“Nom nom nom!”
“Eeeeeeek!”
After which she was arrested. Naturally enough.
“But whyyyy?” Cururunelvia wailed as she was led away.
“Why do you always make such a nuisance of yourself?” I asked one day as we were traveling.
Cururunelvia was beside me, grinning as usual. “A nuisance? Am I?” she asked, looking mystified. I guess she wasn’t very aware of it herself.
“You’re going to die one of these days,” I said.
“Hoo-hoo-hoo! Not easily, I’m not. Because I’m studying the immortal girl!”
“Yes? And what are your conclusions?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you don’t seem to have many conclusions.”
“Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…,” Cururunelvia laughed, a very unsettling sound. She proceeded to choke down some cursed water that was supposed to kill you if you drank even a drop.
“Gggrghhh!”
She ended up sound asleep for three days and three nights.
That was how it usually went for us. The one thing I couldn’t call my life was boring.
In between doing bizarre things, Cururunelvia found time to study me, just like she’d said she wanted to. She examined me from head to toe and gave me a panoply of medicines to try.
“It’s not just injuries, Riviere. It looks like you don’t get sick at all. I sort of thought that might be the case…”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Like, the medicine I just gave you is supposed to turn your entire body green.”
“Is that so?” My hand moved of its own accord.
“O-ow! Please don’t hit me!”
Since we never stayed in one place for long, these examinations always took place at an inn or hotel. Nonetheless, Cururunelvia kept copious records and questioned me intensively about my situation.
“Could you tell me about your background? I mean, if it makes you uncomfortable, don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s fine. But I don’t come from anywhere special.”
I gave her the quick version of the story of my life before I had joined her on her journey.
“Oh, I see.” She diligently took down everything I told her in a notebook. “‘There was a girl named Riviere, a poor child isolated and alone because those around her were creeped out by her…’”
“That’s a lot of nonsense,” I said. No one was creeped out by me!
“Maybe, but evoking sympathy is a great way to get research grants when you’re doing this kind of work,” Cururunelvia said.
“You’re a stubborn one,” I said with a sigh.
Cururunelvia kept writing. “‘Whatever illness befell this young lady, whatever injury she sustained, she always survived. In fact, her preternaturally quick healing abilities allowed her to appear to resurrect herself from the very edge of death…’”
“I’ve never been on the edge of death.”
“People expect a certain amount of hyperbole in research.”
“Is that how it works?”
“Yep! Trust me.”
She went back to writing. “‘When I met her, this young woman was just turning forty. But she had the appearance of someone in her midtwenties…’”
“Is that how I look? Like I’m in my midtwenties?”
“You can do a certain amount of massaging the truth and even a bit of outright lying in research.”
She seemed to be doing this research by the seat of her pants. Yet somehow, strangely, being with her gave me the sense that one day we really would solve the mystery of my body. Even I wasn’t sure why I felt that way. Maybe her devil-may-care approach to life was rubbing off on me.
“All right, Riviere. Just take a sip of this medicine.”
“What does this one do?”
“Drink first.”
There was a long pause, but finally she made me drink it. Then she said, “It’ll make your whole body glow like a lamp!”
At that moment, Cururunelvia’s body, in fact, lit up.
“Gosh, that’s bright,” I said, squinting. I wasn’t thrilled. But I also wasn’t sure if the way my eyes were narrowing was because of the brightness—or if I was smiling because I was having so much fun.
One day we were at a hotel when Cururunelvia asked me, “Say, Riviere, can you use magic?”
“Uh, no.”
“What, really? Come on, try it. I’ll even lend you my wand.” She tossed her wand to me. It was old but lovely. The wand that had saved me.
After a moment’s hesitation, I went “Yah!” and waved it.
She didn’t say anything.
I didn’t say anything.
Nothing happened—were we surprised?—and silence came over the hotel again as my shout faded away.
“No good, huh? I see…” Usually, Cururunelvia just kept grinning even when things didn’t go the way she hoped, but this time, and this time only, she looked disappointed. At the time, I didn’t know why. I just assumed she wanted me to be able to use magic.
It had been just about a year since we’d met.
“I’ve learned a lot about you and your body, Riviere,” Cururunelvia said. We were in a certain country, chatting in the hotel as we so often did while she examined me. But this statement came out of nowhere. “Strictly speaking, I don’t think you are immortal.”
Wait…I wasn’t?
I gave her a dubious look, not really following. “What do you mean?”
Cururunelvia flipped through the papers from all her examinations of me and said very simply, “You are aging, a minuscule bit at a time. It’s just extremely slow, owing to your body’s particular qualities.”
“Particular qualities?”
“Uh-huh.”
She told me that she thought my extraordinarily quick healing, my resistance to illness, and the fact that I had stopped growing at fourteen were all because of the nature of my body. Me, I could hardly tell what she meant.
Finally, Cururunelvia pointed at me and said, “Your body consumes magic.”
That was the truth of what had transformed me into a nearly immortal being.
Magic-Consuming Physiology: That was what Cururunelvia dubbed this heretofore unknown condition. The defining trait of this physiology? Well, it was right in the name.
“First, a premise: Mages use magic by consuming the magical power in their bodies. The natural world is rich with magical power; trees in particular produce a lot of it. That’s why you can use slightly more powerful spells in a dense forest—there’s so much magical energy around.”
Suddenly, I found myself getting a lecture on magic. I wasn’t so sure about this, but I decided to listen quietly; Cururunelvia didn’t seem to notice and just kept talking.
“The purposes to which mages put magic are myriad. Attack and defense, medicine, and more. It would be fair to say there’s almost nothing that magic can’t do.”
“Can it heal injuries quickly?” I asked.
“It’s not impossible!” She nodded eagerly. “And I think that’s what your body is doing, Riviere—all on its own!”