Flashback The Magician's Daughter

[Kit Rowan]

'They had names for each other. While they were together, my father was Ivak, and my mother was Kova. Aunt and Uncle were uncomfortable with it. They said it was a taunt to the gods, who were like to turn it into prophecy. My mother picked it. She never told me so, but I know. She would have found it funny.'

507 AV, Season of Summer, Day 24

Kit studied the window carefully. It was, in reflection, a wonderful piece of craftsmanship. Many windows in Alvadas aped the design of foreign buildings, all straight edges, but the maker of this window had sought something more in harmony with Ionu's city. It was all curves, a practical nightmare for any glassblower, which was probably why her aunt and uncle had never bothered and gotten thick curtains instead.

"Djed is the stuff of the world. The foundations upon which all things are built. All things, at their heart, from the smallest rock to the greatest god are built upon bones of the Djed that defines them."

Kit leaned her cheek against her palm, face turned toward the window. She imagined that she could feel the wind on her face. "Uh-uh."

"There are three sorts of wizard in the world; those that draw on the power of the gods, the power of the world and the power of the wizard themselves. We are the last kind. When a wizard like us draws on magic, they do not do their work from 'will,' or 'power.' They draw from their soul first and their body last and fashion miracles from them. One who dips just below the surface can draw on things easily replaced by a night of mirth or a good meal. But drawing deeper demands a darker price."

"Uh-huh." Kit imagined the feeling of the sun on her back and the wind against her body as she ran through the streets of Alvadas. Her mind made it real, and she felt the roughness of the roads through her shoes as she ran and laughter at the colors of the sky. The shadow of a smile tugged at her lips.

". . . So your mother and I ran through the city naked, riding purple wolves, and fought off the undead with nothing more than a soggy cat and a book of old poetry."

"Uhuh," Kit murmured, staring longingly out the window. She felt the rap-rap-rap of knuckles against her forehead and raised her hands up in protection, turning away from the window and toward the perpetrator, indignant until she remembered who it was.

Her father was not an old man, not even into his forties, but the world had stacked the weight of an age on top of him. His hair was stark white, his body unhealthy thin, and the joints of his hands thick and bloated with a sickness that made him wince with every motion. His face was peering into the memory of a memory, handsome lines in his expression hinting at what might have been before sicknesses ravage. "Kit," asked, his voice tired. "Are you paying attention?" It was clear in his eyes that he knew the answer.

Kit lied anyway. "Yes!" she said, with a dishonest child's unshakable conviction.

Her father steepled his hands. "Okay. What is Djed?"

Kit bit down on the inside of her lip, her shoulders falling. She tried to squeeze herself into invisibility in her chair.

It didn't work. "How does magic use it?"

Kit looked down, rubbed her elbows and twined her ankles together. She couldn't see her father, but she could hear him sigh. "Dammit Kit," he said, somehow more exhausted than before. She felt hands fall on her shoulders and looked tentatively up into her father's face. The open concern cut deeper than anger ever could have. "Magic is dangerous. You need to learn this." He said. Kit looked away toward the window and daydreamed of running through the streets. "I'm trying to help you." But Kit was lost in thoughts in play and friends and sunshine, and may as well have not been there at all.

[Kit Rowan]

'When I was little I would look out my window every night and hope that next morning they would come around the bend to visit. Sometimes it was years before I'd see them again, and they never stayed for longer than a few weeks. I always asked if I could come with them, and they always said no. And then I would go into my bed and spend every morning looking out the window, hoping my parents would come back for me.'

He said other things, too, but Kit was not really there to hear him. "You are so like your mother," he said, and there was no more frustration in his voice, just fondness and something a little deeper. Kit turned toward her father and saw him smiling. He knelt—and it must have hurt him so to kneel—touched her cheek with a hand that only barely trembled. Their faces, she realized, were perhaps half a foot apart. Less. "Your hair," he said, almost reverent. "It is just the same. And your eyes . . . And the same look when all you want is for me to go away."

Kit curled her toes and smiled, uneasy, squirmed a little under his eyes. "Ha . . . ha?" She said, not sure if she was really supposed to laugh. Her father didn't seem to mind. That was a good sign.

"I could never convince her to listen," he told Kit, the hand on her cheek roaming backwards to her neck, down the line of her spine. With his other hand, her took hers, grabbed hold and squeezed it harder than she'd thought he could. "My little Kova," he said, and Kit could hear something breaking in his heart. "Please, please be my daughter too. My home is far, far away. Your mother left me here. You're all I have left in the world."

Kit's eyes were wide and startled as she watched the broken man. "Okay," she said, hurriedly. "Okay!" Just stop! Stop being so broken and pathetic and . . . and . . . !

"I knew I could count on you, little Kova." He said, smiling that curious sort of smile. Her father leaned forward and kissed Kit on the crown of her head where her hair parted. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, squeezing her firmly against him. She wrapped her arms awkwardly around him and bit down on the bottom of her lip. "I know I haven't been very forthright with you. Do you have questions for me?" He murmured.

