An Exchange of Arts (Celeste)

[Kit Rowan]

Celeste seemed just fine. Satisfied, Kit backed off and gave the girl some space. "Don't rush. It's better to take this slow." Kit foundered herself mirroring her father's words. Sheepish, she took her seat again. Now it was her turn.

"That . . . Makes sense." Kit said, leaning forward, hands on knees. "Papa always said reimancy was like bleeding your soul, that res was its blood then spilled. If it's like that, maybe morphing is just . . . changing it." Kit fell back into her chair and furrowed her brow. Was that how Celeste had caught on to auristics so fast? Was all sorcery intertwined in that way, each leading into another? "Okay," Kit said, rubbing her hands together. "I'll give it a try."

Her father had said that magic was best used from a place of calm control. Kit closed her eyes to keep outside influence out of her head, closed her ears to the sounds of birds and the gentle creaking of the city in the wind. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Kit tried to imagine her Djed, to feel it in the same way she felt another's, but in the end she left herself feeling silly, sitting around doing nothing.

Maybe Celeste was good enough, or well trained enough to understand the basic flows of her own djed, to pick them apart from each other, but Kit was not. She was not even sure where to begin. If her father had been around, he would have said something about gestures surely. Coping mechanisms to ease the learning . . .

Kit barely understood how a loom worked, and aside from picking at rugs knew only the basics of weft and weave. It was unfamiliar to her. But maybe she could use something else. Breathe in, breathe out.

She listened to her body, felt the way her weight pressed into the chair bottom against her back. The way her clothes brushed against her skin, the way the wind ran through her hair. Kit knew the little curiosities of her body intimately; she had stretched it, exercised it, pushed it. She imagined it now, as complete as she could, tried to make it breathe as she did. Spasm as she did. It was her body. Her body, to warp and change as she felt fit . . . Kit raised hands to her face, pressed against them . . . Nothing happened. She borrowed the way she influenced her body into res, the sideways tilt she let her sensations take. You are mine. Change! She thought, and felt skin mold beneath her fingers like clay.

Kit imagined Celeste'. The shape shape of her own retreated, losing tick by slow tick what little hardness maturity had given her. She thought of the shape of her skin; round chin, gradually broadening up into her face. When Kit lifted her hands from her face what looked back at Celeste was a simple mimicry of her the younger girl's face; the cheeks were fine, as was the overall shape, but still Kit's nose, still Kit's eyes. Kit grimaced with a face that wasn't her own. "Gods," she whispered and shook her head hard, and her natural dimensions reasserted themselves immediately. "It's so tight! Like . . . Like . . . Like wearing a shirt you're too big for." It seemed to chafe, her natural face constantly insisting on retaking what belonged to it. "How do you stand it?"

[Celeste Arumen]

Celeste watched in quiet fascination as the girl attempted to turn her sight inward. She’d never really instructed anyone before. Perhaps she’d given her too advanced an explanation for someone just starting out. But it seemed she at least had some idea of what to do. After seemingly a moment’s frustration, Kit gathered her self. The shape of her face began to shift and change, cheeks rounding and becoming full, chin threading down to a keener point, until she’d emulated the heart-shaped frame that Celeste had always known.

The observation made her laugh. ”Well, whenever you’re ready, you can let the shape go. All it takes it releasing the focus and you just snap right into place.” She punctuated her words with a little clap. ”You did better than I did the first time. I could barely even make my fingernails grow longer, let alone change the shape of my face!” She thought with a poorly disguised grimace about the first time Grams had showed her how to emulate the characteristics of different animals. It had not gone well.

”Let me see,” she said, having recovered slightly from the first unpleasant encounter with auristics. Bending down, she retrieved the flower that Kit had cast to the ground. It was pretty, the brilliant golden center ringed with delicate white petals. Closing her eyes, she again made the triangle across her heart, this time trying to focus on perhaps one facet of Kihala’s creation. Quietly, she reached out, trying to feel the flower’s energy by sound, rather than scent. What would a flower sound like, if it could sing? Her mind gently touched the halo of energy around the shuddering little being.

After a few moments a lilting little whistle, like the sound of grass being caressed like the wind, touched her ears from inside. Celeste gave a soft coo of delight, trying to listen further to the auristic melody of the flower. Perhaps then she could open her eyes and see what color it made, among other things. Her heart soared.

When she did however, the tune was gone. Celeste frowned. ”I was listening to the flower sing, but then when I opened my eyes it stopped.” How frustrating. Maybe she needed that focus to really touch an aura. ”If I can keep the visual of the aura in my head without closing my eyes, maybe I can do it again.”

This time, she tried to see the color that surrounded it. She stared intently at the tiny thing, searching with the power of her intuition for the aura. At first, nothing happened. But in a moment or so, a faint whisper of energy surfaced around it, a barely visible filigree of molten gold. To Celeste, this was the color of simple things, of life.

