Faith

"It's about innocence," Jennifer said.

Kel frowned in thought, strategizing. "So, what, you lose your magic the first time you have se--"

"It's not about virginity," Jennifer bit out. She'd had this conversation before, it seems. "It's about innocence. And no matter what strange ideas people keep confusing, virginity and innocence are not directly related. Someone who'd just been grabbed into a dark alley would probably have more difficulty casting a spell than someone who'd just slept with someone they love."

"Huh," Kel said. "Any idea why that is?"

Jen rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Theories. What magic feels like is...like you're climbing a rock wall, and there's a handhold you aren't quite tall enough to reach, but you could jump for it. But it's difficult, because if you hesitate, if you put anything less than all your strength into that jump, then you won't make it."

"And jumping means letting go of what you know is solid, for what might work," Kel finished.

"Yes."

"So I have to trust...what?"

Jen spread her arms. "Trust that you are built for the world, and the world is built for you. Trust that you are made to fit, designed specifically to be able to make that leap. Trust the universe, trust your body, trust yourself. And"--she closed her eyes and took the sort of deep breaths that Kel had seen Anne take when she had a panic attack. Jennifer flattened her palm and pointed all her fingers forward--"focus." Fire shot from her fingertips in a straight line.

Jen looked to Kel. "You try."

Kel looked at Jen's hands, then her own. I am made for the world. This is nearly indistinguishable from the world being made for me. I am a being of leaps and bounds and energy. I survive. I can do this.

Kel held her palm as Jen had, then paused. I have no need of fire. My survival does not depend upon it at this moment. What do I need?

This was gentler, and so Kel softened the line of her palm into curves, then swept a motion through the air. A sphere of water floated where she had gestured.

"Interesting," said Kel.

Drinkers and Mages

Literally prompted by this.

It’s easy to find someone to drink from the water glass. Accepting water into one’s body is natural, normal, we all learn it.

The next one takes the plant. This may take a few times, for chewing the plant doesn’t work, but it’s simple enough to understand how to eat such a thing whole, and the plant is alive. Once swallowed, it will tell one what to do.

Next comes air. The third drinker doesn’t breathe the air; they swallow it. Just odd enough to push people towards water or earth, but not nearly so tricky as the last.

Then there’s fire. Singers take the fire, and always singers. It makes sense, as those dedicated to the art only lose their voice for a day, and the rest will lose it forever.

One must hold the fire in one’s belly for a day, without hesitation and without doubt. Fire spat out in the first day will give one’s voice back immediately.

One needs one’s voice for the incantations of a mage, so the fire-drinker must be a singer, must love and need singing. It is nearly impossible to find one so dedicated who does not fear the loss of their instrument.

Elisia breathed deeply. She knew what this description was supposed to do, and knew that there were probably different versions given to each drinker. Probably about how the water drinker must be brave, to go first, alone. How the plant drinker--the word didn't fit, but it was still the word--accepts a foreign life into one's essence/mind/soul, how courageous it was to do so and how fulfilling to be whole.

She knew they were understating air. Her friend Jenny had taken air, and had described it as, "a torrent sweeping through every part of you, except no one can tell why you're upset. The old air-drinker warned me I'd go temporarily insane, but I didn't realize zie meant it. I wasn't...me." Elisia shook her head.

That was probably it. They didn't want her to back out, so they'd overstate the prestige and understate the consequences. The consequences must be similar, for fire and air.

Elisia stared at the glasses, briefly thinking back to when the four had been full. There was only one left, now. Fire. Destroyer, healer. Warmth, burning. Loss of voice, loss of self, but perhaps recovery, perhaps movement to something greater.

Fire of life. Pyre for your deathbed.

Elisia stared at her glass. She took a breath of air through her nose, then exhaled, "My glass." That was wrong. "My fire." That was right.

She took the glass of fire and drank, all in one go. Her throat closed, but that was fine. The fire reached through her skin, called oxygen that way. It also burned her skin, but that was fine. She was made to drink fire, she had burned herself often enough. She had enough moon-pale stripes to prove it, stark against bronze skin.

A dozen people came to her. After the first two (Jenny, her mother), Elisia realized that she was hallucinating. They told her that she wouldn't be a mage, not properly, a drinker but never a mage, that she'd never get her voice back, that everything of her would burn and nothing would grow from the ashes. After two more people (her father, a stranger), she wasn't sure if she was in the same room anymore, or if she was still standing or had fallen.

