White box

Tails

If you only fought the battle out on the field, then you had already lost, so -

"I'll play my music to you tomorrow, so please don't go out, I have a lot to show! And I know an awesome take-out place, a friend gave me a gift card for it, so-- there's no need to worry about food either."

The two were surprised, but agreed with joy, saying they hadn't made any other plans for the day anyhow.

Now that she thought of it - when was the last time they heard her play? Just like Timothy, Stephanie had mostly cooped up in her room to do her thing. School had school things, exams and recitals were about playing stuff other people had written-- she hadn't yet gathered up the courage to show her stuff to the world. Purple overhearing was an accident-- a very happy accident all things considered.

Stephanie had prepared for bed and was about to summon purple yet--hah, no need huh? There was a purple mushroom waiting for her on the cover of her piano. It hadn't been there ten minutes ago.

She opened her eyes, again, sitting next to Purple by the piano, this time, though, she reached out to open the lid.

"Tomorrow I'll be playing to my parents," she said. "Is there something I should know?" After all, she hadn't really played her songs to humans.

"How music-savvy are your parents?" Purple asked.

"Not so much," Stephanie replied. "Dad listens the same rock-bands from his teenage years in his car and mom doesn't seem to care about music at all."

"Then there's no problem," Purple replied with a smile.

"In what case, there would be?" Stephanie asked.

"If either of them liked Jazz music from the 1940s," Purple replied and Stephanie tilted her head at that. "Souls might not have conscious memories, but since you keep tapping in your subconscious to find stuff, you are using experiences from your past life. An expert might recognize that you have all the ticks from a certain diva that passed away in the 1960s."

Eh? EEEEEEH????

Purple tilted his head, not sure about her reaction.

No, no, right, there was no reason to be shocked. She had already heard that people had souls that they flew into transmigration cycle and got reborn, so, of course, her soul would be the same, although wait-- Carl had said no one knows how that transmigration cycle thing worked, but--

Hmm-- She looked towards Purple. If he knew that humans were dryad seedlings, and only mortals (aka, humans or partly humans) were connected to it, then. "How does that transmigration cycle thing work?"

That was too vague of a question to start it off, but through repeated questions, Stephanie found out. There was a sub-dimension phase shifted in a curious way that was completely overtaken by a sea-anemone-like-beast, who liked to eat corrupt aether. Any being who had any skill with dimension crossing could access it, but no one with any sense would - that beast would eat up all your corrupt aether and then throw you out as a pure being without memories, lingering emotions or whatever made you up, but sometimes that was needed.

Most souls had a bad tick of getting dirty with time, if that got bad enough the soul itself could collapse, so to prevent that each sentient civilization needed an administrator like being who would connect all members of the group to that dimension, or - another option - an administrator who would set up a location for this access. Of course, it was possible to continually make new souls and let the old ones collapse, but that took a lot of energy(impossible for humans) and collapsing souls were truly depressing and pitiful things.