KOREY:
The front door opened, and before more than a short burst of frigid night air could sweep into the room, it was shut again.
I looked up from the book I had been reading, and Pransai and Casai did the same from the story book they were both reading from.
We were sat in the main room, the Ledi sisters curled up together in front of the fire spell circle trying to keep warm, I sat in a chair nearby doing the same. Sinsa was taking off his coat having just arrived, his long purple robes falling down, and almost immediately I could see him wrap 2 pairs of arms around himself for warmth. I marked where I was in the book, stood up, and went to activate the warming spell just inside the threshold for him. Despite only one person being able to use it at the time it had been carved, that being Casai, Sinsa had put it and many other of the useful spells he'd made for other people around the house.
His shoulders visibly relaxed as the cold was driven out from his frame, and he sighed in relief. "Th-thank you Korey, it really is t-too cold out these days!"
We walked over to the fire and sat down, Sinsa walking to give Pransai a quick kiss before pulling up a chair to sit near the fire.
"How many spells did you manage to get touched up today?" Casai asked as Sinsa settled into his seat.
"Not as many as I would have liked, only 4 t-today, but no one will b-be without a working fire tonight, and that's the most important thing." Sinsa had been out late the last few days, as a large cold front had moved into the area. The nearby Tinsel river had even begun to freeze at it's edges with how far the temperature had fallen.
"Is it common to have a spellcrafter like Sinsa to repair spells in small towns like this?"
"W-well, some t-towns might have spellcrafters that could-"
"No, for the kinds of spells Sinsa makes, only nobles would be able to afford to have them crafted and maintained." Pransai cut off Sinsa's explanation with one of her own. "We are most fortunate as a town to have him, and the town is forever indebted to the fact he will not charge a
proper
amount for his spells."
"I'm still ch-charging for my services, I need t-to at least pay for the supplies!" He pulled out the small pouch of coins he'd gotten for his days work.
Casai addressed me directly "If he charged what a city spellcrafter a quarter as talented as him did, that bag would be ten times the size. But then the townsfolk wouldn't have fires like this." She gestured to the flame sitting in front of us, the soft blue glow of the circle underneath just barely visible.
"Magic shouldn't just be reserved for nobles, th-they haven't done anything to deserve its wonders. It should be for everyone." There was a slight bitter edge to Sinsa's voice as he spoke those words into the fire, a tone I hadn't heard from him before.
"And that's one of the things I love about you." Pransai reached a paw out and rested it on Sinsa's thigh, bringing him back from wherever his thoughts were taking him. He put two hands on Pransai's and smiled warmly at her.
Their was a brief lull in the conversation. Since the fire was powered by magic, there was no occasional crackle of burning wood to punctuate the silence. But the same shadows that a normal fire would throw still danced across the walls while we sat in front of it.
"You've been touching up way more spells than you did during summer, is that usual for you?" I asked after a few moments.
"Well, k-kind of. I t-tend to spend most warm seasons doing research, and more repairing during the cold months. The c-cold tends to be hard on spell circles." Sinsa had gotten used to my names for the seasons, though I mentally scolded myself for using my own terms for them.
"I guess that makes sense. Was this last warm season fruitful at least?"
"Not particularly, I spent a lot of t-time working on spells that d-didn't end up working. I p-probably spent too much time on them, I was really t-trying to make it work." His brow furrowed slightly remembering the apparent frustration.
Casai jumped in with an inquiry. "What were you trying to make anyway? You were messing around with plants kind of a lot."
Sinsa's cheeks were slightly flushed when he answered, though that might have just been from the cold. He visibly hesitated for a moment before speaking, then let out a sigh and answered.
"I... I was at-tempting to find a way to encourage physical changes in objects and persons." He shot me an apologetic smile. "Like spikes, or something."
Wow, that got me right in the feelings. It had been months since I had furtively asked if something like that might be possible with magic. I'd come to see that it was not something that could be done with the way magic worked, at least, as far as my basic understanding went. It was quite a rigid system as far as I could tell. Yet, Sinsa had spent his summer trying to come up with a way to make it happen anyway.
"You have lot's of spiky plants though, did you get it to work?" Casai questioned, gesturing to Sinsa's desk, currently covered with many plants with odd combinations of colors or spikes.
