Vivi and Mae former friendship and guild companionship

Vivi and Mae former friendship and guild companionship becomes visible when Vivi encounters the elf alchemist at the guildhall in Prismarche. Mae is not merely an old associate returning to an organization: she is one of the people whose continued existence gives material form to Vivi’s lost past, and whose response to Vivi’s return reveals how deeply the vanished century has altered everyone who remembered her.

Recognition After a Century

Mae appears at the doorway with golden hair, silver eyes, youthful features, and shock written across her face. Vivi recognizes her as Vanguard’s alchemist, noting that, like Rafael, she has barely aged. The recognition is immediate on Vivi’s side, but Mae’s response is more physically overwhelming. Tears rise in her eyes before she can control them, and she laughs at herself while insisting that she cannot believe Lady Vivisari is truly standing before her. Her reaction transforms what might have been a simple reunion into evidence of accumulated absence: Mae has carried the possibility that Vivi would never return, and the sight of her unsettles the composure expected from an accomplished alchemist.

Mae’s identity has also shifted in the intervening years. Vivi remembers hearing Jasper mention a person named Mae and realizes that this is the same individual as Miraelle, Jasper’s team alchemist. Miraelle confirms that she has been using Mae for some time and allows Vivi to call her whatever she wishes. The change of name does not erase the former bond; instead, it shows how the surviving companion has continued living under altered circumstances while remaining recognizable to the person from her earlier life.

The Weight of Vivi’s Return

Mae explains that Rafael had brought her up to date, but she had believed she would never see Vivi again. Vivi answers that she returned as soon as she could and would at least have informed the guild if she had retired. Mae replies that everyone had assumed something might have happened, and that no one would have blamed Vivi for wanting to disappear after everything. The exchange quietly invokes the fate of the Party of Heroes and the Cataclysm Campaigns: Mae understands that Vivi’s disappearance was connected to an almost unimaginable history, even when the conversation avoids stating every loss directly.

That history creates an imbalance in the reunion. Vivi experiences memory problems after her transmigration and must ask Mae to walk her through aspects of the guild’s practices, perhaps all of them. Mae is concerned but not surprised, suggesting that Rafael has already explained the condition. Their relationship therefore cannot simply resume where it stopped. Mae remembers the person and the world they shared more completely than Vivi does, while Vivi must reconstruct the institutional and personal past that Mae has preserved. Yet Mae does not treat this gap as a reason to withdraw. Her concern coexists with readiness to teach, and her emotional response shows that recognition survives even where continuity of memory has fractured.

Rejoining Vanguard

Rafael asks whether Mae truly wishes to rejoin Vanguard, and Mae’s answer makes clear that her long avoidance of other guilds was itself a declaration of loyalty. She has not spent the past hundred years away from every alternative guild by accident; Vanguard remained the organization to which she wanted to return if Vivi came back. Her moment of hesitation concerns not her desire but her welcome. She asks whether she is still accepted, and Vivi assures her that this goes completely without saying. Mae’s beaming smile, quickly hidden in embarrassment, demonstrates the authority Vivi still possesses in the lives of those who remember her.

The exchange restores their guild companionship through an explicit institutional act. Mae is not merely forgiven for her absence or tolerated as an old acquaintance; Vivi’s acceptance permits her to reclaim a place in Vanguard. Rafael’s involvement gives the reunion administrative form, while Vivi’s answer supplies its personal legitimacy. The relationship thus operates on two levels at once: it is an old friendship renewed through feeling, and a working alliance reconstituted through guild membership.

Alchemy and Collaborative Work

Their renewed association soon becomes practical. Alone with Vivi after Rafael escorts Jasper away, Mae discusses the collaborative crafting process, while Vivi explains that her time away has left her needing guidance before working with others. Vivi has a project planned for Saffra, the beastkin girl who is her apprentice, and wants to understand the process before involving additional craftsmen. Mae recognizes Saffra through Jasper’s account and connects the apprentice’s willingness to confront a Titled-rank monster with Vivi’s own history of throwing herself into danger to help others and her former companions.

Mae’s knowledge is valuable because collaborative work does not require an adventurer to spend a century mastering a primary crafting skill. She explains that a participant contributes selected steps and strengthens the final result, allowing adventurers who spend their time fighting monsters to assist their guild’s craftsmen without years of specialized study. Vivi may lack serious rank in collaboration itself, but the many skills gained during her extraordinary life make her potentially more useful than a highly ranked ordinary assistant. Mae sees this immediately as an opportunity rather than a deficiency: Vivi’s presence could let her create substantially more powerful alchemical products after a hundred years without such work.

Mae’s excitement becomes concrete when she begins arranging her equipment and mentions that she has not brewed an Earthstrider Elixir, a top-tier speed potion, or anything comparably potent for a century. Vivi already possesses such a potion and does not need another, but she chooses not to interrupt Mae’s enthusiasm. That restraint matters to their restored companionship. Vivi does not reduce Mae’s return to a task chosen solely for immediate utility; she allows the alchemist to determine what she wants to experiment with, giving her renewed professional freedom within the partnership.

Continuity, Loss, and Future Bonds

Mae’s return links Vivi’s former life to her present responsibilities. She remembers Vanguard, Jasper’s team, the Party of Heroes, and the scale of loss that followed the Cataclysm Campaigns, while Vivi is trying to build a future with Saffra without yet revealing her true identity to the apprentice. Mae’s question about whether Saffra might also be invited into Vanguard shows that she is already extending the old network toward Vivi’s new relationships. She assumes Jasper is not a special exception and treats the guild’s reopening as an opportunity to recover a broader community rather than merely restore one personal connection.

The relationship therefore ends this phase neither as a nostalgic return to the past nor as a purely functional arrangement. Mae’s tears, her fear that she might not be welcome, Vivi’s assurance, and the immediate prospect of collaborative alchemy establish a renewed bond shaped by both intimacy and work. The century has made their former friendship impossible to recover unchanged, but it has not made it irrelevant. Mae becomes one of the first surviving companions to meet Vivi as she is now: powerful, partially estranged from her own history, responsible for a new apprentice, and determined to rebuild Vanguard through living cooperation rather than memory alone.