Willamina Moreau

She was never satisfied. He wondered if that’s why he felt so drawn to her. But Cal couldn’t claim in that regard she was special when he viewed everyone as special in their own ways. But she was… godlike in his eyes. Her words were magic. The eclipse felt like nothing when he sat in the shadow of her.  “Are you saying you haven’t studied me enough?” he asks, voice light as he tears off a piece of bread to place in his mouth. 

“Orphans are a different story, Mina,” he says softly. “I don’t know how the Vae feel about my kind, but I remember how the Keep treated me before my magic manifested. Although I suppose because I’m not a child anymore that I’m hardly a strain on society now that I can provide for myself.” With war nipping at the edges of everyone’s thoughts, healers were important. “What I’m getting from this though is that you don’t behave and to whomever told you that, I can’t help but to agree,” he teases.

-

Mina’s gaze shifted again to Cal and she grinned, “I have a feeling that one could study you their whole life and never figure out everything.” She knew enough about him to enjoy him and his company. But she’d never pried too far and wouldn’t dig. His boundaries were his own and she respected them. But what she did know, she adored. He loved with everything he had, and he loved often. He was free with his affections and his attention and it changed as quickly as… well… a stream.

Her smile softened when he brought up his past, she knew he hadn’t been as fortunate as she had been. She loved her mother dearly and she still had her father. And while she was trying to get to know him more, she didn’t know him that well yet but she was grateful that he had accepted her. She’d never been an orphan, nor had she ever lived on the streets. She’d found her home early in the temples. “I know it isn’t… helpful to hear but orphans shouldn’t be judged based on what their parents did. That’s awful.” She shook her head and smirked again, “Why would anyone want to behave? It sounds so dull.”

He believed there was magic everywhere, that even if you weren’t gifted by the gods, magic still swirled in you. He saw it in the poets, in artists, in Mina’s eyes when she was truly, madly, deeply in her element. Moments like that remind him how he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. They’d be apart for weeks and then be pulled back like the waves to the shore. There was an ebb and flow to them.. “And water,” he reminds, both helping him become the healer he was. “The light gives me strength but the water compels me, pushes me where I need to be. Funny how the gods granted a little desert boy power over water,” he laughed softly and looked away from her sight to stare upon the stares. She always did that, he always found himself staring at her, even when she catches him. “I aim to please, my lady,” he says, remark equal in jest to hers.

“I think most humans innately have soiled names with the Vae,” he teases. But he had only met a few, “Like they see us as the one off bad member of our family they met a hundred years ago.” He’s content in the idea of being an orphan, which is why he was so quick to shed the name he was either born with, or given as a street urchin. Whomever that child was was long gone, and there was no record kept. Only a few knew of his name before, as unremarkable as it was. “We could do it. There has to be a few cities who would let us in without question,” he wonders.

-

In some ways, Mina did feel like even those without it could sense magic. Like there was a sort of buzz around different objects or people. Like you just knew they were different, that they were… more. But she also thought that in many ways, she was more too. Her education had been unique in that she hadn’t been satisfied learning just the teachings of the Infinite Three, she wanted to learn as much as she could. And she wanted to draw her own comparisons and conclusions from that. Not everyone had that sort of drive. Just as not everyone was driven and led by their magic like Cal was. “So the light is your power but the water… that’s your compass…” She smiled, “Probably a whole theory out there somewhere in the world that says we go where the rivers flow and the seas command. You’d be the best subject to study.”

“I don’t know if it’s a rush of magic or just my love of the sun,” he admits. Summer was always his time. Lately it just made him miss the Red Keep, the warmth of the desert under his toes. “Perhaps it’s a bit of both. It’s because your surrounded by what gives you power. I feel it when it rains, also. Or even just floating in a lake, or the ocean.” It relaxed him, he could feel the magic swirl around him and he could swear he felt the heartbeat of the world in it. But he was always a bit romantic. “I like to think I just know you enough to know your type of cheese,” he teases.

Everyone had their own view of what happened when they died. Sure, of course, there were mass theories that large groups believed in, but Callahan believed in… well, whatever soothed your soul. There were moments he believed in reincarnation, because he wanted to see more and more of the world, sometimes he’d want to return to the stars. But that thought usually brought his focus away from living life. He wanted to live this life like there was nothing after it, so he strove to see everything, to feel everything he could. “We could go to Vailen- you could, I mean. There are many cities that are open to humans. There will always be.. that sort of phobia, but they would welcome you.”

