Flashback Taste Beyond Taste

[Kit Rowan]

Day 67, Season of Summer, 513 AV

Kit woke before morning the sun rose to a thin, feeble desire to itch herself. She scratched at her side, hoping against hope that it would fade away. Of course, it did not. She breathed a sigh and rolled over in her bed so that her belly was pointed downward, face buried in her pillow. Kit huffed into it and waited for sleep to take her again.

It did not.

She felt the sun across her back before she saw it, a warm reminder that the day had begun again, peering through open curtains. Kit grumbled into her pillow, pulled her blankets around herself and curled into a ball with them. She offered Nysel a sullen prayer to take her hand and bring her back into the world of dreams.

He did not. Kit hissed and slammed both fists into her pillow, sighed.

There was a knock of knuckles on wood. Kit's 'room' had no proper door, and when people came to greet her they often walked up the stairs and right inside. And Kit was fine with that, mostly. Her father, on the other hand, had learned he was not welcome, and found his way to work around it, venturing up the stairs and making noise to be sure she knew he was there. "Darling? Are you awake?" She heard him ask.

Rather than answer, she rolled over in her bed and cradled her hands behind her head, peered sideways in bed at the abandoned stairwell. Her father continued waiting for her to answer. He waited in vain.

"I just wanted to know how you were feeling. The symptoms should be getting better now. Are you comfortable?"

Kit grimaced gave to the urge of an a scratch on her thigh, pulling her chemise up to better get at it. Still, she said nothing.

"It's still probably not smart to practice your reimancy, it takes a long time for a body to recover from pushing itself too far in that, and pushing further could be dangerous. Especially if you're still feeling something."

Silence.

"But if you're feeling mostly better, it may be okay if you practiced auristics, instead, so long as you didn't push yourself too far. It is a far less draining magic, and . . ."

"Papa?" Kit said, neutral, cold.

There was a shocked pause. Kit imagined his thoughts; She is talking me again? Finally! "Yes, sweetheart?"

"Get away from my room."

[Kit Rowan]

After Kit did her morning stretches and dressed, she escaped to the relative safety of the streets where sound and life could chase away the silence. Kit found the crowd and moved through them, let the noise of conversation, the smells of the city and the pressure of persons push the irritating itch into the back of her mind.

Shere took a turn here, there, walked into The Bizarre and watched the world expand; it seemed to her as if she was standing at the lip of a great dome, people milling all around her. There were enough people in this dome to fill all of Alvadas a a million times over, to fill every city in mizahar a thousand times over, all of them persons walking from store stall to store stall shopping. Or at least, it seemed that way.

Kit wandered through until she found something that made her nose rise up, the corners of her mouth twisting toward her eyes. She followed the scent to a circle of fruit merchants, their goods exotic and strangely shaped. Her mouth watered, Kit licked her lips. She considered bolting through, grabbing a piece of fruit and making a run for it . . .

No, she thought, tucking her hands into her pocket. It had been a long time. Better to be safe. She propped herself on a wooden crate and leaned back, holding out her hand against the wood to keep her from falling all the way down, dug her toenails against over her other leg and let the cascade of senses roll over her body.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit's eyes caught a small boy, clinging to an older woman's hand. He said something, eyes turned up toward her, expression full of childhood sullenness, while the woman stared down, ran a hand over his head, smiled an accommodating smile before the crowd pressed together, breaking Kit's line of sight. He wasn't who he ought be. Her father.

She had daydreamed.

The girl leaned forward, slouching her back, letting her hands rest on her knees. Shut her eyes tight. She remembered him carrying her up the stairs to her room, the brush of lips against her forehead. His insistent, irritating, endearing worry over her well-being. The distant look in his eye when his mind didn't click, and he mistook her for someone else. The pain that wracked her body when he introduced res into her system.

Was there anyone else in the whole wide world that would call her 'daughter?' She clawed at her ankle. No . . . Kit thought not. She was the daughter of a wizard and madman. He was all she had. Had she been a poor daughter to him? Was that why he always managed to forget who she was?

"Aw petch," she shook her head. This was the thought she'd left to keep away from! Kit slapped a hand against her thigh and sat up straight. Anything to clear her thoughts . . . She closed her eyes, breathed. What was it her father had said? Clear your mind, let thought . . . fall away, feel everything.

It was difficult in a room with nothing but the floor under her feet and the clothes on her body. Here, it was even harder. People talked, laughed, shouted, cursed. "Fish, fish from the patchwork port—look like apples, taste like oranges—vegetable meat! Eyes say meat, tongue says carrots. Fool your friends—" It was hard. Maybe one of the hardest things Kit had ever done. But eventually the sound of their voices echoed in Kit's ears, the meaning falling away from words under her focus, becoming a faded, senseless jabbering on the edge of her awareness.

