments that were making Ja'far certain that she was more self-aware than she let on and that she was definitely planning far into the future. She read Fate and knew at least several decades of history. There was no way she wouldn't have taken that into consideration during every interaction let alone before agreeing to be Sindria's Prophet.
For all he knew, Mori's behavior around their King was just as staged as when Sin courts women of position to benefit himself and Sindria. She certainly was able to ignore his flirting the morning of the revolt and again on the ship leaving Balbadd. Whenever Ja'far had tried to bring up questioning her motivation, Sinbad had wrote him off by implying that he took her reactions at face value. Sinbad said that he knew that Mori kept Fate in mind when she made decisions, but it was more obvious to Ja'far that his King wasn't acting with caution when it came to the Prophet.
Mori had promised that she would explain about those two calamities from the future she read, and the only reason she hadn't been forced to explain yet was because she was still ill. The General was going to make sure it happened before the day was over. If she was well, and they were all going to meet up to get to know each other better, then Ja'far was going to make sure Mori told them what she was hiding. But first he'd have to find her and make sure she agreed to join them for dinner. She'd have no reason to refuse the first request from her King so this part should be easy.
Ja'far had wanted a chance to talk to Mori without the King around, but as soon as Ja'far declared he was leaving, Sinbad stood up and said he would join him. There was no convincing him to finish his work; Sinbad was determined to see 'his Beautiful Prophet.'
The King lead the two of them to the magicians' tower and straight to one of Yam's labs. Sure enough Mori was with Yam and both were chatting with nearly a dozen people -magicians, and other academics of the tower. They were at a table with scrolls and that magnifying device made from Mori's notes.
One of the magicians was pointing to one of the scrolls on the table. "Your handwriting got a little hard to read here. Could you read it for us?"
"Yeah. Which part?" Mori said while making her way over. When she saw the part she laughed, apologized for laughing, and then read out loud for the group, "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."
Why such a thing was funny to her, she explained as, "It is a true fact, but it was also the punch line of a joke. There isn't really a easy way to explain the joke since it's referential... Sorry."
This was accepted by the room easily for some reason with "at least we know how to say it now."
"I'm glad to see you all welcoming my Beautiful Prophet and getting along, but don't forget she's only just recovered." Sinbad spoke over the crowd and they all turned to him.
Mori's eyes widened and she glanced at the window behind her. When she looked back she looked equal parts stunned and confused.
Standing on the windowsill behind Mori was a bird of the exact same type as the one Sinbad possessed with Zepar.
Was Sin still watching her?? That would explain how he knew exactly where she was.
"Your Majesty! You're here early. I thought the meeting wasn't for another hour or so." Yamuraiha responded to her King entering the lab.
He laughed.
One of the other magicians spoke up. "Would you like the demonstration now since you're here?"
They agreed and other academics left since they weren't a part of the planned meeting.
—
~POV Mori~
Bright peach poured over plum and midnight violet. Sinbad's voice was definitely happy and boisterous. I barely had time to process what he had said before the magicians were repeating the same spell they had shown me earlier.
It had only been five days since I last heard his voice in person, and it became that distracting. It reminded me of the times I finally rewatched the series after trying to ween off of it for a month, but worse since it wasn't a recording. How was I going to survive his return from the Kou Empire?
The thing that made his voice stand out so much was the amount of purple in it. So I could easily see his voice separate from all of the blues, reds, greens and yellows I saw from the rest of those speaking. Yamuraiha's voice was mainly rose red and yellow with a sliver of cyan poking through. ((Her EN and JP VAs have almost the same colors and similar textures like Sinbad's.)). Ja'far's was deep cobalt blue with bits of dark evergreen and salmon. ((His EN and JP VAs look super different in texture and colors, so I'm still figuring out how to blend them. His EN is mainly a midtone cobalt and dark aqua with the texture of thin dry brush gauche paint over salmon. The JP is like wet brush ink in extremely dark navy and green with flecks of yellow and dark red.)) Their voices, although pretty in their own right, contained the colors that I was used to seeing. Nearly every voice that overwhelms me makes some purple, and purple was the base color of Sinbad's voice. ((Sometimes purple is made with how the colors over lap, sometimes it's just purple. His Eg and Jp VAs normally had ultramarine blue and indigo as their main but the way they change their voices to do Sinbad makes the color warmer so it becomes purple.))
While Sinbad commented on the stones produced by the spell and asked the magicians questions about use and practicality, I was focusing on adjusting to his voice. He was going to talk to me again soon since we were in the same room, and I was going to need to be able to focus on his words.
"Where the Prophet wrote about 'electrons' bonding particles together to define what they are, is like the instructions around the Rukh that tell them what to be. So as long as we can figure out the right instructions we can gather and change materials at will. This was all just theory before now." One of the older magicians explained. That was a mostly correct way of thinking about the material science, but he was going to be doing magic not science so I didn't get pedantic.
