Rarestone
"What's that you've got there, Minoth?"
Addam's question is an innocent one, but Minoth's fist clenches up around the clay bell all the same. Nothing, he wants to say, instinctively, and keep its special significance all to himself, but then, that's not how you share a story, is it?
He opens his palm at a halfway point to signal his obedient offering of the bell for observation but not for manual inspection. Addam peers from his seated distance, reciprocating the idea of "you can look but you can't touch" in such a way that Minoth feels a slight pang of regret. Why not, in fact, share closer? But this will have to be good enough.
"That's quite a pretty piece," Addam muses, settling back. "I haven't seen that one - I didn't make it for you, did I?"
"No..." Minoth pulls the bell back, takes a look as if observing himself for the first time, and then sets it down at his side. "Mireille gave it to me."
Addam's face immediately brightens. "The potter? Lovely woman. I hope she's still doing well."
If she'd been relying on the clay bell she'd donated to her once-upon-a-half-time acquaintance in any other capacity than a minor one of superstition, Minoth would have to guess that she isn't, but she has Teo now to keep her busy, if not in fine health, again, so he's never had anything but good feeling about it. She did say she didn't need the charming ward anymore...
"I'd bet she is," he says. "She was always good at looking for the best side of things."
"Always? You knew her?"
Ah. "Met her once, in Indol. She remembered me, anyway."
"You've a distinctive face!" Addam crows. "It was you, wasn't it? I mean-" he gestures, and Minoth nods.
"As far as I know, yes. Doesn't really matter, either way. I know her now."
"Gratifying, isn't it? All the people we've met."
The sentiment, having hit the air, stales slightly as Minoth looks around at the rest of their assembled many-met troupe. Gratifying, but just as potentially depressing - if you weren't Mireille, then, eh?
"Ah!" Addam scoots up on his log, fishing for something in a pocket buried beneath the folds of golden fabric. "That reminds me, she gave us her notes for making one, didn't she? A bell?"
Minoth has a habit of scanning the pieces of paper they receive, in all manner of handwriting, for anything anecdotally interesting, and of course he'd been especially precious about Mireille's effects, so he has to correct the prince: "For the Tiger-Winged Helmet. The Telepathic Bell was some days back. I don't think you ever got around to making one up."
Further fishing reveals another crumpled scrap - one could say it appeared well-loved, if one were feeling charitable, but to the wry observer, it just appears forgotten-about. "You're right! Here it is. 'Increases hard-won Trust between the tolling Driver and the tinkling Blade, a formidable one unit ringing out over terror in battle.'
"Well." He flashes Minoth a smile. "Let's have at it, shall we?"
The recipe calls for two Ripple Lenses, five chunks of Bismuth Slab, three Inverse Bearings, five Cranberry Bells, and three Dharma Crickets; and, of course, a generous handful of ingenuity and creative suspension to imagine how all these disparate parts might come together to create anything that resembled a bell, much less a bell of the purported telepathic properties that could bind together, indelibly, any given Driver and Blade.
Still, Minoth dutifully produces the crickets, reminds Addam of his secret bottomless pocket supply of the dried fruit, purloins the cragged metal from Jin, and collects the necessary machine parts from Hugo's stash. From Hugo he also garners a small metalworking hammer and a non-rippling magnifying lens, which had, coincidentally enough, been used in the manufacture of Hugo's own trust-building augment, the Heart Compass. Minoth can much more easily envision decorative hinges and brackets surrounding inlay of gorgeous and peculiar stones, alongside a Flier Stinger, creating any useful idea of an object, but he's honestly excited to see what Addam will come up with.
All of Addam's creations are marked by the absence of the endearing fastidiousness that Hugo's work boasts. The names of the artifacts are often much more colorful than either gimmicky or straightforward, a fact which corresponds neatly to the two royals' differing interests in history and logistics, and the motifs of wings and bells could almost make Minoth think of angels; rather, fleet-footed warriors, waving fans and mirrors, donning masks and rings and participating gaily but ever-foibled in myth.
Something many-hued thrums in Minoth's chest as he realizes yet another way he's fallen in love with Addam - the man and the myth both. He's fallen in love with words, and promises, and all these things he can observe that are so different to him yet so entrenched in being the same, the same, the same.
To love Addam, perhaps, is to love humanity. And Minoth certainly knows that he has done that. He loves the part of humanity that bestows upon him, a veritable stranger, a blessing of trust and experience, just as much as he loves the part of humanity that is so sweetly and gently fooled into calling Quaestor Amalthus "so kind" at any moment, past or present.
People, infinitely splendored, are everywhere. Addam, impotently sweating as he toils over the bending of the bismuth and the affixing of the crickets' mechanism for stridulation, is only just here, but there are so many things in him, just here.
Yes, indeed, all souls will attain salvation. They do it by sharing in stories and sentiments, together. By asking, what's that you've got there? And then following on, and doing something wonderful with the answer.
Will the Telepathic Bell itself help increase the value of trust shared between their party, and between, say, Addam and Mythra, most of all?
Perhaps not. But it's done its part right now, between the two of them.
Minoth trusts.