“Now, the trick to it,” Oliver said, “is that there’s no trick at all.”

The team was camped somewhere in the forest, surrounded by trees and nature no matter how funny the smell. They were deep into the night and Oliver had extricated Zed from the rest of the group for their long forestalled lesson.

The night wasn’t so dark since the moon was out, bathing everything in a gentle pale blue, and they used the little light that streamed from between the little gaps between the leaves overhead to see.

Oliver had tried to have Zed sit in a cross legged position, but when Zed had begun complaining after barely five minutes, he’d freed him to sit however he wanted. Even before the lesson had begun, they’d learned Zed was anything but flexible.

“Before we go on,” Zed interrupted, raising a hand, “why can’t Jason teach me this whole aura sensing thing? He is the strongest, after all.”

“He can’t teach you because of how strong he is,” Oliver answered. “He might skip steps without knowing he’s skipped steps.”

Zed tapped his lips and nodded sagely. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“Good, so as I was say—”

“Doesn’t that mean Ash would be the best person to teach me since she’s the closest to my stage? You did say she’s the one who taught you.”

Oliver sighed, seeming already tired.

“You want the truth?” he asked.

Zed gave him a small, knowing smile. “It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Go on then,” he said, with the exaggerated gesture of a man preparing himself to get punched in the face. “I’m a big mage. I can take it.”

“The reason I’m the one teaching you,” Oliver said hesitantly, “is because none of them think you’ll take it seriously. They think you’ll joke a lot and just end up pissing them off and it’ll be a waste of their time.”

Zed looked at him in mock suspicion. “But Ash suggested you teach me even before you all learnt of my charming personality.”

“That’s because I’m her younger brother and she enjoys delegating the annoying tasks to me.”

“Perks of being the older one, I guess,” Zed said with a chuckle. “And while I’d love to carve up a poster and protest to their idea of me, I can’t really argue with them. Just look at me, I’m already filtering out which jokes are proper for our current situation. One’s a tree joke, one’s a hunter joke and one’s a gay joke. But I don’t think that last one’s proper.”

Oliver’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Why not?”

“Because it feels homophobic and you could be gay.” Zed shrugged. “Don’t want to go losing friends I’m not yet done making.”

“One,” Oliver held up finger, “I’m not gay, I’ve got a girlfriend.” He raised another. “And two, you’re probably right. If you think it’s homophobic, it probably is.” He paused, then raised a third finger. “And three, don’t tell my sister I told you I have a girlfriend.”

“Why not?” Zed asked.

Oliver scratched the back of his head nervously. “Because she’s kind of still in a sort of technically still existing relationship.”

Zed paused. “Those are a lot of adverbs. Whose relationship are we talking about; your sister or the girl?”

“The girl,” Oliver answered.

“Oh, you poor fool.” Zed laughed quietly, more than aware of the silence of the night they sat in. “Even I know not to date another guy’s girl, and I have a problem with my brain.”

Oliver shot him a frown and Zed raised his hands in a gesture of placidity.

“I’m not judging,” he said. “I’m just saying I acknowledge the quagmire you’ve slipped your delicate self into and would like you to know that I won’t say a word.” He paused, suddenly thoughtful. “I sense there’s a dirty pun in there somewhere that I can’t find, so feel free to interpret that whichever way you please.”

Oliver groaned in exasperation and rubbed a hand down his face.

“That’s enough of that,” he said sternly. “Let’s just get to the reason we’re here please.”

“Sure.”

“Now close your eyes,” Oliver said. “Take a deep breath, and most importantly, don’t say a word.”

I get the feeling that last part’s more about me than aura, Zed thought into the silent sound of him not talking.

“Now,” Oliver continued. “To sense aura you must first understand what it is you’re looking for if not you won’t know when you’ve found it. Aura is the effect of a mage’s existence on the ambient mana. It is, like a mage’s mana, an imprint of themselves. My sister described it like smelling food and she’s right. But it’s more than that. The body is always doing its best to contain mana, and while it does that, like an overflowing cup or a pot that’s not sealed tightly, some of it will spill or its smell will escape. That small spill is what sips into the atmosphere and becomes aura. It is what helps us know when another living being is around us.”

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As Oliver spoke, Zed listened. He breathed gently with every word, picking the important pieces of information. If aura was significant to everyone then it could be used to differentiate everyone. And if the body’s containment of mana was like a poorly sealed pot, then it was possible to seal it. It would be possible for a person to mask their aura, hide it from those around them so they could slip about like simple people. The idea fascinated him and he was forced to drag himself back to the task at hand.

He was here to learn how to sense aura not how to hide it.

“Just breathe,” Oliver was saying. “Pay attention to everything around you. The smell in the wind. The sound of falling leaves. The sound of children playing. The taste of your tongue. The fabric of the clothes you’re wearing.”

Zed heard no child playing and tried not to let how out of place the concept was from where they were distract him. Instead, he listened and inhaled deeply.

