Mommies and Daddies

We're back today with chapters 7 and 8! Which is going to bring us almost to the end of the story! The final two chapters, 9 and 10 will go up sometime soon, likely either this weekend or early next week. Until then, enjoy chapters 7 and 8!   Later in the infirmary, the spellnurses quickly confirm everybody’s suspicions. It’s mana sickness.    The loss of muscle mass, the headaches, the exhaustion and yes, the accidents (Madris and the handmaiden immediately cop to keeping the accidents secret for you and charming your panties. For approximately half of one second, the Queen looks ready throw them both off the top of the tower, but she forgives them). All of your symptoms are a result of your body’s reaction to the infusions of the Queen’s mana. If you continue getting pure doses of her mana, this will become close to your default state for as long as your mana is adjusting to it.    “In a sense, the risk to her long-term health is actually quite minimal, as long as she’s monitored and cared for,” one of the spellcrafters explains. “But she would be dependent on others for almost every aspect of her care until her body’s own mana finishes synthesizing with the Queen.”    The Queen runs a hand down her neck. She lets out a long sigh.    “I really thought achieving mana synthesis was possible if we just found the correct dosage…” She murmurs. You look at her.    “But they just said it is possible,” you say.    “Rain-” your Queen tries to interrupt you, but you push on.    “They said no long-term risk to my health. That means your mana isn’t going to hurt me, right?” You ask. “It’s not going to ruin my heart or my lungs or make my teeth fall out, is it?” You look at the spellcrafters and spellnurses. They share a nervous look and then look at the queen for direction.    “Rain, you would be trapped, bedridden, like we found you this morning!” Your Queen says.    “The symptoms would continue to be what they’ve been so far,” one of the spellnurses offers.    “But they would grow in severity over time,” one of the crafters then confirms.    “Can you give me something for the headaches?” You ask.    “Rain, you don’t know what you’re saying,” the Queen insists. She kneels down next to you where you’re seated. “You wouldn’t be able to wield a sword or learn magic or spend time with Bernadette and Sabine.”    “Who says I can’t?” You grumble, your proper tongue slipping as your frustration mounts. “Somebody can carry me to see ‘em.” The Queen sighs. “You want this mana synth…thing to work, don’t you?”   “I want you to be healthy.”    “Everybody keeps telling me to be patient,” you respond. “How long would this take anyway? How long would I have to be stuck in bed before my mana gets used to hers?” You look around. “A couple weeks? What?” The spellcrafters talk amongst themselves for a moment, one of them shakes a head and they let out a sigh.    “We don’t know. This is still a very young art we’re practicing. All of our studying says mana synthesis should occur eventually, but we simply can’t guess when. If we were to continue down this path, it could take a very long time to reach the other end and there’s no guarantee we can pull you off of it once we start.”    “What if we made the dosage smaller?” The Queen asks.    “We’re down to a single drop a day, I don’t know how much smaller we can get,” Madris says.    “We can dilute it further.” She looks at her crafters and when she speaks again, it’s far more authoritative. “We’ll find a dosage small enough that makes synthesis still possible without any of these side-effects.”    The spellcrafters don’t look confident about that, but they know an order when they hear one, so they agree to start work immediately.    After a few days of no mana infusions, you feel better. Then, you’re given what you’re told is an extremely diluted dosage of your Queen’s mana. She has a smile on her face, but you can tell from her eyes that she’s disappointed at this turn of events. You take the dose and don’t feel anything - you can’t imagine how severely they had to dilute it, but, you feel fine. So they start giving you the dose with your morning water every day. Your headaches are gone, your strength is back, you have no more accidents (poor Madris got assigned vault duty for a month, you try to visit her when you can to help her stave off the boredom). You feel fine. Everything is…fine.   But you imagine how little of your Queen’s mana you’re getting now. You think about how long it’s going to take for you to become a true witch, if it ever happens at all. You remember the disappointed look behind her eyes as she forced herself to smile at you.    And it just….really doesn’t feel good.    —   “The Arcane Aspirant, the First Chosen, my Umbran Princess. You flatter me with your hospitality.”    “Yeah, yeah, pipe down and eat your cakes.”   But despite the surly way you talk to her, you do find one thing to feel good about. Giulia is feeling better from the illness that kept her from your ceremony and has finally come to visit. The two of you are sat with tea and fancy little cakes as princesses are like to do, or so you assume. You’ve got to be honest, you asked your handmaiden and Artemis what you should do when she got here. Both of whom are standing by, along with one of Giulia’s own guards.    