-

She understood that, feeling like you were in your element. Only for her, perhaps she was tied to the wind. She had grown up loving her home and her life and family but even as a child, she preferred skipping around, spending time in Elysi with her father or Loqoala at the temple or with her mother’s family elsewhere. Getting to learn about different places, different people, experiencing all of that, that was what she held closest to her heart. “Mmm… maybe I’m at my best with the wind then, never settling, never still. Like you are with light. Motion, traveling… that keeps me at peace.” Mina gave him a small smile, it was so easy to take kindness and thoughtfulness like that for granted and she often did. Perhaps coming from the temples where everyone just sort of… helped out each other had skewed her view of the world. “Thank you. It is the least you can do for me allowing you the pleasure of my company.” She grinned then, teasing and laughing.

Go to Vailen with Callahan? It seemed like a perfectly simple, promising, exciting adventure. “Oh we could? And let you sully my good name to the elves?” She laughed again, as if she had any such thing. She was an unknown, only really acquainted with other priestesses, a few people outside of the temples like Cal, and her father. “I’d love that, honestly.” She admitted. Seeing more of the world, especially with good company as they breezed through it, sounded like her ideal life.

“Instead I get the luxury of being a poor magic user of the dawn,” he drawls. He had heard those stories too, even met a few shadows mages in his time at the Magaesterium. He thanked her for the glass before he pull himself up in to sitting position, if only to marvel at her for a moment longer while he was still clear headed enough to do so. ”Don’t have to tell me twice.” He motions to his bag, “In case we get hungry.” He had filled it with fruit and cheeses, a loaf of bread, all carefully wrapped. A bottle of wine more just in case. If the stars called for it.

As much as he believed in the gods, he believed in the stars. He believed in the gifts they granted them and if he believed in the gods any more than he did, he would have joined a different life. “Stars burn out, but there is always one to replace it. They continue on, in one way or another. Perhaps one day we can travel among them and they can tell us what they know.”

-

“Do you feel a rush of magic during the summer then, when the sun is at its strongest and in the sky the longest?” She slid down next to him, crossing her legs and pouring a glass of wine for herself. “Like during the solstice?” She smiled, taking a look through his bag. “Oooh you got havarti…” She peeled back the wrapper a bit on the soft cheese and broke off a piece. “Wine, food, stars, good company… you’re spoiling a girl.”

The Comfort of Family

Closed Starter for: Willamina Moreau ( @priestessofthethree )

Where: Glasswater Magaesterium

When: Two weeks before the Eclipse

The Magaesterium-cum-Library of Glasswater was a sight to behold. Situated in the center of Glasswater, the structure was five buildings connected at the second and third floor by covered walkways, and the fourth floor was an arched dome with an oculus at its heart. The buildings themselves were situated in a pentagon with a courtyard in the middle that held a star-shaped fountain. Around the edges of the courtyard, and lining the streets that branched between the buildings, were street vendors and merchants who came daily to hawk their wares. A couple towers still showed signs of being repaired. Randulf marveled that the damage done in the attack was minimal. Their wards were not to be taken lightly in any place yet especially here with its magically imbued stones that had stood for millenia. The rebellion was foolhardy to attack this place. That they had even tried showed just how much of a fool they’d made of him. What even was the point of attacking buildings that held knowledge? That was a place of learning? It made little sense for a movement that claimed to want to help those oppressed when only those who wished to oppress attacked such places.

What other truths of the movement had been hidden from those who’d joined with good intentions in their hearts?

Shaking off that thought, he took a moment to get his bearings. This wasn’t a place he came to often whether it was in Elysi or elsewhere. Randulf’s personal views on magic didn’t align with what the academia taught nor with most of the populace of Vailar. He tried not to share them too often given that it often brought an unpleasant response from others. Or a headache in the form of a lecture if the person overhearing happened to be part of the Magaesterium itself. Of course, his visits here of late had nothing to do with magic.

Having Willamina this close was a treat. He’d not gotten to visit with her this often when she was visiting the other kingdoms or out in the desert of Elysi. The first and second floors of each tower held libraries dedicated to different genres while the third were used for educational purposes. Of course, even with having been here more than once in the past month that didn’t keep him from getting turned around. Plus, he wasn’t sure exactly where his daughter was at this exact moment.

“Excuse me,” Randulf stopped one of the magus walking by — the symbol on their robe declaring them a Professor — to ask for directions. “I’m trying to find someone. She is a visiting Priestess of the Infinite Three.”

Willamina had told him before that the faculty knew of her presence which only made sense as she needed permission to study here.

