Breath Of Fresh Air

by **Kit Rowan** on September 27th, 2013, 8:03 pm

Day 55, Season of Fall, 513 AV

The evening sun kissed the horizon and inflamed its edges like a wound left to rot. Kit crept through the docks of the city where the orange light of near-dead day colored the streets of Ravok and the shifting waters of the canals in bloody hues There was a dread beauty to it all, the people of Ravok milling about, never looking from side to side, each certain that the whole world revolved around their lives.

They didn't turn their heads, didn't see the small girl in leathers jogging past them, didn't see her peek warily into a little alley. She saw nothing suspicious, a building with a low roof, and made her way inside.

Kit took a run up toward the wall, jumped toward it, hit the wall with her feet first, took a step up and grabbed the edge of the roof before she could fall. Kit didn't let herself stop, pulling herself further up the roof with a grunt without letting the momentum of her leap and vertical step fade completely. She crawled over the rooftop, found its center, looked around and saw that the buildings around her had been built higher.

This was a sheltered space. A safe place. Kit sighed, remembered how she had elected to practice when she was alone in Alvadas. Find a rooftop somewhere safe and hidden from public eyes and stay there. She had been terribly afraid of the discovery of her magic, then. Quite terribly. Perhaps it was a smaller thing to her now? Or perhaps it didn't matter so much when it wasn't just her magic that Kit was hiding, but her everything.

Kit closed her eyes, her ears almost accustomed to the hideous laughter of Ravok's twisted gulls, put her hands together as if in prayer and tried to clear her mind of thoughts. It was one thing to not notice she were pushing too far when blood was already pumping in her ears. But when she had calmed her heart, when she had prepared herself in a quiet place, when she had learned the regular rhythms of her own body at rest? Not feeling when she began to approach the edge of her power was almost hard.

Not that she meant to push to the edge. At least, not today. Her practice now was for an entirely different purpose.

by **Kit Rowan** on September 28th, 2013, 6:17 am

Kit cupped her hands as though trying to keep water from slipping between her fingers, let her eyes fall half-lidded and breathed in deep, till her chest swelled outward and it hurt the inside of her chest to hold it. She breathed out, felt a jolt of pleasure run through her body and watched as res cascaded from the palm of her hand upward, like water trickling off a roof in slow motion, only going the wrong way. She focused, stopped it about a hand above her palm, where it coagulated into a bundle of pulsing, luminescent green gel the size of her fist.

Her father had taught her that air was a substance, as real as earth and water and with all their power. A reimancy didn't have to manipulate what was already there, though they could; a reimancer transmuted. Kit was not restricted to pulling the air this way and that; she could make it.

She could make air.

Kit closed her hand into the fist, and her res began to glow more intensely around its outer edge. With her free hand, she lifted it up to the res, and though through habit it tried to pull away still she felt the slow, steady breeze on her hand. Kit's father had once taught her how he cast a fireball, in the hope that she would happen across his first element in time; first transmute the outer layer. Then the inner, all at once, for an explosive impact.

But then . . . What if she didn't want an explosive impact?

Kit studied her res carefully, unfurled her fist to stop the reaction. She cut it in half with a hand, waved the needless part away and watched it dissolve away into nothing. She made a beckoning gesture with two fingers and opened her mouth wide.

The res flew into her open mouth, and she shut her jaws with a click. Kit breathed out, till there was nothing in her lungs at all, and closed her hand into a trembling fist. The outer layers of the res began to transmute, providing a slow, steady intake of air.

It felt wrong. Creepy. Her body told her that if nothing was coming in through her mouth or nose then nothing was coming in at all, but her lungs were already inflating as she breathed 'in' er res byproduct. It was almost painfully clean, the ambient stench of even a relatively clean city like Ravok rendered obvious alongside the pure, sweet air she transmuted. Kit felt tears coming to her eyes.

Her chest did not beg to breathe. Whatever her reimancy had done to make air, Kit's body was more than happy to make do with it. Kit let it run until there was no more res in her mouth at all, and she finally took another breath of Ravok's air.

Ravok was a city of canals. Should the need ever take her . . . Well, the water was right there. But Kit was not the best of swimmers, and doubtless she would run out of air before she could go anywhere even remotely worthwhile. But with this, she could cheat her body out of true breathing for a short while.

But it would be cumbersome to use, Kit thought. Push air out of her hands and put it in her mouth? Nonsense. Not when there was a better way.

Kit pressed her left index and pointer fingers to where jaw met throat and closed her eyes, trying to blaze a new gesture, a new set of orders to make a clear and distinct spell. She felt res seep from the roof of her mouth, press up into the little hollow above her upper teeth. She breathed out, set off the transmutation, breathed in . . .

Again she took in good, pure air, smiled at the taste of it and kept it up until all of it was gone. Though . . . The question remained, could she cast this kind of spell while swimming? Would she really have the focus? Kit sighed, ran her hands down her face.

Enough magic for today.

by **Vanari** on November 15th, 2013, 12:59 am

Kit

Acrobatics	+1 XP
Meditation	+1 XP
Reimancy (Air)	+2 XP

Lores :

Notes :