Side Chapter Metous 10: Tel’s Vocation

  While Ceel was away with her meeting with Nina, the rest of her family and Li were at home rexing.

  Tel was growing new flowers from seeds she had recently ordered. They were a bck flower with a blue diamond pattern on the leaves and a nearly crystal clear blue flower.

  Mel and Tyell were watching television together on the couch. They had one bowl of snacks between which was slowly being moved back and forth.

  Li was also in the kitchen area as she tried baking a cake. The keyword was tried as she had never made one before. She was watching a video through her contacts to give her the step-by-step, but no matter what she did, it didn’t seem to be the same as the video.

  Tel was in the kitchen and was there to provide support, and she reassured Li that everything she was doing was good and that the end product would end up good.

  Tel said, “Eat something to calm down, you skipped breakfast earlier.”

  Li nodded. “Good idea. Do we still have soup in the fridge?”

  “Plenty of it.”

  Li went to the fridge to grab herself some lunch. She never expected she would be so nervous simply making food. The idea for the cake randomly came to her, and once she mentioned the idea to Tel, she pushed her to try it.

  Li flicked her pink fringe out of the way and put food in a warmer and waited for it to be at the perfect temperature. While she waited, she looked over at Tel and asked. “Tel, what are the pnts you ended up buying?”

  It was a simple question; Li had never seen either pnt before, so she was slightly curious considering their weird looks. She knew Tel liked to ramble sometimes, but it shouldn’t matter too much considering she had to wait for the cake to bake anyway.”

  “Certainly.” Tel lightly cpped her hands together in joy. “So, the first flower, the bck one, is the spoililitous jeticaous montopia. I've actually waited for a few months for this one to come back on the market. It’s a nocturnal flower that in the wild goes through six key stages in its life cycle, though the tter stages are skipped when grown outside of its natural habitat.” Tel pulled another one of its seeds–a rich blue in colour. “Stage one is these beautiful seedlings, when pnted, they stay underground until they have consumed enough water–”

  “Mum, can you keep it simple?” Tyell interrupted. Turning his body around on the couch. “I don’t want you to distract Li and have the cake be burnt.”

  Tel scoffed, “Please, we have an arm.”

  “Uh huh, that didn’t stop you when you were teaching Mel how to cook.”

  “That was ten years ago,” Tel replied, clearly offended.

  “And? It wouldn’t be right to forget about it.” Tyell turned back around.

  Li’s eyebrows raised at this conversation. “Umm?”

  “Basic gist is that Mum got too invested in talking about her berries at the time that we burned a stew so bad that it shouldn’t be edible. Ceel and Dad said food shouldn’t be wasted, so they split the remains in half and raced to scoff their bowl down first.”

  Tyell added, “Then it became a challenge to see who could keep it down.”

  Li looked at everyone wide-eyed. “Did… that really happen?”

  Tel couldn’t look back. Li got her answer.

  Within a few moments, Li got her warm stew and sat with Tel as she slowly but simply expined her new flowers. After that was done and with plenty of soup remaining, Li watched the TV from the kitchen as the cake slowly baked in the oven.

  Tel was still modifying her flowers, adjusting the size of the stem and leaves.

  Ding

  “Oh–” Tel looked away from her flowers and turned her head towards her phone as a sudden message came. She had most people muted, so if she got a notification, it must’ve been one of the few people she left notifications on for.

  “A message from Ceel,” Tel said aloud.

  “What did she ask?” Mel said from the couch.

  Tyell took more food from the bowl. “Probably asking if we wanted anything picked up on the way home.”

  Tel read the message and smiled as she saw it. Then she read the message aloud for everyone to hear, with some slight modifications. “Hey beautiful Mum, I was wondering what your Vocation is exactly?”

  “Mum’s Vocation?” Mel questioned–the answer was obvious after all.

  “Oh, my vocation is [Flower Maid],” Tel said with a smile.

  Li nearly coughed up the soup but smacked her chest and forced it down. “What?!”

