“How are you doing that?” she asked, sitting by the fire.
Her friend looked up from the pot, her humming trailing off. She picked up the wooden spoon to continue the now slowing stirring as the other came to her hip. “Do what?”
“Do… the magic. Without speaking, I mean.” Vaer clarified, turning her body to face her friend.
Pona smiled, wiping her hands on her brightly coloured apron before coming to sit cross legged in front of Vaer.
“Magic,” she started, “is less about what you say and more about what you attach it with. We use words because they have certain ideas, feelings, built into them. But the actual sounds don’t matter, it’s your intent.”
Vaer frowned. “Like, the will to make it happen?”
Pona hummed, the air vibrating with it slightly. “Like the desire to shape what is around you.” she brought her hands up, fingers sitting lightly on invisible strings, “the suggestion of change, to push and pull reality.”
“But you still need the sounds, you can’t just pull at the world.” Vaer said, the ghost of a question lingering at the end of her statement.
“Sure,” Pona smiled, “but all I have to do is tag it and the space will move to meet the sound.”
Vaer was aware that she had leaned forward, pulled in her own way she supposed towards Pona. “Show me.”
Pona stood, and pulled her long hair up into a ponytail. She breathed out and lay her palms parallel to the floor, arms beside her. As her breath settled so too did the energy in the room seem to shift and lay down. Vaer felt pressed at, even as the hair on her body stood.
“What do you want me to say?” Pona said, her wrists turning and fingers winding those strings again.
“Uh. I don’t know. Um, a nursery rhyme?”
Vaer released a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Oh hush, like you’re not already the cliche of a kitchen witch.”
Pona stuck out her tongue and then hummed a note, the sound travelling along her strings. “The itsy bitsy spider,” she started to sing, and Vaer could hear it but she could also almost hear whispers of… something else underneath those words. She shut her eyes.
“Climbed up the water spout,”
There was definitely something, a pull but also a drive to do- she wasn’t sure.
“Down came the rain and washed the spider out.”
Not a word, no. Pona was right, it was more the feeling. She said ‘down’ but Vaer felt... Up. high. Rise.
“Out came the sunshine and dried out all the rain.”
Vaer opened her eyes. The room was filled with cutlery, books, small objects that were floating in the air around them. Vaer’s own hair was rising around her head and there was even a floaty feeling in her chest as she watched Pona in the centre of the room. She was grinning, eyes on Vaer, and the words seem to fall from her mouth to join the objects in the room.
“And the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.”
And then the pause. The end of the song hanging as if a held breath. Pona raised an eyebrow at Vaer, and then released her hold and her breath, and the feeling shifted. Return, home, back, as the books slotted themselves on Pona’s shelf, the cutlery found its place in the draw and the other object drift slowly back down to the table.
“How was that for kitchen witch?” She said, letting her hair down again.
“I’ll give you the witch,” Pona said, trying not to sound as breathless as she felt, “but as for the kitchen...” she finished, gesturing at the pot on the stove which was now bubbling over in its inattention.
Vaer sweared, running to the stove again as Pona laughed, still feeling lifted despite the spell’s end.
