“Thank you for helping us, Princess.” The spirit she’d asked to speak for the rest told her once she was done healing all of those who needed it.
“It’s no problem and if anything like that happens again I’ll be happy to help, but why did you come to me?”
“Because we believed you could help.”
“I mean, why did you come to me instead of asking one of the great spirits? They’d typically help you all, wouldn’t they?”
“Ah, yes but none are free.”
None?
She didn’t know how true that was, or at least how much of that thought wasn’t just coming from their own view of things. Thera knew that her father regularly guarded Anailia but he was pulled away often enough that he should have been able to help and while both her aunts Funa and Lux had tasks that kept them busy she didn’t think they’d be too occupied to help either. Then there was her newest uncle Ogilt who was just guarding Ben’s experiments but almost certainly could have left for the few minutes it would have taken a being of his power to deal with that level of threat.
Although, I guess he still doesn’t seem mentally well enough to be one of the top choices and as for the others, well, Salinoth is the only great spirit that dedicates the whole of his time to the seas and Incedis has his family and I don’t really care enough about the last three to know what might keep them busy. I guess I don’t even have a clear enough idea about what my dad and aunts do to say they weren’t doing anything important right now either.
“Okay,” She said aloud after thinking it over. “If anything like that happens again, for any spirits or elements or fairies, let me know. I’ll do my best to come and help.”
That got a reaction from the crowd around her, all of them swaying around her happily to hear as once more she was surrounded by hundreds of voices, only now they were singing her praise instead of drowning in worry and fear while she did her best to calm them amongst cries of how loved she was.
“Yes yes, if I can I will help but just remember I can’t teleport, I’ll need some of the space spirits to give me a hand each time. Speaking of, could I be sent back to where you all found me?”
“Yes, of course!” A spirit told her, motioning the only space spirit in the crowd to open a portal for her to pass through. “Thank you again, princess. We won’t forget this!”
“Don’t worry about it, this is just what I should be doing.”
She stepped through from there, back to the city she’d been only a little before and back in front of the waiting gate, freed from her adoring crowd, at least mostly. Through the gate it had made came the single space spirit that had been among the rest, waiting quietly by her side until she spoke up.
“They say it’s obvious and the rest of us will understand soon enough.”
Okay, I’m never getting a real answer.
Trying to find a bit of acceptance of that fact in her heart, Thera held back a sigh and instead did her best to give the space spirit before her something a bit more substantial, seeing that it was clearly still curious.
“I don’t know for sure, but it might be because I help them,” She explained. “I give them my mana when they need it and that helps them grow their numbers and I come to their aid like you’ve just seen. Other than that though I really can’t say beyond my relationship with my father, who you’d know as the great earth spirit.”
It was the best she could do at least but it seemed to perk the other up a bit as it regarded her more closely.
“If you help us then will you help me?”
“If I can then of course, what do you need?”
Aside from being supplied with mana, she didn’t know what else she could do for any spirit besides just talk but she was at least willing to try as she wondered what problems a space spirit could have. She was used to all of the other affinities that existed on the world by that point but space spirits were still new, she didn’t actually know what sort of issues or concerns might bother them until the one with her said the most obvious.
“Our great one isn’t well. Can you change that?”
What else would a spirit want? Their love for their great ones was no little thing and the request was no simple one either. Thera didn’t have it in herself to undo millennia of trauma and self-hatred, she didn’t know if that was something that could ever be fixed, even if millions of years passed for the immortal being.
“I don’t know if that’s something I can do.”
“Can you try?”
“...Yes, I can try.”