Melidandri rushes down the stairs to the hot shop, practically tripping over his own feet in his haste to reach his workstation. He leads me to the main bench at the center of the studio and gestures for me to stand at the ready, as though I'm his apprentice. "Master Nuri. Observe, if you're able. I'm not sure if you have mana senses available to you, or if you're blinded due to your condition. Nonetheless, I'll explain what I'm doing. Perhaps you'll pick it up as we go."
"I used to have [Manasight] before my injury,” I say, shrugging off the melancholy that always accompanies the memories of my loss. I step into the familiar position of an assistant as the master of the shop beckons toward the furnace with empty hands. A molten ball of glass floats over to the workbench and rolls itself across the marver.
Grinning at the casual display of dexterity, I watch as a true master plies his craft. The need to share wells up within me. “Sometimes, I think I'm right on the cusp of seeing the various flows of arcane energy again. Never seems to last, though. I'm left wondering if I'll ever recover what I used to have. [Manasight] is less impressive visually then some of my other skills, but it's one of the most useful abilities I ever developed. I miss it."
A glimpse of shared pain glimmers in Melidandri’s eyes. "I know what you mean. Losing something so central to your personhood feels like the death of a friend or family member. I don't wish that on anyone."
My smile slips. "Well, it's not quite that bad. I lost my father to a mana plague when I was young. He used to run a glass studio, although it was much smaller than yours. All I've ever wanted is to be like him. That's why I got started with glass in the first place. I'd gladly trade a thousand thousand Skills to have him back."
“I don't doubt you would, Nuri,” Melidandri murmurs. Then he straightens. “I shall endeavor to help you honor his memory by showing you how I forge my greatest works. Stand by with the gloves, if you please? When I am ready, I'll need steady hands to bring this to the kiln.”
His gaze flicks down to my missing hand, and he coughs in embarrassment. “Er, perhaps a poor turn of speech. Apologies. Are you up for the challenge?”
“It’s been a few years since I was an assistant, but I can still acquit myself well. Don’t worry about me. I only hope I can see what’s going on well enough to learn.”
“You’ve already done the hard parts. Now, let’s make some glass.”
With a flourish, Melidandri expands the ball of glass, all without using the blowpipe. His Skills at work, I presume, or perhaps an advanced working of external mana control. Manipulating the glass isn’t impressive on its own; Melina can do the same. No, it’s the way that he also controls the flow of air and inflation, which are flawless. The tongs sing in his hands, shaping the glass as surely as if he rolled the molten mass through a mold.
The main portion of the project takes on the contours of an elongated pear, or perhaps a teardrop. Additive floats up from the workbench drawers, mixing into the main batch of glass and tinting the fluted glass green. I’m not sure what he needs me for, to be honest. He could easily move the glass to the kiln by himself, based on this display of prowess.
Thin strands of glass rise up from the batch, twisting into delicate, lace-like fronds to encase the entire working. They’re translucent, but still retain a sense of otherness, as though there’s mystery hidden in their depths that not even light can uncover. I squint, studying the encasing more closely to try to determine the purpose of the structure. Is he making scaffolding, like a construction crew working on a high-rise building? Or is this the framework for the mana-imbuing, made visible for my sake?
Green, gold, and ivory colors flow together in harmony as a stylized vase comes together before my eyes, reaching just above my head in height. The gold-colored glass forms knobs with claws, like lion’s feet, regal and sturdy. They flow up into sleek, braided cords of glass that gives the vase strength and definition, circling together at the top of the vase to create a second rim covered with patterns and texture. Underneath them, the green of the vase itself is lustrous and smooth, perfectly uniform and even. Not a single flaw mars the surface.
More and more white-clear glass, barely tinted and still letting through the light, circles around the elegant shape. Some of it appears structural, but after further examination, I’m convinced that Melidanri is creating an overlay for me to see his mana-working. The air itself is thick with energy, fairly humming with the potency of the free-flowing powers of creation.
I resist the urge to close my eyes, forcing myself to watch the proceedings so that I can learn what to do in the future if I want to replicate what’s happening in front of me. Nonetheless, there’s a pervasive sensation of contentment that tempts me to curl up and take a nap in front of the furnace. I can’t recall the last time I was this happy, this at peace with the world, and with myself.
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A smile tugs at the corner of Melidandri’s lips. “Ah, you can sense it. Good. That bodes well for you in the future. I’d worry for your recovery if you could only benefit from contentment after the fact.”
The world hums with significance when he says contentment, although I can’t pinpoint why. I only know that he’s crafted a structure that will hold the mana in place while he pours in his earnest intent and passes along peace. Simply standing nearby feels like a condensed version of a hearthfire and hot tea on a cold winter’s night, or the gentle warmth of the sun seeping into my weary bones while I doze on the riverbanks on a lazy summer day, surrounded by a field of poppies.
