Rising Shards

I remembered the general layout of the Cani Sciences Museum, but it had definitely gone through a lot of changes since my last visit. One struck out immediately: an absolutely enormous wall that had a list of all the documented Cani powers on it. The sheer size of it, maybe as tall as a few floors of a building, compared to how small the text was that filled every inch of the stone was a bit awe inspiring. Little flying camera drones buzzed around it; we approached one of the stations that let you scroll through the powers and search for them with either a keyboard for more specific entries or a palm sized scrolling ball for those just wanting to scan around.

“I feel like just a computer listing the powers might be easier,” I said.

“But where’s the fun in that?” Zeta asked as she went for the glowing orb search method, spinning it wildly.

“Word of advice if you ever do any speaking engagements here,” Evy said. “And if they let you pick your location, pick one of the stages or theater rooms and not this one, trust me.”

“How come?” Zeta asked, idly scrolling past some powers categorized by how much they assisted with woodworking.

“Because if you do one in front of the big wall, all anyone pays attention to are the cameras zooming around behind you, which are way louder up close to them.” Diast said. “I flinched like five times and interrupted myself when I thought I was gonna get whacked with one of those.”

“That does sound pretty bad…oh, wait!” Zeta said, starting to type something. “I wanna see if the butter guy is on here.”

“Butter guy?” I asked.

“Uh huh, Dr. Diast told me about him,” Zeta said. “Apparently he could make a lot of butter, but not an infinite amount of butter.”

“Hey, you remembered!” Evy said.

“This sounds…vaguely familiar,” I said. “Was he ever on the news?”

”Maybe?” Zeta found a Cani power that read “BUTTER CONJURING” on the wall. “Think this is the one? Or would it be something cooler like near infinite butter generation?”

“That’s probably it,” Evy said.

“Next, we gotta find our powers!” Zeta said. She tracked her own storm powers pretty easily, as well as Evy’s and my own. Then Oka’s, then her other friends before she had enough of the big power wall.

“There are so many of em,” Zeta said as we walked to the next exhibit. “How often do they add more?”

“I think they do a survey once a month,” Evy said.

“And how do they etch the names it?” Zeta asked.

“With a laser, I think,” Evy said.

“Not a Cani with laser powers?” Zeta asked.

“It could be, but I think they have tools for it when they don’t have a laser type on hand.” Evy said.

The twinkle in Evy’s eyes as she talked even a little bit about her passions gave me butterflies in my tummy. “What?” She asked when she caught me staring.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“You must’ve said something good during that laser talk, when Stella says ‘it’s nothing’ all zoned out like that, she’s trying to hide how happy she is.” Zeta explained.

“Shut it,” I said, but saying that while grinning took any venom out of it. “It’s nice to see your teaching in action, I guess.”

Evy scratched her forehead. “Thanks.”

“What got you into studying Cani?” I asked. “Or. We’ve talked about that before, hm. I mean, what about it as a job appeals to you? That sounds so stupid.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Evy said. “I like answering that one.” She pointed back to the big wall area. “Using that as an example, every month new Cani powers get added to that thing. Not just one or two, but hundreds. I feel like you could study Cani over twelve lifetimes and still only have a sliver of what you could know about us. And that’s…really enticing and cool to me. One of the reasons I think I got attached to the idea of Cani studying as a job was how…limitless it all is.”

Even more butterflies decided now was the time to get all fluttery within me.

“I love that,” I said.