Mum. I Made You Breakfast [Inanna, Ninsianna]

"Then why does the King want to look if no one's allowed to look at there?"

She asked from her spot, she had a vague idea of why but Ninsianna was telling the story here. The little danava nestling a bit closer while she guided her mother's hand onto her head and placed it there, trying to milk the attention for all that it was worth.

Her mind wandered back to the story and where it might go, would William fight the King but what if the King won and saw the sword? The King would be mad if he lost though, right? At the same time, she thought that William should be free to do his duty because that's what he was allowed to do.

"The king, you see, wished to know if he was strong enough to use the sword, in order to prove his worth to the people in surrounding kingdoms. He was a petty king, whose rule lacked conviction. He could think of nothing but strength to assert his authority."

Ninsianna smiled a touch more at Inanna's nestling, making sure to give gently rub her daughter's ears as she knew she was so fond of.

"He pushed past young William, but the young man did not relent. No matter how many times the king and his men beat William away, he continued to follow them, to force them back even as a fruitless endeavor, until finally he had found himself in the very center of those woods. The king then drew his sword, and told William to step away. But he would not do so, for all that he knew was that someone had come to interfere in those woods. He looked back, and saw an old blade resting in an ancient tree. He knew nothing of that blade, of course. All that he knew was he was supposed to protect the grove, and so he placed his hand on the sword and drew it out."

She was more or less telling this tale as it came to her now, though she was still applying a few other tales that she had heard throughout her life. Incorporating both fiction and truth into it, simply to make a narrative she felt would be pleasant and still worthwhile for Inanna to hear.

"The sword was said to be a holy item, which would never allow any but a hero to hold it. The king, seeing that William held it so effortlessly, realized that he could never best William, offered instead to make him a knight of great prestige. Naturally, he accepted, and he took the blade with him without even knowing what it was. His only condition was that the grove stay protected, and the king acquiesced to that offer.

"From then on, he was Sir William, and he was sent off to a foreign land where the king wished for him to fight their enemies. It was there, crossing into a kingdom by the sea, that Sir William came across brigands accosting a beautiful woman, with flowing lavender hair and who was clearly weak. So he cut them down, to protect her from evil, and offered to bring her home. When she led the way, he realized that she was a princess in this land, who had gone out to explore the world without anyone to attend her. Sir William, wishing to provide her that freedom and knowing well how beautiful she was, offered to marry her."

What a weird story, she wondered why the king knew of the sword but not William. Wouldn't someone tell him or something what he was protecting? Seemed a little important Inanna thought but she was also easily distracted and the hand putting in work to her ears was silencing any kind of questions about the whole thing.

"So did they get married?"

Inanna asked a little drowsily, a bit too comfortable in her spot which made her want to fight and resist the veil of sleep again. She'd already slept enough although maybe it was her own little gloom that was making it a bit harder to maintain as well but it wasn't all bad either.

It was a good spot here that gave her a chance to push those troubles to the wayside.

"They did indeed, and the Lady Ilyana began to travel with William through the lands. He became a hero of that seaside kingdom, as well, traveling through it with his beautiful princess as they cut down villains and protected the people. So caught up in his heroism was Sir William that it never so much as occurred to him that he was saving the very people he had been sent to war against. He was a good man, after all, and conflict was not in his nature."

The story had more or less completed itself in Ninsianna's mind by now, which was quite to her benefit. It was much easier for her to tell a story when she didn't need to make something up.

"In his own homeland, people spoke of how Sir William had brought together the two kingdoms through his efforts, how he had made their land look strong and prosperous in a way that they never thought possible. The king, of course, refused to ever admit that Sir William was responsible. He was adamant that, if only he had been able to take hold of the sword, it could be him who brought such glory. So he called the knight back home, and invited him to the castle with his bride. They threw a lavish party, and in the dead of night, he had his spies steal away the sacred sword, and replace it with a replica. After all, Sir William never knew of its nature, and so surely he would not notice. The king took up the blade, and was pleased that it accepted him, too, as a wielder. The next day came, and Sir William left none the wiser, returning to his questing with his adventurous bride."

What was this twist? Inanna wasn't ready for him to lose his special magical sword, have it taken away from him and it did make her become a bit more thoughtful too. If her magical girl powers was like that sword, well besides the fact that no one stole them from her. They were just gone and left a little void which was lacking something.

