[Year 351, The month of Storm, day 14]

Geisai was lazing around his pallet with a couple of scrolls he must have read a dozen times by now, while I was busy filing grooves into a hand full of wooden stubs as part of a project. The thunderstorm outside had entered its third day, meaning we’d been cooped up in our cave with nothing to do for that long. The monotony of staying inside had gotten to me halfway through yesterday and I’d been doing my best to avoid counting the stalactites on the ceiling for the third time. Luckily Geisai accidents had provided me with enough materials to get this project going.

“Geisai, could you come here for a second.”

After a bit of grumbling he put down the scrolls he been reading and came over to my little station.

“What?” Even though he’d spoken in his regular tone of voice, his eyes were a slightly darker shade than normal, so being inside was starting to get to him.

“Could you melt this down for me, I’m gonna need it in a little bit.” I held up a small bag of beeswax we’d managed to collect during the winter. Thankfully, the cold had made it easy to smoke them out and collect the honey and wax.

“Alright.”

When he took the bag away from me, my hand reflexly shot out and grabbed a hold of his wrist.

“What’s with this?”

Geisai had bandaged his hands, but there was no reason for him of all people to do that. I saw a slight spark in his eyes, but it was replaced with his usual grin and eye color before I could figure out what it meant.

“I’ve been working on something new since our last sparring session. For now, the bandages are a necessity, but once everything is settled you’ll be in for quite a shock next time.”

The pit of my stomach did a little flip when he brought up that fight. Honestly, it was becoming more and more difficult to figure out what he was gonna do when we fought. I may need to learn how to fight with entirely different weapons just to keep up with the wild Ideas he was coming up with.

After I let go of his hand, Geisai with to gather the kindling, pots, and waters he needed to melt the wax. While he was doing that, I took out the box of broken metal. I’d been keeping the largest and most usable pieces of metal from all of our broken knives and spent all of yesterday night chipping them into useful shapes. Now that the handles were finished, I could finally put all of it together.

“Teeh”

When I tried to pick up one of the blades, I received a powerful shock. The faint hint of burning leaves and twigs helped explain what was going. While I was still annoyed about being shocked, watching Geisai brought a smile to my face. He had begun boiling the water in the larger of the two pots he’d collected, but the interesting thing was what was going on around his body. Every couple moments, small arcs of lightning ran across Geisai’s body. While he wasn't affected by it, if I was any closer to him my hair would stand up and my own clothes would shock me with every movement.

A shame that, despite having been born with such a rare magic affinity, he wasn’t capable of doing much beyond that lightning field, and it had taken quite a bit of effort for him to do that. When I’d turned twelve my magic would flood the cave unless I suppressed it with the elemental necklace, however, six months after Geisai’s twelfth birthday he hadn’t shown any signs of his magic awakening.

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At first, I’d thought that he’d gotten his birth month wrong, but he’d been adamant about it being the in the month of storms. He’d said his mother would always make a special meal to celebrate his birth, instead, he argued that his healing must have been his magic affinity and he simply developed it early. While the scrolls mentioned some people showing signs of magic a few months earlier than normal, Geisai said he’d always been able to heal quickly. Eventually, we just had him test out a few spells from the different elemental types until he found one that he could use.

However, even when we found out he had lightning powers, he was incapable of using the spells properly. No matter what incantation he uses, Geisai is only able to make that field of lighting around himself. Not to mention the fact that, since he had a magic affinity neither of us knew what the deal was with his healing. Was it just an ability all darh’ki were born with?

Wait…

“Geisai, we forgot your birthday!” Geisai turned around and raised an eyebrow at my comment. He took a moment to think it over in his head before he made the realization himself.

“Oh yeah, it was a few weeks ago, wasn’t it? Oh well, we’d better remember it for next year.”

“That’s all you have to say about it?” He usually made a big deal about birthdays, so it was a bit of a shock that he just brushed it off like that.

“Well, what’s the point in bringing it up beside keeping track of our age?”

It was my turn to be stumped. Even back in the village, there were a couple major celebrations that were held throughout the years, but besides those, age was mainly used as a sign of status. In fact, the only celebrations I could really remember was the one prior to one’s awakening and the passage into adulthood held for villagers that reached their fiftieth year.

“Not-Not, really. I just remember birthdays being important to you.”

“It's not the day that’s important, but the memory of the days I spent with my mother.

Without her to celebrate it with, it’s just another day to me.”

There wasn’t anything wrong with what he said but it was still a little sad to hear him say that without any inflections in his voice. Geisai turned away from me and placed the smaller pot on top of the pot with the water.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter. What are you gonna use this stuff for?”

“I’m making a set of throwing knives and I need something to bind the mischief handles to the blades. I figured we could make something useful out of the trash we had while we wait for the water to sweep us away.”

“I guess our supplies are starting to run thin. Better make use of what we can before it becomes useless.”

“Hmm, yet in a couple years we’re gonna have nothing but furs and stones tools. With any luck, we’ll still be capable of verbal speech by then.”

For some reason Geisai’s back suddenly became stiff and his hands stopped just short of dumping the beeswax into the pot.

“Something wrong?” All I could do was wait for Geisai to answer. Only after he placed the wax in the pot and covered it did he respond.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life living like this? Is it even possible to keep going like we have been?” It was a question that I’d asked myself multiple times before but had done my best to ignore it.

We’d managed to get along fine given our circumstances, but we’d reached the plateau of we could achieve with the things we had and the knowledge we possessed. This cave, half-filled with broken things and primitive furnishings, was the best that we had. If things had been different it wouldn’t have come to this, but there was no point in thinking about that.

“I don’t know. I wish I had the answer, but I don’t. All I can do it do the best that I can with what we have.”

Geisai just sat there with his back turned to me, something I’d said had really gotten to him, but I didn’t know what.

“The best we can do isn’t what you deserve.”

“What? Hey, where are you going? Geisai, Geisai!”

Though I called out to him, Geisai walked off without responding to me. Even though it was still pouring down, he walked out into the storm before I could catch up to him. I don’t know what he’d been doing, but Geisai didn’t return until the next morning.