Elisia couldn't fight. Her nails slipped through the illusions, and her words couldn't pass her lips. She couldn't take deep calming breaths, because the fire burned on steadily, giving her what air she needed and none more or less.

So Elisia did not fight, and she did not try to calm herself. She did not attack, and she did not hide. She relaxed every muscle she had control over, and she let it happen.

Some hours later, the visions dissolved. A hand appeared. The fire-drinker before her, the one who had been the fire mage. "Welcome, fire-drinker," Samantha said.

I took her hand and stood. I breathed through my never-closed throat and said, "Fire mage."

The older fire-drinker smiled at me. "So you are."

Restless

EDIT: The html for this was not cooperating. If it didn't make sense to you on first read-through, that's because it made no sense. I've fixed it now. 

This was written as part of a challenge to write thirty things in thirty days based on thirty prompts. The posts from this challenge are tagged "challenge", and the title to the posts are the corresponding prompts.

"You'll only find peace while traveling."

Spells, Samantha decided, should be more dramatic than that. Really. There should be chanting, or markings, or at least a moment of clear focus, for heaven's sake. But no, the spell that defined her entire life was six words in the vernacular. It wasn't even a good story. She couldn't even remember what she'd done! It was embarrassing. And now...

"It's in my bones," she whispered.

Most people wouldn't mean that quite so literally, her bones whispered back, in their annoying, upper-crust-accented way.

"Stop it." Samantha paused a moment, then tried mouthing, [Can you hear me like this?]

Of course. If I were a being of air, I would be much easier to live with. She felt the voice ring with a definite smirk. Sam couldn't explain how she knew that, but then, the voice wasn't really coming in through her eardrums, so that was hardly odd.

She kept her mouth closed this time, and thought, Can you read my mind?

It was hard to keep time, without a watch and away from any place with a big town clock, so she counted steps. At twenty, she tried moving her tongue without her lips, [Can you hear me like this?]

Of course. Again, immediate and smug. Good. It couldn't read her that deeply.

[What happens if I stop?]

You know.

Sam did. That hunger, thirst, itch, lust, want, that started in her feet and moved up, until she couldn't focus, could hardly eat, certainly couldn't sleep, until she ran and ran and ran, drinking in every new sight and sound. She'd fought it, at first.

[But no injury.]

A laugh, one that wouldn't be anything but genuinely amused if it didn't echo through her rib cage, ick. No food, no water, no sleep, and then you run mindlessly until you collapse. But no, no injury beyond that. I need none to prod you into finding me something new.

[It isn't new to you,] she bit out, as far as she could without opening her mouth.

I like how new things taste. Besides, if I set you running until you saw something I hadn't seen--well, you'd die first. And then where would I be?

Sam's eyes flickered to the knife at her belt. [Huh.]

You won't do it. There was just the barest something, so slight it didn't translate into anything but a feeling, wouldn't be there if she weren't actually in the same body.

[But if you make me miserable enough, I might.] She walked to a weeping willow, drew her blade, sat under the bowing branches. [You like the taste of new things, but you're not a being of air.] Another flicker of understanding. Instead of pushing at the creature in her bones, pulled the feeling closer. [You like things to be a little the same. You don't want me attached, but you're attached to me.] Sam put the blade to her throat. [How attached?]

You wouldn't. You wouldn't! The cry went from echoing to buzzing, climbing in pitch as the spell woven through bone reacted.

"It's balance," Sam murmured. "You can't make me too miserable, because I might." She put the knife in her lap. "But I won't, because you can still make me plenty miserable." Her fingertips lay on the hilt now. "We rest, at the next town. I will be friendly, and I will stay until I am done," her bones thrummed indignantly, "or until I sleep with someone, whichever comes first. Just because I'm not starving doesn't mean I'm happy with this set-up. Deal?"

Her bones went quiet. Deal.

"Good." Sam closed her eyes. [Do you need to sleep?]

No.

[Then keep watch. Neither of us wants me dead yet.]

Words and History

I watch a show called Once upon a Time, and an episode (4/1/12, "The Stable Boy") had an interesting way of approaching a problem. An author character was talking to the sheriff, and suggested that she get past her block on an investigation the same way he gets past writer's block: Reread, now knowing how the story so far goes.

This is great for moving forward, I think, because we already know how we saw the story at that point in time. But, it works because it adds a perspective. There is something important about this perspective. There is also something important in how the author saw it the first time through.

History is a study in retrospect. We work like the author rereading a work to see where it was, in relation to the moment of where it is. The problem is, we don't always remember to think back on what is was when it was.

