Wing It
Sitara’s POV
Torryn’s hair looked black the first evening he arrived. Sunlight proved it had more of a blueish hue. The grimoires we were looking at the other day are still piled downstairs in the treatment room, though he left early yesterday morning. I enjoyed teaching him a few magick basics he’s surely forgotten by now. For a human, he knew a lot already. Well, he could kind of name a few processes, and a few of the schools, anyway. He seemed impressed, even as he made jokes about herbs and candles and fae... jokes that made me laugh, nonetheless.
The human with the iron bullets and mask … and bright-eyed grins…
“Sitara! Are you coming?” Lennox yells a third time from the stock floor. Better get up now before she starts plotting jinxes. She has her next test at the academy today.
Cherry blossom petals float through my accidentally open window, along with the brick air.
It isn’t hard to pick out an outfit when you only own three.
It’s an overcast Thursday morning, but there’s no rain scheduled until the evening. I hop down the stairs in my wine jumpsuit, clipping my identity coin to my belt. Lenny throws me my robe. She must’ve re-dyed it after the healing turned it white. “Ah, thank you. I do prefer it in blue.”
She charms her staff for travel, molding it into an inconspicuous necklace to wear. “How are you feeling? Should we walk?”
“I’m fine. It’ll be good to stretch my wings.” I button my cloak at the neck and wave her out the door, locking up the practice.
She fails to hide her worry behind a laugh, flipping around our ‘closed’ signpost on the lawn. “Maybe I should look into that parachute after all.”
It isn’t a far flight from the sakura, but her fear isn’t unfounded … especially given the time I fell out of the sky last year.
We were heading to the academy on a windy day, and my body was all out of whack. I’d spent most of the previous night flying around collecting materials, and the morning making elixirs. My wings faltered mid-flight, and the figurative crash in magick led to a literal one… into a large pine on campus. Luckily, my nerve apparatus came out mostly intact, though my hand was bruised all over. Just needed to replace one of the rods and a phalanx ring that was already cracked.
It was the first time I realized how lethal a manic episode could be.
I survive the flight in one, or, I guess, two, pieces, and Lenny is able to sigh in relief. Grey weather fits the scene all too well. Nothing but mediocre memories at this place. Lumous Academy, the New Haven School of Enchantment. It’s one of the top institutions on this side of the veil… and also my alma mater. I think it made her feel safer testing here knowing that I was familiar with the environment. She gets around fine on her own now, though, better than I ever did.
We collapse our wings and head to the main corridor, built around the base of a large redwood. The front desk attendant unabashedly looks us up and down as we approach her counter. Haven't seen her before, but this position is a revolving door. Lenny wrestles out her student ID coin. “I’m, uh, here for the E11 test. Lennox Finn.”
The woman swipes the token through the machine, presses a few buttons on her end, and hands it back, all without taking her eyes off a copy of Winged Warriors, the borderline extremist periodical. “You’re all set.”
“Thank chamomile, you’re here!” a girl calls out as she rushes toward the lobby. I recognize the blonde hair and exasperated arm motions, but her name escapes me. “Can you help me fix my staff? It’s not responsive at all!”
“One second!” Lenny clips her coin back beneath her robe and turns to me. “Carmela’s the only mage in her house, so she doesn’t have anyone to help her with things like this.” Carmela, that’s right. I’ve met her once or twice. “Will you be able to find your way without me?”
“Of course. Don’t worry about it.”
She slips her staff off her neck and uncharms it. “Thank you a million for coming. It feels more magical when you’re on campus.”
I laugh. As if. “Be sure to look alive out there… but stay relaxed, okay?” This might be her hundredth some odd exam, but the test anxiety in surges in her muscles every time.
“I know, I know.” She shakes her limbs and smiles, running off and leaving me to deal with the evil side eye coming from behind the desk.
“Your academy coin, please.”
“Oh, I’m, uh, not a student.” Only a couple decades removed. I pull my identity coin from my belt, and her full attention from the propaganda. "Arcani Sitara."
She hesitantly scans it, sure to look it over first, examining the uncommon engravings on the surface. My given name, date of birth, photo, and other nonsense pop up on her screen, along with the rare, boldfaced additions:
MAGUS ET OCTO
VETERAN (ALIUM)
She slides it back with narrowed eyes as my information vanishes from her screen. “All set.”
I thank her, even though she’s probably too busy, wondering how and why someone like me exists, to hear it.
Even when I attended Lumous, I got lost all the time. It’s easy to get turned around in the hallways, and every other corner has a staircase leading to another seemingly identical floor. Just follow the signs, Clyff would always say, pointing at tiny wall placards with ranges of class numbers on them. All the hallways connect, so, as long as you head in the right direction, you can get anywhere.
