Davo sat at a small wooden table under the welcoming shade of a massive, gnarled tree, its sprawling branches casting a lattice of sun-dappled patterns on the worn cobblestones. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves overhead, producing a soft rustling that mingled with the distant hum of busy voices drifting in from the far side of the plaza. Overhead, a pale midday sky was beginning to shift toward a deeper hue, reflecting the warmth of the sun that bathed everything below. Nearer to the edges of the square, a ragged vendor sold simple conjured fare, and the faint aroma of freshly baked bread mingled with the resinous scent of the old tree's bark.
At the table, Davo leaned over a modest tin cup, intent on the swirling motes of translucent light hovering above it. Opposite him sat Selis—a young woman whose mere presence seemed to radiate confidence. Sharp cheekbones framed her almond-shaped eyes, and a cascade of dark auburn hair glimmered in the sunlight, shifting with every tilt of her head. When she smiled, a subtle wave of citrusy fragrance, tinged with something faintly floral, reached Davo's nose. The unexpected luxury of a pleasing scent tugged at his curiosity, making him wonder what small secrets she might keep in this world that had so little left.
"Alright," Davo said, his voice steady, though a bashful grin played at the corners of his mouth, "I can see the water forming, but you've gotta keep it steady. Otherwise, you'll end up with a half-formed puddle all over the table."
Selis wrinkled her nose in frustration. "That might not be the worst outcome—at least there'd be water."
He couldn't help but chuckle at her wry tone. Many in this new reality had displayed varying degrees of awe, nerves, or outright fear when learning to conjure. Selis, however, seemed to approach it with breezy self-assurance, as though weaving droplets from thin air were just another skill to pick up. Her posture relaxed, she kept a playful glint in her eyes—eyes which, Davo noticed, were fixed on him almost as much as on the shimmering sparks above the tin cup.
He cleared his throat. "Try focusing on the moment the droplet forms, and hold that picture in your mind. Picture each part of it snapping into place. If your mind wavers, you'll lose the shape."
She flicked a glance at him, the corners of her lips curling. "Easier said than done. You're so intense about it, I might just drop the whole droplet out of sheer distraction."
Davo felt his cheeks warm. In his old life, back before the event had overturned every norm, he'd never drawn such open, playful attention from anyone—certainly not from someone whose presence lit the space around them like morning sunlight.
Still, he forced himself to maintain composure. "I'm only intense," he countered lightly, "because if I'm not, you'll end up conjuring … something that will not quiet work."
With a teasing shrug, Selis turned her eyes back to the flickering lines of energy at her fingertips. Thin streams of light curled in on themselves, resembling the beginnings of a silvery cobweb weaving itself into existence. Davo watched closely, noticing that the formation wobbled each time she spared him a mischievous smile.
He had performed this instructional task countless times these last few days—helping others see the intangible threads of creation, guiding them to harness it. But something about Selis's presence unsettled the normally focused part of his mind. Instead of simply observing the conjuring, he felt drawn deeper as he pulled his attention away from her bright smile. His consciousness slipped further into the delicate dance of forming water than ever before.
Davo's vision—if it could even be called that—began with the water's surface, a shimmering membrane poised to drip into the tin cup. At first, he observed the liquid with the usual senses: a clear droplet, perfectly ordinary, trembling as it hovered at the edge of creation. Sunlight glanced off its nascent form, casting a fleeting rainbow shimmer across the table. Yet something in Davo's mind tugged at him, an unspoken invitation to peer deeper, as if an invisible hand had cracked open a door just behind his consciousness.
Without realizing quite how, his awareness shifted, gliding beyond the outer appearance of water. The sight was reminiscent of peering through a magnifying glass—only that lens became a portal, drawing him into a secret, hidden world. A delicate tapestry of molecules appeared, each droplet revealed as a chorus of shifting particles. Oxygen and hydrogen, braided by forces invisible to ordinary eyes, shaped themselves into symmetrical clusters. They vibrated at a pace that felt impossibly fast, as if teeming with restless energy. The faint hum Davo perceived was not a literal sound but a sense of momentum—of a grand, perpetual dance that wove these molecules together into fluid identity.
