Flashback Flowers In Her Hair

[Kit Rowan]

507 AV, Season of Summer, Day 32

After his prior tutoring session, Kit had been determined not to allow her father to rope her into another. She tried excuses, when excuses didn't work she pulled on defiance. She ignored him and yelled at him and slipped out her window into the night and wild streets where her father was too scared to follow. But inevitably she'd come back to her aunt and uncle's house to get some rest, to sleep and always her father was there, waiting like a sick puppy at the door with sad and hopeful eyes.

'I just want to help just a little session just so you won't hurt yourself I won't hurt you please you're all I have left, please let me be your father please let me teach you let me teach my daughter . . .'

At last she'd given and said FINE. But this time, SHE picked where.

The Garden of No Return.

There were few places in all Alvadas that better exemplified the city's nature. Ever-changing, ever-shifting, it was an infinite maze that never tired of confusing its occupants. The first time that Kit stepped foot into the maze when she was younger she emerged a week later, half-feral, babbling and smiling like a girl who had found a piece of lost treasure.

Kit felt comfortable there, which was why she picked it. Her father did not, which was also why she picked it.

He held her hand, spindly fingers wringing tight with fear and nerves around hers. She let the hand drift behind her, not looking back, back straight and step jaunty as she stepped through. Her father's hand clenched harder around hers, till the pressure turned to pain. "Slow, little Kova," he murmured. And Kit turned around to look.

Her father wasn't looking at her; eyes sunken into his gaunt face he watched the sides of the garden. Still he held still. "You're hurting my hand, papa." Kit said, and she smiled. Something about the garden made her feel playful. As soon as she said the word Kit felt the grip on her hand loosen. Her father looked into her eyes. She could read the question in them. Must it be here? Kit turned around and marched forward. "On we go!"

And on they went.

The garden was beautiful. All around them rose walls of hedge, and as Kit watched she saw some sliver and snake over open gaps and passageways, closing off the way till it looked no different than any other wall of the hedge. "Darling," her father said, and his voice was quavering. "How will you know the way out?"

But Kit only shrugged. "We gotta go further in," she said, avoiding the question entirely. "We're not near far enough." Serves you right for keeping me in the dark, Kit thought, for not telling me everything. Serves you right!

[Kit Rowan]

Deeper, deeper, deeper . . .

Kit led her father down a winding, sinuous path. She caught a glimpse of color out of the corner of her eye, released her father's hand and went running off the path into the grass, dew rising where she stepped and dampening her ankles as her father's voice cried, "Little Kova, no!" But she kept on running.

She crouched down in front of a bed of flowers and studied them with greedy eyes, a little girl in a sleeveless linen shirt and short trousers not reaching her knees, her red hair tucked into a little ponytail. She knelt closer, examined the flowers arrayed in front of her, grabbed and plucked a violet from the garden. She stood up straight and turned around to face her father, who still stood on the path, hands tight in nervous balls. She gave him a winning smile, slipped the little red flower into the base of her ponytail so it sat behind her head.

"Oh . . ." He said, and his eyes went a little glazed. "Kova . . ."

Again he dropped her mother's nickname on her. Was it a mistake? Or did he truly forget the distinction between his lover and his daughter? "Papa?" Kit asked, eager to remind him what she was, planting both her fists on her hips. "You okay?"

He shook the daze out of his eyes, waved her concern away with his hand. "Oh it's nothing you're just . . . Just so like your mother."

And there came the unease Kit had hoped to force away, snaking up and around her stomach like a real, living thing just waiting to start to strangle. Kit's eyes swung across the garden, found a bench just a little down the walkway. "You sit there," she said, pointing to it and already marching toward it herself. He sat down on the bench; there was plenty of room for two.

Kit chose to sit in the grass instead, resting on her rear, leaving both her legs vertical in front of her. For a while, neither parent nor child said anything at all. Strange birds sang in the gardens.

Her father coughed into his hand, made a sound in the back of his throat. "You know about Djed?" He asked. "You remember?"

Kit nodded once.

"Right." He sighed. "All things have Djed. Plants and animals and men . . ."

"And Gods." Kit rolled her eyes. "You said."