"But he doesn't have his magical sword anymore. Is it going to be a tragedy?"

Inanna didn't sound too impressed by that idea and she became a little indignant while she proded for spoilers about the story from her mother. Pouting into the lap at the thought that the brave hero would suffer without his magical sword and get beaten or die, that wasn't how fairy tales went were they?

That's not how she wanted them to go.

Ninsianna knew that Inanna was hoping for an answer about how this story might go without simply waiting for the ending, but she would hardly want to spoil the story for her little girl, especially after having spent such effort on creating it. So, instead, she simply shook her head and continued her tale.

"Sir William continued on with his heroics, and never even noticed that the sword had been changed. The king, meanwhile, took the sacred blade with him into his next campaign, assured in his victory with such a blessed sword. But in his very first battle, he was cut down, and the sword he carried was snapped in two by a foe who had far outmatched him. When the court physicians and the wizards went to see what had happened only then did they realized the king's mistake. The sword had always just been a sword."

She thought it was a little bit transparent of a twist, really, but she hoped that it would have been enough to entertain Inanna, if nothing else.

"There were no blessings of the gods or powerful enchantments on it, nor had there ever been. For Sir William was not a hero because the blade had allowed him to be one. The blade had simply been something that let his heroism come through. He was righteous, strong, and that was all that he needed to turn even an ancient blade, untouched for centuries and left to rust in an old grove, into something magical."

It was an ending, one that Inanna hadn't exactly expected but was she unhappy with? No, it was actually better than what she had expected and it was a little surprising that her mother crafted it - from scratch as far as she was concerned. Inventing new concepts and weaving them together elaborately even if it was a mixture of tropes that existed prior made into one. Inanna didn't get caught up in that.

The story did make her feel better though, the little girl a bit more upbeat while applying it to herself. She didn't need her mother's magic to enable her own wishes. She'd seize them herself and make them real, how? She didn't really know but the hero in that story didn't seem to know either. He had some kind of natural thing for it though, did she have that kind of aptitude to be a heroine? Would a pathway just open to her if she was naive or did she have to bruteforce her way into making it real.

"That was a good story, mum. I liked it.. and William and his wife lived happily ever after, right?"

She did want to hear it end like that. Didn't everyone want to hear it end like that?

"They did indeed. They eventually returned to William's home in that sacred grove, and lived a quiet life in peace."

Well, that may not have been true of the man Ninsianna had based this tale on, but this was a fictional story anyway. A great deal of what she'd said had hardly happened to him, and so it wasn't a lie to say that the character she'd created lived happily ever after with his wife. Frankly, that was a life she would have preferred for the two of them anyway.

"I hope that you enjoyed the story, Inanna. I don't often come up with tales like that, so I apologize if it was not quite what you were hoping for."

"It was really good, you should do it more."

She assured while moving from her spot, instead getting up and taking a seat on Ninsianna's lap to face her proper and give a small grin that was a lot better than her gloomy mood before. The little danava of freedom stared at her thoughtfully.

"I don't have my magical girl powers anymore, and I want them back but um, I want to be from me and not you like before. You know, like the knight. So uh how did you develop your powers? You know, the contract thingies."

Inanna didn't really know how to develop and even if she asked Nel or Alex they weren't really danava not like her mother who'd get her a lot better than they could in this stuff. That was her idea of it anyway. It'd be like asking Alex what was happening as she got bigger, he was a boy and she was a girl you know? Just didn't make sense.

Ah, that was what Ninsianna had been anticipating. She listened as Inanna laid out the problem she was facing, and thought about how best to answer. She knew that much of what she had grown to master was rather recent, and that her contracts had simply been something she'd always known. But that wasn't a helpful answer, and that alone meant she could not give it.

"My contracts are a part of who I am, as a Danava. It is in my nature, embodying Social Order. If you wish to grow your powers in such a way, then you ought to think on what it is that you embody, and how you believe it should be shown to the world."

She knew that was somewhat abstract, but that was really the truth of it, wasn't it? Ninsianna didn't want to lie to her daughter about something this important.

"When you have found that answer, then you will find that the power to make it true is with you once again."