"What about your Vell?" Aest asked. "Did he have children? Does he lose track of time, like you said you do? A wife? A husband? Something like that? Now that you've had your questions, answer some of mine."
"Yes," Sonder said. "He's married."
Aest's brows lifted a fraction. "Ah. And?"
"To a sorceress," she went on. "The Scarlet Sorceress. Her name is Limerence. She's very smart, and very strong-willed."
"Sounds fierce," Aest said. "Is she your mother? I don't want to assume too much, but are you Vell's daughter? Maybe a niece?"
"In a way, I am his daughter," she said, though there was some hesitation in her voice.
Aest noticed at once. "In a way?"
Her fingers tightened together in her lap. "They're not my parents by blood," she said. "But they're family."
"Adopted, then." Aest shook his head slightly. "You shouldn't phrase it like that. You have to say it out and proud. If they're family, then they're family. Not just in a way."
"I know," Sonder said quietly.
"Blood matters to some people," he said. "It never mattered much to me. I wouldn't hesitate to call someone my family if I believed they were. If I ever did hesitate, it would mean I thought there was something lesser about it, or even them."
Sonder hadn't realized how much weight there was on something like that.
Aest smiled then. "Besides," he added, "from the way you talk about them, at least about Vell, you already sound like a daughter. Worrying about him. Chasing things to save him, from what I don't know yet. Trying to fix what the world has broken." He tilted his head. "But you mentioned something else. The time thing."
"Humans don't suffer from it," Sonder said. "And Vell doesn't either. I don't think he can. But I do."
"You do? What's it like?"
"It's not like anything at all," she said. "You go on, day by day, doing what you always do. And then, suddenly, you realize you don't know how much time has passed. Once, a man named Languor, he called himself a mage, though his magic was strange, built a machine to see if lost time could be measured."
"And?"
"And it could," Sonder said. "In only a few weeks, I'd already lost several days."
"You don't feel it?" Aest asked. "No dizziness? Vertigo? Nothing like when you're about to vomit? Nothing like that?"
"No," she said. "There's no warning. No sensation at all. You just don't know."
"That's really strange. Can't magic fix it? Don't mages have some kind of remedy?"
"Not really," Sonder said. "The only thing that helps is staying aware. If you stop paying attention, or fall into a rhythm, if days start blending together, it begins."
"The world really is full of strange things."