The first time I remember coming into contact with this was a biology class. We were learning Lamarckian evolution--which is wrong. My previous teachers had said, "This is what he thought; this is why it is absurd. Now, look at this Darwinian stuff!"

And then, one teacher said, "Now, this is wrong, but it's still important, because Lamarck came up with some theory for how it worked. He was trying to figure it out."

Which was a complete revelation to me, at the time. And I've thought about such things, since.

I've thought, Now we're in a world where, "Lamarckian evolution," "alchemy," and "magic" mean "fake," or "wrong," and where, "religion" means "unchanging."

It was not always so. It is not always so.

Lamarckian evolution and alchemy were attempts to understand the world. Attempts that came before us. They look no stranger to us than we will to those who follow us. Magic obviously exists--it describes anything people don't understand. And religion could change as things became more useful. It still does.

I have never heard anyone who was complaining about religion actually complain about religion. I have heard people complain about small-minded people, people who will not listen to reason, people who hate other people for what they are rather than who, people who cling too tightly to old ideas, but never about religion. I have heard some people say that all Christians are against gays, and that all gays are against Christianity, and I know that both ideas are absurd.

Were I placed in an English-speaking nation a few centuries ago, I would find the language difficult to incomprehensible, and they would find mine the same. The same language is entirely different a few centuries apart; individual words change even more quickly. Outdated concepts were not always outdated, and the words around them had not always shifted so.

A Riddling Story

ONCE

upon a time, there were three girls who were the best of friends. Childish Naomi had hair of gold, determined Rachel of fire, and quiet Eve of moonless midnight. When they were young, they ran everywhere together, and found places and rhymes that they kept among themselves. As they grew, each found a husband, and each grew a family of her own, and they drifted apart. However, as they were such friends, they still spent time together, even if they did not run so quickly as they once had.

On one such sunny day, they believed they had stumbled upon a place no one else knew, for though the field was lovely and lush, they saw no sign of any human.

Naomi, on her first excursion since her child was born, laughed aloud when she found the flowers in the clearing. She grabbed Rachel first, who play-fought to keep Naomi from weaving flowers into her hair. They seemed to come in every color and size, and Naomi managed to make Rachel's hair an explosion, if not the most symmetrical of things. The new mother moved on to gentler Eve, who made her first sound of the visit--a chuckle--when Rachel said she was jealous of the eldest's flowered braid. Naomi teased, "Lovely, if you want flowers done with skill, then you must learn to sit still."

At which point Rachel dove for a lily in Eve's hair, and Rachel and Naomi fell into a laughing tumble. Eve smiled as she watched them, and even she did not notice the shadow that moved just beyond the trees.

Then, the old witch cried: "Who has been picking my flowers!" The voice sent frost across the clearing. "Who has been picking my flowers!"

Eve stood, and then Rachel and Naomi stumbled to their feet. "Please forgive us, miss; we did not know--"

The old witch's cane struck frozen ground, and the three were not allowed another word in their defense. They were flowers, each identical to any human's eye, but not, through her magic, to the witch.

"You have been picking my flowers!" she cried at one of them. "And you rolled all over them. And you..." The witch paused, with an expression no human could decipher. Out of mercy or whim, the witch made one last motion. "May spend one last night at home." She leaned over and whispered the rules of engagement. For fun or some idea of fair-mindedness, the women had a way out.

Sure enough, as the sun set, the flower disappeared and Eve rose in its place. After running for too much of the night, she arrived at her house. "Husband!" she whispered, remembering not to wake the children.

"Sweetheart, welcome home--" He pulled her by the fire and, therefore, into the light, where quiet Eve's face spoke volumes. "What happened?"

"A witch cursed us to flowers." Her husband would understand who 'us' was, so Eve wasted no syllables explaining. "I am free this night, but you must pick me. If not, we remain."

"The witch told you this?"

Eve nodded, and he held her tightly, at least as scared as she. "Rest, dear one. We will walk back together in the morning, and I shall see you transform into the newest flower."

And so they lay together, near the warmth of the fire, until sleep came. Eve's sleep was troubled, but the rest helped them both, as it helps all creatures.

Eve woke, and stood to go. "Rest, dear one. We have time for breakfast before we walk." And she ate, but lightly, for though she knew she had not eaten for a day, she knew a too full stomach made it more difficult to run than a too empty one.

Eve ate, and stood to go. "Rest, dear one. We will be swift." And she rested more, for no reason but her fear.