She gasped. The aura puffed out of existence. ”Neat!” She exclaimed. ”I’m rubbish at it, but for a second it actually worked!”

[Kit Rowan]

"Right," Kit said, letting her hands run over the familiar contours of her own face, to make sure everything was back the way it should have been. She had an urge to find a mirror and check to be sure; Kit did not quite trust her hands. "That's a relief, I wouldn't want to get stuck."

When Celeste chose to start again, Kit noted with some relief that she chose the flower for her practice. She knew first-hand how much a tiny distraction could destroy a beginning Aurist's focus, she she leaned forward and shut up. Kit drew an inverted triangle over her eye, and again Celeste's aura blossomed around her. Kit tried to find evidence of the girl's casting somewhere in the tangled whorls of light that spun around Celeste, but she did not know where to look in the chaos to find it.

"Didn't hurt quite so much that time, huh?" Kit let the corners of her mouth curl up. "I think maybe an aura is . . . Brighter the more djed it's attached too. So it's easier to read them than people. Because . . . It's less dense. Less noisy." The next time Celeste turned her spell to the flower Kit felt a . . An echo, so soft she might have missed it if she hadn't been paying close attention. Was this was it felt like to watch an aurist with auristics? Kit thoguht so. "There you go," she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. "You've got it."

She rubbed her itchy eyes until the strain finally began to leave her. "Do you think maybe it's easier to learn other magic, once you've already got a little bit know?" She asked. "It seems like we're both doing pretty well." Kit held out her hand, narrowed her eyes and focused, as hard as she dared. She reached with her other hand, grabbed at the web between her thumb and index finger and tugged.

Again nothing. She had to close her eyes and forget the rest of the world existed. Just her and her hand. She pulled again, and felt the skin begin to give way. She peeked through one eye . . . Frowned. Kit had been hopped for a web like she imagined that Konti and charoda had between their fingers, but all she had done was stretch hers out like a piece of taffy. Maybe she hadn't imagined it clearly enough? "Trickster keep me keen . . . I can't imagine how you can change your whole body without making a mess of it." Kit let it go, and it snapped right back into place, just like Celeste said. "Papa always said that magic is like a knife whose hilt cuts." She licked her lips, flexed her fingers. "What happens to you if a morph goes sour?"

[Celeste Arumen]

Celeste listened closely to Kit’s advice. She certainly had more experience with the discipline than she did, having only just begun. It applied in several different ways too; a person was noisy because their soul had many layers, which was something she’d already known. Flowers didn’t have personalities or anything. But likewise, they weren’t plagued by feelings, either. The aura of a person might reflect how that person was feeling on top of whom they were. It was a simple deduction to make.

Things were going well for both of them, considering. Yet, she was somehow not surprised. It was likely in part, the fact they both already had experience with manipulating their djed. Kit seemed to have a similar idea, at that. Celeste beamed. Perhaps they really were kindred, after all. ”I was just thinking the same thing.” Now, how to further expand on that? ”Perhaps all the magical arts are complementary. I mean if you think about it, it makes sense. They’re all in some way tied to djed.”

She watched with warm affection as Kit pulled at the web of her hands. Was it just for sport, or was she trying to accomplish something specific? Now that would remain a mystery – but whatever it was, it didn’t seem to work the way she’d planned. ”Well, he was right about that,” Celeste said. Even the hand that wielded the power could just as easily get cut. Magic was much like a cobra. You never knew when it’d recoil and turn on he who charmed it.

”Well, you get stuck. Just like you said earlier.” She made a face, thinking about some of her more recent consequences. The least that’d ever happened to her was that she’d accidentally got her toenails stuck too long and had to waddle everywhere for a couple of weeks. ”If your face gets stuck like mine, we’d at least get to be twins.” Now that was a funny thought. Kit was rather cute wearing her face. Maybe she could even teach her how to copy the other features.

”A good way to practice is to try just what you did. Shifting little things helps. In the end, the idea is to get more flexible. The reason people get stuck is because your djed is stretchy, but when you push it too far, it can lose the ability to snap back into place. It grows dull, more easily changed. Which is a good thing. But sometimes, your djed just forgets what it once was. It doesn’t go back.”

She frowned. It was a scary thought.

[Kit Rowan]

"I guess technically everything is manipulating Djed." But that was splitting hairs. "Not like this, though . . . Not directly. I think you're right." It was something to muse on. Her father's book always insisted that a mage's arts made a person . . . More. Was that true? Were the pair of girls s few steps closer to something more than human? Wicked thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.

When Celeste went deeper into the consequences . . . Overgiving, she remembered the term, overgiving . . . Kit shifted uneasily in her sheet, looked down at her hand. She had walked into this with her eyes open; no surprises, like there had been with Papa. This time at least Kit understand what it was that she was risking. "You're right. That wouldn't be the worst thing to get stuck on." She said, gave Celeste a smile, but it was subdued.

