#wizards apprentice

pregnant pause: "no no I jest! where would we be without them? seriously."

Letters came from her son so infrequently that when Pía came skidding into the house with a wide grin on her face and handing over the letter written in Alaric’s scrawl, she had barely believed it. He hadn’t written in five or so years. As she held the thick yellow-green paper while examining the address, more and more of his now graduated apprentices gathered around, waiting to know the contents of the letter.

“He’s writing from a different place,” she said as she unfolded the letter. 

It wasn’t very long, often they weren’t. But the contents made her smile far more than even the times he sent her seeds along notes on the care of the plant. Metzi finished the letter and handed it off to Nico. He barely got a chance to hold it before it was being snatched away.

“He has a new apprentice and–” Exclamations of delight greeted her words and she smiled before snapping her fingers to make the quiet down. “And he’s coming back home.”

Mickey Mouse Whirlpool

Here’s your drawing @disneyfan95. I hope you like it!!

Never in her life had Fay had hair that grew fast, but after only a couple months as Alaric’s apprentice, she could pull sections of her hair forwards to look at it. Looking in the mirror showed the shaggy looking mop of pale red that no longer looked stringy and flat.

And she didn’t know how to feel about it.

She looked into the mirror now, one hand wielding a pair of scissors and the other much more hesitantly pulling at hair. Long hair wasn’t allowed in the Protectorate. And her hair went far past regulation. Bringing up the scissors, she touched the top blade to the section she held…

One breath.

Two breaths.

“Come on,” she whispered to herself. She could do this. It wasn’t so hard. 

Just.

Cut.

A tremor shook her hands and Fay dropped the scissors with a groan of disgust at herself. The metal chinked dully on the stone of the sink and she ran her hands through her hair. It had gotten thicker as well as longer and she loved the feeling of it slipping through her fingers.

All the more reason to to cut it off. Pleasure in her physical attributes was to be stifled. Vanity was a detestable trait for a person to have.

Gripping the cool stone with both hands, Fay glared at her reflection. She had to get a hold of herself. Just because she had accidentally done magic and had been disavowed by the Protectorate didn’t mean she had to lose every ounce of discipline and the values she’d grown up with now that she was an apprentice to a wizard. It didn’t matter that he treated her gently or took a much softer approach to things. She couldn’t afford to be gentle or soft. The world was harsh and she needed to be hard in order to meet it.

Grabbing the scissors once again, she yanked at her hair again and brought the shining metal back to it.

And froze again.

Her fingers refused to move no matter how much she willed it. It was just her and her reflection and she couldn’t stand her reflection. It showed the tears she didn’t want to acknowledge trickling down past the freckles that had become more numerous and prominent because of how often Alaric encouraged her to join him outside for lessons. Instead she glared more at her reflection, blaming it for everything. If you hadn’t gone soft, this would be easy, she told it.

The now all too familiar secondary thumping sounded in her ears and the mirror shattered.

Fay jumped back with a yelp, dropping the scissors as she scrambled from what she’d done.

Alaric was going to be pissed.

“Fay?” Shoving herself from the wall she’d pressed herself up against, Fay launched herself out of the room and shut the door behind her. Alaric stopped in place as she plastered herself to the wood. He looked at her and then the door before his eyes settled back on her. “Did something happen?”

“No.”

The corners of Alaric’s eyes creased even if he didn’t commit to narrowing his eyes. She’d spoken too fast. And hadn’t even come up with a better answer when he’d clearly heard her yelp. 

“You can tell me the truth, I won’t be upset,” he said gently. It was always the gentleness. It disarmed her until she remembered all the times where she’d done just that while growing up in the Protectorate and had ended up bloody from the ensuing punishment for whatever she’d done to earn it.

“Nothings wrong,” she replied weakly.

Alaric simply sighed and came closer, his hand reaching for the door handle. Fay tried to block him but moved a moment too late. His hand touched the handle and he merely waited, looking at her with that same soft expression she kept trying to convince herself that she hated. Finally she slid away from the door so he could open it unobstructed and prepared herself for whatever punishment was going to follow his discovery.

Staying an arms distance away from him, Fay followed Alaric as far as the doorway as he went in. She watched as he picked up the scissors and then moved to look at the cracks that marred the mirror. He leaned in and moved his finger just above the largest of the lines. Because she’d used magic, there was no point of impact and the cracks were a jumbled yet still somewhat geometric mess. A moment later and the surface was healed, with the barest hint that anything had happened.

“Let me see your hands,” Alaric said as he stepped away, putting the scissors down after a quick inspection.

Trembling a little she stepped closer to him and offered up her hands. He’d never hit her before, but she couldn’t see any other reason why he’d want to see her hands. Her knuckled were already scarred from punishing beatings that had torn the skin. This would just be a new set. She could handle it.

Alaric took her pale, scarred hands into his own brown hands with their own scars. He turned them over a few times before sliding up her sleeves. Fay flinched with each movement he took, steeling herself for impact. Only he didn’t hit her, instead letting her go.

“What were you feeling when it happened?”

Fay blinked a few times before answering. “Anger.”

He nodded thoughtfully before gently steering her out of the room. “A little more productive than fear. Did you mean to do it?”

“N-no.”

“Then hold onto how it felt when the magic worked through you. I want to see if you can do it on purpose now, okay?”

Okay? No, it wasn’t okay. “But I broke it.”