Soon the two ran across the countryside, for there was not enough time, each had fooled themselves into a few more moments together, and it was the downfall of the plan. Even as they approached the clearing, Eve disappeared, and only the wind over the grass even showed him where the three flowers were.

He had hoped to find some difference: a lock of black hair, or one ducking in the wind, but there was not such hint. Each could have been the same plant in three places. He looked closely, desperately...

And smiled.

He picked the flower that was his wife, and each woman stood free.

Now, how did he know which flower was she?
















(This was her dear husband's clue: Eve, who had stayed inside, lacked dew.)

Grimm version.
Erstwhile's version introduced me to the tale.

Love and Love

"Priorities and Sanity" 'verse.

Her first love is the obvious one, the one Emilia had since childhood. Love of helping, love of being helpful. This one could be two, if Emilia separated them, and she had. "But it's not terribly sensible," she mutters to herself as she scratches down the vague sentiments in her journal, as much to make sense of everything as to document. Helping people means another is in less pain, and being helpful means that she is a person--she writes, People are helpful, objects are useful., a phrase thought so often that she's unsure if she'd ever written it--but they both give her the same glowy feeling. Emilia knows herself well enough to separate the sources, but it's like separating love for two distant relatives. The love is because they are family. The love is because she helps.

The second is one she had certainly not had at the beginning of her apprenticeship, though she was aware of it and vaguely wanted after it. Some might call it "true love", though Emilia always felt that true love was agape, not eros.

She felt stirrings, of course, even before apprenticing. He's cute, or I really want to kiss her. But those were brief urges, and easily enough ignored, forgotten, or pushed aside until she could deal with them on her own terms. Though the mageling can do that with her feelings about Dale, they keep coming back. And after the first few times, she doesn't want to push the feelings away. It's like denying help to a person in need--she can do it, especially when the need is slight, but it hurts her just the same.

Emilia hates lying. It twists her gut and lungs in unpleasant ways, and sticks them that way for hours or days, depending on how big the lie. So when Dale asks, "Do you want to go to the dance with me?" she says, "Yes," because she does. It is irresponsible to go, but she does want to.

And now she shuts her journal and walks to Dr. Johnson's office, because that is the responsible thing to do. Or because she reached the point where she needs a person to focus her thoughts, and not just paper. Her teacher is good for that; he asks the right things.

"Professor?" He's working at the blackboard. "I told Dale I'd go with him to the dance."

"You are aware Dale lost his magic around your age." Professor doesn't look up. That's relaxing; she's never known him to offer any punishment without looking the person in the eye.

Her honesty nudges her. "I forgot, in the moment. But yes."

"You have more than enough hours this week," Dr. Johnson adds as he goes back to correct an equation, "even if it were standard practice for students to work in the libraries on their Friday evenings. I assume you are not here to apologize over that, though you may be trying to believe it so." He turns to her, eyes still a startling blue from some experiment-gone-odd. Or maybe right. She wasn't there. "Have you admitted the reason to yourself yet?" A little tic from his original language; the literal way to say figured out was admitted to yourself.

"Not until the present moment, no." She shakes her head: to emphasize the negative, to clear it. "I don't think I can be both."

Gently, "Finish the thought."

"I am not sure I can be a sexual being and a healer, concurrently, without sacrificing an important part of at least one."

"Tell the story."

Emilia's eyes focus on something not in his immaculate, airless office. "The young woman thinks she can't be both what she wants to be and what she thinks a woman is. She goes half-mad trying to choose one, but ultimately does. If she chooses to be a woman, she falls into a depression that someone close to the woman side of her--a lover, a family member, or a friend--pulls her partially out of, then she pulls herself all the way out. If she chooses what she wants to be, she discovers she wants to be a woman, too, while off on some adventure, and figures out on her own that she can be both. If the story needs added page-count, she overcompensates before settling down, and if it is a tragedy, she will never quite realize she can be both."

Her professor smiles. "Finish the thought."

Now that Emilia thinks of it, the story is a classical heroine's journey. The answer is obvious enough. "I don't want my life to be a tragedy," Emilia says dryly. "I'm going to the dance with Dale. Thanks, Professor."

"My pleasure." He turns back to the board. "Oh, and the protagonist in the tale need not be a woman." Which means, I empathize, and, Remember Dale may feel the same way, or both. Dr. Johnson is a male healing mage, and Dale had the crisis of confidence that losing something as important as one's magic brought.

She nods. "Thank you, Professor."

Intermediate, Or: Translation

Pt II of "Priorities and Sanity", by a popular request of one.