As Celeste went on to explain the nature of morphing, Kit found herself nodding. It made sense; she couldn't imagine pushing further than she already had. Her body wasn't used to changing, it still remembered being a girl who was the same shape always, and had yet to come to terms with the fact that maybe it didn't have to be. "So it's like doing stretches? First your body doesn't want to bend at all, then it'll bend a little, and then you can put your feet behind your ears?" Kit would have to be gentle with her djed, just as she had with her muscles. Introducing the idea to it slowly, until maybe one day she could as fluid with it as Celeste was with hers.

Kit wondered if Celeste's aura revealed some tell, if some light in the storm of her halo whispered of her elastic djed even when she was not changing. This time Kit elected not to search for it. "Well," she said. "There are always risks."

It was only fair that Kit share her half of dangers. "Auristics really isn't the same. It's not as . . . Physical as Reimancy and this morphing. It'll still mess you up, but it'll do it . . ." Kit pushed a finger to her temple. "Here. I pushed too hard once, and everything I said was nonsense. Your eyes, ears, taste . . . It can all get dull, or locked on one thing you saw a day ago and not let go." Kit took a sip of the lemonade. Smiled. "This tastes wonderful."

[Celeste Arumen]

She noted that Kit had slightly less enthusiasm at the mention of overgiving. Celeste really couldn’t blame her. It was certain the two of them had their own less-than-pleasant encounters with magic in the past. The more you practiced, the more you realized it to be inevitable. You would push too far and get burned, emboldened by past success. But you would learn. Celeste had on several occasions, having started as a very small child. It was a wonder she hadn’t gotten herself killed, from amount of supervision Grams had given her.

Her counterpart spoke like she knew how to stretch, or at least knew the theory behind it. ”Yes, just like that.” Celeste replied, being drawn into the metaphor. Was Kit an acrobat, like the Inverted? The idea was very appealing. The little girl couldn’t imagine how to move as they did. But perhaps the metaphor worked both ways; with effort, she one day could potentially manipulate her body just as easily as her djed. But that was a thought for another time.

Which let them to the risks of Auristics. Now that was truly terrifying; to get your physical body stuck was one thing, but the lose your mind… Celeste felt a pang of cold fear, at that. Was that how her Mother went? Dove too deep, too far into someone’s aura and lost herself there? The little girl knew virtually nothing of her parents. For all she knew, her Mother was an Aurist or a Reimancer or a Summoner. Petch, she could’ve been a Morpher just like Grams, playing a dancing bear for the circus.

But whatever she was, she lost it before the end. Celeste didn’t want to die like that. For as much and as often as she changed her appearance, she was still herself inside. Even if no one else knew who exactly that was, she did. Having something concrete to hold on to… That was what essentially kept her going. The feeling was written all over her face, too. Celeste looked pale, pinched, a little ball of worry. But what if, what if?

She exhaled, long and low, working to expel the rising hysteria. ”Sorry,” she said, and suddenly she looked very much like a small child, rather than any kind of mage. ”I just thought of Mum for a second there.” That would explain it, she was sure. ”I can’t imagine losing who I am. No matter what, I don’t want to lose that.”

[Kit Rowan]

Kit looked up from her lemonade when she got no response to find Celeste staring pale-faced at something . . . elsewhere. She was frightened enough, and Kit's description of auristic's consequences were the only thing that could have caused it, but it had not truly struck her as something horrifying . . .

When Celeste mentioned her mother Kit bit down on her lip in remembrance. Kit stared for a few ticks. What would Rechail do? She would say that this was the way mizahar worked, so toughen up. But that felt wrong right now. Celeste understood plenty, she wasn't some half-learned thief trying to skip out of wwork. What would . . . What would her father do? Her mouth made a little line. Kit set down her glass, stood up and marched over to the girl and tried to pull her into a hug.

She gave the little girl a protective squeeze. Everything is going to be just fine. "I haven't known you for a long time, Cel . . ." Kit said. It had not been very long at all. "But you don't seem to me like the kind that'll roll over and let the madness in. You're too keen, too cunning, and too clever for that. And not just that, you've your grams, and you've me." Gods, what a thing to say! "I mean, look at me!" She grabbed Celeste's shoulder and pushed her just far back enough that Kit could actually try to look into her eyes and gave the girl her most charming smile. "Do I seem crazy to you?"

OOCAaaaggh short, but I've fit everything in there I wanted too. Still feeling kinda bad about it anyway.