The night air was soft against his body, cool where he knew it was meant to be chill. It wafted over him, parting around him as it did all things. It slipped into his hair like a father’s touch, patting only its surface but not digging beneath it. It was gentle in all things with a promise of firmness and withheld power. He let it rule the world beyond him, giving it deference where it was due. When he breathed it in, it was a task not to shove it all away. It smelled of both life and death. He could smell the wood of the trees and the leaves newly sprouted. He could also smell the presence of dead things. Leaves falling after absorbing their last ray of light. Dead things succumbed to the wrath of time and the teeth of predators. There was a smell of decay and rot with a touch of trepidation and something else he could not quite name.

He shifted himself from it gently as it grew to a crescendo.

For fear of being consumed by it, Zed slipped himself from smell and into sound. Oliver was still speaking, using words in a gentle rhythm. Zed gave him only enough time to hear something about the birds in the sky and the sun on his skin before casting his senses elsewhere.

Sound came in the gentle whisper of broken rhythms. The first thing he heard was the soft beating of his heart and the filling of his lungs in every breath. Then there was the slow beating of his pulse which he realized actually wasn’t slow. It pumped faster than the average speed he knew, and he checked his breath just to be sure. He found it faster than it was supposed to be. He gathered that piece of information and filed it away under the list of things he blamed on magic.

Pushing away from himself, he listened to the world around him, grazing over the sound of Oliver telling him to envision the taste of honey on his tongue.

I don’t even like honey.

Zed listened to the leaves undulate to the gentle touch of the night's breeze, swaying and dancing to a song none could hear. He listened to the quiet chirp of birds communicating in sounds so low he doubted the other birds could hear it. He listened to life in its woody glory.

It was as it filled him that Zed felt something new. It was a touch in the air, the softest touch. Barely a graze, if he was being honest. He grasped at it as it came, more from a sense of curiosity than certainty. His mind was already slipping into his sense of touch. The feel of the clothes on his skin, as Oliver had called it. However, this was too light to be ignored and when he found purchase in it, it was odd.

The sensation was like walking into a room filled with smoke only without the sight or the smell, or walking into a mist. Zed could feel it all over him and could do nothing against it. Without thinking, he raised his hand and moved it slowly, waved it through the air, and felt nothing. It struck him as odd since the feeling was still there, still flush against his skin.

It was like the air was enriched with smoke from a million sources, some of it served to taint it more than enrich it. Some irritated his senses and others brought a sense of familiar calm to him.

Zed pulled them to him, and when it didn’t work, he pulled himself to them, trying to understand them; to find meaning in them. Each time he failed. Each failure was as woeful as woe had any right to be. At some point even the sound of his own pulse began to distract him. The steady thrum of irrelevance around him started to prove distracting, and more than once he had to fight the urge to tell Oliver to stop talking. To simply shut up for a quiet second so that he could hear himself feel.

The annoyance broke the flow Zed had held onto so fickly and it shattered like fine china. The force of it jarred Zed from his trance and he shook out of it gasping for air like a man almost drowned. He took the air into his lungs with heavy gulps, panting with his hands firmly on the ground to hold him up. It took him a moment to realize he was sweating.

When Zed raised his head, he found a satisfied smirk on Oliver’s face.

“What the hell are you smiling for?” he asked, his voice hard. He realized his annoyance at the distraction of the boy’s voice was yet to subside.

“You’re sweating,” Oliver said. If he had heard the tone of Zed’s voice and was bothered by it, he didn’t show it.

“Yes,” Zed said. “I know I’m sweating because I’m the one sweating. Is that normal? The sweating, not me knowing I’m sweating.”

Oliver nodded.

“But I thought mages don’t get tired so easily,” Zed said. “I’d assume someone that could walk for days without breaking a sweat wouldn’t sweat so easily.”

“Well, that much is true,” Oliver agreed. “But sensing aura is different. Your body is using mana to do something it hasn’t done before—something it doesn’t have an idea how to do. Think of it like training new muscles you’ve never used before, and very roughly at that.”

“A two-year-old carrying weights,” Zed mused, then nodded. “Got it.”

“Weird analogy,” Oliver said, with a touch of disturbance. “But I guess that works.”

Zed shrugged, his breathing finally calming.

“My skin hurts,” he said suddenly. “Does that make sense? I mean its sore the way muscles get. But instead of my muscles, it’s my skin. It sounds ludicrous. Exactly how it feels, too.”

Oliver shrugged. “I can’t say. It’s different with everybody. And its magic. I guess we can just wait and see if it goes down?”

Zed acquiesced with a nod.

It wasn’t long before his breathing returned and he was back to what he considered a normal state. Certain of it, he looked at Oliver still sporting his self-accomplished grin and remembered his annoyance at the sound of his distracting voice.

“Why are you still grinning?” Zed asked.

“Because I just found out that I might be a good teacher,” Oliver said. “I didn’t get to this state when Ash was teaching me until our third lesson. But look at me guiding you this far in just our first lesson.”

Zed stared at him flabbergasted.

You’re the one who broke me out of it in the first place! He thought with a sufficient touch of dismay before schooling his expression. Instead, he said, “I won’t argue with you on that. However, I do have one question.”

“What’s that?” Oliver asked.

“Why the hell were you asking me to feel the touch of the sun on my skin?” Zed asked. “We’re in the middle of a god’s damned forest. And it’s the middle of the night.”

Oliver’s paused, lips puckered in embarrassment. His answer was as pointless as his sense of accomplishment.

“Oh.”