Her father clutched his hands together in front of him. But they didn't stay still; his fingers were always searching for some more optimal way, some more comforting way to hold the other, dancing like a nervous pair out for a ball across his knuckles. "Yes." He said. "Yes. But what I didn't say, is that everything that is has an aura."

This, she had not heard before. Kit tilted her head in a way that meant question.

"I said that what you did," her father licked his lips, refused to meet her eyes. "I said it was auristics, yes?" He didn't give her time to answer. "It's the power to see the aura of a thing's djed."

She narrowed her eyes, hmmmed. "So I can know everything about something by looking?"

"No, no." He shook his head. "Not everything, not nearly everything, ever. But some things. Important things," he said, when he realized that Kit's attention was beginning to wane. "I knew some people who use it to peer through walls. Kit? Can you still do it?" He went suddenly serious and still. "Do you remember how?"

[Kit Rowan]

Did she remember?

Kit remembered the sensations as she had explored the rock her father had provided. She reached up and held a hand against her temple, eyes squinting at the thought. Kit remembered feeling it with her hands and listened to its sound and rolling her thumb over its surface and the little trickles of baseless sensation that she hadn't thought to note. She tried to trace it back to something she had felt before, that she had seen or smelt or tasted before, but it was like trying to fit a sculpture into a picture frame; it didn't work. "I . . . think so." Kit said.

"Okay," he said. Her father pulled on his jacket so that its side was in front of him. He traced a pocket with a free hand. "There's something in here." He said. "I want you to try to see it."

Kit stared at her father, felt her eyebrows try to climb to the top of her head.

"You should be able to," he insisted. "Especially if my aura isn't in the way." He pulled his jacket off and held it in front of him. "You should be able to see its aura through this."

"But how?!" Kit raised her hands up. "I can't see it!"

"It shouldn't matter. Just . . . Will you try for me, little Kova? Please?" And there again he stared with his broken eyes, turned her own sympathy against her, fashioned them into emotional bars and chains to guide her his way.

"Alright," she growled, hugging her feet close to her chest as the breeze stirring her hair. "I'll . . . Try."

Kit closed her eyes, let thought and resentment and wrath fall out of her head, let sensation rule her. The grass where she sat tried to stand upright, to prick her through her trousers, like dozens of dull little leafy knives. The wind danced with airy fingers over her bare arms, shifted her clothes. The smell of flowers and trees and green things bloomed all around them, twining together like fabric into a new-woven shirt into a scent that Kit could only think to call life.

Now that she was here, Kit found the way to her new trick, her new magic clear. It was like breaking through a thick brush and finding a well-trod path on the other side. Kit felt her chest expand as she breathed in, tasting the air, felt it contract as she breathed out, feeling the warmth of her own inside in her mouth, on her tongue.

Kit opened her eyes and stared at her father's jacket. She wanted to see through it, wanted to see through it. She focused, and focused, holding her body tighter and tighter and she saw her father's jacket. Its aura was like a boot well worn, familiar and old, threadbare. She felt for a moment as though she were running her hands over its surface, feeling the roughness of the cloth under her fingers. But the pocket remained a mystery to her.

"I can't see inside," Kit hissed, and the frustration shook her carefully meditated peace like a boat in bad weather.

"You need a focus, Kova," her father said, and this time Kit was focusing so close she missed the misspoken word and lost look in his eye. He kept on speaking fast, clipped and excited, smiling to see someone stepping into the same world he lived in every day. "Chant your meaning, gesture your purpose. Like your reimancy, let your hands guide your intent, so your mind knows where to wander."

Kit bit down on her lip and nearly lost her concentration completely. Focus, he said. Focus how?

With her left thumb, she traced an inverted triangle over her left eye. With her right hand, she traced an inverted triangle over the correct pocket. Kit felt her attention shift from aura to aura before sliding right back. She did it again, again, again . . .

She made a frustrated sound and let herself topple backward into the grass, staring dejectedly into the sky. Her head, it pounded so . . . She didn't wanna think. She wanted to do absolutely nothing for a while.

"Did you see it?" Her father asked. There was a desperate sound to it. "Did you!?"

"No papa." Kit hissed, pressing a hand to her forehead. "No. Leave me be."