Ja'far went straight for the biggest draw back. "Making something this small took all of you and enough magoi that we could see it. Is this really viable?"
Yam answered. "It takes an immense amount of magoi to make even these stones right now, but as we refine the spell, it will take much less." She picked up one of the stones. "This is still new magic so it will be a while before we can put this into regular production." She was disappointed by Ja'far's skepticism but wasn't going to let it stop her research. "Up until a week ago we could only augment preexisting things with alchemy magic. Now we can completely change something's material and even make something new from bits and pieces of other things!"
"I see." Bright violet splashed across my vision. "Have you only made rocks so far?"
Why didn't I ask that? It was such an obvious question in hindsight. I guess I was so focused on answering whatever questions they had that I forgot to ask my own.
Yam nodded. "We've been trying to make metals or precious stones since those would be the most profitable to produce but finding the right arrangement of 'particles' has proved difficult even with Mori's writing. These stones are basically just carbon."
Oh. Ohohohoh
"If your aim is artificial diamonds then put carbon under high levels of compression and heat." I cut in to explain. "That's how they form naturally after all. You can do the same with other stones too if you start with the right ingredients. It's all about causing the right chemical reaction. Actually..." I walked back up to the table with the scrolls and pointed to the periodic table of elements on the scroll on atoms. "You see this chart? It shows the election count and other information for each base element." They already knew what most of the natural elements were -just not the details that made them the base elements.
"We figured as much, but it's still difficult to figure out how the 'particles' join together in practice." One of the magicians responded.
I smacked my forehead with my palm. "I knew I was forgetting something." I had drawn an example of what atoms look like, and had explained compounds but had totally forgotten about drawing examples. That's what happens when I try to write without sleeping for 2 days.
They were mainly asking questions about single celled organisms before, so we didn't even get to the material science stuff. Luckily there were already pens around for the notes they were making. I grabbed one and the incomplete scroll.
"I'm gonna make a few quick examples." I was still a bit sloppy with the dip pen, but I didn't care.
((plz excuse that I forgot the ear shells))
I drew what hydrogen and oxygen atoms look like separately as well as when together to make up water, then I drew a version with the short-hand hexagons to represent the compounds. I did the same for salt (sodium chloride). With salt I also drew an example of it's crystal structure.
I looked to Yam. "Since I don't know exactly how magic works I don't know if you just pull moisture from the air when you use water magic or if it's also making water like this. But you can probably reverse engineer how compounds work from this."
I turned back to the paper and added another compound. "Diamond is made up of just carbon but it's structured like this." I didn't bother making an example of the atoms since they had already figured out that part for carbon. I just drew the compound hexagons repeating in the pyramid pattern that forms diamonds. "But so is graphite for instance which is structured like this." I drew the hexagons in the connected tubes pattern.
I stepped to the side so Yam and the other magicians could get a closer look. "Does this help?"
The magicians started gathering around my new notes. They started scribbling notes on their own papers including different versions of the magic circle while discussing with each other.
I took a few steps away back towards the window and ended up between bird!Sinbad and King!Sinbad. This was extremely ridiculous. At least Ja'far was also there to help keep the King in check.
The bird flew off -probably released- and the waves picked up.
Sinbad's voice was a nearly black violet and indigo as he spoke softy. "So you were working on this instead of resting? It is impressive but I believe you promised to take better care of yourself."
I kept my voice controlled and didn't make eye contact. "In my defense, I filled all but that scroll," I pointed to the one I had made to explain microscopes, "either that last night in Balbadd or on the ship here, so it was before I made that promise." I could feel in the waves and see in his face that he was about to start something.
Sinbad laughed and scattered gold glitter across my vision.
Ja'far and I sighed in unison.
Then the General gave me a back handed compliment. "I've been wondering how much you could do as a prophet after we change Fate, but with this it's clear that you won't just be sitting on your hands most of your time here."
I knew Ja'far didn't trust me that much, but I was really hoping he'd start to accept me more by now, or at least be a little less hostile. He's a lot like my younger sibling and best friend, so I really hoped we could become friends some day. Today was clearly not that day.
Sinbad watched me for my reaction.
The magicians were getting a little loud as they made progress with my added information. It also made it easier to not be over heard by them.
Ja'far wasn't wrong; it was something I had realized after handing over the scrolls. But, "I didn't learn this from reading Fate. It was reading this world's Fate that let me know this information would be invaluable." I kept my voice quiet so only those 2 would hear.
"What?" Ja'far was a little louder than me but he was aware enough to know I was keeping my voice down for a reason. He brought his own voice down as he gestured to the backs of the magicians in the room. "You're going to tell me you knew information that even the greatest minds of Sindria didn't know, and it wasn't something you read being discovered in the Future?"
The waves around Sinbad were growing as he watched me.