"Not really, I was only able to get those p-plants to grow spikes because they can grow them naturally even without magic." He stood up, walked to his desk, and picked up a plant to showcase. "This plant naturally had thorns, but not flowers. Only half of Floralum actually flower and make pollen, whereas the other half produce thorns for protection, until the are pollinated, and start making seeds." He picked up another plant. "I managed to make a Floralum that does both, makes thorns and flowers, by using a customized targeter to until a found what made the thorn plant make thorns, then used that on a plant that already had flowers. But unless the plant already had the ability to make thorns, it doesn't work." He gestured to several other types of plants, none of which had thorns growing on them. "I mostly used Floralum because they grow so rediculously fast in the presence of mana, but it the same thing could work for other thorny plants, just slower."
Huh. That was actually really good science. I had an idea of what he was doing, though he probably wasn't aware of it himself. He had used targeters and tried encouraging growth in certain areas, until the targeter had hit the right thing. I wasn't sure if he had hit a gene or an organ to bring about the change, but the result was expression of non-typical traits in the plants. In other words...
"Wait, so you made the boy plant look like a girl plant?" Casai asked.
"That's, uh, I don't think the plants are... Kind of?" Sinsa seemed flabbergasted by the framing of the question, but nodded after a moment.
"OH, I... well I should ask her first... um, I might need... hmmm..." Casai let out a loud sound, then seemed to backtrack for a moment. Everyone was looking at her fumble her way through whatever she was trying to say, which I appreciated, since it distracted everyone from noticing my breathing go shallow.
The roil of emotions that I could feel coming on was not something I wanted to deal with right now. Not while I was in the middle of a conversation, or while I was with someone, or today, or really ever. I just had to force all of those thoughts into a portion of my brain that wasn't "me", so I could look at them from afar. Later. I just needed to get my face under control until someone started paying attention to me again. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
I wasn't half bad at shutting out my emotions.
"A-are you okay, Korey? You look d-distressed..."
I was apparently at least half bad at shutting out my emotions.
"I think I'm just tired." I lied. "I'm gonna head to bed, but I'll see you in the morning." I smiled and turned from the worried, the inquisitive, and the confused expressions, and went to my room.
KOREY:
My bed was soft, as I'd come to expect, and the covers were smooth and perfectly cool to the touch. I'd been here for about six months. I was still sad sometimes, thinking of home, but most of the time I was living life alongside people who made every day worth doing so. I had gotten cosmically lucky with where I'd ended up, lucky with
who
I'd ended up with, lucky with the fact I could talk and read, and lucky that I'd even ended up not dead upon arrival, falling out of the sky.
It felt selfish to want more.
I rolled on top of the covers and looked out at the moon shining through the window. I'd started to learn some of the constellations in the sky. Ventrious, the raging fire, a sharp zigzag in the sky. Briemme, the sleeping baby Peryton, a small curl of stars. Zenkaul, the first dragon, wings whipped out in an intricate pattern across the cosmos. That last one was my favorite, and I let it draw my eyes' attention now.
Sinsa's research was both breathtaking and heartbreaking. I could-
I sat up in bed, bringing my knees close to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. This was silly. I'd had every opportunity back on earth to make a decision. 21 years, and I had been just fine. There hadn't been some big obstacle in my way. There wasn't some magical research that needed to be done to even start to think about making that kind of decision. I just... didn't make the choice.
Besides, there wasn't even a guarantee that Sinsa's magic would even be helpful. I was making tons of assumptions about how it worked, what it was doing, how else it could be used. First I'd need to learn exactly how it worked. Then, I'd need to apply everything I remembered from the hours and hours of time spent researching-
There was an odd sense of familiarity that filled me, and I almost let out a laugh at the absurd thought of it bringing me comfort. I don't think I'd be able to count the number of nights I'd spent in bed debating this with myself. I'd gone to sleep in my apartment after staying awake for too long doing that the night before I'd been transported here. I remember the faint feeling of hope going up to the river to see if the summoning had come with any perks, and being met with only my reflection.
And then Pransai and Sinsa and Casai had found me, and taken me in, and life had been good. I hated to admit it, but there was a part of me that really liked Pransai and Sinsa. The near instantaneous kindness and acceptance, the massive amount of help and care they had given to me, all of it, really made my heart swell.
I'd never say that to them though. How disrespectful would it be to even suggest that when they already loved each other so much. How disrespectful would it be to ask them to love me when I was still waiting to make this choice.
How awful did I have to be that I couldn't even think about it properly.
I wanted to be a plant with thorns and petals, so, so badly.
Coward.
I laid down and did my best to drift off to sleep. All of that could be a problem for future me. Same as always.
