Puzzles (Fyr)

 A/N: More tiny Ayron and Fyr bonding time because we love the insane magic found family (and continue to ignore Beyte's delusions because they are strange and very concerning) 

“What’s this do?” Ayron asks, pointing at a cube sitting on one of the shelves in the study. “It’s a box.” Not satisfied with the answer he looks at me for a moment silently before turning back to the shelf and attempting to get it down. Unfortunately for him, he’s not quite tall enough to reach it yet, at least without climbing on something. Getting up from my seat I go and pluck him off the shelf before he gets the chance to try and start climbing it more than he already had and hurt himself, putting him back on his own two feet, and take the cube off the dusty shelf. I should really make time to clean in here one of these days, it’s gotten remarkably dusty. Holding it so it’s eye level I show the many sides of the artifact. “See? It’s a puzzle box." Each side has a different inlay that unlocks the various parts. “I like puzzles” Ayron murmurs and even more curious now he reaches out for it “Ah ah, what’s the first rule of handling artifacts?” That stops him in his tracks for a moment as he thinks before blurting out “clean hands!” and runs off to go wash them. With a few moments of peace I set up a basic way to keep things from getting too messy or potentially lost, this wasn’t what I’d had in mind for the day, but at least the boy has an interest in dwemer history, might as well turn it into a lesson.

Ayron comes bounding back into the study and sits on the cloth I’d set down along with the puzzle cube eager and ready to learn. “Do you know who the dwemer were?” Ayron nods confidently “They were a bunch of really tall dwarves who made lots of things and now they’re gone…why were they called dwarves if they were tall?” A correct answer, and a good question that I myself cannot answer, and so I simply shrug in response. That’s it’s own linguistic puzzle, probably a mistranslation from the original dwemer language or some colonizing idiot's way of putting the society beneath them. “Can you tell me what kind of things they made?” We had spent some time on the road recently and as a result passed and in some cases examined a number of ruins, including some dwemer, and I’m curious to see if he’s able to identify the differences between them and more typical ruins. First, he points to the puzzle box as an example and then takes some time to think staring up at the ceiling “They built those stone cities with the hard to say names and lots of metal, the built the centurions, they built the other rolling metal guard centurion type of things, they made plates and cups and other normal objects but they used metal instead of what we use, oh and they made airships!” So far as Ayron and I have gotten to know each other and our respective quirks I have learned three things 1. He loves anything to do with history 2. The concept of flight and levitation is fascinating to him and 3. Apparently he enjoys puzzles, an honorary fourth would be getting him to eat a vegetable that isn’t an ash yam or other similar root vegetable is harder than keeping Beyte in touch with this reality. Oh the joys of raising children, for a nine year old at least he isn’t so bad, he could be much worse behaviorally, really.

“Very good answers, and yes those cities do have difficult names, at least to spell.” One of these days I’ll have to find a way to introduce him to my dear friend Yargrum, the last living dwarf…if I can find a way to safely do it while limiting corpus exposure. After a few minutes of quizzing about recent information and our trip Ayron and I begin to dissect the puzzle cube together one piece at a time. Having done it many times over the years I could do it in a matter of minutes, but it is interesting to see how Ayron approaches the task, and as a result I let him do most of it while providing assistance if needed. It takes longer, and some putting back together and taking apart again until it’s completed but eventually we get to the last layer. Ayron presses a small button and flips open the top to reveal exactly what I’d said earlier the contraption was. “See? Just an empty box.” Now more confused than anything else Ayron looks at the pieces we’d taken apart and back at the small box, going back and forth between them a number of times before making a face somewhere between confusion and annoyance while adding a deadpan comment of “That’s a pointless and unnecessary thing to have for just a box.” continuing to stare at it and fidget with the lid. “Depends on what you used it for. Would you want someone to get to your treasure just by turning a key? Or would you rather have them do a puzzle that takes time and mental energy?” That reframing allows the puzzle contraption part of the box to make a bit more sense and we find that putting it back together is much faster than taking it apart, and with practice it would likely become very quick to pull apart and put back together if one used it regularly like the dwarves did.

With the activity done the puzzle cube returns to its protected place on the shelf among other various artifacts on display and reading material on the lower shelves. Now that the room is back to its original form I find myself drawing a blank for what else to do for the day now that the impromptu lesson has concluded and Ayron wanders around the room flapping the sleeves of his robes much to his amusement. He’ll grow into them eventually, they’re Alfe’s old ones that she’s since outgrown, for now they remain just a bit too big for him. “That’s all for today, you can go do what you want now.” At those words Ayron rushes out of the room and I hear running footsteps down the hall as I sit back down to pick up where I’d left off, ah yes, the usual corpus research.

Later when passing by on my way to see what trouble the girls had been up to during the day downstairs and hoping to myself the damage isn’t too much I find Ayron in his room asleep on the carpet surrounded by a partly completed block tower, a stuffed Guar that must have fallen off the bed, and numerous sheets of paper and a stick of charcoal with drawings of  Dwemer ruins, machines like the centurions, the puzzle box we had worked on earlier, and in a corner of the page filled with labeled scientific and architectural doodles a small picture of the two of us on our most recent adventure. Careful not to wake him, a technique honed by years of practice and the experience of raising four other children I pick him up and tuck him into bed, not forgetting the Guar which I believe he named Gua-Gua that had gone on its own adventure onto the floor at some point earlier, and place it beside him. Taking the drawing from its spot on the floor among the other papers I turn out the lamp, whisper goodnight, and leave Ayron and Gua-Gua the Guar to their slumber. The drawing I take back to the study and hang it among the other drawings and pieces of art I’ve been given by the girls over the years in its own little place of honor, for some reason this one in particular makes me smile. Perhaps because it’s the first of hopefully many other things that will join the wall. For someone not from a magic using background and having spent much of his childhood with his own family in the primarily agricultural part of Morrowind, Ayron has adjusted remarkably well into this little adopted family, now if only I could get Beyte to understand exactly what roles each person in this household actually has, as her mental stability has become increasing questionable and concerning with time…but that is a larger and much more complicated puzzle of its own, and one for another day.