Lissa woke to a pounding headache. The sun was too loud; the birdsong too spicy; even the blankets on her bed were too bright. As she struggled to process the ongoing surplus of sensation, she realized how strangely jumbled her thoughts and sense had become. Sunlight couldn't be loud, and you couldn't taste birdsong... could you? She squinted her eyes tightly together, but the sensory information only lessened slightly as only her physical sight was covered. As she tried to sit up, she realized she wasn't in her own bed, and the events of the evening trickled back into her mind, which struggled to focus past the flood of information. She must have fussed out loud, because soon, her mother came to sit beside her, offering her an earthenware mug of something warm.
Tecka spoke low and quiet, "How are you feeling this morning, sweetling?"
Keeping her eyes shut tightly, Lissa slowly sat up and scooched over to the edge of the bed, lacking quite a bit of her normal luster. She couldn't see the mug with her eyes tightly shut, but somehow she could see the hunk of earth, and she reached out to take it. If she focused on it, it seemed to grow and begin to expand and fill her entire awareness with—she somehow wrenched her focus off of it, and took a sip of the weak bone broth. It's flavor was simultaneously dilute and full of unfamiliarity. Tecka didn't miss the face that Lissa made after the sip, like when she'd tried to eat a lemon like an apple.
"My head hurts, and this tastes funny," Lissa whimpered.
Her mother nodded, putting an arm around her shoulders. She replied, "I expect so. Do you think you can drink it anyway?"
Lissa grimaced, but nodded, immediately regretting the motion. The strange tastes in the broth didn't change exactly, but she did become more used to them as she sipped at her mug. She kept her eyes shut tight, but that only did so much, and her head continued to pound. By the time she had nearly drank the whole mug, she thought maybe her headache had receded slightly, but it was still so severe that it was hard to tell if there was any change.
"One more sip, Lissa, and then I'll go fetch your father," her mother encouraged her.
With effort, she finished the last few drops, and Tecka led Lissa to a floor cushion at their dining table and went to quickly fetch Drust from the meadow. Soon all three Brightglenns were sitting at the low dining table. It was time to try to figure out what they could about Lissa's condition. Drust wrapped his concern for his daughter's well-being around his [identify] spell and prepared to cast it on Lissa. With her eyes still squeezed tightly shut, she jerked and turned toward him as soon as his emotions made contact with his magic. She watched with her not-quite-sight as thick threads of something colorless emerged from his heart, twisted together in a noticeable pattern with something else, and then came directly toward her. She leaned away as it approached her, but a suddenly recognized a familiar sensation, like the gentle request of [discern boon]. It was coming from whatever this strangely composed thread was that had emerged from her father's heart.
Just then Drust spoke quietly, "Lissa, please accept my [identify] spell. I know everything is overwhelming right now, but this will give us information we need to help you."
Lissa took a few quick, shallow breaths and mentally gave her assent. The thick thread connected to her, the part of her that was already experiencing sensory overload, and she whimpered at the tiny additional load placed upon her. Almost immediately, though, the thread withdrew, and streaked into the surface of the wooden table, burning the results of the [identify spell] in its organic, flourishing script.
Lissa, whose curiosity couldn't be hindered by a little thing like a migraine from sensory overload, had opened her eyes enough to squint at the writing on the table. When it became clear she wasn't going to be able to decipher any of it, she focused her squinted eyes on her father's bearded face as he read the results of the spell.
Drust's dark eyes went wide as he scanned through it. When he arrived at magical attributes, which he thoroughly expected to still be unformed, he stopped cold. Icy surprise gripping his neck and crept down his spine. Not only were her magical nodes fully formed and visible, but they were also well outside of the norm for a human. Alongside the shock, he also felt pride at his daughter's success begin to well up in his heart.
"Daddy," she managed quietly, "what's wrong with me?"
He glanced up at her, schooling from his face the shock that had sent chills running down his spine. He drew on the budding sense of pride in his daughter's accomplishment to produce a smile. When he looked at her, concern was still evident in the tightness around his eyes.