She beams at you as she sits down. She does in fact help herself to some tea and spreads a bit of cheese on some bread. Once she looks comfortable, you decide to strike.    “Alright, I’ve waited all this time to ask and I can’t wait anymore.” You slap your hands on the table. “Did you know what was up with the tiara or not?!”    Your handmaiden and Giulia’s guard look confused. Artemis glances at you, then looks at Giulia. Seems she might want to know too. Giulia looks around and apparently surmises that since you brought it up, it’s fine to talk about it openly.    “I….admit. I shaded the truth about the tiara.” As she explains, she takes a cloth and spreads it on her lap. “I concealed the full purview of my knowledge of it to what I believed to be its applicability to your situation.” You let out a breath and fall back in your chair.    “So, you knew.” She sips her tea and nods. “About me.”    “I strongly suspected. And I did not know how to brooch the subject with you. I thought if I told you about the tiara, you would come back to see it,” she explains. “And if I offered it to you, you would put it on, wanting what you wanted and…the tiara would do what it does. I planned to tell you the truth afterwards.”   “What if I wanted something else?” You ask, raising an eyebrow. She taps her chin and looks up, lost in thought for a few seconds.    “I honestly hadn’t considered that outcome,” she says. At that, you both manage a laugh. “But whatever my plans were, I certainly never intended for you to venture to another country to try and steal it, muchless almost succeed!”   “What can I say, I’m a woman of many unexpected multitudes,” you say as you lean back in your chair and sip your own tea. “…were you going to try and get the Queen to adopt me, too?”    “Mmmn….” She strokes her chin again. “I had thought of it as a possibility. I knew she was searching and I sensed your potential the same way she did. And there was a part of me that thought you fit much better like this than our previous relationship. You never seemed to enjoy your previous occupation that much.”    “Well, that’s where you’re wrong, princess, I still love thievin’,” you say defiantly, getting another giggle out of her. “Problem here is if I try to steal something, they just give it to me anyway. Takes all the fun out of it.”    “I can only imagine how many fewer thrills your life has now, regrettably,” she comments. “I want to mention, Father gave me your letter. It was of great comfort to me while I was ill. Thank you.”   “Yeah. Well. I just. Wanted y’to know, I guess.” The letter was mostly just a summary of what had happened when you ventured to the tower. Along with some words of thanks for her part in setting it all in motion, intentionally or not. Regardless of your interrogating her today, you just wanted her to know you appreciated it. “Your father seems nice.”    “He’s very excited that I’m close friends with Queen Maeve’s first chosen.” You did get that feeling somewhere around the time he was readjusting your Queen’s spine. “Mother on the other hand wants to know when you’re going to pay us back for all the jewelry.” Your grimace and take a bashful sip of your tea.   “Sorry.” She waves a hand.    “Think nothing of it. Consider it a contribution from one royal family to aid the construction of another.” And while that sounds nice, there’s something else you can’t shake. Something you haven’t been able to figure out.    “….why’d you help me?” You ask. “Not only did you never turn me in, you…you saw what was inside me, and. You helped bring it out. And all I did was cause you headaches by stealing your stuff. Why?” Giulia half-glances at her own guard again, but considering the royal family already knows about the stealing, you guess you’re not in any risk of getting in trouble.    “I admit, I didn’t love having to hunt down and re-buy half of my jewelry every couple of months. But at the end of the day, they were just things. You were a person. One of my subjects. And my subjects deserve my help.” She places both hands on her cup and looks down. “It bothered me, that I knew you needed help, but I didn’t know how to give it and you didn’t know how to ask for it. So I just let it be. Until I could figure something out. If that cost me some jewelry, that’s the easiest trade I’ll ever make in my life.”    Things are quiet for a few seconds. You take a cloth and dab at your face with it as an excuse to look away.    “I guess that makes sense,” you mutter into the cloth. You’re not sure it actually does. You’re not sure it makes any sense that Giulia and your Queen have done so much for you. But the reality is that they have. Maybe it’s about time you stop questioning it and just start appreciating how much they care about you.    It’s quiet again, before Giulia changes the subject.    “Do you still have the tiara?” She asks. You think about it for a second.    “It’s back in the vault,” you say. She nods.   “Do you intend to wear it again?” She asks.   “We spoke a little bit about me about wearing it for special occasions,” you say. It wouldn’t have any practical effects. It cast it charms on you when you put it on and the spellcrafters keep the charms touched up now. But, for all it meant to you, it does still hold some sentimental value. So if it was something really important, you wouldn’t mind wearing it again. “But besides that, it should stay protected.”    “Agreed.” Giulia nods her head. “I wanted you to learn it directly from me, however. I am still petitioning the Queen to borrow it for research purposes. I hope you don’t mind.” You blink a couple times.    “I don’t, but, why?” You ask. You thought she had planned to borrow it for you, you’re not sure what use she has for it now.     “Well, now that I know it works, I’d like to study it. See if I can’t learn from its combination of charms and duplicate them or even modify them a bit. If there are others like you that…aren’t able to be their true selves, for whatever reason. I’d like to at least offer them the same choice you had.”   You have to admit, you hadn’t thought of that. While sometimes it felt like it, you probably weren’t the only person in the world who felt the way you did before putting on the tiara. Statistically, it was impossible. The thought of there being more people like you pulled at your heart in a way you didn’t like, but true to form, Giulia was not only thinking a lot more big picture than you, she was already thinking of a solution.    “I’ll speak to mother today,” you say, sipping your own tea. “I’ll ask her to give it to you.” You look at Giulia and she’s staring at you, an expression of surprise on her face. “What?”    “….you just said mother.” Your eyes get big when you realize that you did, in fact, just call her mother. Not your Queen. You look around. Your handmaiden has a hand over her mouth and is bouncing up and down on her heels. Even Artemis looks a little surprised.    “I…” You look down. “St-stop looking at me like that!” You sputter out. “It’s just…what she is! She’s my Queen and she’s…” You take in a deep breath and with more intentionality this time, you say, “….my mother.” Giulia chuckles a bit, but mostly just has a big smile on her face.    “Indeed. I don’t know why I was so silly as to be surprised. It’s just obvious when you think about it,” she says. “I’m happy you two found each other.” You nod and murmur some small agreement, still feeling a bit bashful about what you just said.    “What exactly is your relationship with her, anyway?” You ask.    “Mmmn.” She taps her fingers together. “Queen Maeve started me on my path as a magic user. There was, at one moment I think, an opportunity for us to become much closer. But I decided to forge my own path, in my own way. And that moment was gone. Now, we consider each other…colleagues. Trying to advance our understanding of the magic arts to help both of our populations prosper.”    “She talks the same way,” you notice aloud. “About helping people.” Their reasons for helping you sounded almost the same - just that they helped you because they felt you needed help and that in and of itself was enough reason.    “We share similar views on subjects like these and the role royalty has to play with them,” Giulia says with a nod. “She has without a doubt influenced my sense of duty.”    You have to admit it, you’re pretty impressed.    “You two are really special,” you say. And sitting here, across from her, princess-to-princess, you kind of hope that sense of duty is rubbing off on you a bit, too. But… “I don’t think I can do anything like that, though.” You let out a sigh and just weakly smack a fist on the table. “Especially if I can’t even handle my mother’s mana.” Giulia grimaces and doesn’t look or sound entirely surprised.    “Rain. Look at me.” You do so, looking up and making eye contact with her. She reaches a hand out and places it over yours.    “You’ll get there.”    And in that moment, you believe her.    Later that day, you ask the Queen permission to enter the vault. When you address her as ‘Mother’, she teleports across the room and grabs you in a hug that lasts about five minutes. When she hears what Giulia wants, she agrees that you should retrieve it yourself.    “Now that your journey is done, you can help start any number of others,” she says as she gives you her personal key to the vault. “I’m very proud of you, Rain.”    At the mention of your journey being done, you look down a bit.    “…mmn.”    But you take the key and go one floor up, to the vault. Madris is briefly inconsolable when you tell her you’re not here to spend the rest of her shift with her, but to actually enter the vault.    The tiara is in the same spot you found it before, on the night your life completely changed.    The night your “journey was done”….according to your mother.    You think about the next-to-nothing dose of her mana you took this morning. Then you grab the tiara and turn to leave.    On the way out, you pass a dusty old spellbook. Your eyes hang on it for a moment.    “… …. …”    You wind up personally handing the tiara to Giulia. She’s very appreciative and reveals she has a gift for you too.    “I did tell you, I always thought these looked better with black hair.”    It’s a new dress. Pink and white. Most of your dresses are purple, the colors of your house. You may have gotten a little choked up as you accepted it. You’re just a sucker for color coordination, you suppose.    