Speaking seemed somehow sacrilege. Instead, Kit simply nodded.

"I have a few practice tasks for you. If you can do them, I'll answer a question. Any question. Okay?"

Kit shifted in her seat, suddenly intrigued. There were so many things that her mother and father had left her in the dark on. And they were promising her answers now? She couldn't say no. "Okay."

[Kit Rowan]

'My aunt would tell me stories about wizards from her home in Syliras sometimes. Sometimes they were about wizards, and they always ended bad. The ones when they were caught by knights were the boring ends; it always ended in execution. The rest were more colorful. Once she told me about a man who chewed off his own hands cause of an itch he couldn't scratch, about a girl whose face melted away into a shapeless mask when she tried to change it too much. She relished the stories, I think. She did not like magic.'

Her father had her—he tried to help at first, but one look at the expression on his face was enough to convince Kit to do it all herself—move all the furniture to the edges of the room to leave the middle with lots of space for them to work. The only except was a table that he left in the center. "Go get a candle, little Kova, and rest there."

She rushed through the house and returned a few chimes later with a long white candle on a wide silver plate. She placed it carefully in the center of the table, stepped away and watched.

"Go back a little further, Kova." Her father said, staring so intently at the candle he did not see Kit's startled look. She moved backwards, long step by long step till—"That will do." He held up a finger. Color stirred slowly along the top, seeping right out of his skin. It was red and transparent and shimmery and the sight of it made Kit pale.

It was a drop of liquid res smaller than the tip of Kit's pinky finger. Her father murmured something under his breath and the res floated down to touch the wick of the candle and ignited into flame. "I want you to put this candle out from where you're standing," he said, turning to look at Kit.

"With Reimancy?" Kit asked, and she hated the sound of her voice. The trepidation in it, the fear . . . But this time, she couldn't chase it away. Kit clasped her hands together behind her back and shifted on her feet, staring at the candle.

"There's no shame if you can't," he said. "But please, try. If you start to feel anything strange, stop and tell me so."

"Savvy," Kit breathed, ran her hands through her hair and lowered down into a squat, on eye level with the candle. She closed her mouth tight and began to excrete res from her mouth. It had no texture, really; Res wasn't really anything, her father had told her once. Res was only what waited to be. Kit held up her hands like her father had taught her, to guide and control the spell.

She spun both her hands around in a twitchy sort of circle, and all the res in her mouth transmuted to air. She felt her control slipping already; the air wanted to be free, to follow its natural tendencies and explode out from inside her mouth. She still had some cuts in her gums from when she'd tried it first, a while ago, and had left the air where it was long enough for her to lose control.

But this time she moved quick enough. Kit shoved her hands forward, and the air, guided by her will, rushed out her mouth in a plume that could be seen in the curious shape of the dust, suspended in orange light. The candle blew out, just like that.

"Now," Her father said. "I think I owe you an answer."

Kit stood up straight and walked up to her father. "Are you going to die?"

Her father closed his eyes, made his mouth into a thin, lipless line. "I think so."

"I don't know." He grabbed he shoulders and rubbed at them in what Kit could only assume was meant to be comforting. Her father tried to smile, but this time the expression didn't quite seem to fit on his face. "You and your mother, you're built for this place. You know it, feel it. To you, it's the right soil. I don't think that this place has the right soil for me."

"Dad," Kit said, tilting her head to the side and propping a hand on her hip. "What are you talking about?"

He blinked at her, like w. "I . . . don't know, little Kova. Maybe it will make sense later." He clapped her on her shoulder and turned away from her.

Hrmph. Kit crossed her arms. Well, if all his answers were going to be like that, then was it worth it? Maybe the second one would work better?

She sat anyway. That was what a daughter was supposed to do . . . right?

[Kit Rowan]

Her father sat, cross-legged on the ground while Kit watched. "Little Kova, could you sit in my lap?"

Kit felt her lips twist into an uncomfortable expression and crossed her arms, rubbing nervously above her elbows, shifting from side to side. She remembered, her mother and father had always called her 'little fox' before, when they visited. It had irritated her then. But Kit didn't like the way her father had had bound Kit to her mother's nickname, didn't like the haze that hid behind the colors of his eyes as he said it. It made her uncomfortable in ways she couldn't articulate.

"Do you want an answer?" The feeble young wizard let both his hands rest on the ends of his knees, staring up expectantly at Kit.

The girl breathed and unsteady breath, meandered over to her father and plopped herself down on his knee. But he was having none of that; she felt an arm of his curl around her belly, pulling her closer until she could feel his chest pressed against her back. "Don't be shy, Kova." He called her by her mother's name again. "Now close your eyes."

Kit scrunched her shoulders and closed her eyes. "Now, I want you to breathe as even as you can, like we practiced before. Meditate. Just think about your breathing." She did. It was quick, too quick, panicked. She forced herself to slow, counted the seconds one, two, breathe in three, four, breathe out. One, two, haaa three, four hooo.