The first weeks fall into no particular chronological order in Emilia's memories. The book is basic healing magic, sacrificing one's own energy to put into another. She takes to it well. She heals a dove, stitches up a dog's paw, and learns how to use the fire magic she has to cauterize wounds and sterilize surgical instruments--she's not performing major surgery yet, but she's well on her way to helping. It's the first few weeks; she hardly expected even that.

Somewhere in the middle of that, Dr. Johnson tells her to call him "Professor". She asks why, mostly out of surprise, which is how she learns he isn't a native speaker of her language.

"The vocabulary translates imperfectly, but it's the closest way to phrase it I've found."

Emilia's confused a moment before the obvious clicks into place. She assumed the oddly precise diction to be part of his persona in general, but it made just as much sense as a side-effect of a learned language. He had grown up with different vowels, probably; his diphthongs were always strangely pure. She almost asked him what he spoke first, but he was handing her another book, and this one taught healing humans.

And some point that must have been after that, Professor would tell her about that particular book, about the effect it had on nearly every student who would not be a healer. "Humans have a resonance to them," a similarity in wavelength that threw many mages-in-training. Even if you knew a spell quite well, even if you had used it before, even if you were only thinking of using it on a human, could be jarring. The book was the first test, because the feeling would distress, but not harm. "Usually, the sensation is akin to a papercut."

Professor eyes her closely and watches her cast the spells, asking a great many questions. So many distractions that they annoy her, but when her focus finally breaks, she just winces at the sting and says, "Sorry."

He nods. "Good. No resonance issues." And that must have been before she knew about the human-human resonance, because Emilia remembers not knowing. It strikes her as an odd thing to be such rare knowledge, but supposes that only healers have to worry about it.

She remembers asking, though she's not sure if it was immediate. "Healing something more like yourself has a greater chance of shifting injuries, rather than simply healing them. Casting such a spell on one's identical twin, for instance, is the most dangerous, as it has the issues of casting on someone your phenotype, genotype, age and gender. Healing a sibling or non-identical twin is roughly as dangerous in practice."

And then Emilia's first resonance. Not her first human--that was an octogenarian, of significantly different racial background. Not even, oddly enough, her fellow student, who could almost be her sister. Privately, Emilia believes she was more careful because of that, though admitting so means stating that she was not careful with the burned eight-year-old, which isn't quite right.

Suzy is bawling. Not the poorly suppressed sobs that Emilia had seen in her patients, nor the dead-eye look a few of them had, nor choosing to allow oneself to weep because of a lack of pride, just...bawling. No choice one way or the other. Pain meets lacking inhibitions; tears fall.

"H-Help me. Mama said you could help me!"

Emilia flinches. Professor's eyes are on her back, but he's done too much that day, or something, there's some reason that means she has to help this girl who's in pain and it doesn't matter that she's exhausted too, she just has to fix the burn that's running up the poor thing's arm all the way to her shoulder and so she just

Emilia forgets absolutely everything she's been taught, grabs the girl's arm, and jerks the pain straight back, snapping Suzy's skin to perfection.

Emilia jerks back and hisses a syllable she heard Professor say exactly once, when a mother mid-messed up labor came in. Suzy's burn had been on her left, and this burn is on Emilia's right arm--the one she'd grabbed at Suzy's hurt with--but beyond that, it's identical.

"Resonance," Professor said, softly.

Emilia nodded. She had enough control not to be outwardly distressed over the pain, but it took the whole of her focus. "Would you take Suzy to her father? I need to treat this."

Professor nodded and took Suzy's hand.

Resonance is difficult-nearing-impossible with a sibling. A twin is more difficult, but at that point the bell curve is already so low that people hardly notice. Which means...

Emilia ran the burn under cool water, then set something warm on it to keep the blood flowing.

It was as if whoever created the universe decided that healer's couldn't be selfish. No matter the training, a healer would always auto-resonate. No healing mage could self-heal.

In a little cooldown room, now, where doctors can go and not have to worry about patients or next of kin who insist they could have done more. Emilia sits at a table with apple juice in a sippy cup, because it's definitely one of those days.

"What happened today?" Professor says it in a gentle tone, which meant she screwed up badly enough to warrant eggshell treatment.

"I obsessed over the wrong detail and got resonance."

Professor nods and hands Emilia a jar of something. "For the burn. Finish the thought."

The last three words fall into a rhythm, and Emilia guesses this was another thing from his original language. "I...I think I don't fully understand what you mean by that."

"Answer what you think I asked, then."

