Rooftop Reimancy [Flashback] (Wrenmae)

by **Kit Rowan** on July 13th, 2011, 1:30 am

Her aunt had told her stories about wizards they found in Syliras. In her tales they always came out barking mad in the end, malicious and twisted or put down like mad dogs. "No good comes of twisting the world," she had said. "That is the domain of the Gods." And Kit had believed.

Her father had whispered old tales of a nigh-forgotten age and left her a book that told her that wizards deserved to rule the world, and did. And, because he was her father, she had tried her best to believe that too. Though perhaps once a season Kit would hear some account of a mad wizard, maniacal, murderous, sometimes locking themselves into dark places until they starved.

It was her shame. It was her birthright. Kit knew from what her father taught her that she should be proud, from what her aunt had said that she should be ashamed. But she was only afraid. When Wren took hold of her she did not think about the ill luck that followed where he went like a pestilence, but that he would throw her from the roof.

She did not embrace him; she clung to him too tightly, her hands all but scratching at his back, not for comfort but to keep him from hurting her. I should have let you fall, she thought, again, again and again.

When she realized that he wasn't going to kill her she let go and pushed Wren away from her. She did not want him touching her. Did not want anybody touching her. It was, she realized, his fault. He had asked questions. He had snooped. He had pulled all the unpleasantness out into the open. "You know now," Kit said, more harshly than she'd intended. "I told. Happy?"

by **Wrenmae** on July 13th, 2011, 10:53 am

"Kit..." But there were no words, nothing could fill the silence between them now. When she had clung to him, Wrenmae had assumed it was for comfort. For once since their relationship had begun, he actually felt as though he 'meant' something to her. All his antics, stories, and nonsense never seemed to culminate into much. When her father died, Kit simply eschewed everyone she had known (Few as they had been) and he was a casualty.

Casualty? Had he ever been that close? It wasn't a thought he wanted to dwell on. Certainly she meant a great deal to him, her continued life was important. She was his family, adopted perhaps, but did one need a tie of blood to call another sister or niece? He moved with the momentum of her shove, stepping back a few paces. He still held the book in his right hand, wind bristling at the pages softly, murmuring their secrets. Looking at it, Wrenmae set it down on the roof, not quite sure how she would take him handing it to her.

The synapse between them, the hypnotic influence he had played on her emotions was gone. In a sense he was taken aback, she was cold and even alienating, her eyes etched in stone. Wrenmae smiled, anything to break the tension of the moment, but it was weak and faded shortly after he plastered it on his face.

They stood apart quietly, the two of them, and the wind over Alvadas hurled back against Kit's res, erasing it from the roof in one errant gale.

Seidaku had said magic was like a sword...it could be used to hurt or defend...not all mages were monsters. They couldn't be. If so, what did that say about he and her?

Was Vayt right in choosing him?

"I'm...sorry," he said at last, but there was no sincerity in his tone, only confusion "How long were you...err...I mean how long have you been able to do this?"

by **Kit Rowan** on August 12th, 2011, 2:51 pm

She had been able to use her Res ever since . . . No. Don't think of that. Kit had dwelt on this moment for a long time, pictured it in her head, watched the details play out. First came the discovery, then the accusations . . . but Wren was not following her model. Kit did not know exactly where, but she knew it was headed in another direction. "It was a . . . gift," she said, "from my father, before he died. He gave the Res to me," she clutched at her wrist, nervous. "And he showed a little about how to use it."

It was a relief to say it. "He said it was my birthright," she told him. He had warned her that others would not understand, would not believe. Told her some small part of the danger. It was the first and only thing that he had ever tried to give her. She did not know whether the Res she used was her own or what her father had left inside.

"I'm not mad," she said, the iron coming back into her voice. "And I haven't hurt anyone. I couldn't. It's just a little air, not like I can control the wind or anything." But why won't you stop? "It's just, I get this itch," she gestured. "It's like having another arm, or leg. If you don't move it after a while it starts to cramp up. I never do anything bad. Never."

Who are you trying to convince? Him? Or yourself?

by **Wrenmae** on November 9th, 2011, 5:33 pm

"Just a little air..." He repeated her to himself, gently curling his fingers around the errant breeze coasting above Alvadas. Such remarkable abilities. A little air was the love of sailors, a little air could quench the heat of a still summer day. But it wasn't the fact it was a little breeze that meant anything, it was the potential to be more. They all could be more.

And he wasn't being honest.

"I don't think you're mad," he said at last, a quick grin running across his features, "I think you'd be a little less subtle about your abilities if you were...besides, I'm not being completely forthcoming myself."