Eventually, Giulia returns home. You wouldn’t see her again for a while, but you know the princess from another land will always hold a very special place in your heart.  --- Various construction projects started back when you were preparing to be announced as First Chosen, but now they’re finally starting to bear out. Walls are going up, more rooms are being built and surrounding your home,  more settlers are arriving and building homes of their own. The tower is expanding outwards into a proper keep and around and within it, a proper castle town.    You are growing too, the best you can.    “Come on, advance.”   You try to step forward. You swing and Barhom deflects it away and swings back.   “You’re standing still. Use your feet. Keep moving. Now, advance, close on me. Close on me. Yes, that’s good. Keep going. Now, parry and riposte! Now!”   He swings. You deflect it, you let out a roar and swing as hard as you can. You strike him in the shoulder and he actually stumbles back one step. You don’t know if you actually stung him or if he just did that for effect, but he has a smile on his face, nonetheless.    “Excellent, princess. Your strength and your technique are improving. But what do I keep telling you?” He asks, pointing at you.    “Use my feet.”    “Use your feet. I can see it in your eyes, you’re thinking so much about what you need to do with your hands that you’re forgetting to move your legs. I can’t imagine you were this stationary this often in all those years of burgling, my princess.”   “I didn’t get into many fights when I burgled,” you explain between breaths as you grab some water. “If people with swords ever noticed me, my technique was to run away.” He chuckles.    “As you say, my princess.” He looks up at the sun in the sky. “That’s enough for today. You have magic lessons.” And that makes you throw your sword on the ground.    “Yeah. Sure I do,” you grumble. Barhom picks up the sword.    “Not going well?” He asks.   “Going nowhere,” you mutter. “I can’t get it, the mana’s not….coming.” You flail your empty hands. “I’m starting to think it’s never going to happen.” Barhom is quiet for a moment.    “You have a check-up soon, do you not?” He asks.    “…yeah.” You nod. “To see how the diluted mana doses are doing.”   “I believe you’ll get good news,” he says. “These things often seem their darkest before a breakthrough. Perhaps you’re closer than you think.”   “Yeah, maybe,” you mutter and drink your water. “…thanks, Barhom.”    “Of course, my princess.” As he escorts you, you hope he’s right. You hope it’s good news.    —   “There’s been a complete reduction in all of the symptoms from before, the weakness, the aches, the exhaustion.” Thankfully, they don’t mention the bedwetting.    “And?” Your mother asks.    “Well, we’ve learned more about the process of combining two distinct strains of mana since last time,” one crafter says.    “And we believe we can speak in more educated terms about the timelines we would be dealing with.” You look between them. They don’t look like they’re about to give you good news.    “Well, what is it? How long is it going to take?” You ask. Somewhere in your stomach, you feel buzzing. From the way they keep looking around, you know you’re not going to like the answer. If this was about to be good news, they would’ve led with it.    “With the doses as diluted as they are and the princess’ mana as undeveloped as it is, we believe it could be….20 or 30 years before she experiences mana synthesis to a level that would allow her to truly harness the Queensblood mana.”    You fall back into your chair. You hear your mother let out a small groan. You just stare at the ground for a moment, unable to believe this. The words knock around the inside of your head like rocks.    20 or 30 years.    “Even with the pure doses she was taking before, it would likely have taken years,” one of the crafters says and your mother seems to at least take that as consolation.   “Then I suppose this is all we can do,” she murmurs, putting a hand on your shoulder. You look up.    “How many years?” You ask. Everybody looks at you.    “Rain…” Your mother starts to say.    “How long would I have to deal with the mana sickness, a year? Two?” She asks. “Come on, how many years!” One of the crafters gives a little shake of hear head.    “My princess, even if we gave you constant infusions, the pure mana would still take a great deal of time, maybe even as much as a decade, and the effects of the mana sickness would set in more severely than they did before within months. You would become frail and dependent on others for everything.”   “And stopping the infusions would not stop the effects, depending on how long you took them,” one of your spellnurses chips in. “Even after just half a year of infusions, it would take at least that much time for the mana sickness to wear off. And that gap would just get bigger and bigger the longer you took them.”    You remember what it felt like, waking up in your own bed, unable to move, unable to do anything but lay there and keep wetting yourself, like some kind of baby. The thought deeply frustrates you.   “Rain, you mustn’t lost heart,” your mother says, although she sounds about as broken up as you do about this ‘20 or 30 years’ business. “This is a new magical art, we’ll figure out something that can help. We just need to be patient.” And after hearing about patience and keeping the faith and eventually so many times, you just. Can’t take it anymore.   “I don’t want to be patient,” you hiss out through your teeth. Your hands ball up into fists and you ineffectually beat them on your own lap. “I don’t want to wait. I want — I want to have your mana, now!”    “Rain.” Your mother’s voice becomes more forceful. “It’s not becoming of someone in your station to desire power so openly,” she scolds. “This is natural, part of being a witch is learning how to wield power before you have it, not after.” On some level, you’re aware that you should calm down. You can’t just force the world to be what you want, you can’t force this situation to be what you want. But the fact that she thinks that’s what this is about burns you up so much, you can’t help but feel even more upset.    You stand up out of your chair, knocking it over.    “I don’t care about power! I don’t care about the mana making me a stronger witch or anything like that!” You exclaim. “I want the Queensblood so that I can be your daughter!”    “What are you saying?” Your mother asks. “You are my daughter!”    “Not as much as I could be!” You shout back.    Things go quiet. Your mother always feels like she’s two steps ahead of everybody else in the room, rarely looks surprised by anything, muchless anything you say. Right now, she looks shocked. For the first time since you’ve met her, she looks like she doesn’t know what to say.    Eventually, the crafters break the silence.    “We are working day and night to try and find a way to speed the process up. Without causing any harm to the princess’ health.”    Your mother takes in a breath.   “Thank you. Thank you, for everything you’re doing,” she says. She then takes you by the shoulder and guides you out of the room, Artemis following you both. You go all the way back to your chamber without saying a word. You just stare at the ground, letting out small, wavering breaths the entire time. A lot of frustration you’ve been feeling for a long time just boiled over, that much is obvious.    Once in your chamber, your mother sits you down on your bed. She sits next to you. Artemis watches your mother for instruction. Your mother nods. Artemis nods back and closes the chamber door, staying inside with the two of you. Then, she turns to you.    “Rain,” she says. You think she wants you to look at her. You can’t do it. She lightly puts a hand under your chin, but doesn’t force you to look. “You know that mana and magic and blood aren’t what made us family.” And you wish you could agree with her, but, well. Your full, unvarnished feelings have been dredged up and you can’t put them back down right now.    “It’s the same thing,” you say. “The tiara. Your mana. They’re not….” You shake your empty hands. You’re struck with the unfortunately familiar feeling of being unable to figure out how to say what you want. “They’re not different things to me!” You sputter out and you know that’s going to be useless.    “What do you mean, Rain?” Your mother asks. “The tiara is gone. You gave it to Giulia, remember?”    “….if I may interject, your grace.”    Artemis takes a step away from the door, hands folded behind her back. Your mother looks at her. You still can’t manage to pull your head up.    “It is my gathering that you two share a different perspective on Princess Rain’s progress. My Queen, you believe that the night she came to us and put on that tiara, Rain ended one journey and her becoming princess was the beginning of something new. One book closed, another opened. My Princess, I believe you feel the opposite. Your life before you came here, putting on the tiara, becoming princess and everything since is all part of one journey to you that you feel is still incomplete. You feel that while you have made progress towards it, you cannot consider yourself to be your truest self until you have the Queen’s blood.”    By the time she’s done, you feel tears forming in your eyes. You nod a few times.    “She’s right,” you say, barely above a whisper. Just bared out like that. You don’t know whether to kiss Artemis or hide under your bed.    “I see…” Your mother murmurs. For the second time tonight, she looks and sounds surprised. Her hand comes off your chin and lightly pulls your head towards her, resting it on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Rain. I didn’t understand.” You turn your head into her and let her pull you close.    “But, my Princess,” Artemis says as she approaches and kneels in front of your bed. “Even if you feel your journey is incomplete. You must not forget all the steps you have taken, all the progress you’ve made. You must not confuse your inability to complete your journey with an inability to keep taking it. You have made great strides and you will make many more before you feel you are truly finished. You can still do things, small things, every day to bring yourself closer to the Queen and bring yourself closer to your truest self. You just need to focus on what you are capable of controlling each day and be glad for what you have achieved.” She reaches a hand out and puts it on your knee. “Every day, I am glad that you came to us in search of that tiara, my Princess.”    “I am as well,” your mother says as she lightly strokes your hair. “I don’t know how many times I’ve thanked Giulia for sending you to me.”   And despite everything, you let out a little scoff.    “You know she didn’t even do it on purpose,” you murmur through your tears. Your mother chuckles fondly and kisses the top of your head.    “Nothing ever truly happens on purpose,” she says. “The best you can hope for is that occasionally, you find something better than what you were hoping for.”    You spend a bit more time with your mother and Artemis. Eventually, they leave. You imagine your mother is going back to her personal study and won’t sleep a wink tonight as she tries to untie the knot that is this mana problem. You eventually try to go to sleep yourself, but you’re too trapped with your own thoughts. Artemis’ words ring in your ears. She exposed your frustration to a depth that even you didn’t fully understand, but she also gave you words you know you should take to heart.    But try as you might, you just can’t shake it.   Eventually you get out of bed and you pull a small box out from under your bed. You open the box. There’s a single folded up piece of paper in it.    You didn’t just take the tiara from the vault. You also opened up that spellbook and flipped through it. You tore a page about mana transferring out and shoved it into your dress, knowing Madris wouldn’t check. You stare at the page for longer than you should.    Once you’ve stopped staring at it, you sneak out of your room.    —   The spellcrafter’s workshop is empty when you enter. You start looking around, opening drawers, checking crates and barrels, peeking into cauldrons. There’s something almost nostalgic about it. It’s almost like the first night you were in the tower, except you might be doing something even more ill-advised than that, this time. Doubt starts to creep in the longer it takes you to find it. If it’s not here, the only other place it could be is your mother’s study and you’ll never be able to sneak in there without her or the Queensguard noticing.    Then, you open a cupboard and you see it. A large ceramic pot filled to the brim with violet, swirling energy. Almost a liquid, almost a gas, almost a solid. Constantly moving and shifting.    This is your mother’s mana. The Queensblood mana. This is what you they’re using to give you the infusions and what they’re studying to try and find more efficient ways to do it. This is what you need.    You lift the pot and set it on the ground. You pull the page out of your dress and look it over once more. You grab a piece of chalk and start drawing the runes in the circle on the ground around you. You check the runes against the page once, twice, three times. Once you’re satisfied you return to the pot and scoop out a small bit of the energy into a vial. You very carefully carry the vial back into the circle with yourself. You draw one more rune on the ground in the center of the circle and then press your hand to it.    The circle lights up, glowing a light red color. So far, so good. You pour half of the contents of the vial onto the rune in the center. The glow changes from red to purple. The remaining energy in the vial turns to smoke and rises up out of the vial, circling around you in several wisps for a few seconds before it sinks into your hands.    You stop and wait for a few seconds. The runes go quiet. You look around. You reach over and grab a small wooden measuring tool from one of the tables and set it on the ground. You flex your hands in and out a couple times. And you try to do something you’ve been struggling to do for a long time now. You try to call on your mana.    A soft violet glow surrounds your left hand. And a purple hand appears in midair. Your eyes get big. You move your own hand downwards. The purple Magic Hand sinks downwards. You make a grabbing motion. The hand grabs the tool. You move your hand up and then open it. The hand moves up and drops the tool back on the table. A huge grin spreads over your face.    It’s not much. It’s just the most basic, rudimentary spell possible, but. It’s enough. It’s enough, for now. Control what you can. You’ve done what you can to control what you can and, you know what? You do feel a little bit closer to your mother right now.    Not that you’re planning to tell her about any of this any time soon.    In fact, you need to start getting rid of the evidence that you did this. You’ll start with cleaning out the vial and erasing the runes. You take a step forward - you wince as you feel a sudden pain in your stomach.    “Ow — aaaaah…!”   You then groan as you feel sudden, intense ache in your head. The two sources of pain are so distracting that you don’t realize you’re still walking….and one of your legs just gave out.    You stumble forward and fall. You see it before you hit it. The giant pot of your mother’s mana.    