Here, water was no longer a passive liquid; it was a restless entity with a heartbeat of its own. He could feel the tension in the bonds, the intangible pull that locked each molecule into place. The molecules glowed at the edges, edges that shimmered in a spectral hue of turquoise and silver. They reminded him of tiny fireflies in a swirling, ever-shifting mass, jostling, pushing, then bonding again. Each time they collided, a minuscule spark of energy licked across his awareness. And in that moment, the fluid nature of water made perfect sense: it was an endless negotiation of molecular neighbors.
But his awareness did not stop there. He felt his perspective sharpen again, an invisible current tugging him further into the heart of each molecule. Almost as if some cosmic stagehand pulled back another curtain, atoms themselves revealed their intricate structure. They hovered in front of him like minuscule solar systems, each nucleus a concentrated powerhouse orbited by electrons dancing in ghostly trails. Davo marveled at the electrons—they were ephemeral, half here, half somewhere else, traces of probability that circled each nucleus in bright, swirling patterns.
He found himself drifting between these atoms, no larger than a speck within a colossal void. And yet, these atoms were impossibly small by human standards. At this scale, he sensed each bond as an intimate handshake of energy, a cosmic handshake that gave molecules their solidity and purpose. The electrons whirred past him like comets on elliptical orbits, flicking in and out of stable positions with an elegance he'd never imagined. He saw the oxygen atom, heavier, with more electrons swirling around it, each electron shell lit by a faint luminescence, as though containing starlight. The hydrogens, simpler and lighter, clung close like companions in a cosmic waltz.
And then, as if the lens of his consciousness decided it was still not enough, Davo plunged deeper. He drifted through the outer electron shells and into the nucleus. Protons and neutrons huddled together, a fierce cluster bound by forces far more potent than any he had known existed. Up close, these nucleons looked alive—vibrating, shifting, brimming with tension. Each proton exuded a sense of charge, almost a tangible presence that could repel or attract in an instant. The neutrons sat close beside them, no less critical for the atom's stability.
As he hovered there, the concept of solidity dissolved further. The protons and neutrons quivered with minuscule fluctuations, revealing they too were not the end of the story. They were, in fact, pockets of something even more elusive.
Davo's mind dove once more. The protons and neutrons unraveled into quarks, tiny swirling points of immeasurable power. They zipped within their boundaries, confined yet dynamic, held by the strong nuclear force. This force, Davo sensed, was monumental—like a rubber band stretched to near-breaking, binding the quarks into unthinkably tight orbits, each quark appearing to dance with a complex interplay of color charge and spin. It was here that Davo felt the raw pulse of creation's architecture, where matter's identity took root. These quarks, with their near-fanatical movement, seemed to laugh at normal definitions of space and time.
Every shift and quiver exuded raw energy, resonating with the primal echo of the universe's earliest moments. A sense of timelessness enveloped him, as though the laws that governed these quarks had been ordained at the dawn of creation. He felt dwarfed, yet oddly comforted by their constant, rhythmic swirl.
He drifted onward across fields that extended beyond the quarks themselves. These weren't just empty voids; they teemed with ephemeral fluctuations that blinked in and out faster than any eye—or mind—could track. Virtual particles coalesced like sparks, existing only for the briefest instants before dissolving into the background. This quantum foam bristled with possibility, a sea of half-formed realities that never quite manifested in the world of direct experience. Space, at this level, was alive with potential, a tapestry of ephemeral shapes that teased the boundary between existence and nothingness.
Davo sensed wave-like currents that threaded through this continuum, tangling and unknotting themselves in an eternal dance. Each wave could mutate or vanish, a flicker of probability shaping the micro-world that lived beneath what humans called "matter." The emptiness here was misleading—like a black canvas swirling with hidden color. He felt he could reach out and touch the waveforms, though the concept of reaching or touching meant little in a domain where matter was more wave than particle.
