Its oddly abnormal 'normalcy' inspires all the more reverence in Opal's-Fire; she kneels before it, memorizes the names of her ancestor's ancestors.  Respect is important.

That has been here so long, hasn't it...

How was it preserved?  Perhaps she'll ask, if she has the time.

Thier family is not exactly an ancient fixture of the empire; certainly this shrine couldn't be a millenia old, even assuming it was made when the founder was first appointed as a duke. But perhaps to one who is barely twenty, even a scant thousand years is a long time. The shrine stands as it always has before them, silent and unmoving. 

After a few minutes, that seems to change. At first, it seems a trick of the light making the etched dragon seem to move, but then it animates itself properly, stretching and flowing, and then peels itself off the glass entirely, a dragon made entirely of mirrors. Specifically, the Thousand-Mirror Dragon, famed artificer and duke of the undying empire. 

"Well, then. Who have you brought for me to talk to today, grandaughter? They seem a slight bit better than the last lot."

(The twins will remember that the last lot were thier cousins, a year older than them, boisterous and martially inclined, who returned from thier trip disappointed but then earned no small honour by being accepted as outer disciples of the Ancient Chivalrous Burden Sect.) 

"I am Opal's-Fire, honored great-grandfather; this is my mirror-sister Diamant Reflections, who is shy but also vibrating out of her skull with questions about your work, if I know her.

"I believe she brought you something?"

"Ah - um - I did!  I heard you were very busy with your work so I, um.  Brought some food that I heard you like because I know I sometimes forget to eat - or, do stuff like that, I suppose - when I'm wrapped up in something."

The immortal dragon laughs like vast and distant windchimes. 

"Ah, I have such helpful descendants. How wonderful. You should be reassured that I have long since automated away the fullfillment of such needs for times of urgency or distraction, but it fills an old man's heart with pleasure to snack with his grandchildren and I would be delighted to indulge while I consider your questions." 

"Yay!"

"Thank you, honored grandfather."

The twins are a study in contrasts as they both react - Diamant, well, vibrating happily, hands clasped together, while Opal's-Fire is much more serene and performative about her happiness, but still genuine.

This extends, too, to how they eat; Diamant is quick, eating like the food will get up and run away if she doesn't eat fast enough - and, well, her honored grandfather is quite busy! - while Opal's-Fire is a lot more measured; she may be as full of questions as her sister, but she is more patient about actually asking them.

Diamant has a lot of questions that are about specific things she read in books that just don't make sense, what her grandfather's life was like growing up, or what it's like being so much of himself.  How did he decide that mirrors were what he wanted to build his life around?  Or within, she supposes?

For the less overtly brainy of the twins, Ophelia's questions are by far the most contemplation-requiring.  What advice does he think they should have, that no-one else will give them?  (She realizes that he hardly knows much of them in particular, but she thinks it's still worth asking.)  If he could change a decision he made at some point, what decision would it be, if any?  If he can tell them.  (What would he do instead?)  What is the most surprisingly useful technique he's seen or heard of?  What about the most surprisingly useful technique he knows, if that's different?

Books written by cultivators make no sense because they were written about subjects which are intensely personal, incredibly heterogeneous, and half the authors are lying for various reasons. Also, the family probably didn't let her have any books with clear insights into how to cultivate as a teen because letting teens cultivate is predictably a disaster, so she's probably missing prerequisite knowledge. He'll help seperate out which books are which sort. 

He grew up in the comfortable middle class as the son of a greenhouse foreman and a silversmith, both petty "citizen" cultivators who never left the first realm, and spent his time practising silversmithing to take after them before the Bank noticed he had a entanglement of karma with one of thier fortress-vaults and offered him a position in thier sect so he could realise that potential. 

He choose mirrors almost by accident - he was already good at working with silver and both destiny and management was pushing him into warding and before he knew it, he had more mirror-aspected meridians than anything else. 

He can't do more than bad metaphor to describe what it's like to be so vast to a mortal, but he supposes one way to put it is that everything he *could have done*, he simply *does* instead. He does not need to leave alternatives unconsidered, in this state. 

