After introducing me to magic, Hyraj didn’t let up on teaching me her language. If anything, she worked me harder, making time to do more of those magic exercises. There was the first one where we touched fingertips and another one where I made a ring with both hands and she did the same, putting her hands on top of mine.

With the second one, she would summon the magic fire or water, then take her hands away and the magic would linger for a bit before fading. I felt it more this way. A buzzing, a kind of spinning, like there were millions of tiny whirlpools, a bit like when you sat funny and your leg started to prickle.

There was also a… pressure? Like how I’d “popped” the magic the first time, when she took away her hand, I felt the magic push against me and try to break the ring. Surreal. Magnets repelling each other, or leaning into the wind on a blustery day.

Three days of practising that and she gave me the next step.

Her hands felt so warm against mine, hotter than the magic flame flickering in the centre of the ring, then she eased away, leaving just that ball of fire. “Little squeeze,” she whispered.

Not expecting her to speak, it took me a second to understand what she’d said. So I started bringing my thumbs and forefingers closer, ring squashing into an oval, and—

“No. First this,” she said and, glancing over, I saw she had forefingers and thumbs overlapping, sliding them back and forth to make the ring bigger and smaller.

Another second for me to understand, then I copied her. The “pinching” had been easy, like the magic was clay, but this felt impossible. I managed a little before it just wouldn’t go any more. If I let up at all, it pushed me back beyond the starting point, still trying to break the ring.

So I strained, arms and shoulders tense as I tried to use my whole body for it. Too focused on myself to care about the magic. My lungs burned, unconsciously holding my breath, heart pounding, loud in my ears. Maybe I closed my eyes, maybe I concentrated so much I couldn’t see.

And I finally broke, hands jerking apart as I gulped in breath after breath, my whole body trembling as if it didn’t know what to do now it wasn’t tensed up. Between blinks, I watched the magic fire fizzle away.

After a long few seconds to recover, I turned to her, unsure what expression I would see. Maybe I disappointed her, maybe that was supposed to happen. I didn’t know. Her face told me nothing, though. A blank expression and a gaze that lingered on my hands.

“Louise did okay?” I quietly asked.

She broke from her stare and, unhurried, her gaze came up to look me in the eye. “Louise did okay,” she said.

A weight off my shoulders, my heart beat easier, apparently more tense over this than I’d realised.

“Louise see magic?” she asked.

Relieved too soon, I froze up, trying to remember if I had and only drawing a blank.

That silence all the answer she needed, she said, “Again,” and raised her hands.

I scrunched up my face, trying to clear my mind and not really succeeding. Didn’t want to keep her waiting, though, so gave up, raising my hands.

We both made rings and she summoned the magic fire again, leaving it with me as she stepped back. Again, I felt the buzz, felt the push. Again, I slid my hands closer, shrinking the ring, only managing a little before it pushed back enough to stop me.

But I didn’t lose myself in trying to push.

A deep breath, then I tried to squeeze the ring with just my arms. Not much happened, barely made it smaller, but I watched the magic. It flickered and flared, not quite there, like a trick of the eye how it caught the light, sort of reminding me of how the air wobbled above radiators and heaters.

Still, I kept pushing, arms beginning to ache. They hadn’t exactly had time to rest up. Maybe my imagination, the magic seemed to flicker more. A fiery thread trapped in a swirling vortex of air. It danced and twisted and wrapped around itself, going through hot hues, sometimes barely visible amongst the writhing magic, but always there.

The longer I held, even without pushing in, the thicker that thread grew. At first as thin as sewing thread and, at the end—when my arms couldn’t take it, falling down—it was about as thick as a worm.

I had no clue if that had happened last time, but I saw it happen this time.

“Louise see magic?” Hyraj asked.

“Louise see magic,” I whispered, watching the “worm” of magic fade away.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Maybe taking into consideration how tired my arms were, she ended the lesson there. Of course, she had another lesson lined up, making me practise the different tenses and genders of “see” until I couldn’t see straight.

It didn’t help that my mind was full of thoughts about the magic thread. As much as I tried to focus, I ended up wondering what it meant, what it was. Even without the thread, the magic fire had felt hot, so was the thread actually not fire magic? If she made magic water, would the thread come out blue? Was the rest of the magic made of threads as well and I just couldn’t see them?

Hyraj sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Let us eat,” she said, striding off.

Lost in thought, it took me a moment to jog after her. “Ah, sorry, sorry,” I said, thinking I had upset her. She was trying so hard and I had messed up so much….

She didn’t stop or even slow, her long legs making it hard for me to keep up. I really must have annoyed her this time for her to not be unhurried. What made it worse was that it was her day to cook, so I could only bring over reeds for her.