And then, as though carried by a final surge, Davo's awareness slid into something deeper—a realm so fundamental it defied rational comprehension. Here was the quantum foam, the scaffolding of reality itself. At this level, space-time seemed to fluctuate, warping in miniature folds and ridges. Davo's mind brushed against the intangible edges of wormhole-like fluctuations, ephemeral tunnels that existed for trillionths of a second, too brief to be more than an abstract possibility.
Gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces felt not as separate phenomena, but as notes of one grand, universal chord. The foam roiled with the ghostly shapes of possibilities that might never be realized. It was as if the entire universe were a cosmic pot, boiling with ideas waiting to be plucked out of nonexistence. Here, time lost its sequential meaning; what was past or future merged into a single vantage point of swirling energies and interconnected fields. There was no up or down, no left or right—just a rolling sea of ephemeral patterns, the blueprint behind the illusions of matter and solidity.
For Davo, a wave of awe and near reverence washed over him. Everything he'd ever touched or tasted, everything he'd thought immutable, was distilled into this surging ocean of quantum interplay. Reality was no longer an empty stage for matter to dance upon; it was a living, breathing symphony where each note, each wave, each flicker of energy interlocked with every other.
In that transcendent instant, Davo felt as though he was a witness to creation's most secret workshop, as though the universe itself had peeled back its veil, allowing him to stand at the edges of the forging fires where existence was hammered into being. He recognized the primal hum that underpinned every droplet, every gust of wind, every grain of dust. And it left him breathless, stripped of any illusions about the solidity or simplicity of the world.
Then, abruptly, he was yanked back. His consciousness snapped like a tether finally pulled taut, reeling him from the depth of quantum reality back to the small wooden table beneath the gnarled tree. The hot sun, the drifting dust, the faint smell of baking bread—these sensations flooded his awareness, reasserting themselves with almost startling clarity.
Selis's inquisitive eyes studying him from across the table.
He let out a shaky exhale, trying to steady himself. Selis tilted her head, her lips quirking with amusement. "You good? You looked like you just… vanished for a second there."
Davo blinked, his heart still thrumming with residual adrenaline from wherever his consciousness had traveled. "I—yeah," he managed, clearing his throat. "Just… got a bit carried away."
"Carried away by me, I hope?" she teased, her voice laced with that playful edge again.
From somewhere behind him, Jane coughed suspiciously, as if valiantly restraining a fit of laughter. Emma, calmly folding her arms, gave him a mildly exasperated glance that said, Focus, Davo. Meanwhile, Calla and Liora, who had been wrapping up demonstrations nearby, exchanged looks that were equal parts entertained and intrigued by Davo's brief, unaccountable lapse.
He forced a grin, struggling to mask how rattled he felt. "Something like that," he answered ambiguously, deciding not to elaborate on subatomic phenomena or swirling quarks.
Selis didn't press the issue, though mischief still lingered in her gaze. "Well," she said, flexing her fingers, "think you can help me try that water trick again without you zoning out on me?"
"Deal," Davo replied, forcing confidence back into his tone. "Just, uh, avoid hitting me with a conjured tidal wave if I daydream."
She gave a chuckle, more earnest this time, then turned her attention back to the faint sparks flickering in the air above the tin cup. He watched her lips thin in concentration, the faint line between her brows deepening as she focused. Davo steadied his breath, reining in the shimmering memory of what he'd just experienced. Yes, the universe was infinitely more complicated than he'd ever imagined—but for now, he had a student to guide.
All around them, the plaza thrummed with activity. Others were conjuring small streams of water, lumps of dough, or even the beginnings of basic tools. Laughter intermingled with gasps of awe. The dusty city backdrop felt slightly less oppressive under the canopy of the old tree, as if within this bubble of communal learning, hope had found fertile ground to root and flourish.
And Davo—though still taken aback by his fleeting glimpse into the quantum depths—smiled softly. He'd figure out the implications later. For now, the here and now demanded his focus.
He had a demonstration to finish, a new friend to guide, and a world still half-waiting to be remade. That, for the moment, was more than enough.