“Accidents happen. This is why in my country we catch people as soon as possible after their first show of magic so we can teach them how to control it before a tragic accident happens."

A whirl of thoughts and feelings flung its way around her mind as she was brought into the study and the polished bit of quartz was placed into her hands. Fay stared at the offending bit of crystal before looking back up at Alaric. “You aren’t mad.”

“No. Now, breathe like I taught you and try to make the quartz light up. Focus on that and not me.”

I have too many things going on inside my head. It all started in checks notes early 2021. It all started with the very beginnings for Defenders of Alcadia and then spun out of control from there. Now I have twelve works I'm playing with all in various stages so I'll be updating this the more things happens.

we are pretending I did this on time

With the sun hot on her back and the scent of dry soil in her nose, Fay knelt among the pots of herbs. Alaric knelt beside her, pointing where to use the small shears he’d handed her. Unlike her, his arms and shoulder were bare with no protection from the sun. His dark red brown skin didn’t burn like her white skin. He said that there were other people as pale as she who didn’t blister in the sun like she did. Apparently the red in her hair meant the sun disagreed with her more than it did a lot of other people. So she wore a shirt of pale yellow-green with sleeves that she could leave loose or button so they fit more snugly around her wrists and a hat that held a scarf of gauzy cream coloured material so it protected the back of her neck. The scarf was something she’d been looking at for a long time on one of the rare trips she took with Alaric through the large outdoor market that spanned a couple streets. It was pretty, and she hadn’t known that Alaric had been keeping an eye on her until they were leaving the market at sunset and he’d put it into her hands along with the dark purple plums she’d also spent a lot of time looking at.

“We cut it here so that it doesn’t put too much energy into growing up and out when it should be using all that energy into growing thicker stems and roots,” Alaric explained as he snipped at a few vibrant green stems that looked out of place with the older dusty grey-green stems.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why not let it grow however it wants?”

Alaric pinched a few of the leaves between his thumb and index finger. “Because it gets too weak, especially now when it's hot and there isn’t so much rain. New growth means the plant will use up all the water to make new leaves, get stressed, and very likely die.” He held out his fingers. “Smell.”

Fay cautiously sniffed his fingers and wrinkled her nose at the pungent sharpness of the scent. “You want me to eat that?”

“It adds a nice flavour to stews, so we’ll be drying most of this for cold weather. The rest will be used tonight with the chicken.” The stems went into the small basket that sat between Fay and Alaric. “People and plants are similar. People need to take their time and strengthen what they have before moving on. If we try to learn too many things at once, we’ll get stressed and make ourselves sick. Often we’ll quit learning and that's a little like dying. Remember that, Fay. A few things at a time, and go slow.”

“I don’t want to learn magic.”

“You already are,” Alaric replied gently. “There is magic in learning how plants grow and how to take care of them. There’s magic in cooking, in cleaning, and in working with your hands and body.”

“No. Those are normal things,” she argued back, glaring at him as she did. 

Alaric merely blinked before cracking his knuckles and picking up his shears again. “Are you telling me you find nothing magical or wondrous about taking a chunk of metal, and turning it into something like a knife? Or turning raw ingredients into a delicious meal? Isn’t turning something from its rawest form to be refined and shaped into something else a form of magic?”

Fay furrowed her brow and stared down at her hands. They were dusty and her fingers had green stains from weeding earlier in the rows of seedlings. “That’s not magic though.”

“Why not?”

“I…” 

She didn’t like these kinds of questions, there never seemed to be an answer that stopped them. It always made him ask more questions and those led to answers that meant more questions and on and on and on until she was so muddled in the circles he wound around her. Circles of questions that kept haunting her when she was trying to fall asleep. 

Touching the leather pouch that held the crystal light she created with magic sparked a thought and she thumped her chest. “It doesn’t cause the second heartbeat.”

“That’s because it’s a different form of magic.” Alaric sighed. “Perhaps it’s a little bit too much for you to tackle currently.”

Nose twitching in anger, Fay sent her fists into the packed dirt around the pots and leaned forwards on them to snarl at the wizard. “I can get it! I’m not stupid!”

“Where did I say you were stupid?” He looked up, one of his brows quirked up in the way it did when he was confused. “I consider you to be quite intelligent and highly curious. I am also fully aware you had your innate curiosity stifled, perhaps deliberately smothered even, and that you were raised to hate magic and anything related to it. You can’t see what I mean yet, and so I need to be the one to rethink how I do lessons for you to accommodate that.”

Well now she felt weird inside. Her emotions stuck together and twisted and it all hurt. Slowly easing back, she hugged her arms close to herself. Why was he like this? He was supposed to be her teacher. So why did he keep saying things like that, that he had to be the one to change things. She was used to being yelled at for not getting things, for not being able to do things correctly like everyone else. Teachers had always beaten a lesson into her one way or another. Often she came out of such times with bruised knuckles and stinging eyes from trying not to cry when her hands were switched.

“Fay?”

Tears disturbed the dust and dirt on her knees. She was allowed to cry here. Alaric didn’t hurt her, the scars on her hands were just that now. She hadn’t developed fresh bruises except from when she ran into something or tripped and banged herself up.

Alaric moved and she felt him settle beside her, cloth rustling as he grunted softly as he sat. “Do you want to-” 

She threw herself into his arms before he even finished his sentence, burying her face into his shoulder as sobs choked her throat. Alaric patted her head as she clutched at him.