Emilia adjusts the coat she'd hung over the back of her chair, pretending it bothered her. She unscrews the lid of the ointment jar and notices that it actually smells nice--vanilla? Her eyes dart to his with surprise, and then she has to answer. "I focused on an end result rather than what I should have done to achieve it. In doing so, I endangered both the child and myself more than I needed to."

"Finish the story." That same rhythm. Whatever it was, it turned the order polite, curious and gentle rather than demanding.

Emilia sips at her apple juice. "It is good to remember such things." She stares at the ointment a moment. "This is non-magical?"

"Correct." Brief, even for him, as if it were not his place to interrupt the story she was telling.

"I think..." Emilia looks at her arm. What she saw as a mirror of the scars is much milder. The resonance injured her, but not severely. She would scar, just a bit, but had she gotten this from pouring hot water on herself, she would treat it mundanely and carry on. "The main character keeps what scars she gained. For remembrance's sake. Not out of guilt, that would be childish. Just because...it is good to remember such things."

Professor nods and the spell breaks. "As you wish."

Abby, Maggie and Sylan

Abby had mostly shed the feminine form, and Sylan had yet to truly adopt a human one. For the sake of brevity, Sylan shall be 'it', though it is more animate than that implies, and Abby shall be 'she'.

Sylan was smiling, or doing something we would best understand as a smile. "Ah, the lovely lady Abigail. Delighted." Sylan bowed over Abby's hand.

Abby sighed and muttered, "Again?"

Sylan straightened and tipped his head to the side. " 'Again'?"

"At the very least I can imagine an excuse for Margaret."

Sylan grinned at the confirmation of his guess. "You can't destroy something that encompasses you, darling."

Abby let out a huff, then realized she suddenly looked like someone's (overdone) idea of an adolescent daughter, make-up and all.

Mostly due to Maggie's influence, she deadpanned, "You're not even my real Dad."

Sylan laughed. "Oh, I can see why Maggie liked you. Where did she get off to, anyway?"

"Here," Maggie said, fading in draped over Abby's shoulders. "I die sometimes, though. It's vaguely unpleasant."

Abby gave the long-suffering sigh of old souls and the pretentious. "If you did not insist on touching me..."

"Aw, now what fun is that?" Maggie kissed Abby's cheek. "Wouldn't ever get to do anything, if I went around doing things like that." She glanced at Sylan. "You alright with this? It looks like she's thinking of herself as your child."

Sylan shrugged. "She isn't." It suddenly looked curious, itching to figure something out. "Any pattern to when you die?"

Maggie's eyes danced. "Midnight."

"And does it happen if you're not touching her at midnight?"

"No." But there was laughter in her eyes, and Abby had the barest hint of a smile on her lips. The not-quite-smiling woman breathed, "Three, two..."

"Then why not just refrain for a few moments?"

Maggie laughed outright. "My midnight, dear. Don't you know the stories? Midnight can last hours."

"Days," Abby added, eyes crinkling.

Sylan blinked. "That makes no sense."

"Magic," the girls said together. Maggie continued, "I'm not of your realm, Sy. Good on you for trying though; it'll work anywhere but here." Magic lifted one hand to gesture to the not-space that they had quasi-manifested in. "Wouldn't've, but then Abby convinced me to stick with her." Mag's nose buried itself in the hair behind Abby's neck.

"Some would believe it good for them," Abby said, dancing around a direct statement. " 'They can figure it out now.'"

"I could've given them the exact measurements on the first try, if I wanted to," Maggie sighed in the tone of an old argument.

Sylan shook his head. "Do you follow any rules?"

"I can't create," Abby said, at the same time Maggie said, "I can't destroy."

Sylan blinked. "You two together..."

"Would be a force to be reckoned with," Maggie said cheerfully. "Good thing I've decided not to do anything to the world anymore, or we'd probably be running the joint as non-benevolent dictators. It's just so hard to keep track of who's a person, you know?"

Sylan half-smiled. "I just try to be fair to everything."

Maggie shrugged, then began fading. "Oh. Midnight. Going to take a few minutes this time, I think."

"I'll leave you two your minutes, then. See you later."

"Eventually," Abby noted.

"Probably not me," Maggie said in a chipper tone. "I only come out when it's dramatically appropriate, and you've already met me once."

"What about Abby?"

The Cheshire Cat would envy Maggie's grin. "Well, I hardly need to follow all the rules."

Being

The general prompt: http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random
Power you get is your super power. Hit random page. Next power that shows up is the power of your arch nemesis.