"It would appear that you've been given your magic early, Lissa, just like you wanted. And from what I'm reading, it would seem that your headache is due to such sharp acuity that I've never heard of any human having it before—maybe some of the highly magical creatures do, like dragonkin and fey folk—but even elves and gnomes typically only have acuity around 0.4." He took a breath and continued, "According to this, you've an acuity of .009. Those are incredibly sharp and sensitive magical senses, not to mention the spell also shows you've a finesse of 7. Your acuity shouldn't change much as you grow, but the other attributes typically continue to grow until you reach adulthood."
There were other changes to her status, like how Anella was designated as her patron and special attributes now sported [precocious] along with the others. He could only imagine the changes would make his and Tecka's job of raising Lissa more difficult. Those changes also weren't relevant at the moment, much as he would have like to rage against the heavens for their part in this. Something needed to be done to ease Lissa's sensory burden or she would likely be unable to function for weeks until she fully adjusted to her extraordinarily sharp acuity. He thought for a moment about what their options were. Lissa had squeezed her eyes shut again and pulled the neckline of her shirt over her nose and mouth by the time Drust voiced his thoughts.
He counted out the options he could think of on his fingers, "Well, we could send for a healer, who may or may not have any wisdom on this. We could wait for you to acclimate, Lissa. I could try to find a local archive to see if there's anything there that could give us some ideas. We could try to find an emissary from one of the more magically sensitive races to ask them. We could search for some kind of enchanted item or potion, but enchanted items are incredibly rare and I've not heard of a potion that can affect attributes." He ran out of fingers on his first hand and just laid them down on the table as he continued, "Or maybe, if you're very, very lucky, you might have access to low level a skill or spell that can help you that you don't need a profession to unlock."
Lissa's head had started to pound more fiercely, and she barely responded, mumbling a bit incoherently. Tecka and Drust looked at each other and decided it was time to put Lissa back in bed. While Tecka went ahead of them, Drust lifted his little girl's tired body into his arms and followed Tecka into Lissa's room.
In the morning light, the small bits of [umbral fur] that had been left out on her bed the night before had eventually evaporated. Not even their hazy miasma remained having burned away entirely. Tecka quickly picked things up off the floor, placing them back into Lissa's trunk, including the closed leather satchel that held the bulk of her precious [umbral fur]. Lissa groaned weakly in her father's arms, and he carefully put her down and tucked her into bed.
They fashioned a blindfold from a spare bit of cloth and dug out some earmuffs from their packed up winter clothing to help ease Lissa's burden. The shutters were latched shut, and any strong sources of magic that they could think of were removed from Lissa's room, which ultimately meant that Tecka rummaged through the trunk again for the leather satchel and any remaining party potions she could find. Locating only two, Tecka and Drust withdrew from the room to discuss their options. Halfway through Lissa's bedroom door, Tecka remembered the plain grey bracelet that Lissa never took off. She didn't want to upset Anella, but it was likely a source of strong magic, so she gently untied it from Lissa's small wrist before she left, shutting the bedroom door behind her.
Lissa struggled to shut out all of the extra input. Even the things in her room that were supposed to be non-magical seemed to have some level of magic attunement to them, microscopic threads that she could somehow see even with her eyes closed, and there were tastes and smells too, not just sights and sounds. A whole smorgasbord of new flavors she had no language for. She once again drew the top of her shirt up over her nose and mouth, but it only helped minimally, since it didn't do much to filter out the new, non-physical odors.
She was miserable.
She lay there unmoving for what felt like a very, very long time, mind too overloaded to really even think about anything. She must have drifted in and out of sleep because the next thing she knew, it was her father this time who sat on the edge of her bed and offered her a steaming mug.
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"I know you probably can't eat, but you've at least got to drink something, lamb." he said. He only called her lamb when he was worried, and she turned toward him sharply, which set her head spinning again. The headache from the overwhelming sensations had developed a side of vertigo, and she struggled to sit up straight. She took the mug from her father and took a sip. It was more salted bone broth. When she'd drunk it all, her father took it from her, placed a gentle kiss on her damp forehead and helped her lay back down in the bed.
He replaced her blindfold and earmuffs with gentle hands and left her alone again in the dark. Either the broth helped or she was finally starting to acclimate to the sensory load, because her thoughts began lining themselves up into a semblance of order, and she began to be able to pick out single sensations from the multitude of inputs. For the first time, she noticed her own magic—not just her suddenly unmuted acuity, but her own magical self, the portions of her that were primarily magical. It wasn't quite like vision, but she could feel or maybe taste the four fundaments within her core.