  Mel’s eyes bulged in surprise. She was gd she wasn’t eating or drinking anything at the time.

  “Huh! Why didn’t you say ANYTHING?”

  General consensus was that Tel’s vocation was [Pnt Mage].

  Tyell interrogated his mother. “How, you told us it was [Pnt Mage?]”

  “I’ve always tell-ya it’s a pnt mage. Not it’s [Pnt Mage].”

  Tyell groaned at their mother’s bad pun.

  “That’s... bullshit...” Mel swore at her reasoning.

  “No swearing at my house dy.” Tel stared daggers into her youngest daughter.

  “Sorry mum!”

  With that, Tel stopped gring and leaned back in her chair. “But what’s with the huge reaction?” She looked at everyone, trying to hold back her smile.

  “You, of all people, should not be saying that.” Said Tyell. It was clear that his mother had purposely hid information for years, just for a stupid joke. This was in line for Tel, making stupid puns or jokes, and having one pnted for years waiting to bloom was not unexpected, but what she chose to hide was the biggest shocker.

  Tyell thought, while his reaction was justified, he also didn’t know about a conversation that Li and Mel had about Li’s first Vocation.

  “...Why did you even choose that Vocation?” Mel decided to bite the bullet and ask her mum the question.

  “It had what I wanted with pnt manipution; it also contained barrier abilities, which I liked the idea of having something more to protect myself.” Tel smiled and clicked her fingers, and a barrier of pink petals that floated down appeared. “It also has a few skills that make for funny visual effects.”

  “...”

  “...”

  “...”

  Tyell believed her reasoning, but everything was still so stupid.

  Mel also believed her but wondered if there was more to the story that she wasn’t telling.

  Li was still too fbbergasted to make sense of it.

  Tel was still chuckling to herself, watching the reaction.

  There was also a nasty reason why Tel had brought up this conversation, along with it being the perfect timing to bring up this long-kept secret. In one of her many conversations with Nina, her lunchtime companion had brought up the question of whether Li was enjoying Tel’s garden and flowers.

  That question alone wouldn’t bring much suspicion or concern, and Tel knew Li only held an average amount of interest in pnts.

  But her mother's senses were tingling.

  So, she decided to push Nina and ask more, and eventually Nina let it slip that it was just something on Li’s file.

  Once she had that nugget, Tel asked Li a few questions when she got if she had interacted with pnts much during her life. The answer was no and that she didn’t hold much interest, followed by an apology since it was something Tel was passionate about. At the time, Tel told her not to worry; she knew best that not everyone was interested in the same things. Tel herself was never able to find enjoyment in her eldest’s stargazing activities.

  But with that information in mind, Tel concluded there must have been a special reason why it was some sort of file that Nina was able to access. It couldn’t have been some primary school report card, it had to be something more important, which led to Tel’s theory.

  That Li at one point also had the [Flower Maid] vocation.

  Honestly, Tel felt so proud of herself that she even wondered if this was what it felt like to be a detective.

  With the information now in hand, there was so much she could do and so much she was curious about. If Li had chosen [Flower Maid], then it was certain it wasn’t for the pnt-caring side of things.

  In honesty, Tel just wanted Li to open up a little more, and with the looks Mel and Li were giving each other, she was certain Mel knew a secret.

  The questioning from the siblings continued for a while longer, and Li managed to get her cake out of the oven without it burning.

  Tel was happy to answer and confirmed basically everyone no one knew.

  Eventually, enough time had passed.

  Ceel walked into the house and asked, "So, Mum, you did not reply yet; what’s your Vocation?”

  “Argh…”“Ugh”

  And was met with a groan from her siblings.

  “...I seem to have missed something.”

  Mel and Tyell began to recap everything that happened.

  Tel sat back and smiled in happiness, and she hid the small amount of sombreness she was feeling. Of course, there was one person who had always known. Well, Chris, haha, the secret has finally been let out. It got the reaction we both were expecting...

  Bobple