From THE LONGER THE FALL by Inanna Arthen:
Diana cleared her throat. “It really is very important, and we’re working against a deadline. Can you make a compound for us? We’re willing to discuss any terms you ask.”
He simply looked at her in silence, his expression enigmatic. But when Diana started to speak again, he reached out and put a finger on her lips.
“I have one more thing to show you, come over here.” He walked toward the far wall of the cellar, beckoning. She followed, taken by surprise, to where a heavy wooden chest she had assumed was a tool box stood against the wall. He knelt down beside it, undid its complicated encoded latch and lifted the lid. Inside the chest, carefully nestled into a deep bed of gray fluff made from cattail rushes, was a heavy glass bottle filled to the brim with an iridescent liquid that appeared to glow with its own nacreous light.
“You made it already?” Her voice was hushed, partly from incredulity, partly from awe. She extended a hand over the bottle, feeling tiny prickles in her palm. The purity of the compound’s magical nature was as close to perfection, she thought, as a mortal could have achieved—certainly closer than she ever could have accomplished on her own, if she had taken a year in seclusion to make it.
“Ay, after your first letter came, that’s when I started it.” He stared raptly at the bottle as well—as anyone would have who glimpsed it. The soft shimmering colors played like light on water. “This is what you wanted, then?”
For a moment she couldn’t speak. “It’s…it’s perfect, Gregory. But—how did you know?”
“From what you said in your letter—and I see things now, Di. More than before, even, I can’t explain it. But this…” he stroked the surface of the glass with one finger, and the colors moved and changed where the shadow of his hand fell. “It’s the best I’ve made, or ever will. And it had to be, since it was you asking for it.”
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