If you want:
you are absolutely in the right place. Have a look round, and contact me if you have any questions or desires about anything you see on here.
The magic spilled out of her, as blood is wont to do.
She had spent the first ten years of her life fascinated by colour, and the next ten by people, and the next six by life. In the last year they had coalesced into an act she was still honing, and felt she always would, and one that she would risk her life to keep — though not anyone else’s. She had experienced enough of loss to believe in its effects on another.
She had in fact experienced loss upon loss throughout her life, in a myriad of ways, like a garnet chipped by inexpert tools: mostly unexpected, until the time approached for it to happen, and then reluctantly anticipated. The power and act she had discovered could also give her an insight into what would happen and what would not, which was a skill she had learned much younger, but was also buried deep after years of harsh words by family and strangers alike. That, too, was now private.
Knowing the approach of loss gave her strength to be tested by it, but gave her none to adapt to the aftermath without what or who she prized. It took time, and thought, and often long months of berating and self-hatred and uncertainty before she found her way through the other side of the fear that mired her and stuck to her like tar in her hair — and she, with no courage to cut it away, pulled at each strand of herself, dead as it was but still part of her, working it slowly and agonisingly free. But it left her mostly whole, each cycle that coppiced her, and the growth that came attracted new times and people both.
She was in a growth cycle right now, enjoying the attentions and presence of multiple people, all of whom possessed in each way a desire to improve and be better than who they were before. She liked that, and shared it, though she wasn’t sure she could achieve it. She was convinced too much had, or could, happen to negate any good that a change would bring.
She could try, though.
She brought her attention back to where she was. Lost in her reverie, her concentration had drifted and her magic had dried, scabbed over her reservoir, and no more wounds could bring it back. She looked down at her hands, trying to hide her anger. They were covered with tiny healed cuts around the nails, mainly from picking and chewing, and a large one flared on the knuckle of her left thumb, the most recent. Reopening it would do nothing; she had learned early on that it was like re-catching a dead fish thrown back in the water. It would never bite a hook again. She had to wait until another shoal from herself appeared — or find another source.
She looked around her, and over, snapping fully into the present. She was on a boat powering almost full speed on the Thames, a commuter clipper, its twin prows ploughing through the water like a salmon. She was at the back, where the propeller churned the river milky white, leaving silt to boil in its wake. There was a naval flag, too, scarlet with the Union Jack in one corner: a Red Ensign. It bucked wildly on its slanted pole.
Beside her, there was the entire reason she’d decided to cast in the first place. As usual it was a man, but unusually, it was one she loved. Originally it had been for how he had let her in, and she had naturally reciprocated; now it was for how he shifted like a sea change, quiet outside but wild in his own mind, lapis eyes darting, measured voice stuttering, only to switch and melt and pounce whenever he felt safe. Now he was quiet again, but it was a peaceful kind, and one that felt rarer still. She wanted to help prolong it, further it or deepen it, however she could. She could not; but, with her magic, she could affect moods or aspects that might influence in kind. She could also add warmth, and here on the boat with a north wind biting their left, it would be both useful and a way of giving her love.
It went like this: first, establish a desire. That was simple this time: keep warm, bring affection. She’d learned how to keep herself warm last year, and it was easy now. She was also sure enough of her regard for him that affection, though less practiced, would be no more difficult. Next came a focus: a target to aim at as much as for. That would be the man beside her, oblivious as he was to her power. Next: a source to transmute. It had to be red. Red: millennia of connotations for power and passion and strength, all unconscious. She’d simply discovered that it was possible to shift the colour from being into acting, and she was sure anyone could, if they were brave enough. She didn’t dare find out who would.
The next part should have been just as straightforward, if she’d kept her concentration. Whilst any red could be taken and transformed, she always had a source of red — her blood — and she knew how it coursed and fed and fell better than any other means. She told people she self-harmed, was anxious, though she’d never cut with a knife; it was a partial truth, a lie to hide her power. In reality, she grew her nails just long enough to pick apart the layers of her flesh, so blood flowed. Blood clots in seven minutes. Seven minutes to take and mix her red with that of her desire. The hardest part was succeeding in less than that.
She’d been covered in scabs much of last year, mostly on her fingers and anywhere on her hands, frequently overcome and frightened by the pressure of perfection; but she was skilled now, honed, and only one large one remained. That was the one on her thumb, that she’d picked open with a nail ten minutes ago. She’d waited until he started to point out sights on the riverbank — landmarks, infrastructure, unexpected art — and while he had, she’d listened and opened herself, letting herself feel until it turned into lava in her heart… and with one swift scrape, it was free. But her timing was off, like palpitations, torsades de pointes of her will: he still spoke, and she wanted to listen, drift on his stories like a current, and vaguely hope he would fall into a lull before those precious minutes were spent on him instead on for him. Still he had spoken, and she had happily listened even as she grew anxious. Now he was silent, but the connection was not only still around, it was loose: she needed another source of red to anchor herself to, otherwise her power would bleed out uncontrollably and with no direction until it was entirely depleted, and leave her sick and dizzy for days.
The clipper was too new to be rusty, and the busy red flag in front of them, whilst perfect, was too obvious. She closed her eyes and mentally reached out to the wider world, carefully, as the boat rocked and bumped and sped over the water. Most animals were scared off by the fury of the boat screaming through the river — but there, of all things, a lamprey, gleaming like a ribbon of fire to her sight, crimson and gold all at once. She focused — hyperfocused — and linked with it. Far away she heard herself inhale sharply from the strangeness of its red. She poured all she felt and wanted into it, until she could transmute some of its blood enough to resonate with it, become familiar with it, and then take it back transformed. Life spilled through her. She blazed with heat, her cheeks a sudden blush, her hands warm once again. The cut on her thumb quivered with two pulses. Her intensity rode before and over her, stronger than anything she’d left since she came into her power.
She didn’t know she could care this much, nor get so much power from care.
Another exclamation startled her eyes open. She was still sitting on the bench. Ahead of her, his back to them, stood one of the crew. His mouth was agape at the water on the side. It had turned from gentle waves to a St. Vitus’ dance: what she had sensed as one lamprey was a dozen, twenty, more, too many to count, all writhing, all linked to her as a rope. They broke the surface of the water like a shattered mirror, the fire of her passion stirring them to closeness and flight and uncontrollable waves of sensation and memory, breaking and colliding. Their blood, normally as cool as the water they wove in, felt as hot as a star to her shivering, overwhelmed mind.
She froze, stunned to fevertouch by the intensity of her emotions, helpless in dismay.
Next to her, the man with the blue eyes was still calm. He glanced over to the sight of the lamprey shoal, seizing and frenzied, then looked at her, and down at her hands. His brows furrowed, though whether from thought or anger she couldn’t tell. The thought that he might be angry with her terrified her on a level that struck her gut like a kick from a horse — and with that she lost her power completely. All that was visibly red on the clipper glowed, then ebbed away: ruddy cheeks paled, and crucially, so did the flag. Its red melted into grey, and was gone.
She let out a low keening sound, torn out of her, which was lost in the sound of the churning waves. Beside her the flag, bled of colour, flapped and stuttered in the wind. Its drabness was stark against the pale blue of the morning sky. The man she loved looked at it. His face was unreadable as he turned to her: she bowed her head, ashamed, desperate to hide what few secrets of herself she had left.
With one hand he cupped her chin, gently, and lifted it. Their eyes locked. As soon as they met, his steady, hers trembling with fear and wariness, the bond to the lampreys slipped and screamed loose like a cut steel cable, and refocused to feedback on her heart and wounds. With his other hand, still looking at her and into her, he placed a fingertip on the cut on her thumb. The warmth vanished, sucked away, and she bit back a cry. She didn’t want to show fear, never wanted to, but it slipped out of her. But her fear did not matter to him: he was the eye of the storm of her chaos. Ice cloaked her hand, colder than the wind or the water, and then it was gone. He took her hand in his, ice meeting fire, and then glanced over at the flag. Glared at it. In the space of a second colour flowed back into it: this time, though, its red was that of blood. She looked at her thumb: in its scab’s place was a pale white scar.
“Don’t do that,” he told her, neutrally, though she didn’t know what he meant. Conditioned to her fear, so wrapped up in it she was sure she would crumble, she lost herself in trying to work out if he was talking about acting in care, or being scared, or wounding herself for him or herself or at all. In the cloudy night of her anxiety her power shone again, faint but true, and this time it latched into his presence and became insight. The truth of what was most likely to happen ensnared her in terror even more—
—and she broke, broke through the other side of it, like sunlight at storm’s end.
She took a leap. She threw her arms around him, forehead on his shoulder, and screwed her eyes shut. Deep in her heart the thread of power was looping but still loose, and blind terrified instinct overrode her past experience. She took it in the dark of her mind, felt out for him — his red unmistakably more purple than her own — and offered it. She trembled as he accepted it, hooked it into his heart even though it became taut, snagged as if it wanted to own all that he would give, and tenderly wrapped his arms around her.