Clyff…
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
I peek through the glass window of door 29C on the second floor (that is, after going to the third by mistake). The desks are full of students, and the professor is adamantly swinging around his staff; not using it for magick, but to emphasize his point. He must be teaching his psych class. I don’t often visit on Thursdays, but Lenny’s quarterly was scheduled later in the week than usual. No harm, though. I’ll just stop by again in a little while to talk with him…
We meet eyes for a second, and it’s already too late to turn back. Izumi yells my name and waves me in, opening the door himself when I refuse.
“Sitara! Oh, it’s so lovely to see you!”
“Sorry for interrupting. I can come back later…”
“Nonsense! You picked a good time! I’m about to do a demo for my psychometry class.”
“Oh, well, you know…”
“Don’t deprive us of a rare learning opportunity!” He turns to address the class and motions for me to join him. “This is my former student, Arcani Sitara. Some of you may have met her before.”
Likely. This isn’t the first time he’s enlisted my help on days I’m visiting. I should have his schedule memorized by now. I wish I did. Showing me off is his way of showing he’s proud of me, or something, I think, though it must also, be to stroke his own ego, at least partly…
“Sitara is a mage of the eight.”
…because he once instructed the only current known eight.
Most students lurch back in shock, eyes wide at his declaration. “Magister Izumi, that’s not possible, is it?” A boy at the front calls out.
A girl across the room quickly backs him up. “She looks too young to have even graduated one academy!”
Both sentiments are common, but wrong.
“Nonsense! It’s plenty possible, and she’s plenty old enough.”
Plenty old enough?
As some who remember me start to recount my previous appearances, Izumi stops them, preventing them from ruining our game. It’s a quick ice-breaker we came up with as a convenient way to demonstrate my knowledge in all eight areas of magick. Originally, we used it in our pitch to academies for my accelerated certification testing, but it’s turned into a bit of a party trick. I love the silliness and simplicity. Reminds me of the nights on the front, as a little faerie kid performing for fellow soldiers to raise morale.
Izumi gives me a smile. “I guess she’ll just have to prove it to you.”
The focal point is his morning coffee, but the game can easily be adjusted for cups of tea, jars of rain water, or pints of beer.
He grips the handle and holds the mug out to me. “Enchantment.”
Altering the properties of objects.
I hover my hand above his drink, drawing the rune for fire with my palm until steam becomes visible. “Thermal amplification.”
“Divination.”
Prediction and insight into the unknown.
I dip a fingertip of my numb hand into the scorching beverage, careful not to get my orthotic wet. “Hydromancy.” The flavor comes to my tongue before my mind. “Coffee. Hazelnut. No milk. Two sugars.” I shake my head, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. He has such weird preferences for a faerie. So little sugar.
He laughs at my reaction as I tend to my burned finger. I can’t feel the pain, but it’s crimson. “Necromancy.”
Manipulating death and life forces.
It’s a minor enough injury to restore without herbal supplements. I knead magick into the wound until the skin returns to its natural color. “Healing.”
“Illusion.” Izumi holds out his hand.
Deceiving the senses and perceptions of others.
I suck in a breath, reaching back into my mind. Usually I’ll tap into consciences manually and deposit framework for solid manifestations, but there are too many here for that to be efficient. Instead, I develop the figment externally. An identical mug takes shape in his palm. “Holographic projection.”
He shakes away the illusion by disturbing its plane of existence, allowing me to resettle in the forefront of my headspace. Without missing a beat, he jerks the real mug toward me, launching its contents my way. I lost count of all the times I got drenched when we first attempted this, much to his entertainment. Luckily, we practiced with cold liquids back then.
“Abjuration.”
Protection and cleansing.
I sweep my hands out in front of me, bringing forth a glossy energy shield to absorb the coffee. “Barrier manipulation.” The floor doesn’t see a drop, and neither do I.
“Evocation,” he calls out, raising his arm and smashing the mug against the ground in one motion. A few students flinch in my periphery.
Creation through the elements.
I guide a gust of wind with my hand, sweeping the ceramic shards into a pile. “Element handling.” This time, he manages to break it into seven pieces, but it’ll be just as easy to put back together.
“Transmutation.”
Conversion of matter to a new form.
I kneel down and gather the broken mug, envisioning its undamaged state. My hands tremble as the fragments glow, melding back together in the light. “Restoration.” I toss it up to him. One time, during a pitch, he missed this catch. It fell right back onto the floor for me to fix. Gave everyone a good laugh, though we were mortified.
“Conjuration.”
Summoning and manifesting between planes.
I reach out and call upon my staff as I stand back up. “Planar caching.” Holy holly. The room gets a bit fuzzy at the edges. We could’ve taken that a little slower. He can be a bit overzealous. I prop myself up on my staff to help regen quicker.
Izumi turns to the class, takes a sip of his coffee, and gestures to me with his mug. “So, does she pass?”
