Talia looked down at the misshapen lump of green clay that she’d awkwardly moulded into a tablet with her left hand. The poor tablet had been brutalized, covered in a series of gashes that, if it was tilted the right way, might just look like Runic.
If you were squinting. And half blind.
Talia sighed.
“You know, when I said you should try it yourself, this—ah—wasn’t what I had in mind,” Osra whispered, looking over Talia’s shoulder.
Even at a whisper, the other girl’s voice echoed hollowly now that the tinkling song of crystals had faded.
Talia turned to roll her eyes, only for Osra to drop something in her lap with a grin.
Setting the tablet aside, she picked it up, flipping it around in her palm and holding it up to the light. Talia gasped. The statuette was about as long as a finger and had the pale blue-green leeched out to a translucent yellow, except for the shock of violently crimson hair on its head.
Osra had created a carving—shaping?—of her, going so far as to model each individual scale of her amour. Statue-Talia looked…fierce. Defiant. Grinning, tight-lipped, with her hand on the pommel of her sword.
“Osra, it’s…”
The girl looked down sheepishly, brushing a stray strand of hair out of her face.
“I know, your nose is a little off, and I couldn’t get the colour right, but there’s only so much I can do with beryl as a base—”
Talia nudged the stammering mage with her good shoulder, scoffing.
“It’s amazing. The amount of detail—I…thank you,” Talia said, before chuckling, “Even if the hair is a little on the nose.”
Osra cocked her head.
“Do you, do you not like it? I can try to change it, but it’s so…vibrant. Once I saw it, I never understood why you dyed it in the first place.”
At this, Talia frowned, thinking back to her conversations with the girl.
Did I really never tell her? I didn’t, did I? Maybe some other time. I don't feel like rehashing my awakening right now.
“Oh no, it’s fine. I like my hair, but you know how it was with other kids, in school I mean. I’m just lucky my name isn’t a great alliteration,” Talia laughed, too emotionally drained to be bitter, “This one girl, Blake Halloway, her wytch-mark was a pair of horns. Got called Horny Halloway up until the day we graduated.”
Osra winced, shaking her head, before jerking her eyes up again.
“Poor—Wait, wytch-mark? I thought…No, you said your parents were mages, didn’t you? I guess I just never put two and two together. As far as they go, though, I’d say you got lucky.”
Talia raised a brow imperiously, snorting.
“And my teeth?”
“Your teeth?”
Did she really never notice?
“Yup, and my eyes too, while we’re at it,” Talia groused and looked down, making a split-second decision and flicking her fingers into her orbits to fish out the artefact that changed their colour to a slate grey. The yellow glow was barely visible in the light of the manalamp.
Palming the mysterious, near-liquid artefacts, Talia looked up and smiled wide.
Osra jerked back at the unexpected sight.
That…hurts more than I expected it to.
Without a word, Talia looked away, recharging the eye illusions while she was at it and putting them back in.
What do you even say when the way you look scares your only friend?
“S-Sorry! I didn’t mean to react like that, you just surprised me and—”
Talia turned to face Osra again—words of reassurance already on the tip of her tongue—only to be met with a reptilian hand centimetres away from her nose. Scaly, peeling, tipped with sharp black claws.
“Gah!” Talia yelped, flinching and banging her head on a crystal.
Then she froze.
Traced the hand back up to Osra’s arm. The arm back up to the once-shy girl’s impish face, her eyebrows raised as if to say ‘et tu?’.
Annnd—now I’m a hypocrite, aren’t I?
“Uhm—likewise,” Talia muttered, staring at the other girl’s wytch-mark.
Osra chuckled.
“Guess we’re both a little odd.”
Talia let a slim smile quirk her lips.
“Is that why you’re always wearing gloves?” she asked.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Are your teeth why you never smile?” Osra shot back.
Talia gave her friend an incredulous look.
“What? I smile! All the time,” she protested, amending her statement when Osra gave her an unconvinced look. “Well, I do. Maybe not all the time, but I do!”
“Not with your teeth,” Osra remarked, “I used to think it made you look sad and aloof.”
Is she right? Do I hide my teeth? I hadn’t even noticed…
“I—”
Osra shrugged, playfully smacking her.
“It’s alright, I get it.”
Talia nodded slowly, gazing into the shallow pool where the manalamp spread its cool blue rays through the alcove. Lost in thought.
What else do I not notice?
The pair sat there for a while, each contemplating their own experiences. To Talia, it almost felt like Osra wanted to ask something, but couldn’t bring herself to. The psion didn’t use her powers to check, allowing her friend to reach a conclusion on her own.
Better to not tread down that slippery slope. Again.
Finally, Osra grunted and reached over to tap the slab of green clay with a hand. The parody of runic washes itself away like it had never been, and the clay collapsed on itself, into a ball.
“C’mon, I want to see you try to sculpt something. No hands, just telekinetics. And no runes. Don’t be so boring,” she said. Then, seeing the skeptical look on Talia’s face, she added, “Don’t worry, if you break something I can fix it.”
“Fine,” Talia sighed, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Osra waved away her concern, wiggling her fingers and making the little statuette in Talia’s lap dance a little jig before it resumed its pose.
Closing her eyes, Talia focused on the Imagery she and Osra had come up with, with the help of Magic for the Newly Awakened, the guidebook magister Evincrest had given her. Painstakingly, Talia created the shape of a hand, linking together vectors—as she was calling them—of pure force in her mind. When she felt the Image was stable, she pulsed mana into it, spinning up her Core and unspooling a string of mana at the construct.