Opal's questions do indeed provoke him to perform a moment's consideration. His advice he says, is that, if you're not a martial cultivator (and most people shouldn't be) you will spend your life in fear of them. Sect and family and empire can only do so much in the face of sheer strength, and outthinking and outmanoeuvring them is a constant labour of tremendous difficulty. So his advice is to find a strong fighter that you can trust with your everything, someone you love more than blood who loves you more than life. Nothing less can make you safe, if you are powerful and cannot fight. His regrets, he says, should be quite obvious from that advice. 

On more mundane topics, he says, the technique he personally underestimated was a makeup technique back in first realm. At the time, it seemed like a surreal and vain thing to incorporate into your very soul, but in time he came to understand that other aspects also valued efficiency and artistry when it came to the quality of thier tools, and that a Beautiful cultivator really has no tool ranked higher than thier appearance, so naturally being able to spend half the time taking care of it for twice the benefit is priceless. He's quite certain that technique saved its user's life. But perhaps, he muses, they don't need to learn that lesson, having being raised in high society unlike himself. 

The most useful technique he himself knows is his Grand Worldsoul Mirror, whoss first fumbling version was on thier list of choices. People always underestimate it, assuming that brute force can defeat it, or that there's some kind of trick to it. Which, there is, of course, but it's not the sort of trick you can just worm your way past. 

...would he like a hug?  About the advice.  It seems really sad.

"I think, honored grandfather, that your comment about the makeup technique is quite useful advice because now the scions of our family cannot measure the height of Mount Tai, for they stand upon its slopes - I had not consciously considered the amount of time and effort put into my appearance," which is more than Diamant's, "until Diamant decided that she wished to at least design our presentation gowns herself, and then I failed to extrapolate the logic into our daily activities.  I imagine Diamant is already thinking about equations of time spent per task frequency per unit effort, or something."

Yes, she is, in fact, thinking about that!

Plot (time saved/duration * (1/task-time-to-recur)) against difficulty-of-learning...

She's going to grab her notebook and write this down, actually.  There's more factors than she can keep all in her head at once, right now.  She hasn't even begun thinking about effort magnification.

He would like to be clear that this isn't a metaphor for anything, but his current incarnation before them is too sharp and pointy to safely hug. He appreciates the offer, though. 

... he would also like to suggest that she try not to get too obsessed with efficiency. It's a trap some cultivators fall into trying to get the most out of every day the heavens send, and they exploit too much and explore too little. Cultivation will entail a thousand unknowns and a hundred lifechanging realisations and that's really important. Which is not to say you should spend more time than you have to on makeup, but if that same impulse means you never stop to talk to shopkeepers? That's not a good thing. 

"It stops being efficient to worry about optimizing further at some point!  That's right there in the math!  But really, I hope I - and you - needn't worry; as long as I haven't run out of books to read and things to learn, I don't expect I'll stop taking detours along the Dao."

Opal's-Fire hides her shock at the way Diamant just spoke to their honored grandfather behind a bite of food.  Are they truly worthy of - well, she supposes that there is hardly a possibility that he isn't considering them, given what he just said - but his concern?

Still, she will corroborate that her sister wants to know about everything she can get her hands on.

"I almost expect her to have the opposite problem, really, depending upon how effectively she is able to leverage parallel thought.  She flutters from subject to subject like a butterfly who dreams she is a woman."

Presumably he has many other things that he is doing in parallel, yes, but for now he is happy to be here and talk to them. He will tolerate another half hour of casual discussion of trivialities and tangents, before. 

"I'm glad to see that I have such bright and eager young descendants. I hope to see you again someday, so don't go getting yourselves killed or wasting your potential now." 

"We will do our utmost to that effect, grandfather.  Thank you for your time and wisdom."

"It was nice meeting you!"

And then in synchrony, they give a respectful bow.  Maybe they don't precisely need to need to, but they practiced!

Cute kids! Thier honoured ancestor will retreat back into his mirror, and the world will be still once more, as it was when they arrived but for the addition of a good number of crumbs and wrappers. 

Most of the crumbs are even neatly contained within the wrappers!