Most of the students applaud, to which we jokingly bow.
“Now, let’s get on with the demo! There’s really no one better to help me introduce the lesson we’ll be covering next class.”
In classic Izumi fashion, we nearly run out of time for the conclusion. He rushes us through the wrap up and dismisses the students while I catch my breath. For fae’s sake. I shouldn’t be this exhausted. Well, I’m not totally recovered from healing Torryn. Maybe I’m more out of shape than I thought.
Maybe it’s getting bad again.
“Ah, I remember the first time you demoed in my class. You nearly collapsed!” For the record, I did, but I remained conscious. Blacking out entirely was a less common occurrence as I got older. “I hope I didn’t drain too much of your magick this morning.”
“It’s alright. I can handle it.” Not that I really had the chance to decline. He knows my limits well-enough, though.
“Are you here because Lennox is testing?”
I nod. “She’s taking her third quarterly.”
“E11, right? How’s her training?”
“Done. She’s ready to graduate, honestly. I’ve taught her everything this school will test her on." And she does it all with this gleaming sparkle. She’s a much better faerie than I’ll ever be.
“Wouldn’t that set her a few years ahead of schedule? Will she be following in your footsteps after all?” No surprise Izumi is still hopeful there.
“You ask me that every time I see you,” I laugh. “She’s not going to be an eight. Divination makes her nauseous, and the last time she tried evocation she nearly set her whole hand on fire.”
He smiles, shaking his head. “How’s the practice doing?”
“Getting along well. Lennox runs everything at this rate. I’m only the token mage.”
“Oh, please. Token mage,” he waves me off as he shuffles papers around his desk. “What about the hand?”
I wiggle my fingers. It’s sore from the strain of the last few days. “Still attached.”
He stops, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
“The pain hasn’t been persistent. I still lose control once in a while, when my energy supply is low.”
“Have you”—he shrugs—“given it any more thought?” He always dances around the A word.
Of course I’ve thought about it, but it’d severely hinder my abilities as a mage. I may not be able to feel anything in my hand, but it still transfers magick. My orthotic is reliable enough. It’s the regen that affects my health, and that’s largely due to the disease. “I can’t afford to be cutting any limbs off.” “Are your other symptoms improving, then?”
Well… “Smaller tasks have been taking a toll on me again.”
“And you’re active daily, to flood your system with magick?”
Most days. Some days. “Yeah, and it helps sometimes.”
The classroom door swings open abruptly. “Izu! Can you take a look at this… for me?” The man trails off as he looks up from his stack of papers. “Oh, I’m sorry. I hadn’t considered you’d be in a meeting. Please, excuse me.”
Izumi jumps up. “Nonsense! Please, you must remember Sitara!”
The man shifts on his heels. He remembers me. I remember him. There’s no fae behind the veil that spoke out against my certification as a mage of the eight like Magister Roy. “Sitara? Oh! I hardly recognized you!”
I force a smile and lean on my staff.
“I notice your hair is unpigmented. I’m assuming that’s from recent purification, and not a new fashion statement?”
No, no, please, I’m the epitome of high-fashion. “I healed a traveler the other day at my practice.”
“Did you stop by because you were in the area?”
“Her apprentice is taking an exam today,” Izumi chimes in.
Something crashes in the hall, followed by disjointed screeching. We rush out to find bustling students and a mammoth fire, just in time for the alarms to trigger.
How in hazel did this happen?
Magister Roy shouts over the commotion. “No, what is this? Who was in the lab today?” The nearby faculty begin rushing students towards the exit. The flames grow. There’s a large canister on the floor, crumpled and burned. This is exactly why Izumi has been petitioning to invest in better transport containers.
“We should enchant some boxes and contain the fire for the professionals,” Roy suggests.
That’ll only increase the damage where it’s already spread. It might compromise the building’s structure in this wing if it burns too long.
“Sitara! What are you doing?”
I wave them off, gripping my staff with both hands. No sense letting this go any further if I can stop it.
I just need to breathe.
Pointing the hilt of my staff towards the blaze, I channel magick from my core to abjure an energy barrier around it and restrict oxygen supply. The area is larger than I accounted for. My heart is pounding in my chest. I transmute the remaining flames through my palms, kneeling and reaching through the barrier. It’s only hot for a second before what’s left reduces to ash and smog. Institutions as old as Lumous pay no mind to their archaic means of handling emergencies. I evoke water to avoid risk of reignition, soaking the floor and my robe a bit, too. At least it's out now.
Vision clear? Tactile malfunction? Muscle control? I blink a few times, squeeze my fists, and bite my tongue. I don’t think my senses were affected by the sudden magick drain.