Holding out his hand towards her, Wrenmae concentrated on what Seidaku had taught him. Nothingness was not only the absence of 'somethingness', it was an emotion, a state of mind.

Purging oneself in such an emotionally thick situation was difficult, more the act of systematic repression rather than any 'slipping' into the necessary place needed to channel his Djed.

The Void, as always, gave him difficulty. It wasn't the act of calling it into being that was hard, it was understanding something no rational being had any right to fathom. It was, at surface, an easy concept that became more cavernous and impossible the longer one gazed into its depths.

Still, he was here to prove a point to Kit...or at least alleviate her fear of discovery. If they both knew something of each other, perhaps the secrets both held would be easier spoken, easier kept.

Just above his outstretched hand, a tiny point of complete umbra appeared, a pinprick of Void sustained with Djed. Wrenmae closed his eyes, focusing on only the little portal, willing it to expand and finding he had no idea how to do it. Calling the Void was a process hard enough, and extending it was something that begged a mastery he had not yet achieved.

An understanding he simply didn't have.

Opening his eyes again, the tiny point of nothing vanished. The world poured in to fill the space and Wrenmae let his hand drop, drops of sweat forming across his forehead. "I...learned a bit of Voiding from a friend in the city," he admitted it penitently, almost as though looking for her forgiveness, "I know what you mean about the itch, it's just...well, I don't think magic is all that terrifying."

He shrugged, leaning down to take a seat on the lip of the building, watching the bustling crowd push beneath him. "My teacher said something once, that magic was like a sword...it could be used to hurt or to help." He bit his lower lip in concentration, willing himself to believe what his teacher had said as well. He would need to in order to sound convincing to her. "So magic is only as good as the person wielding it. A lot of cruel people have used their abilities to bring terror, but certainly there are those who have done beneficial things with their powers, right? Couldn't you just use your breeze to push a sail or cool someone down?" Glancing back at her, Wrenmae shrugged, "It doesn't have to be something you hide."

by **Kit Rowan** on December 20th, 2011, 7:20 am

Kit stilled, tilted her head to the side, watched Wren with unsure eyes. While he was still alive and first taught her to handle her Res, her father had given his own advice on magic. "Father said magic is paid with the coin of the soul," she said, rubbing a hand over her arm. "Our Djed is the whole of what we are," she recited, as though repeating something she'd heard a hundred times before. "And in its spending we risk our end."

She looked down at her hands, at the little scars that named her Reimancer to anyone with the proper know-how. "Dad . . . Initiated me." Never trust another wizard; they are twisted, every one, and every time it's different. So he'd said, and Kit knew that he'd been broken just as bad inside. She didn't feel insane, but she was not a wizard, not really. She had a few palour tricks; a one trick pony that a clever Alvad could replicate with a little time and cleverness.

Or so she told herself.

"I'm not a wizard," she shook her head. "I'm a performer, and my father taught me a few things. That's all."

by **Wrenmae** on December 24th, 2011, 10:58 pm

Wrenmae sighed, his arms slack along his sides as he took a seat on the roof. The flaxen shirt he wore shuffled in the breeze, giving it brief and simple life before it fell to nothing again. He frowned at Kit, looking at his own hands and then stuffing them in his pockets. Leave it to his younger niece to lecture him on the dangers of magic.

"I suppose you're right," he mumbled, blowing a strand of hair from his forehead, "But did your dad say control was impossible? Are all wizards supposed to be crazy and deranged?" He lay back against the roof and stared up at the sky, "Seems awfully boring if that's the only way it plays out."

He thought about what he'd said a moment and raised a hand, shaking it at Kit without looking at her, "Not to say that I'm making light of wizards, just...well, just that it seems an awful shame there aren't any good wizards to look up to."

He leaned up, forcing his elbows behind his back to prop himself upwards. "Does that make me evil as well? I only know a little magic, like you, but does that mean I'm not a wizard or that I can't be trusted?" He frowned, lying to Kit didn't feel right, but to tell her the truth would be to truly make her angry. Nobody liked to be manipulated, and the book had always told him to be careful how one initiated the magic. If the victim knew and was not willing, it was more likely to start a fight than anything else.

Wrenmae let it go and blew at his hair again, annoyed. Maybe it was time for a cut.

But that was for later.

"Hey, Kit..." he looked past her this time, beyond to Alvadas...a skyline he knew would change, "Do you ever think about leaving the city?"

by **Mirage** on May 29th, 2012, 5:56 pm

The Truth Within the Reality

Kit :

Wrenmae :

The Truth Hidden by a Mirage :