She struggled to focus, but with patience and effort she finally parsed them one from another. There was minty moonlight and hazy shadow that tasted almost like dew, and the light and shadow seemed to be bound up comfortably together. And there was crystal clear sweet water, and her sense of the final fundament began with the delicate aroma of flowers and herbs which seemed to swell through the warm musk of oak into the towering sharpness of pine and redwood; those two, floral life and the purest of water, also seemed to have been somehow wound tightly together.
She took a moment to rest and gather herself, head still pounding. She couldn't close off her senses or even block them with her hands. She just wanted it to be dark and quiet and odorless. Acting on a brand new instinct, she did something with the shadow in her core. The sudden muting of sensation was a relief and a shock. The extra input she'd been receiving since last night hadn't disappeared, but now it traveled through a thick muffling haze to get to her. She sighed suddenly in relief, and promptly fell asleep.
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When she woke a few hours later, her father was once again sitting on the edge of her bed, presumably holding another mug of broth. She sat up carefully, but the pounding headache had been reduced to a weak ache behind her eyes. She pulled off the blindfold and earmuffs, and looked at her father with relatively clear eyes for the first time in what felt like a year.
"Well, you must be starting to feel a bit better, sweetling." he said, smiling.
She began to agree, but it was then that she noticed a wispy curve of shadow out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to look at it, it had moved. Everywhere she looked, it stayed precisely in the corner of her vision, as if it was in her eye instead of in her room.
"Daddy," Lissa began anxiously, "There's something in my eye now."
"Oh? Which eye?" Drust asked, handing her the broth. "Hold this, and I'll take a closer look."
She squinted one eyes shut and then the other, determining that it was in fact in both of her eyes, and remained visible even when she closed them. "It's in the corner of both of my eyes. It looks like a curlicue made out of shadow."
He had reached for her face, but immediately leaned back in surprise. She could see hopeful disbelief in his eyes.
"I promise it's there daddy! What is it!?" With the reduction in her headache, Lissa had gained a corresponding increase in volume.
"Drink your broth, and I'll try to explain. Did you happen to do any magic while you were lying here?" he asked, with obvious pride and relief in his tone.
Lissa took a sip, delighted that the broth didn't taste extra funny this time, and mmhmmed as she continued to drink. Her tummy was suddenly very, very empty, and she took as big a sip as of the hot liquid as she could stand. Between sips, she added, "but I don't know what I did."
Her father's lips disappeared as he pursed them beneath his full, dark beard. "Well, I've never tried to explain it before, seeing as you're my only precious lamb. To be honest, I didn't think I would need to explain it for at least another half a decade." He stroked his wiry beard, looking up in thought.
Before he said anything else about whatever it was, he said, "I'm going to get your mother and another bowl, maybe this one with a bit of food, mm?"
Impatient, but suddenly very hungry, Lissa didn't object. She finished her mug of broth while she waited, still frustrated by the small swirl of shadow in the corner of her vision.
In a moment though, her father returned with two bowls, trailed by her mother, who carried her own bowl of soup and a floor pillow under one arm. Drust handed Lissa one of the bowls, spoon already inside, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her mother placed the floor pillow close enough to the bed that she could comfortably reach out and pat Lissa's knee.
"It's good to see you alert, sweetling," Tecka said, doing just the thing she was close enough to do by patting her daughter's knee through her blankets. Her eyes sparkled with pride. "Your father tells me you've learned a spell."
Lissa nodded as popped a bite of soup into her mouth. It was hot, thick with cattail starch, and full of summer vegetables.
Drust held his own bowl of soup, but didn't eat yet. He finally began answering Lissa's question about the strange shadowy symbol in the corner of her eye, "So, ordinarily you'd be getting this talk the night your last agetooth falls out. Falton got it on the road, I'm sure. Parents usually try to explain before you're in this situation not knowing what's happening." He cleared his throat and took a small bite of soup.
Tecka continued to pat Lissa's knee between spoonfuls. Lissa squirmed impatiently.