Izumi places his hand on my shoulder. “Seems like you picked a good day to stop in.” Wrong place, wrong time, it always feels like. “Can you stand?” He helps me to my feet, propping me up on my staff. “I could use some fresh air. What say you?”
Before we sneak outside, the officials finally arrive and shut down the area to allow for assessment of damages. The dean thanks me for intervening, but I don’t think he appreciates my comment on the lack of enchantable matter nearby for teachers to use in the event of chaos, or even a fire extinguisher.
“Beautiful display back there, Sitara,” Izumi raves. “You really let Roy eat his heart out.”
I roll my eyes. “Why do you have to flutter everyone’s wings like that?"
“I’m sorry. I don’t get too many opportunities to mess with him.” We find a bench along the walking path to settle on. My nerves buzz from the flush of magick.
“You know he hates me.”
“Hate is such a strong word.”
“I notice your hair is unpigmented. I’m assuming that’s not a new fashion statement,” I imitate with obnoxious exaggeration.
He laughs, shaking his head. “What was it you were purifying again?”
Torryn. “A wounded traveler came through the outpost down the road, is all.” He even left kroner for us after I insisted he forget about it. I put it straight into my secret graduation fund for Lenny.
“Healing has never been easy on your body, or your mind, Sitara.” He breaks out his dad voice. “Can I hear more about this traveler?”
“He blacked out in a forest on the other side and slipped through the veil.”
“A human man?"
“A human man."
"Seems like an important detail to carefully omit.”
Hardly omission. Just irrelevant. "He was a freelancer working with the military.”
“The human military?”
“Well, yes. He’s human.” How many times are we going to say it?
He nudges me with a wink. “We’re the last of few fae who can say it’s obvious what side someone’s fighting on.” That’s true. We sure shocked our hometown with our desertion, at first, before the whole story came out. Some still opposed Izumi's return to teaching after the war ended, but his tenure and the new dean have kept him on board this long. “Did he have a gun?”
“What?” I heard him correctly, I’m sure of it. “Where’s that coming from?”
He frowns with a sigh. “Your trigger finger has been twitching all morning.”
A leftover tick from the war, wrapped up in the same pretty package as the trauma. I ball my fists. Now that he says it, I’m aware of how frequently it’s been happening. “It was the first time I held an F3 since putting mine away.” It’s under my bed in a locked trunk.
“An F3? So, he was Enchanted Forces?”
“He said he was a freelancer. I didn’t question him.” Might not even be military. I’m just assuming.
“Has it triggered any nightmares? Flashbacks?”
Honestly? I’m just doing my best to not think about it. He probably assumes as much. Izumi was a frontline healer in the EFU alongside me for a few years, until he was transferred to the dev team for medics after a combat injury. I remember how distraught I expected him to be when I gave him the news, that his eye wouldn't heal, but he immediately made a joke about all the different patterned eye patches he could wear... and he does. Today it's purple to match his robe.
“Sitara, if you need a break from the practice, you know you can come here. Just start with one class. We can teach it together.” Not this again. “It’d be something to get up for in the morning.”
“I get up in the morning every day as it is.” Well, sometimes it’s the afternoon… and sometimes it’s only to make myself tea… but… “Even the jump from Zodat Sitara to Arcani Sitara was a stretch, but Magister Sitara? No. The academy isn’t a place for people like me.”
“A soldier?”
I narrow my eyes. He’s not entirely wrong, though.
“Do you plan on maintaining the practice?”
Maybe for a bit longer. “I’d like to turn it over to Lennox before she graduates.”
“What’s the rush?”
“I want her to hire whoever she wants and start turning it into her space." She has a lot of big ideas. Lenny won’t have the same range of service, but I’m more than confident in her enchanting abilities. “And, honestly, Izu? I’m tired. Is that selfish?”
“It’s only selfish if you’re using it as a means to run away.” He pauses, foot bouncing on the sidewalk. “Is there anything you’re running towards?”
Well, I’ve been running away my whole life. From school. From pain. From enemy fire.
“Or is the plan to leave, and find it then?”
He never lets me off the hook with the big things. “No, there’s no plan yet. That’s why I’m still here.” The pavement sparkles from all the tiny rocks embedded beneath the surface and all the faerie dust that has yet to fade.
“Have you heard back from the citadel about your brother?”
Clyff. I haven’t seen him since… since before the war even started. “They still won’t tell me anything.” I get the same rejection letters everywhere I reach out to, telling me my clearance doesn't warrant the release of the sensitive information. Information as to whether or not he's still alive.
He squeezes my shoulder. Does he realize how serious I am about leaving sooner rather than later? “If you need anything, Sitara, please call, or fly over.”
I close my eyes and remember Torryn’s dumb pun he could barely get out amidst his laughter.
How does a faerie cross the road? She wings it! Get it? Wings?
Winging it.
Well, it’s gotten me this far.
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