[Kit Rowan]

A pause. A heavy silence.

"There's no real rush, little Kova," her father said, though there was strain in his voice. "We don't want to push you too far, or too fast. It could cause damage. Do you know what that damage is called?"

Kit sighed. She crossed her arms behind her head and watched the clouds crawl across the sky. "Do you know what it's called?" She heard repeated again, in a sharper tone.

"Overgiving."

"Good. In auristics, overgiving can damage your senses. Or warp your thoughts. Do you remember the signs of overgiving in Reimancy, little Kova?"

Kit decided she didn't feel like laying down anymore. She pressed her hands against the ground and flung herself up, her body whipping from on its back in the grass to standing straight up. She casually dusted off her trousers. "The whispers, right?" She said, disinterested.

Her father must have to sensed her desire to move, as he stood up himself. He offered her a congratulatory smile. "Yes, yes, that's one. But always watch out for the taste of metal in your mouth, shaking, and loss of control of your spells. It means something has gone wrong, and you need to stop now."

It occured to Kit that the path was for people who had nowhere better left to go. She scanned the current boundaries of the garden—it had since shifted, of course—and started at a brisk jog toward a nearby tree with low branches. Her father might have cried out a protest, but she did not listen.

Kit trotted up to the tree, reached up and grabbed the lowest branch she could reach. Still; she wasn't quite tall enough to straight pull herself up. Instead, Kit planted a foot on the trunk of the tree, grabbed hold of a higher branch, took another step. When Kit was even with the lowest branch, she coiled her arm around it and heaved herself up on top of it, stood up on the branch and took a step higher on another nearby.

By the time her father had come to the tree Kit was nestled above his head, comfortable sitting in a little crook of a branch, feet swinging back and forth beneath her. "Be careful, little Kova!" He called up, as though she did not know exactly what she was doing, and Kit rolled her eyes at him.

"There's no reason to worry." She said, though Kt would be lying if she said that the concern in his face did vindicate some deeper part of her. "I'm fine."

But he shook his head. "Sometimes auristics can cause headaches," he said, "or dizziness! You could have fallen and broke your skull!"

Where were you, Kit couldn't help but wonder, when she had been exploring Alvadas alone? Where was she when she HAD fallen, when she HAD hurt her head against the pavement. "Don't be silly," Kit insisted. "I never fall."

[Kit Rowan]

Time passed. Kit continued scrambling about in her tree, climbing higher and higher till she got to the tallest branch that could support her weight. She put her back to the trunk of the tree and straddled the branch, leaning back against the trunk. The higher she went the higher the garden around her rose, or seemed to rise, weaving up taller and taller, refusing to give even the slightest hint of the maze's temporary layout as it shifted.

For a while she had managed to ignore that he father existed. But this time she couldn't. "Darling?" He called up the tree. "You've lost your flower."

Kit blinked, reached up and played with her ponytail. There was, sure enough, no flower there anymore. She must have lost it at some point during the climb. She shrugged. "So?" She said, peering down at her father between the branches.

"Wait here." Kit watched him march away toward a nearby bundle of flowers, and her eyebrow raised, half-convinced that the maze would do the cruel thing and close him off from her. But it allowed him to reach the flowerbed, reach down and pluck something and returned back, still walking. Her father had, she realized, a flower in his hand, a vivid blue. Kit leaned out from her branch a little, stared down.

"With Reimancy," he said. "You can transmute the elements, but not just that. You can attract and control what's already there." Her father held up a hand a thick globule of red, shimmery res slowly eased out of his hand, floating and shifting in the air. "We can attract and control what's already there, too. Can you control gaseous res, Kit?"

Kit frowned, nodded.

"Good." He made a motion with his hand, and suddenly the globule of res separated into a thick cloud of gas, no bigger than a man's head. "Reimancers make things. That means that air is an actual substance, just one that moves easily, like water. If you can attract all of the air in the middle of the gas, keep it from moving, you can make a bubble where things can sit, if they are very light." He dropped the flower into the red mists. It slowed, stopped, floated there. Kit's toes curled. Her father made a gentle upward motion with both hands and the res, along with the flower, ros into the air, floating between the branches until until it was maybe three arms length away from Kit.