When she opened her eyes again, all was normal. The crew had shrugged off the churning, and gone back indoors to the other passengers. They were alone, and the incarnadine flag had settled to a steady flutter. So had her heart: she realised it pulsed in time with her own, irrevocably linked. She found herself smiling at it.
“Well, that was lucky,” the man with the lapis magic said dryly, and at that she let out a peal of laughter, short and pure, that hung in the air like a fire bell. Gently she shook her head at herself, shaking the last of her fear with it, and pulled away to sit back on the bench, side by side. They still held hands, though: the scar on hers glistened faintly blue, and she noticed as she settled down that his hair now had a touch of ruby in the sun. She didn’t think he’d mind; it was a small price for the sense of belonging they’d found.
Marked, and bonded, they watched the river fall away.
“Ok, so yellow is thought, right?”
Biel scratched a fingertip in a puddle of spilled beer, trailing a sigil that was very carefully unfinished. Tannin recognised it as unfinished, but given it was to summon a pleasure class demon and they were in a Soho pub, it was wise not to take chances. Most of them were feeling flighty today.
“Right,” Biel replied. His accent was British, Londoner, strong. “And the shade gives a good idea of mood. There’s an idea with earthbound folks, they call it colour therapy, that you can influence someone’s mood by changing the shade around them – it’s true. Kinda. For them it’s like trying to tell more than the shape of a man by his shadow. Can’t happen. But we can, with yellow and thought.”
Tannin laughed. “You’re stating the obvious again. You’re so drunk.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.” Biel wagged a finger, sending a few drops of beer floating gently to the ground. “But you never know who might be listening, right?” He looked round, grinning and wild, and laughed at the few furtive headturns. “Look, no one gives a shit. As usual. Earthbounds, you gotta love them.”
“How do we do it, then?”
“Influence? Easy. Can do it right now. Probably not as good as I can be, but this, my newbie friend, is just a demonstration. A guide to potential, what could be—”
“Biel. You’re talking shit again.”
Biel huffed. “Oh, am I? Watch my pint, Tann.” His finger still damp and sour-smelling, he pointed at his beer – which leapt in a tidy stream to itself, coating the nail and up to the first knuckle. “Thought provides will… will provides touch… touch provides link.” The liquid spiralled gently, grew paler – or brighter – or it was a trick of the light, unsure truth in the flickering candle bulbs. So much of what Biel had shown had been. “Link back to will….” —and the pale yellow flared— “…and circle complete.”
Biel dropped back, flicked his fingers free of beer. His brow was flushed, but whether it was from effort or a drunk blanket, Tannin wasn’t sure.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Wait.” Biel was smiling, his eyes bright. “Just wait.”
Tannin waited. A barman came over, holding a pint, and silently placed it in front of Biel. He lifted it, took a sip as the barman walked away. “Ooh, IPA. Lovely.”
“…So you told the barman to bring you a beer?”
Biel’s grin widened. “No shit. You want some?”
“I’m good.”
“‘O sheltered and untrained to sight before you’…” Biel paused, leant forward. “Seriously, though – it is that easy. It’s a case of perfecting will. Like right now—” he burped— “I’m too pissed to, to specify. I think. But surprises are good.”
“Ok. I think that makes sense.” Tannin looked around. No one raised their head, no one turned to look: they were all lost in their own conversations or thoughts. It had always astonished him how little people cared about anything that didn’t affect them.
What if this could be used to make people care? he thought. Could it?
“Could it what?” Biel blinked. “Sorry. My shields are shit right now. Probly best if you tighten yours.”
Tannin had forgotten that anyone like Biel could reach out, and quickly, he closed his eyes. Saw a wall in the darkness. Mirrored the outside for good measure. Biel nodded to himself, slowly. “Good work. ‘d much rather see my sex life than yours. What were you thinking?”
“How far this could go.”
“Influencing thought? All the way, baby. It doesn’t happen often these days, not with the internet, mobiles, that kinda groupthink. Everyone’s getting wiser to their own thought, rather than letting someone think for them. Cults and religions don’t have the sway they did. But if someone was careful, and they got the right training, they could lead the world.”
Tannin was quiet, looking at the IPA, the bubbles spiralling through a pint the colour of straw. Finally he said. “I need the bathroom. Back in a sec.”
Biel lifted his stolen pint, tipped it in an ironic salute. “I’ll follow when you’re done.”