I chose my words carefully. This could be an opportunity to get some kind of income for myself in the form of a reward, I just had to dangle the bait first. "I told you before that my world has 1500-2000 more years of development than this one. I did read some of this information being discovered in this world's future, but I had already learned all of this long before I read anything about this world's Fate.
"I decided to give those scrolls on biology because the lack of understanding what bacteria or viruses are is going to get me sick again, and might kill me before I get a chance to really help you all against Al Thamen. -And I wasn't about to withhold information that would save others. Advancing alchemy magic was just a bonus."
Sinbad was barely hiding the excitement in his voice. "What other knowledge from your home are you going to bless us with?"
The waves encouraged me. Sinbad thought he had me wrapped around his fingers, but his waves were following mine, not the other way around. It made me smile.
"All of our ships are made of metal and many are several times larger than any in this world. We have flying ships that can go around the world in a day, and self propelled carriages. We captured lightening in a bottle and use it to power all sorts of things. We have devices like Yam's Eye of the Rukh that are so common that everyone has one and can stay connected easily. We've even sent people to the moon and back."
"People did that without magic?"
"Yes."
The waves I was making were huge. I could see it on Sinbad's face too. He knew I wasn't lying -my knowledge would change everything. I just had to convince the others.
Ja'far cut in with a serious tone. "Do you mean to say that you know how those things work?" He tended to play the part of the sceptic since Sinbad didn't. "Just because you grew up around such things doesn't mean you know that much about them."
My smile grew; sometimes it's fun to flex how big of a nerd I really am. "My parents were scientists and engineers. Members of my family worked on those machines I mention. And they taught me the basics."
My dad's special interest are cars, airplanes, space, and theoretical physics so I couldn't avoid learning about them if I tried. Both he and my grandfather were mechanics too. And my mom worked in telecommunication and programming, and made sure her children could make it in the field.
"I also learned a lot outside of them. I worked as a draftsman for several years, and I was even a teacher. I might not know absolutely everything about everything, but I am qualified to start revolutionizing this world."
They both stared at me shocked. Ja'far also had confusion mixed in where Sinbad had a mix of awe and greed.
The King found his words first. "I was already planning a welcome gift for you and a reward for these scrolls but with this," he was giving me a soft smile that demanded my full attention, "I'm not sure it will be enough."
Our waves were moving together. This was what I was looking for. I couldn't help feeling a little playful. And if he was going to turn this into a flirting game, I was ready to play.
I rested my arms on the window sill behind me and leaned on them. I smiled up at the man who was going to stand at the top of the world in only 5 years, and held eye contact. "My knowledge is going to increase the quality of life of the people of Sindria and your Seven Seas Alliance for generations; not to mention how many others my prophecies will also save." This wasn't my forte, but the person I was dealing with enjoyed this type of back and forth, so I had to try.
King Sinbad closed the distance between us and put a hand on the window frame above me. "With your knowledge no county will be able to compete with us. Do you doubt I will reward you what you're worth?" His words were a little confrontational, but his smile and the purr in his voice made it clear he was continuing the game.
I heard Ja'far groan next to us. Luckily, the others were still surrounding the scroll. Playing the flirting game would be unbearable in front of strangers -especially because I always feel like I loose against Sinbad even though things have ended in my favor so far.
I was not expecting the sudden kabedon, and felt my face heating up. I tried my best to keep my composure. I let my boost in endorphins from finally leaving that room continue to carry me.
As nervous as I was, flirting with this man, who was my comfort character irl, was too much fun. "You are the person who has built more than anyone else in these past 15 years, and saved countless lives. You're King Sinbad, King of Sindria -beloved by his people for his kindness and generosity. And you're going to achieve a lot more in the future, So I suppose you'll have the resources and the will."
"Oh?" His voice was a soft magenta faded to dark indigo violet with hints of gold coming from the side. I knew I could appeal to his pride and greed.
But I wasn't sure if I could pull this off with the growing lump of embarrassment in my throat. "And now you're *my* kind and generous King Sinbad, ... Right?" It was faint but my nerves shook my voice slightly at the end.
The way Sinbad's eyes widened was reassuring. Against the odds, I somehow made a critical hit. Maybe I wouldn't lose every match I had with the Womanizer of the Seven Seas.
Ja'far groaned. The magicians made some comments about the Rukh, but I didn't catch them; I was too focused on the golden eyes above me. The moments in the series when he was taken by surprise were my favorite. And I had shocked Sinbad a few times now.
Sinbad regained himself and his eyes narrowed. His normal flirty look was also pretty good -just not for my ability to cope. He leaned in closer to me, and the hair on my arms rose. If his face got any closer I'd even be able to see him without my glasses. I was absolutely not prepared for this level of flirting -if this even still counted as flirting.
I had made a terrible mistake. I wasn't winning; I was tempting death. I needed to find a way out.