Smellactite
Minoth wouldn't peg Addam as someone who spent their childhood playing with rocks. Lora, maybe (though she tends more toward eating grass), and perhaps Hugo, if the little emperor had been raised in a somewhat more lax environment. Certainly, Aegaeon never would have stood the insult to young nobility's teeth. That is, if Hugo had been eating the rocks.
One finds Smellactite in over a score of locations all over Torna, and Titan's hind foot, does it smell. Mainly, it smells like the rainbow of an oil slick, and somewhat like the synaesthetic scent of hot, affinity-charged ether. Most of the power comes from the fact that human noses simply don't know how to interpret these signals, and thus moderate them. But also, the myriad-faceted rocks are just plain smelly.
They don't leach their scent onto other objects, in Addam's pack, and this on its own intrigues him. They live in a world of influence, of indelible passing touches, but this marvelous substance exerts only, and remains aloof.
"I wonder what it tastes like," says Addam.
"Probably what it smells like," says Minoth, because that's how taste buds and the olfactory complement work.
"Shall we find out?" asks Addam.
"Like I said, we probably already did."
What exactly was it that Addam did, as a child? Not swim, even if by all accounts the locale was opportune. Did he fish? Collect small animals? Make mud soup?
Now, aged twenty-four, he licks rocks, apparently. And Minoth, balancing Evie on his knee, just watches. What else can he do?
They're sitting across from each other, Addam too far away to touch Minoth's thigh or bump his unoccupied knee, so at first the change might not have been so apparent. Quiet little Evie, wisely watching what goes on, provides Minoth his only clue, as Addam sets the rock absently down, stands, looks with brow furrowed at his daughter, and then walks away.
No salutation. No sum-up. Not even a spit.
"Guess he didn't like it," Minoth supposes to Evie.
Evie waits until Addam's spiky head is no longer visible, then turns around and resumes her favorite activity: poking and prodding at Minoth's Core.
The Flesh Eater sighs. "If I weren't determined to be such a good babysitter, I'd get you some rocks to play with, too."
When Addam remains uncharacteristically distant for the next several hours, Minoth decides there must be a sensible solution to this. Evie at his side, he pores through their stack of recipe leaflets, which Addam had thankfully left behind, for all occurrences of the mystical Smellactite. He finds it used in Lora's boon memorial charm for her mother, Hugo's tender trust-building compass, Brighid's Resurrection and Eternity perfumes (an elixir for hastened recovery and a favorite of Hugo, respectively), and...that's it.
Addam's never used the stuff before, from what these notes show - in the constructive sense, at least. In the recreational sense, Minoth reasons that the prince would quite obviously already know what Smellactite tastes like if he'd ever ingested it before, and he hadn't seemed to be goading Minoth into joining him, necessarily.
(Minoth has some particular philosophies about teetotalling, and when to abstain from abstinence, which relate also to theories of repressed sexuality and other assorted learned repulsions. His body's no temple, and it never will be unless some interesting patrons chance inside one of these days.)
Minoth keeps thinking hard. When has he ever seen Addam this...moody? The fact that such an objectively shallow incidence of change has perturbed him - both hims - so is enough to elevate the matter from off day to genuinely worrying stopgap.
He knows he's thinking hard, most of all, because his Core begins to ache in that familiar way it had back when the idea of leaving Amalthus, or not, had been an undecided factor. Shifting blame. Spiraling guilt. Hollow gape, precedent to hole-in-the-head warmthless burning.
Surely Evie's fat little fingers couldn't have done that much damage.
In fact, for good measure, Minoth folios the papers, lies back, and pulls her on top of him, a weighted blanket with big blue eyes.
At dinner, Addam is still very much not Addam. Where usually his gaze would gladly steady itself on Minoth, even meeting the Flesh Eater's eyes, for moments on end, now it flits past less like a curious onlooker caught staring and more like a harried onlooker pushing his way through an uncomfortable crowd.
Minoth can't concentrate on the conversation, and it's just as well, because all his usual points of entry have been barred up. He gets nothing from Addam. He can give nothing from Addam. Eventually, he excuses himself, if for no other reason than to fish the odd nonplatonic solid out of his pocket, where it'd been poking at his groin.
So much history, undone in such little time. So much nothing to show for so much everything they'd been through. So much proof that they had loved each other, since this was what it was like when they ostentatiously didn't.
Well. Addam, anyway.
Minoth barely hears it when the deck door opens and the white clogs of the Lord of Aletta come plodding out. He's busy winding, winding, winding, all the way up--
The damned Smellactite finally makes a cloud of greenish-gray smoke, aspected with cyan, magenta, and yellow, when it strikes stone.
"Minoth?"
His name sounds like it's never been said before.
"Jin said I should talk to you."
Jin, meddling in others' business?
"Likely story. Prince."
But Minoth turns to look at him nonetheless, and is shocked to find an all-too-familiar blissful grin blooming.
"It doesn't make sense to me, either. I can't think of any reason why I'd need encouragement to come out here and look at your handsome face!"
The shadow of the Paragon looms in the threshold.
"Jin?"
Two thin fingers sample the mess.
"When licked, the crystalline structure erodes enough that the affinity-inducing effect is hampered. When...huffed, the opposite occurs."
"Really?"
Flatly, Jin concludes, "Watch your kid."