My Power: Magic (bit of a Superpower Lottery win, there)
My Nemesis's Power: Self-Spawn

Added for fun (I chose which was which before I clicked random, though):
My Sidekick: Stinger Protrusion
Nemesis's Sidekick: Destruction

"I think you should be running the show here."

There wasn't a head, exactly, but the hole in the universe was person-shaped. The head-analogue tipped to one side. "Oh?"

"Yeah." There was a stalemate, between the--um.

"What should I call you?"

"Pardon?"

I shrugged. "I don't have a good short description of you. If you don't give one, I'm going to end up with something like 'Black Hole', and that seems rather melodramatic for your personality."

The being stared and blinked--I think. Vaguely shaded: eyes are tiny. "Absence is a common choice. Those who prefer to humanize generally call me Abby."

"Right. Thank you." There was a stalemate going on, between Abby and me. Technically speaking, she--alright, yes, gender-neutrality, but I was calling her Abby--is the most powerful force in the universe. She is entropy. The slow decay of weathering wood, rusting iron, fire snatching up square meters of forest every second. She's not rot, precisely; rot is life's domain, but she is that moment of conversion inside every organism, taking organized energy and disorganizing it.

I was magic. Not a mage, not a magician, not a witch or a wizard. Simply magic. Components of spells, whether they call by word or symbol or thought, called on me. I was the miracles of the land. Like organization increasing in a closed system.

But, by definition, I was inconsistent. If I happened repeatably, I'd be science, and you'd know me in your world.

And, by definition, entropy is quite consistent.

"You were saying?" Abby inquired coolly.

"Ah, yes. Why do you follow him?"

She shrugged--well, actually, she did an eternally graceful movement best described as a shrug. But I really needed to stop or kiss her, and I was not entirely sure if one survived kissing entropy. "I am destruction. If I am to create something, I require a base."

"So you could make lovely driftwood sculptures."

Absence smiled.

The world outside would go chilly from that. So direct an expression on Absence herself meant no thing would smile for that moment. Here, in front of her, it warmed my soul. "Something like that."

"And that's what my Nina is for: someone to affect the fully material plane. But she doesn't run the show." I spread my hands and joked, "What, does your entropy spread to plans?"

"Yes."

"Ow..." I muttered under my breath, rubbing my ears. Smiles warm the soul; direct statements turn you near-deaf. "Unnecessary roughness."

"Nina is losing."

"What--" I started up. "She's fighting?"

"Injury is also my realm, if by a stretch."

One does not say, 'It can't be so,' to that tone. "...I can't feel her."

Abby nodded calmly. "It appears she does not call upon you, Mistress Margaret."

"Maggie," I said automatically. "It's Maggie. Do you know why not?"

"Divination is your realm, I believe." On anyone else that tone would have been infuriatingly calm, but on Abby is simply was. It would be no more reasonable to be angry at that tone than to be angry at a picture of a black hole.

I cast not-water upon the naught-floor and pulled the truth from it.

"As if she ever thought you near her," the man--Sam?--sneered. He actually sneered, my goodness.

"I am her helper. Of course she did not." A blow, then, to the solar plexus, driving the air hard out of him. The words were confident, but the tone was desperate, and only became moreso. "But I can fight without her. Can you say the same?"

He laughed. "Childish. Your mistress aids me in this fight." Another of him came from behind and landed a blow somewhere low along Nina's back. She went down.

They said, together, "And you can do nothing without her."

I realized I had clenched my jaw when the muscles hurt. "Bastard." He only called upon me in truth to make himself anew, none for sustaining, but this was me; this was my domain, and I could right it.

I touched the surface of the water Abby pressed at me, but that wasn't important and pulled.

Both Sams fell. One was female now, the other still male but the wrong height and build. All of his would soon fall such. He ran the bodies hard, sapping what energy the magic infused in them would throw them into comas. And that was wrong, because some of them would doubtless be in some danger Abby pressed tight on all sides, but I only needed one more minute.

Not even a pull, just a shift. From him to them. He had not spread himself so thin, only to one other who was neither present nor the man himself. "One moment Abby," I breathed, "please."

Sam died, and I sliced off a piece of myself to give to little Nina. She'd keep her spikes, when she wanted them, and heal completely from any injuries she'd gotten under my care.

I shut my eyes. I was done.

"Abby?"

"Hush, bright one."

Then the back of my mind went click.

"Dark," I mumbled back, already lost in her. Not evil, not wrong, but dark to my light; perfect, only missing me as I missed her.