[Celeste Arumen]

It seemed Kit had caught on. She felt a sudden pang of guilt at exposing her fear; this was the very first time they’d truly been together, after all. She didn’t want to go spoiling that with talk of madness. But oh, the turn-around! Kit pledged herself to the girl faster than she could blink. The young girl allowed this brief respite from her worry and smiled back, placing a tiny hand on the one circling her shoulder. ”You?” She replied in her little voice. ”Crazy? Never.” Her tone was thick with humor. But it meant she was okay, at least for a little while. Celeste would do her fretting in private from now on.

”Every reward has a measure of risk,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. ”It’s just all about being careful.” And she would be, most assuredly. Celeste closed her eyes again, straining to hear the flower sing. One mental hand outstretched, she tried to caress the sphere of djed. The outward aura vibrated cheerfully, singing of the buzzing of the bees, the creeping ache of growth and the powerful, nourishing rays of the sun. It chorused in vegetative ecstasy and she listened, smiling. Would it soon cease to sing, wither and die? If so, the flower did not seem concerned. It was simply rejoicing in the sense of being alive.

The little girl was thrilled at the novelty of it all. She opened her eyes and sighed, twirling the trifle between her thumb and forefinger. ”It sings because it’s content. Djed itself is a lot different than what it represents. Life is just happy to be alive, I think.” She mused aloud. ”I think I can relate.” Her smile was warm, her eyes rich and fertile in the sun.

”So, would you like to keep practicing?” She noted that Kit’s glass was slowly dwindling. ”Would you like more lemonade?” She gestured to the carafe of liquid on the table between them. Celeste was endlessly inquiring, even with the small things it seemed. Grams would always say she was so quick to question that she could scarcely remember the answers.

[Kit Rowan]

Tweaking the younger girl's nose and rolling her eyes, Kit said "I'll have you know I'm the sanest girl I've ever known. And since I'm sane, you can trust that!" But Kit was glad to Celeste had turned to laughter instead. It was by far a better mender than anything Rak'keli could cook up.

Kit bit on her tongue, turning her eyes up and considered for a long moment before she nodded. "Mhm. When Papa talked about Djed, he was being all boring. Like he knew what it was, but when he talked about it, it seemed a cold thing. A dull thing. It's like saying . . ." Kit pinched her nose and twisted her expression into an ugly parody of itself. "Food is something you eat, so you can live. Sleep is something you do, so you can rest." Only then did she unscrutch her face. "Only they forget to talk about flavor, only they forget to talk about dreams. If Ionu believes we ought to sense whatever we can, I think they would adore Auristics, cause it can let us feel the world in ways we never could."

Her father was a wizard, but he had never favored Ionu like Kit had. Kit's faith had been a terrible unspoken secret between them, and so she had kept this thought hidden. But Celeste loved Ionu as well. She bore their mark, didn't she?

Kit welcomed herself to another cup of lemonade. "Your grammy makes great lemonade," she said, taking her cup and bringing it greedily to her mouth for another deep sip. And buy her some time. Could they do more? Was it safe to do more? Kit felt fine, aside from a slight tingle in her face that still protested being forced into another face. She clapped the lemonade down. "Alright," she said, rubbing at her arms. "Papa taught me a bit of auristics, but first he gave me Reimancy. It was what he was best at, and he wanted it to be my best too." The initiation wasn't anything that she was prepared to give Celeste. But Celeste seemed to have already been initiated.

"You probably already know a lot about it," Kit confessed, wringing her hands. "But that's really the last of what my papa taught me that I didn't pull out of his book."

[Celeste Arumen]

The little girl nodded, rapt. Her explanation made perfect sense. She loved Ionu dearly and it seemed Kit felt the same. In fact, she couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t in the first place. Then again, she’d never ventured into the local apothecary. ”You’re right,” she said. ”Ionu is about savoring life and embracing each passing sensation.” She remembered their merry chase and how fun it had been. At the time, she had only been preoccupied with the thrill, with no actual thought of catching him. For her innocence, her ability to take life as it came and simply enjoy it, she had been blessed.

She smiled, delighting in Kit’s content. ”I’ll tell her you said that,” the illusionist replied. ”She’ll be pleased.” Isolde took compliments marvelously from everyone but her. When it came from Celeste, it didn’t count. Or at least that was how it seemed, anyway. Likewise, it seemed that Kit had plans other than the lemonade. Celeste anxiously scooted to the very edge of her chair.

”Well, I actually don’t know very much about it.” She sighed, allowing a tiny bit of Res to drift up from one hand. The purple substance was no more than a papery fog, hovering precariously before she dispensed it into a light gasp of air. The tiny gale brushed ineffectively past Kit’s russet locks. ”See? What good is it for, anyway?” The little girl frowned. ”All that pain, for what? Grams told me to read about it, but all the books she has about reimancy are in the ancient tongue.” She seemed very upset about this, too. Celeste could speak at least three different languages. She didn’t understand why she had to learn another.

”I can teach you hypnotism, if you teach me how to make sense of this rubbish.” She waved the hand with the initiation scar.