It appeared as a translucent blur in front of her, larger than she’d anticipated. But at least it held.
Until it didn’t. A pop of displaced air was all the evidence Osra got that Talia’s construct had collapsed on itself again.
Still drained from the norroot, Talia didn’t even have the energy to be frustrated—she was just tired. Yet her friend was glancing over at her encouragingly, pushing her to try again.
So she did.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Each time was the same. The ripple of force appeared for a few brief moments before imploding on itself. One particularly bad instance managed to rip gouges in the beryl crystals in front of her. Crackling the pristine pillar with a spiderweb of angry cracks. Shards of nearly powdered crystal tinkled to the floor, only to reverse course as Osra caught them with her geomancy. She didn’t even have to turn her head.
Talia watched the other mage’s display of control with envy.
“This isn’t working,” she said, more of a statement than a complaint.
Osra looked up from the beginnings of an intricate mural, sympathy etched across her features.
“You’ve made progress, at least,” the girl pointed out, “A few weeks ago you could barely use your Core without passing out.”
Talia gave her a flat look.
“A few weeks ago I was manaburned from fighting a damned magmamander and killing a man with my mind—”
As what she’d said registered in her mind, Talia’s world immediately stuttered to a halt. Some part of her realized she’d clapped her hand against her mouth. Osra froze, her expression flaking and brittle.
Osra let out a shuddering breath.
Way to go, Tals. A nice moment, and you go ahead and ruin it. What’s next, going to kill a puppy too?
“Osra I’m sorry I—”
“I miss him,” Osra simply said, eyes flicking back to the mural she’d barely started. A familiar silhouette began carving itself out of the crystal.
Talia shut her mouth with a click, nodding along and waiting for her friend to say her piece.
“I—ah—don’t think I realized just how…how big a part of my life he was. When I was homesick and lost, he—helped me. We spoke every day. Even if it was just about stupid stuff, like what we’d do if we ever got paid, or guesses about what flavour of gruel we were having that day…”
Osra shook her head ruefully, tears streaking silently down her cheeks.
“When I was home, I was the youngest. My parents never had time for me, they were too busy with the Temple. The only time I saw my father proud of me was the day of my awakening,” she whispered through a thick swallow, “It felt nice. I never saw him after that. Neither of them. Or any of my brothers and sisters. Master Zaric, he…filled that gap for me. Showed me that even out here, in the Deep, there’s family to be found.”
She fidgeted, her human hand rubbing at the scales of the reptilian one, picking angrily at the scales. For some reason, the sight gave Talia the urge to grab her by the wrist. To stop her. To—
“When I got this, I thought the gods must have been punishing me. I felt unworthy. Like I’d been ungrateful,” she sniffled, ripping at a moulting scale. “I don’t remember what he said to me, but it was something about how beauty was on the inside. Some nonsense that had nothing to do with what I was feeling—and then h-he made a dumb j-joke, and it made me laugh and—”
Osra slumped to the side, leaning against Talia’s remaining good shoulder. Not knowing what to do, Talia pressed her cheek into Osra’s hair and let the girl use her as a shoulder to cry on, in the literal sense.
“Oh, Osra, you poor girl…” the dead man lamented over her other shoulder, leaning against the beryl pillars.
Immediately, Talia had to repress the urge to smash her fist into the apparition’s face. If she'd still had the use of her right hand, she just might have, anyway.
YOU ARE NOT HIM!
The rage made her shake, piercing through the haze of norroot and the uncertainty of her friend’s sorrow, jolting through her veins like throbs of hot magma.
Talia inhaled a sharp breath, carefully suppressing the wash of inner turmoil.
A pulse of psionic power had the man fade like the ghost he was. But the anger remained, simmering in her gut like a steady drip of acid.
Osra didn’t notice. At least, Talia thought she hadn’t. If she did, she made no mention of it.
“Talia?”
“Hmm.”
“C-Can you—” Her breath hitched. “Can y-you get rid of it?”
“Uh—what?”
“I-I don’t want to feel like this a-anymore. It’s t-too much,” Osra sobbed.
At the words, Talia understood what Osra was asking. The surge of complicated emotions that accompanied that understanding was like the dust after a rockfall. Cloying, suffocating, and impossible to contain. She muscled it away anyways.
This moment isn’t just about me.
“No. Out of the question. That…no, Osra. Just no.” Talia made an effort to soften her voice before continuing, “Even if I knew how to do…what you’re asking me to do, we have no idea what the consequences would be. Do you want to forget him entirely? Poof, erased? Because it’s possible that that’s what it would take, and I won’t do that to you. For gods’ sake, you just told me he was like a father to you.”
For a split second, it looked like the girl was going to argue.
Please, Osra, let it go…
Whatever gods existed, it seemed they were merciful. Osra slumped further onto her, boneless, all the tension gone from her body.
The voices whispering from the back of Talia’s mind, the ones that cooed and cajoled, muttering that taking away grief was the right thing to do—no matter the means—fell away. For now.
But Talia knew, inside, that Osra’s idea had stoked something. A light on a path that was…frighteningly easy to embark on.
Luckily, the grieving mage on her shoulder pulled her from those dark thoughts. For now.
“Talia?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. You’re a good friend, you know that?”
Caught off guard, Talia just pressed her cheek harder into Osra’s hair, unable to find the words to say.