"Sorry, sorry. I'll get to the point," he said. "That shadow symbol in the corner of your eye likely means that you've unlocked a skill or spell related to your shadow fundament. It can happen instinctively or accidentally sometimes, but usually it takes a good deal of concentrated effort to learn how to use your magic." He took another bite of soup. "I supposed that we—that I—shouldn't be surprised that you're a natural."
Lissa asked, "But how do I make it go away?"
"Well, now that you have it, you can't make your magic—" Drust began, but Tecka interrupted
"If you want to make the symbol go away, you have to concentrate on it first. Draw it into the center of your vision." Tecka instructed.
"But how?" Lissa whined, even as she attempted and succeeded in following her mother's instructions. As she stopped rejecting it, and instead drew it closer to her, the symbol grew larger and larger and filled up the center of her vision—her magical vision; it was still there even when she closed her eyes. The shape of it was intricate, but constantly shifting, like it was trying to recreate the shape of a fog bank in lace. There were two tiny threads near the center that had a different quality to them from the surrounding threads, a darkness or a brightness Lissa couldn't quite tell. And in addition to them, a tiny portion in the corner was darker than the rest and almost glowed with inky darkness. It was at this point, she realized that her mother was still speaking.
"Each fundament has an incredible number different skills and spells, but most humans don't have the personal skill, magical potency, or determination to unlock many magical abilities. You should see a few small parts of it that look different from the rest, maybe at the center or along one edge. One will be particularly different. This represents the portion of the fundament's abilities that you've learned. Reach out and touch it."
"But what about the other ones?" Lissa asked.
"We'll get to those in a minute. Touch the part that's different," Tecka instructed again.
Lissa complied, leaving the spoon in her bowl and reaching up with her left hand to touch the thread in the corner that somehow glowed with darkness. The rest of the foggy lace seemed to rotate and withdraw away from her, and the singular thread grew in size. As it did so, the glow seemed to recede to just the very beginning of the thread, while the rest of it remained an insubstantial grey. There was text hovering about it, which she could somehow understand if she didn't focus too closely on any individual letter.
Lissa read it aloud:
"First order spell: Dull Senses, Level 1
Target: Self
Wrap the target's magical senses in shadow. Increasing ability with this spell allows for greater precision and duration, dependent on finesse and potency respectively.
"So... if I get better at this, I can choose what I want to be able to... ," she searched for the right word to encompass her broad acuity, "... sense magically?"
Tecka nodded, "That'll effectively be what happens, yes. You'll be primarily choosing what you block out. You can still sense everything right now, just more quietly, right?" She asked.
"Yeah, although, it seems like maybe it's getting louder again." Lissa rubbed at one eye with her left fist, right hand still holding her bowl. "How do I make it go?"
Drust stepped in at that moment, saying, "You probably did it on instinct before." He stopped to think and then continued, "Casting spells is a little bit different for everyone; there's no one universal way that people interact with their magic. For me, I need to feel a certain emotion and then I sort of twine that emotion with the skill in my fundament and then push it out into the world. You'll need to figure out how to draw on the magic in your fundament to cast the spell."
Lissa listened, and studied the strand of magic in front of her, then she reached out and tugged on it. It unfurled like a bolt of her mother's fabric, thin like gauze. Without much encouragement or motion on her part, the gauze seemed to wrap around her head and settle over her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Blissfully quiet normalcy descended upon her. It wasn't quite like it had been the day before—before she'd forcibly unlocked her magic early—but the same glorious relief that had enveloped her the first time she'd cast it settled over her mind.
The strand that represented [dull senses] seemed to have filled with more glowing shadow, and she realized the text around it now described it as level 2. With a thought, she pushed the image of the spell and her shadow fundament away. It seemed to roll up and descend into her heart, taking it out of her vision entirely.
Finally beginning to be rid of her headache and on the way to satiating her hunger, Lissa realized that she had really done it. She had unlocked her magic early, and she had already learned her first spell. A wide grin spread over her face as her proud but worried parents exchanged a look that heralded the exhaustion they were likely to experience until she matured enough to make wise choices with her newfound power. For the first time in his whole life, Drust, who had longed for a large family, was thankful they weren't able to have any more children—he would need all his available attention to make sure their little girl didn't get herself into too much trouble.