"I get the feeling there is some sort of trick to this," I said, sitting on a chair in from one of the thatched-roof cottages and munching on some sort of snack István had very helpfully provided to me.

We'd gone through several iterations of the loop through the block, and the Grey Rift had appeared in the same block each iteration, proving it wasn't just some sort of transient or happenstance event.

Someone had named it the Grey Rift on the first encounter - I had thought it was István, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I might be misremembering. Ah well, that name had stuck either way.

I was staring into it, willing it to give me its secrets. It stared back, the fracturing of reality I was seeing through it more than a little disconcerting. It had the same weird two-dimensionality of its darker, more useful cousin.

The more I looked at it, the more it looked like something should have been where it was sitting. It sat betwixt the backyards of several of the cottages, a communal area. The pavers here had a pattern to them, rather than being completely uniform blocks. There was a square stone pedestal below it. The whole thing seemed to have some intention to it, but I couldn't figure it out.

I just sat there staring at it, before it began to feel familiar somehow. But I couldn't quite place it. It must have been something I saw as a child - before dad disappeared. I didn't remember him well, but I did remember some adventures we got to go on with him as a family.

They weren't elaborate, usually just walking around some part of the city we wouldn't normally get access to, but I appreciated them all the same. The one I was trying to remember was walking through the very center of the city, the one part of it that was still maintained by the powers that be. It later fell into disrepair, but when I was about Liam's current age, it was quite something.

One building out front had some sort of ornate arrangement of stone and benches. We weren't allowed to sit on the benches, but presumably someone had at some point, as they looked well-worn. By the time we visited, they had the entire area cordoned off from the public, but still maintained as clean and functional.

Well, functional insofar as that a person could - in theory - have sat on the bench, or enjoyed the edifice in the center.

Wait, enjoyed? That didn't sound right. The dissonance kicked loose other thoughts in my head, and suddenly the vague memory gained more clarity, as is the custom for those sorts of things.

It was a fountain. They'd put some clean water in it, and it sprayed it into air and let it cascade down a series of leaf-shaped overhangs set against a central 'trunk' of sorts.

I was absolutely enamored with it, and had told dad that someday I wanted to do well enough to be able to put a bunch of clean water in a fountain and let other people come drink it.

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"A noble goal, Char," he'd said, patting me on the head.

My memory discombobulation cleared up, I realized that the disconnect was because I viewed the fountain as an item to be used by others for a purpose, but had somehow remembered the version I'd seen in the city - where I couldn't use it - as a functionless ornate rotunda decoration.

It turned out it didn't matter either way, as such a thing was beyond my ability to afford it.

Turning my attention outward to the gap in reality, I realized that it really was a good fit. Sure, the base was blocky and generic, but I could totally visualize a fountain sitting on top of it.

I sent my Nebula out. If I couldn't buy a fountain, I could at least make one, if only for a little while. A stream of power serpentined across the ground towards the pedestal.

István walked up to me. "Find out something interesting?"

"More like making a little art," I replied, continuing to feed the flow. There was an amorphous blob taking shape at the base.

"Color me interested," 'Elder Scholar' said.

"Do you have any other color?" I asked with a bit of a laugh as I fashioned a vase-tangential shape, mimicking the features from my memory. The Nebula rose to build atop itself, following my Will.

"I suppose not," the man replied with a grin, his eyes never once moving from what I was working on.

I continued, stacking up and shaping the work like clay, pushing and prodding the Nebula when it didn't quite fit my vision. It was innately responsive, as though it knew what I wanted. As I completed sections, they seemed to become more solid.

Building out the basin as I had remembered it didn't go quite as planned. I expanded the post away to create the catchment for the water, and it just kinda… fell off. It'd cascade down in a very pretty manner, but it still wasn't what I was looking for.

I tried a few times to get it to stay, but I just didn't want to. It was pissing me off and I eventually lost my temper, just a little.

"Just stay put," I growled at it, aggressively forcing it together. "You are my power, and you will listen to me."

I wasn't expecting much, but apparently threatening it worked. It was sticking at any rate, which was the important bit. I filled out the shape of the basin, and then proceeded to craft up the rest, wielding the Nebula more deftly now that I was used to it. István had at some point pulled out a small stool to sit on, and skitched it across the ground with his hand to sit closer.

By closer, I mean 'so close that he'd be sitting in it if he moved any closer'. I swatted him on the nose at one point with a wisp of Nebula because he was examining it with such intensity that he was getting in my way. He did move to a more respectful distance after that.

I finished the top at last, then sat back, looking at what I'd done. In front of the Grey Rift was a fountain, looking fairly real. Something was missing though, and it took me a few seconds to realize what it was.

The water!

I squinted, then sent more Nebula out. But white-gold Nebula didn't seem right. With a twist of my thoughts, the newly added Nebula turned blue, the same as the water Alignment. I wasn't sure if this was an aesthetic change or a more metaphysical one, but it didn't matter. My fountain was built, and it even had water.

I was very satisfied with it, to the point where I hadn't realized just how draining the whole process had been.

"There, finally…" I said with a sigh, "Done."

At the word 'done' a sort of pulse erupted out of the fountain, and the Grey Rift shattered, falling into pieces on the ground. Those then sublimed into the air in moments, the faintest ripples in reality above them as they did so.

In its place stood my fountain, looking as real as anything else. I walked over to it and placed my hands on it - it felt as solid as it looked.

Celistar had at some point come over to watch as well, and she just shook her head when she saw my hand resting it, and the cascade of actual water falling down.

"You're ridiculous, you know that?"

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