You try for all your might to lean away from it, to no avail. You smack into it on the way down to the ground, tipping it over and the raw energy immediately starts leaking out of the pot in liquid trails on the ground and wispy smoke through the air. You’re too busy thinking about how completely and totally screwed you are when this is discovered to notice something much much worse than having to explain all of this to your mother.    You don’t notice one of the liquid trails touching the spell circle you drew on the floor. The spell circle that, once you fell over, half of your body is still inside of. You don’t notice it until the runes light up bright purple again.    “Oh, no.”    It happens very quickly after that. All of the mana instantly erupts into swirls of smoke and waves of liquid that spiral through the air for a few seconds, before they all head back towards you. You open your mouth to - you’re not sure, what? Screaming the word ‘no’ repeatedly isn’t going to do much, but it was probably what you were going to go with. You don’t get a word out either way. The mana tendrils hit you like a tidal wave, sinking into your body one after another. Purple light fills your eyes and sparks fly out of your fingers.   For a brief moment, it’s the most powerful you’ve ever felt in your life. A very brief moment, because you fall unconscious almost immediately.    —-   You don’t know how long it’s been when you open your eyes again.    The first thing you see is your mother, who immediately looks relieved that you opened your eyes at all. Then, in real time, you see her expression shift to wanting to throttle you. Your eyes move around. You realize you’re in your bed chamber. You see the spellnurses, Artemis, Madris, your handmaiden. You try to sit up. Your body doesn’t move. You try to open your mouth. A weak noise comes out.    Wasting no time, your mother holds up the page you stole from the vault.    “Rain. Did you try to cast this spell?”    You nod your head. Doesn’t seem to be much point in lying, right now. The Queen closes her eyes briefly, the spellnurses groan and shake their heads.    “You tried to use a spell circle to infuse all of my mana in yourself at once,” your mother murmurs. You want to tell her that’s not what happened. You tried to infuse a small amount of her mana. The rest was by accident. You can’t get the words out. You kind of doubt the distinction matters that much, anyway.   “We need to start making preparations immediately. You two, come with me,” Artemis orders the two spellnurses and they leave the room. Your mother lets out a sigh.    “Rain, you gave yourself the equivalent of hundreds of direct mana infusions all at once,” she says, blunt and simple. Your eyes get big. You hadn’t intended this at all. You were just trying to do one. She has to understand, you just meant to do one. “If we can’t fix this, you’re going to be suffering from permanent mana sickness until your body adjusts.” She holds your hand in one hand and rubs your arm with the other, trying to do anything she can to calm you in a situation that is making you increasingly not calm. “I promise, I’ll do whatever I can to find a way to reverse this. We’ll use whatever medicine we have to mitigate its effects on you.” She squeezes your hand. “We’re going to do everything we can. Just try and stay calm and don’t exert yourself, for now.”    “Uhm, your grace?” Your handmaiden suddenly pipes up. “There is…that one matter.”   “Yes…yes.” The Queen nods. “We should do it now.” The Handmaiden nods and briefly walks away. You can only move your head so much to see where she’s going, but a couple moments later, she comes back holding a tray and a white stack of cloth. You’re not sure what’s going on until you see her starting to fold the cloth up a certain way. You let out a faint noise.    “Sh, shh…” Your mother rubs your head. “It’s okay, Rain. Here.” She hikes up your gown, revealing your bloomers. She slides those down your legs, followed by your underwear. You whimper as your mother lifts your legs up and your handmaiden slides the cloth underneath your bottom. Over your sad objecting noises, the thick bundle of cloth is pinned into place between your legs and around your waist. Then your mother gently places your legs back down on the bed. Madris helps get your clothes the rest of the way off. You lay limply in your mother’s grasp like a doll as she pulls one of your nightgowns over your shoulders and your handmaiden tugs your bloomers back into place over that bundle of cloth.   Over your diapers.    Your whimpering turns into full blown crying as it sinks in that you’ve really gotten yourself in over your head this time. Your mother holds you and whispers comforts to you.    Mercifully, it doesn’t take long for you to fall asleep.   

Just then, Ms Claire turned around to pick up Sally when she noticed Reis facial expression, and the noticeable sag in her overalls. ‘I’d better change you first,Rei. I don’t think we’re ready for the potty at all.’

I un-bag mine so they naturally decompress.  But other than that, I just pull one out and basically do the "Unfold and put on" routine as well.  

Do you change your diaper in there? 

Good addition, Kat.  It's starting to look like life in that dimension is taking its toll on John.  I'm wondering if he's losing IQ points and the testing tablet will reflect that.  As always, thanks for sharing.