"Just think, don't talk. What do you feel?" She felt her father's breathing against her neck, a clammy coldness along her arms, an arm coiled affectionately lower now, around her waist and a hand skirting bare skin there. Was this what fathers did, Kit wondered? Perhaps it was. Perhaps she simply needed to get used to it.

"What do you smell?" She smelled the old wood of the house. Her father; he smelled like an old person. Smoke from the wax candles. "What do you hear?" The damp sounds of the street, the frittering flicker of candles, her father's voice that said "Focus on that. What do you feel? Don't think about me. Don't think about yourself, just feel."

Ticks turned to chimes. ". . . Father?"

"Hush, my Kova" He said, his voice a little thicker, his arm holding her possessively close while his explored up and down her side. Was this what fathers did? "Feel a little longer. Focus on it."

She did just that. Ticks turned to chimes to time she could not tell, until her father said 'hold out your hand.' She did. Kit felt something fall into it. "I want you to remember what it felt like to excrete res. I want to remember how you knew where it was. What does this feel like?"

Kit clutched it in her hand. "A rock," she said. "It's a rock."

"But what does it feel like?" Her father insisted.

"It feels . . . Like there are lots of holes. And it's really light. And . . ."

"How does it taste? How does it sound? How does it smell?"

Kit paused, brought the rock up to her mouth and licked it with a cautious tongue, made a face. "It's . . . rough. Tastes like ash—"

"—Don't stop talking, but keep listening, keep feeling. Remember when you release Res—"

Her focus was shuddering under the weight of the listening and the feeling. She felt like her brain was being picked apart. She dashed the rock against the floor. "It sounds hollow—"

"—Remember the res when it turned to air—"

"—Like a wet sponge when I hit my leg—"

"—What magic feels like—"

"—A bit sooty—"

"—Remember—"

Kit's words and her father's words echoed in a dissonant, painful serenity through her mind. She scrunched her eyes together and tried to push through. "Like a hundred little empty bits," she said, "trapped behind stone, like bubbles but they're there and don't break. Like . . ." Kit made a soft, pained sound and reached a hand up to her forehead. Her father had stopped talking, held her tighter against him but Kit's attention was on her head that kept pounding, pounding.

"You were right." Her father whispered, and she thought through the pain of course, she had felt it . . . "How did you feel its insides?"

Kit went absolutely still. Her eyes opened suddenly and very wide.

"There's a magic to understand a thing, to read its djed and know all the pieces of it. It's called auristics, my Kova." He nuzzled the back of her neck. "And now you know its beginnings. It took a bell's work to get you see it for a second, but soon . . ."

"Dad," Kit said, a little tremor of terror crawling into her voice. "Stop touching me. Please."

"Aaa?" Maybe it was her imagination, but Kit thought she felt a stiffness in her father. "Of course. I'm sorry, Kit." He'd used her name! That brought her a tremendous relief. Her father's arm uncoiled from around Kit, and she took the opportunity to spring from his lap, pushing off him like the floor, nearly shoving the sick man off balance and not caring.

She turned around to face him and look at him with her arms wrapped protectively around herself. Kit thought she saw some measure of shock run through her father's face. He looked at his hands, and it turned to horror, disgust. "I think," he said, looking away from her. "I owe you an answer."

"W—why . . ." Kit stuttered. "Why did you and mom never take me with you? Why did you always leave me behind?"

Her father still wouldn't look Kit in the eye. "I insisted," he said, "the road is no place for a child to grow up, it's dangerous, and there are too many terrible things out there."

"But I got older! Why didn't you take me then?"

"The city is so much safer," her father had the heart to look her in the eye then. "No matter how old you are, I knew you'd be safer here and happier here."

You knew? You knew? Tears welled up in Kit's eyes and threatened to overspill. Her hands made little fists at her side. "You . . . You . . . You never asked!" She said, the raw emotion in her voice more a curse than any word she could have chosen.

"You don't mean that, you can't!" He said. Pleaded really. He looked so pathetic, but not half as pathetic as Kit felt. "I just wanted what would make you happy. Safe."

Kit marched over to the curved, glassless window and swung it wide open. She glared over her shoulder, tears running down her cheeks. "Keep your damned answers," she hissed, put her foot on the window and propelled herself outside, landing with lithe feet on the streets below, and she ran to some quiet place to cry in peace.
x

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name:Kit Rowan XP Award: Reimancy- 2 Meditation- 2 Auristics- 2 Lore: Daydreaming Through Lessons What Djed is The Definition of Personal Magic Snuffing a Candle with Reimancy Inheriting Mothers Nickname Initiated into Auristics Father 'knew' Best Notes: Ok, I really liked this thread. It had a lot of emotion and just heart put into it and it was a very well written piece. However, I am dead to the world right now working my butt off. If I missed some lore or EXP please PM me and we can discuss it Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM