#daau

im thinking about daau scar and that even tho he loves hermitcraft he misses his old home a lot.

bonus happy scar + warden cub inspired by this wonderful piece of art thats been living rent free in my head

yknow what frick you *unfoolishes your gamer*

Alright!  Finally stopped dilemmaing over which to pick.  As promised/warned this is original and never-before-seen-on-tumblr.  Kai is my character, Karly (and Avil) belong to a friend (who does not have a tumblr).

Karly offered the box he’d spent the entire night carrying to Kai.  “This is your gift.  It’s, um, not really what I planned to get you.”  He ducked his head, shoulders curling in.  “But Avil thought it would be useful.”

“I’m sure he’s right,” Kai said.

Karly didn’t fully uncurl, but he raised his head enough to watch through his hair as she took the box and examined it.  It looked like iron-oak wood, and had either grown naturally, or been grown by a master who managed to recreate natural-looking grain perfectly.  A flame pattern was carved into the sides, and a half-raised spiral flame had been carved into the top.  The hinges were hidden, but the latch was copper, also flame shaped.  Kai flicked it open, and the lid refused to budge.

“It’s lined with metal,” Karly said.  “And the metal is sealed, so Vana can’t smell it.”

Huh.  Kai started to reach for the metal in the box, but then stopped and set the box down.  Karly looked nervous.

Kai cupped her hands together, and tried to make a candle flame in the center of them.

Instead she made a fireball that scorched her palms, and she hissed in pain as she clapped her hands together to snuff it out.  She turned both her hands up, examining them.

The light wasn’t great; and lanterns had been set up while Kai spoke to guests, but they didn’t quite make up for the setting sun.  Still, the burns didn’t look or feel that bad.  Blistered and red, but she still had skin.

“Are you okay?”  Karly sounded worried.  He’d forgotten to be ashamed, leaning toward her with his eyebrows pulled together and staring at her hands.

“Testing things,” Kai said absently.

Healing magic had earned its somewhat inaccurate name because, while it could do a seemingly infinite number of terrifying things, those things were complicated and very few people bothered to learn how to do them.  By far the easiest use of healing magic, and the one that all Rider Academy students learned early, was to simply feed magic to the body and let it do what it normally would much faster.

That method would work for the burns on her palms; if she refused to use magic or let anyone else heal her, they would heal on their own eventually.  There could be strange results of feeding her body vastly more healing magic than it needed.  Kai didn’t know of any, but she had never been interested in studying healing so that didn’t mean much.

If something did go wrong, though, it probably wouldn’t kill her.  Anything else a healer would be able to fix, so Kai focused on her palms, the way they looked and felt and the way they ought to.  The pain was distracting, but that was always true when healing herself.  She tried to concentrate on using the smallest amount of magic she could.

Her hands healed instantly, which startled her enough to lose concentration and the magic cut off.  Which might be a good thing, Kai decided as she opened and closed her hands, turned them over, and spread her fingers, checking to see if anything felt wrong.  Her palms felt staticky, like they’d fallen asleep, but that was probably just because of how fast the healing had been.  Still, she really didn’t know what would have happened if she’d kept feeding magic to her hands instead of being startled and cut off.

“Why are your nails longer?” Karly asked.

Kai blinked, and examined the nails on her left hand, then her right.  The difference was slight, but Karly was right.  Well, if that was the weirdest thing too much healing magic would do, that wasn’t bad at all.  She would have to trim them soon, but that was it.  “Extra magic, I think,” she said, and dropped her hands back to her lap.

Karly frowned at her.  “Did you know it would do that?”

Kai shook her head.  “I just did basic healing.”

“You’re supposed to stop that when it’s almost healed,” Karly said.  He sounded exactly like her teacher.  Former teacher.

“I know.”

“So that nothing bad happens,” Karly continued.

“Nothing bad did happen,” Kai pointed out.

Karly sighed.  “Next time let me do it.”