Tannin headed to the urinal, his head suddenly full of fibreglass. It was hard to think. He unzipped, automatically… then he paused as his senses registered through the yellow haze. Turned left.
A girl was watching him.
“What…?”
“I saw what you did.”
Tannin wished Biel were here. He’d likely say something like “Yeah, you saw me trying to take a piss,” or even, “Can you even use these bogs?” Something smart. He wasn’t so inclined. Instead, he managed, “You didn’t see me do anything.”
“Hm. You’re right. I saw him do it, though.” She leant against the wall, one hand in a pocket, the other loose by her side. She was all in black, short spiky hair, skinny jeans and leather jacket. Young. Young style. Smart, too; you didn’t see that kind of literal thought in a regular earthbound. “I want to learn.”
“I can’t teach you.”
“Bullshit.”
“No. I’m serious. I only learned this twenty minutes ago. I’m a trainee. I’ve been this way for five months. The apprenticeship is ten years. Even if you did see something – like, like a magic trick, Penn and Teller, Copperfield, Morgan, that kind of thing – I. Can’t. Show. You.” He was babbling, he knew, and he wasn’t sure why. His instinct was hammering at his guts, and he’d learned just enough to know that he knew nothing, really, except that he was in big, big danger. He clamped his mouth shut, clenched his teeth.
The girl smiled.
“You passed,” she said. “Shame he didn’t, really.”
“What?”
“You say that a lot, don’t you? Fuck knows why he chose you. I’m from Praesidium. We’d had reports some idiot was showing off around Earthbounds. We were hoping it wasn’t true.”
“Look, he’s got a drinking problem…”
“We can sober up at will. It means nothing.”
“We can?”
A look of pity twisted her calm gaze, briefly. “Look, you’re new to this. We can train you properly. He’ll have to be eliminated, of course – we can’t let Earthbounds know we exist, right?”
“Right,” he said, and fell quiet briefly, but inside he was screaming. His walls had to stay up, no matter what; if she had even a tenth of the abilities he’d seen, she’d pluck any stray thought that fell through the barriers. But there was a chance – a failsafe. He turned his attention inward, doing two things: first, imagining the mirror of his walls gold bright, as reflective as possible. At the same time he focused on a mental drillbit against one of the bricks, creating a hole big enough for a single breath of thought.
Biel, he sent. Help me. Now.
Biel’s response came like a grasping handshake, warm and welcoming in his mind, then a single question: Link?
They’d joined thought before; only in practice, but still enough to trust when desperate. Tannin consented, crumbling his walls with a twist of imagination that lasted the blink of an eye, and felt Biel’s will slip through the ruins, coating him in calm, replacing the mirrorshield with a honeycomb net. It glowed butter yellow, felt powerful, and the strength itself was enough to reassure.
Up until that moment he’d stood there, hesitating and awkward, uncertainty increasing. When Biel arrived, though, his own thought crowded through his emotion, shoving it aside. He looked down. His fly was still unzipped. He hadn’t drunk much, unlike Biel – he was dehydrated, he knew
He took in Biel’s easy assessment of the situation: you use what tools you can in magic.
He let go.
He felt curiously blank as his attention fell to the steady dark yellow stream. He had perhaps about 20 seconds – enough with thought magic. With a promise to himself to scrub his hands, he pointed his finger down, coated it in yellow. Fell into the colour. Let Biel take his power, as a rider does the power of a horse. He felt Biel murmur, deep in his mind.
Thought provides will. Will provides touch… touch provides link. Link back to will. Circle complete.
“Luteus,” he whispered.
The agent’s eyes widened, and she would have gone pale, but instead she doubled over with a clutch of her belly and a low, terrified groan. She threw her head up, her eyes pleading, and Tannin watched the whites cloud with unmistakable yellow. He felt his power twist through her mind like sunflower oil through water, beading and coating but not combining, searing her brain, overwriting the functions…
Biel wasn’t just controlling her mind – he was using it to control her body, taking the toxins in urine and amplifying their markers throughout her, shutting down her liver, letting cascading organ failure do the rest. Tannin felt himself grab her by the jacket and take her into the cubicle, cock forgotten and flopping and dribbling, and shut and locked the door. He slumped her on top of the seat, and fell back against the cheap grey door, the link fading now that she was helpless to attack. He fumbled his fly shut, eyes closed, not wanting to see her writhe in agony. He couldn’t shut out her whimpers, though; nor how her breathing panted, slowed, wheezed and then stopped.
It took her twenty long minutes to die.