Abby smiled against my ear. "Yes." And it was perfect, and it was beautiful, and it was worth it because she made it so.

One does not survive kissing entropy.

Priorities and Sanity

Emilia steps into the old office. Everything is immaculate from perfectly lined books to the man's own perfectly fitted suit, and it all feels so...still. There's a window that lets the sun shine in, since it's as clean as the rest of the office, but it might as well be nailed shut as far as the stale air was concerned.

She planned this for so long that Emilia jolts when she realizes she has nothing to say. Blunt, then?

The words tumble out. "Can you teach me any magic?"

She kicks herself, immediately. Sloppy, clearly sloppy, hardly fit for anyone who cares to ever become a mage, much less one studying under Dr. Johnson. He would just say she was there because her mother had taught him, and he'd be wrong, but how could she say that to him--

He turns. "I was wondering when you'd ask."

Emilia, for all that she had not planned what to say, had an outline in her head. And then he had to go and say that.

"Um," she says, eloquently.

"Though I do admit, when I was your age I was still attempting to plan my speech to convince the mage I wanted to study under," he says. Dr. Johnson isn't quite smiling, but his face is softer than Emilia had ever seen it.

"I rather skipped that part."

The mage shrugs. His suit wrinkles very slightly, and he does not fix it. "I forgot the whole thing anyway. More work than one would think, memorizing a speech."

"...Does this mean you'll teach me?"

"Depends." The man holds up his index finger to tell the fifteen-year-old to wait. "And I will know if you simply say something you think I want to hear."

Emilia nods and straightens, ready for any difficult question he might pose.

"Why do you want to be a mage?"

"I want to help people," she says immediately. "I want to heal people, and I want to be able to make shields so people don't need healing."

"That's not an easy path."

The healer's daughter nods. "But it's easier than watching. For me."

"Second question." Emilia swallows. "Why do you want me for a teacher?"

"Because you're the best at teaching the fields I want to learn."

"What would you do if you can't learn healing?"

"I'd learn other spells and adapt them to healing, and I'd learn more mundane methods of healing."

Still not a smile on the doctor's face, but a hint of approval. "And if you could not learn any magic?"

Emilia blinks. It sounds an innocuous enough question, she supposes, especially in light of her previous response. She's already declared herself willing to take other paths to her destination, and there are non-magical routes.

But that's not it, really. Learning difficult spells like this...some people can only ever make sparks, not fires. Trying can burn them out. It was rare, spectacularly rare with a good teacher--which was part of why she had chosen him, she supposes, but that wasn't really the point. Emilia found the person who could teach her the most.

"I'd retreat into my room for...a little while, I think," she says. "Then I'd look for more mundane methods of healing. Probably Watch." There's a feeling, to someone pushing the magic too far. Some excellent teachers could sense it, but everyone who had gone through the loss knew it, instinctively, immediately. Knew when to stop someone else. Watchers are rare; they rarely want anything to do with magic. But they are useful.

"You are sure you could be around magic, even after losing yours?" The teacher's voice is low now, soft and deep. Gentle, Emilia supposes.

The mage-in-training realizes her posture had slumped and stands back up, squaring her shoulders. "Yes. It might take me a little while, but I'd do it."

He nods, then drops a book she realized he must have grabbed as she walked through the door. "Good. Have that read by Monday, and take good notes. Your training starts in earnest then."

Emilia nods, takes the book gently, and walks to the library.

After the door clicks behind her, the man allows himself a smile.

Musing#4: Friendship

Loyalty is when someone turns to you and tells you to run, then you say, "No," and help them.
Friendship is when someone tells you to run, and you say, "Hell no. You run," and you both stay.

Loyalty is when you follow someone to Hell and back, fighting and watching her back all the way.
Friendship is when you follow someone to Hell, and watch her back as you know she watches yours.

Loyalty is when you follow someone because he's right.
Friendship is when you stand by someone who's not.

Loyalty is a solid, honorable duty to stand by someone.
Friendship is when you can leave at any time, and don't.

Loyalty is a trait.
Friendship is a bond.

Hope is when you can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and go to it.
Faith is when you see no light but follow it anyway.

Hope is when everything you know is destroyed, then you see something you don't know.
Faith is when everything is destroyed, so you look for something that isn't.

Music is emotion and pitch weaved together until we barely know how we can separate it.
Magic is that which you allow it to be.

Goodness is doing what helps.
Evil is doing what hurts.

Now, riddle me this: Which of these do I believe?