"This is as far as I can go," her father said. "Can you take it up the rest of the way?"

Kit chewed on her lip. "Gimme' a tick."

"What was that?"

"I said give a me a tick!" Kit breathed in sharply. She lay down across her chosen branch on her belly and shimmied further, further, further out onto the tree, till it dipped and groaned dangerously under her weight.

"Little Kova!" Her father said, and the flower started to sink.

"I'm fine!" Kit hissed, but she went no further the flower was still further away than she could reach. She wrapped her legs around the branch and held them tight to keep her place steady while her hands were free. "Just hold it there." Kit held out her palm toward the flower. As she pushed, Kit felt a sensation of pressure from the inside of her hand, and res leaked out, the pleasure of casting making her shiver. She kept it going until she had a decent amount of res out, brought her hands together and took them apart, trying to split the ethereal liquid into gas.

And she did, for a moment, but it faded fast around the edges, already dissolving away. "Focus, Kit!" Her father called on up. "Don't stop focusing!"

"I'm trying!" Kit said, her eyes narrow. She held her hand together till it overlapped with her little cloud, as thought containing it, and the fading of res around the edges stopped. Kit breathed in deep, made a gentle pushing motion. The cloud of res floated, floated until it met, then melded, with her father's.

"Are you attracting?" Her father asked. "You don't want to drop it."

"Got it," Kit said, though her voice felt tight in her throat. She saw it when her father cut off his res' support, the flower dipped, nearly fell before Kit's fingers clenched and it stopped in the air. "Haaaaaaa."

"Little Kova?"

"I got it." Kit hissed. She made a slight, upward gesture with her hands and the flower began to lift. So much slower than when her father did it. Was the flower dipping, falling alright? Kit swallowed hard and resisted the urge to wipe sweat from her brow. Still she lifted the flower higher, and higher, and higher . . .

Then it was even with her. She snatched at it with her right hand, catching it along the stem, and her res fell apart, having already served its purpose. Her hands trembled as she examined the blue-white flower her father had picked out for her. It seemed very beautiful. Kit tucked it proudly into her ponytail and let her hands hang free over the edge, smiling a broad smile down her father. "I got it!"

"Very good, little Kova! Very good!" Her father shouted up at her, and she saw legitimate mirth in his face. A long-sought approve that made her heart warm in places that she thought gray and cold. Attraction is the basis of so much advanced reimancy. Especially for aeromancers, like you. Geomancers need earth to use attraction, pyromancers need fire, hydromancers need water . . . But air . . ." He said. ". . . Air is everywhere."

Kit swayed in place where she lay, felt her eyelids start to droop a little—can do anything—Ionu's own daughter—the world is yours—the sky is yours—Alvadas is yours—open skies and blood red eyes—Sivah, Sivah sing a song of summers spent in silence—Kova? "Kova!" Her father shouted, and Kit just caught herself before she toppled from her branch. "Are you listening?"

"Papa," Kit murmured, eyes nearly closed. "I feel weird."

[Kit Rowan]

"What do you . . . Oh. Oh! Oh!" He wrung his hands, his face pale."Little Kova I need you to—He abandoned you, left you to sit rudderless, don't listen, don't—okay?" Kit stared at her father through the branches, perplexity and the beginnings of hostility crawling over her face. Why should she have to listen to this man? He wasn't the parent Kit wanted. She wanted her mom, the entertainer, the traveler, not this half-withered, mad wizard of a father! "Kit, I don't know what you're seeing, but please come down." He said, clasping his hands together almost in prayer. Was he praying to her? Hah! "You've overgiven, and you don't want to be in the tree when more symptoms hit."

Kit narrowed her eyes through the branches and bit the inside of her lip, searching for some reason to say no. The world seemed to lurch around her, and Kit felt her breakfast try to forced itself back up her throat. "Yeah," she said instead. "Okay."

Climbing down was easier than climbing up. At at least, it should have been easier. There was no need to pull or climb, just let Semele's embrace carry her further down . . . But Kit kept making stupid mistakes. Her foot slipped on the second branch, leaving her father gasping below her., and Kit was saved only by holding her grip until she could put her feet in the right place.