-

Luckily, when the attacks happened, the majority of the priestesses and priests who worked in the libraries and magaesterium were safely tucked away in the dormitories, which were renovated from apartments in the back of two of the five buildings of the magaesterium. Willamina Moreau, a priestess studying and learning at the Glasswater magaesterium had only arrived a few months prior after the death of her mother. And most nights, she was in the astronomy tower, watching the stars whirl by. It; however, was built in the building that had been attacked, a few stories above the library with a winding staircase and looked down over even the dome. That’s where she’d been when it had happened too. Thank the infinite three for the wards that did protect the magaesterium, without them there might have been far more damage. The entire building might have been destroyed. But magi were skillful and talented people and even if she could still hear the screams that echoed through the streets, the building was mostly repaired. Hell, only the front end of it that held some of the stacks had been damaged at all. She might have thought there was a correlation with it being the building that held both astronomical and astrological texts as well as some of the more economical related records throughout the kingdom. But she had neither the time, energy, nor patience to think on that. Instead, she went about her life, happy to be uninjured from the events that had transpired weeks before and happy to see so many repairs having been made already.

Mina had been working with the other priestesses and magi to put things back in order, to clear the debris leftover the manual way. Since the attack, she’d spent a few hours every day working in the library, moving mostly torn apart books and organizing them in piles to be repaired and restored. Many were still missing pages, or missing half of the books, more still were charred and too far damaged to save.

“Mina?” The short, stocky priestess called to her as she put another pile of broken books aside. “Someone’s asking for you, well they’re asking for a priestess of the Infinite Three and since you’re the only one here visiting…”

Mina smiled, the other priestess, a decade or so older and a tutor for magi, had a tendency to ramble and she simply nodded. “I’ll be right down.”

Putting away the books she was trying to organize, Mina gathered herself, bounding down the staircase. She caught sight of a salt and pepper haired man, standing with his back to the staircase, and she smirked. “Father!” She called, skipping the last rung of steps and bounding the last few steps to him, closing the distance. “Decided to see the damage for yourself?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he tries to tell her easily, but the fact of the matter was that after trudging up flights of stairs, he found his legs weak and tired. Which was to be expected even if he was at peak power. (Even partial eclipses, he could feel it tug away the light inside of him.) “I almost didn’t make it though,” Cal told her as he all but collapsed on the floor, the comfort of the blankets and pillows called to him too much. His pack sat discarded at his feet for the moment. “Made me yearn for the power of flight,” he added as he stretched out, eyes half on her, and half on the sky.

It was hard to look away from her, he’d admit that easily and readily. The way she moved about the tools, like they were an extension of her own body.

He knew he would never life long enough to see this happen again, not fully, not to this degree. Not with the hushed tones that he heard, whispered in the hallways about the effects. Cal knew of a few shadow mages who tried to hide how thrilled they were, but he was strongest when the sun was brightest, he supposed. Mina had asked if he would join, and he wasn’t in the business of denying himself that pleasure of being in her presence.

-

Mina smirked, “Too bad you were not born a night dragonkin, from what I’m told it’s like they get an extra surge during eclipses… like they drank too much khaf.” She knelt down, pouring him some of the wine she’d brought up and handing him the goblet. “I’m almost done setting up, get comfortable.” She’d known Cal a few years and he was always a good, kind, and fun person to spend time with. And though she appreciated his time and his company, Mina knew there was little beyond that. Not that she wanted it, she had so much to see of the world and relationships that weren’t formed by blood would only slow her down. But she did enjoy their time together, when she got it.

For the most part, the magaesterium in Glasswater had been abuzz with people bringing in cots and making plans for the magi to stay and hunker down during the day of the eclipse. Longer, if their magic was affected afterward. But Willamina Moreau had no magic herself, so she’d spent the day passing out bed rolls and making preparations of her own. She’d lived through a few partial eclipses so far, but from what the magi had said, this one, as strange and unnatural as it seemed, only happened every five hundred years. So she had done some errands and sold some of her time researching for some of the other priestesses so that she could buy a good bottle of wine, not the cheap stuff she usually drank.

And she planned on spending the eclipse where no other magi with any magic would dare to go during it. The top of the mage tower, where the protections of the wards were weakest, and the drain of the eclipse was the strongest. Granted, Glasswater’s magaesterium wasn’t the tallest in the realm, but she had offered to record the event using the instruments they had available, solar mapping tools, sun gazers, telescopes. She was the perfect candidate to stay in the astronomy tower simply because she was one of the few priestesses there without any gifts.

She had climbed the long, winding spiral staircase to the tower and spread blankets and pillows around the floor. She’d cranked the lever to open the oculus of the tower, angling the telescope upward, when she heard footsteps behind her. “I didn’t know if you’d show up or not.” She answered with a smirk, pointing up to the glass roof above them. “It’s beginning.”