She opened her eyes and immediately the color and sight of her irrational home threatened to overwhelm the small peace she had built up in her mind. Still she held on, gritted her teeth, sought something to focus on . . . The food. Yes, the food. She turned her eyes to a pile of breadrolls brought out on a stall near her, where there wasn't much traffic to interrupt her sight. She reached up with her thought, dug it into the skin below her left eye and traced an inverted triangle around it.

Kit felt the aura before before she saw it. Warm . . . Like she was holding it in her hand ad she spoke. It was pleasantly warm. Still fresh, or enchanted to seem fresh even when it wasn't. Her father had said that auras of objects were simple, but even this little piece of bread seemed utterly unfathomable to her. Touch she understood, but the rest of what she saw in it was senseless color, sound and sensation.

. . . Could she taste it, too? Was she already tasting it, and just not understanding? The thought nearly fractured her focus into pieces, but gave her new reason to focus. Taste. She thought at the bread. Nothing happened. Let me taste you!

Still nothing.

Gesture your purpose. Her father had said. So your mind knows where to wander. Kit stuck out her tongue, and this time she drew an inverted triangle there. It was like . . . Looking an an optical illusion. The aura looked . . . Her head reeled . . . It looked like taste. She tasted . . .

. . . Bread. If this cook was an illusionist, they'd bothered to alter the taste as well as sight and touch She felt it as sure as if she had taken a bite out of it herself, her tongue savoring something strange and . . . Cinnamon, Kit thought. They were cinnamon breadrolls!

Like a picture that looked like both a rabbit and a duck, depending on how you looked at it. The aura looked like bread. It tasted like bread. It was both at the same time . . . Kit's eyes were wide at the feeling . . . Like she had just found a new arm that so far she'd just let lie around doing nothing. It was . . .

And then, as her mind turned from what she saw to what she thought, her concentration broke like a string under great tension. "Uggh . . ." Kit rubbed at her forehead and closed her eyes to keep the suddenly unwelcome color and movement out of her eyes.

[Kit Rowan]

"Hey, girl."

"HEY!" Kit shook her head and peeked through her right eye, saw a woman with hands on her hips, staring. "You alright there? Saw you looking at my rolls, then you got all . . ." The baker shrugged. "You want a roll? Five silver is all you gotta pay." She plucked a roll from the table and took a great big sniff of it. "Aaah . . . Damn good. Be a shame if it was wasted . . ."'

"It's . . . No thanks." Kit pushed off her create, looked up and saw the exit to the Bizarre, right where she needed it, as always. Kit smiled and took a few staggering steps toward it.

"Oh come on," the merchant called after her. "Don't leer at my buns and just turn away!" Kit heard the woman laugh as she pushed through the exit, the sound cutting off as suddenly as if it had never existed at all. Kit staggered to the side, fell against the wall next to the entrance and slumped down, holding her arms close to her, waiting for the world to stop spinning, for the taste of cinnamon to fade from her tongue. In chimes, it did, the backwash fading from her eyes and tongue, leaving only a bewildered wonder.

Variety was Ionu's greatest passion, experience and sensation. Kit had not understood her father's lessons . . . Or rather she had, but only now did she understand. Her senses had expanded so much now; she could taste the ground without worrying about picking up bad humors on her tongue. Could she smell things too? More?

. . . No, her senses were feeble and weak, like an kitten struggling to see when its eyes had barely begun to open. But there was so much room . . . But she wanted . . . Wanted . . .

Kit sighed and stared up into the sky.

Day became night and Kit found herself crawled back up into bed, staring wide eyed at the roof. She scratched her side, shifted, fell over on her side. Leth had not graced Akajia with his presence that night, and without his light the world outside her window was pitch dark. Kit closed the curtains shut, fidgeted.

Thunkthunk.[i] She heard her father tap against the wall. "Darling?" He called, and Kit clutched her blankets tighter. [i]Thunkthunk. "Are you alright?" Did he do this, knowing one day she'd find out what she could do? Knowing one day, she'd want to explore it further, and want his help to make it so? Kit admired it for its cleverness. And Kit hated it.

She hated it because it worked.

" . . . Papa," Kit said, and bit down on her lip. She sat up and crossed her legs. "Could you come up? I've some questions."

[Elysium]

Kit Rowan

Experience
Auristics +3
Observation +3

Lore
Alvadas: The Bizarre
Auristics: Tasting Auras
Aura: Cinnamon Breadrolls
Variety; Ionu's Greatest Passion

Notes
Oooh. This was short but very keen! I think you did rather well.