Finally, when he was sure she wouldn’t move again, Tannin closed her mustard stained eyes and carefully eased himself out of the cubicle. He locked it from the outside with a coin, and turned to see Biel standing here, face still, eyes no longer laughing. He wondered who had died.
“Weaker than a streak of piss, am I right?” Biel shrugged, addressed the agent behind the door. “Sorry, lady, but I won’t be murdered for playing with beer in public.”
“Would they have?”
“Absolutely. There’s a long tradition of earthbound and skyfree remaining separate, including to the cost of an individual. So it’s kill or be killed, sometimes.” Biel’s face was stern, all drunkenness gone. He really can sober up at will, Tannin thought, and all words in his mind stuttered and fled as Biel looked at him. His eyes softened, though his voice stayed firm. Practical.
“They can teach you, but it wouldn’t be fun. Or, more importantly, let you survive on this plane. It’s academic versus life, and their way’s even more ruthless than this. Less subtle, too. They don’t really know how the earthbound world works. Like walking in here? Gender neutral bathrooms are still bullshit in this reality. Thankfully this reality’s at least susceptible to an ‘out of order’ sign on the door.”
“What do we do now?” Tannin asked, and Biel smiled.
“I like ‘we’. That’s good. Thanks. ‘We’, you and I, we keep doing what we’re doing. I keep training you, and if anyone tries to take things too far again… well… they’ve got a message right there.”
“Poor woman. I hope she finds peace wherever she went.”
“Oh, she won’t find peace, but she’ll have a good time…” Biel dunked his hands under the tap, went to the cubicle door, and sketched a sign on it. It glowed, briefly, and Tannin recognised it: the same sigil for the pleasure demon Voluptus. He couldn’t help it: he laughed, and Biel grinned back, wryly.
“What can I say? I’m not a total bastard. And I don’t think she’s the kind for peace.” He stepped back, wiping his hands on his chinos. “Come on. You’ve probably got time to wash your hands before they catch on and start hunting us. But that’s part of the fun.”
Tannin turned the faucet, and started to scrub his nails. “You have a strange idea of fun.”
“Yeah, I know.” Biel took a final glance at the cubicle, where a soft pink light started to glow between the spaces of the door. The agent was going to have one hell of a good time. “But I don’t think I’d wanna be any other way.”
Loss and death, it catches you anew each time,
caught by a breath.
A normal day.
To hear from another pillar for your talent
that the first one has crumbled,
fallen away,
he who was your guide
who never knew your name.
You gave him a moniker,
chose one to avoid the truth of your birth,
and he understood that;
just as he understood that
words are where our passion lies,
and now you try to say with inconsolable cries,
your mistake was to leave them with your name and past.
He passes – no, he dies –
with dignity and grace he had in life:
the privacy and solace in the quiet.
You know no such peace,
your head since parting no less than a riot;
you’d forgotten stories told you how to breathe.
Now you’re tangled by words on a white screen,
the announcement of calm sorrow:
he will never write or guide or be again,
felled like a willow bent too far,
weeping.
Weeping.
Fifty-four and mind’s decay
is a cruel way for a writer to end.
The gift of silence is forgotten in your grief.
Your tears become the litany you need,
hot and sudden and unstoppable,
a flood of knowing
of a trail of deeds
that all end in a breath of denial and hope lost:
fuck, fuck, fuck —
All the chances you didn’t know you had,
passed like the one who gave them.
All words are now a bludgeon than a tool.
and you, you born writer, withered and a fool,
you paid so much to learn.
The art he honed was a gift
whoever held the pen,
like a baton
or an awl
or a sword:
and we can continue, fail and fail better,
or we can defend our years’ long silence,
accepting a cancer of the soul,
knowing there is no honour in fear.
The price to find a treasure is a grave:
the first new lesson he never knew he gave.
We fell into ourselves
when he came back from a journey,
a gentle pace from me
and a full long test from him
of himself,
to himself,
and I found in myself a sense of pride
that I did not wait,
sighing in my tower,
but rather learned to abseil it
simply to tell the tale –
of the winds that blew my hair,
of the rope that bit my hands –
as he walked, closing our distance,
to sit with me on the base.
He’s never said goodbye to me,
not in all these years:
like the moment just now,
when we briefly went separate ways
to do our own things:
birds from the new and cluttered nest
we’d just made,
from one home to another.
“Alright, I’ll say–” he begins,
then breaks off,
as if the word itself
could bring it to pass,
could make it meant,
could make the knowledge
of our inevitable parting real.