“You look like a man who’s laid eyes on something he’s chased for years but that's always eluded him,” Melidandri muses. “What is it you see?”
“Are you imagining a halcyon field of wildflowers by a sapphire-blue river?” I ask, moved almost to tears by the emotional power of the image. If I breathe in, I can almost catch a scent of the flowers. In my heart of hearts, I know that they’re not real, and it’s all in my mind, but it’s so pleasant and peaceful that I keep inhaling through my nose anyway.
“Not exactly, no, although I wish I’d thought of it,” Melidandri says. “That scene is perhaps adjacent to one of the images in my mind, but hardly the only one I relied on for inspiration. Experience is always stronger than words. Admittedly, it's less precise than language, but carries more primal power. You still have to fill in the details in a way that’s unique to you; I am simply providing the fuel for your soul to burn through. The shared experience is mine. Your imagination is your own.”
I mull over the implications, staring at the beauty of the vase. How could he impart such incredible detail while working with glass? Lost in thought, I sink to the bench and close my eyes, pondering what I just witnessed. If sharing my experience is key, then it explains why masters of the craft are usually older. They've lived longer and seen more so they have more to offer. That's not to say that young people are incapable of profound experiences, but they're likely missing the full scope of what life has to offer. I have a wealth of poor choices and disastrous consequences to draw on, but precious little otherwise.
“Master Nuri, the kiln!” Melidandri urges, a wry smile on his face as I finally snap out of the meditative fugue and stumble into position.
My feet trace the pathway to the annealer almost on their own accord, while my mind is still wrestling with the implications of how to leverage experience as an art form. Can I invent something I've never lived through? Is pure imagination itself potent enough to empower my mana-imbuing?
Stray thoughts dominate my mind through the lunch hour. Like a frisky puppy giving chase to every bird and squirrel it sees, my consciousness chases one errant idea after another, tripping over new concepts and stunning conclusions.
During the afternoon, Melidandri moves to a workstation in the corner. He directs me to raise a series of mobile walls that block off vision, while he activates runes that shield against sound and scrying both. Pride wells up within me when I realize that I recognize all the base runes. Scalpel is an effective teacher, although hardly a pleasant one.
Melidandri’s fine features knit into a solemn expression. He glances around as though he can divine an eavesdropper or spy by dint of effort around. He frowns, the lines around his lips stretched tight, then makes me swear not to share what I learn next without his express permission.
Only after I swear to keep his methods to myself does his dour expression relax. Satisfied that he's taken precautions to protect his trade secrets, Melidandri beckons me to bring him a fresh batch of glass while he focuses and crafts another masterwork.
The next object he creates is a perfectly round orb of glass at least twice the size of my head. Threads wrap around the globe like dozens of filaments weaving a spider's web, once again tracing the flow of mana so that I catch a glimpse of the inner workings of the imbuing process.
“This one is draining,” Melidandri says gravely. “Watch closely, Nuri; I don’t have it in me to repeat the performance. I’m not skilled at holding so many contradictory ideas fixed firmly in mind at once, so don't be surprised if this fails.”
Melidandri's stern warning isn't my only indication that something extraordinary is happening. I can't see the movement of mana without [Manasight], but the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I sense a surge of power flooding into the golden sphere.
Radiating waves of heat crash over me before he regains his tenuous grip. The glass globe is the epicenter of the working. Glowing ominously, the reflective glass surface shimmers, flickering between orange-yellow-white at breakneck pace. The sphere burns like the sun, flowing from one hue to another so rapidly that the radiant colors overlap in my sight, as though two or three divergent realities are overlaid atop of each other all at once.
Unsettling as the sensation is, I find myself drawn to the pulsing power contained within the rich, complex imagery. This is both the nurturing, steady warmth of the sun coaxing plants to grow, and simultaneously the terrifying, stifling fury of the relentless desert sun scorching the life out of anything that dares defy its glorious, supreme existence.
Weal and woe, hand in hand. Twin fangs of unyielding intent and impassioned experience, all expressed in the strange, shifting sheen of the glass globe. I back a few steps away, bumping into the walls I erected around the workbench earlier before my movement even registers with me. Subconsciously, I recognized and reacted to the danger and potential inherent within the fiery contradiction Melidandri willed into being and impressed upon glass.
While I’m still catching my breath, reeling from the disconcerting object, Melidandri bellows for me to bring him more glass. I leap into action to deliver a fresh batch for him to mold into some new miracle made only of glass, in awe of the effortless creative power he wields.
Thus two days of observation and glass making go by in a flash, and all too soon, my time with Melidandri draws to a close. My head whirling with excitement—or perhaps that's simply the onset of a pounding headache brought on by considering the complex, variegated mysteries of the universe—I bid my second master in the Capital farewell and return to my primary master. I’m trading the medium of glass for flesh and soul, but I’m hard-pressed to tell which one is more powerful, or more terrifying.