Down, down, down . . . And then her heel slipped while she wasn't grabbing hold of anything. Kit plummeted out of the tree. Her father screamed.

Kit landed in an easy crouch, saw her father holding hands to his face, locked in a petrified expression. She gave him a feeble smile. "I'm fine, papa."

"Oh . . . Kova!" He ran toward her, ran for perhaps the first time she'd see since he walked into the garden. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed so tight Kit could barely breathe. "I was so worried." His right hand skirted possessively along the shape of her spine till it reached her head. He tilted her head up toward his, made a kissy-face and tried to close the distance.

Kit's eyes went wide. "Papa. PAPA!" She shouted trying to bring him back to sense, bringing up her own hand to serve as a wall between his lips and hers.

"Oh Kova," he wailed pulling her body closer to his and letting his hands fall in places more appropriate for lovers than daughters. "What have I done wrong?!" but this time he seemed beyond recovery. Pulling back her foot, she drove her knee between her father's legs as hard as her little body could manage.

He grunted in pain and released Kit, and and she darted away, more a creature of panic than thought, into the maze of flowers and hedges. "Kova, why?! Why!?" She heard him call after her, and when she turned around she saw him, one hand stretched out toward her. A hedge began to knit together as the walls behind her closed. "No! Please, don't leave me again!"

Then she could not see her father at all. The wind carried his soft crying to her through the hedge maze. Kit laid a hand on the greenery of the maze, closed her eyes and said; "Thank you."

[Kit Rowan]

Kit wanted nothing but to be away from her father, and so she ran, walked, staggered down the lines the mazes gave her until his voice faded into the sounds of wind and shifting vine. Then she began to remember why this place was called the Garden of No Return. Every turn she made took her to strange, unfamiliar walkway with unfamiliar walls while her head throbbed and her heart beat.

The sun sailed across the sky. Morning turned to noon, and hunger took Kit. She found a bush full of berries and fell to her knees next to it, grabbing them and shoving the sweet fruit into her face until red juices spilled out of her mouth. Noon turned to evening, and while Kit tried to hold it in for as long as she could, but in the end she was forced to drop her pants and relieve herself behind some bushes. Evening turned to night.

Kit crawled to the edge of a fountain, cupped water in her hands and drank in spite of the way it slipped through her loose fingers. She drank and drank and drank and when at last she had her full Kit stared into the water. The moon hung like a silver coin in the water. A girl' stared out of the water, meeting Kit's. Her hair had long since been torn out of its tail and hung wildly about her face. She looked dirty, wild, and her eyes were opened too wide. Her shoulders were hunched, and Kit could see her mouth as it nervously jerked. It took a moment longer for Kit to realize that she was looking at herself.

She splashed water onto her face and massaged her cheeks. Dark shadows of paranoia shifted in the corner of Kit's vision, and she jumped to her feet, turned around in a circle. "Who's there?!" She shouted, clenching her hands into fists. "WHO!?"

No one answered.

"Oh gods," Kit breathed, shutting her eyes and shaking her head. "I'm crazed." Her shoulders shook for a moment in silent sobs . . . or maybe laughter? Kit couldn't tell the two apart. "Papa's been crazed and he gave it to me." She fell on her rear and held her head in her hands. Would this go away? Or would it haunt it forever, like her father's did? "I don't want to be crazed," Kit whispered. "Oh gods, I don't want to be crazed." She stomped her foot onto the grass and shouted; "I DON'T WANT TO BE CRAZED!"

The world was quiet around her. The world did not care what she wanted.

As night turned to morning, and the red rays of Syna's light peeked over the hedge, Kit curled up into a little ball in the grass and slept.

[Elysium]

Kit Rowan

Experience
Auristics +3
Reimancy +2
Observation +3
Climbing +2
Acrobatics +1

Lore
Auristics: The Aura
Auristics: Using a Focus
Lore: Overgiving
Reimancy: The Principle of Attraction
Reimancy: Using a Pocket of Air
Overgiving: Sweet Whispers
Acrobatics: Softening the Blow

Notes
This was a heartbreaking flashback. You portray Kit's Father all too clearly, as he struggles to regain her shattered trust. I feel so bad for you characters, especially poor Kit! If you have any questions, please let me know.