Worse still, magic still filled my mind, my gaze fixated on her hand as she picked up the reed to ignite it. I understood what happened better now. Guessed that, making a ring with her fingers, she summoned a magic fire inside the reed, making it hot enough to catch fire. Or maybe she summoned real fire and it caught on the reed.

A buzz in the air, so slight I swore I imagined it, then fire burst out from the end of the reed, crackling, her hand sliding down before it burned her. Pot over the fire, she made a ring with both hands—buzzing—and water poured out. Real water, not the magic water she’d made for me to “hold”.

I had to wonder if I really felt that buzz or I just wanted to. Our days so busy, I hadn’t really thought about why she was teaching me magic, why I wanted to learn it.

Well, it was certainly useful. Being able to start a fire so quickly without tools was definitely something I wanted to learn. And being able to make water—I wouldn’t have to live by the spring or a river. There was probably more that magic could do, stuff that she either hadn’t needed to use yet or didn’t want to show me or couldn’t do herself. Magic to make wind or ice or even more fantastical things like clay and metal. There probably were a bunch of rules I didn’t know, but steel wasn’t really any more complicated than water.

Back when the accident happened and I spoke to the goddess… I hadn’t realised what I was getting into. How hard every day would be. Maybe she didn’t know either, expecting me to go find a village. It didn’t really matter what either of us expected. This was my new life, this magic what I wanted to learn. I wanted to make my life easier.

But it was also… I wanted to make Hyraj proud. Or maybe happy fit better. I just didn’t want her to feel like she was wasting her time, that I was messing around. Because I was trying my hardest and I appreciated her effort so much. That she wanted to teach me this, I wanted to learn it.

Part of me worried I only felt like this because I was so lonely. It wasn’t really, like, healthy that I woke up every morning scared she had left, that I felt so pressured to do my best, pushing through any headaches, ignoring how exhausted my brain felt at the end of every day.

But it was hard to think about because this was good for me. I didn’t want to break my motivation, every day making it easier for me to eventually “join society”. If I knew she was going to stay here for a year, or even just a month, I could relax, but I didn’t know when she would leave and didn’t dare ask.

The fire burned, water boiled, and she stirred the vegetables.

If I ignored everything else, I loved this moment. It was like we were family. If she would let me help, it would have been even better, but you couldn’t have everything you wanted. Still, I loved this. Something I had always known I would never have, something I never dared to dream of having. This moment of peace as someone cooked something for us to eat together.

The children at the orphanage had been my family, but it had been a loud and rowdy family, full of bickering and fights, not always love. There were too many of us with very different personalities and, well, very big problems. A broken family, held together by the pain we all shared at having to call that place our home. That we had nowhere else and no one else.

Right now, Hyraj and I were here because we wanted to be. Chose to be.

That was probably why I was willing to do whatever she asked me, why I worked so hard. Desperate for these moments. Desperate.

Smiling to myself, I had to admit that no word suited me better. All my life, I had been so very desperate, never knowing what for. Desperate for praise, desperate to avoid being told off, desperate to be needed. Now, desperate to not be alone.

Yes, we had been a broken family of broken people, including me.

Soon enough, dinner was served. “Thanks,” I said, trying to keep my weird mood out of my voice.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

What had been my stone chair was now a stone bench, the two of us side by side, a small gap between us. She didn’t have to sit next to me, but she did. I ate the food she cooked out of the bowl she shared, spoonful by spoonful, the mushy texture and bland taste sweeter tonight than any day before.

“Louise hungry today?” she asked, laughter in her voice.

“No, Hyraj good food,” I said, turning to her with a smile.

She stared for a moment, apparently not prepared for that response, then she smiled back. A smile that barely touched her lips, but showed in her eyes. “Louise good girl.”

I ducked my head, overcome with shyness at those words. Still as desperate for praise as I ever was. “Thanks,” I said. Nothing else I could think to say.

Only a little left to eat, I finished up and realised why she’d said what she had, her bowl still half full. Stuck between keeping her company and getting started on washing up, I chose to wait.

As I did, I hummed, my messy thoughts of the past bringing me back. No one had ever sung lullabies for me, so I didn’t know a better one than twinkle twinkle little star. The stream trickled, her spoon clinked, fire crackled, wind whistled, leaves rustled, and I hummed.

After finishing a loop, about to start again, she said, “That’s a beautiful song.”

I burst out laughing, the sort of thing I would have never heard in my old world. All the gloom wiped away, blinking back such happy tears, smiling so wide it hurt.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked—I guessed she asked, only understanding half. Even before, I just guessed she called the song beautiful, couldn’t imagine she was complimenting my voice.

“No, Hyraj not wrong. Beautiful sound,” I said, using what words came to mind.

Silence for a long moment, the funniness fading away, then she asked, “Again, please.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I hummed.

I was broken and maybe she was too. It didn’t matter. For now, this family I pretended we were was enough.