Fait Accompli: An Unwilling Tutelage

[Seperallis]

If eyebrows were internal, Nevina's would most certainly be raised in surprise at Elke's insistence on essentially studying how to change the very fabric of reality; as it was they weren't, so only the elf's somewhat suspicious interest in making sure not to trip over this dangerously-placed stump might betray her emotion. What a curious child, and ambitious to be sure; Nevina had pegged her for someone rare in her persistence (we'll be polite and call it that), but to be so young, so inexperienced and knowledgeless in the nature of magic...to hold such a lofty goal as to essentially thwart the one rule of reality that even a god could not escape, the girl must truly be either recklessly novice, or utterly mad.

Then again, what is magic if not controlled madness? Bending reality, blurring the lines between possibilities into new realities we didn't know existed is what wizardry was; undoubtedly, madness is simply the process by which we move from hypothesis to theory... Elke's question broke that unwelcome train of thought, though the question itself was barely more welcome. Luckily, the girl quickly became distracted by what soon broke into view through the trees.

What a surprising find! Though admittedly not a particularly peculiar one. Much of these woods nearby stood tall, deeply rooted ancient sentinels, watchmen through the passing of ages as societies grew and dispersed, as men - ever restless in their hearts and nomadic of spirit - settled, lived, died, and moved along with the tides of ages to seek their fickle fortunes elsewhere. Nevina could not say she knew these woods well, but she knew more of man than mer, and more of woods than both to comment, "Like as much we would happen upon such a place off the trails in these woods, and I reckon to think many more we might find besides, but..."

The last word hung in the air amidst the chirping of birds and what soft reminder remained of the gentle threshing of nearby water reached the two travelers here, fading, dimming slowly softer before vanishing under the scruitinizing rays of mid-morning sunlight. The crimson-haired elf left the word's corresponding thoughts to do the same for now, abandoni9ng the sentence as she let down he hood of her robes. Simply, she made measured, steady footfall towards the nearest of the "buildings"; should she announce her presence, call out for anyones existence before taking someone unawares? Surely even the most inattentive could have noticed their conversation carry across this subdued atmosphere.

Besides, the place seemed long vacant of even passing vagrants, long abandoned fire pits showing nothing but stone and dirt, their ash long since flung across the countryside and made mud. Stagnant air gave way to the mildew of ages the closer one approached what remained of doorframes and roof timbers; Nevina ran her hand along the remnants of a wall, the dry, spongy fibers confirming all observations as it flaked away under her light caress as if under assault.

A local family of toadstools, clinging to the nearby shadows and disturbed by her actions, protested. The elf bade them an apology with her eyes, recoiling her hand and placing it within the folds of her sleves once more.

"Our...subject did not make this place a home," she continued aloud her observation, her keen eyes panning deliberately across their surroundings: padded grasses, foot-like shapes from various from various beasts pressed here and there into the earth. Obviously this place still offered passing shelter to the wilds, but it all lacked the leavings, the nestings, the remains, all the signs of habitation. "Likely visited, perhaps. That would make sense. I am afraid our objective lies onward still, though," she added, finishing her assessment, perhaps with a slight twinge of disappointment.

A simple task would have been welcomed, but of course we can't have that.

[Sal]

Not at all disappointed by Nevina's conclusion that no thing or person had made a home in these soggy frames clinging feebly to existence, Elke gleaned, instead, from the mage's declaration the excitement of the discovery still yet to be made. The werewolf hadn't stayed here, so there was still work to be done. Still information to be gathered. Still time to be spent under the wing of the cinnamon-haired elf.

If anything, not being right was a blessing.

"Oh," said Elke, trying to sound dejected and not excited.

To the remains of the village, still huddled close in slender form with emaciated ribcages full of wet snails and phlegmatic, moss-eaten geometries falling perpetually into the river, the adventurer gave a final glance as the two moved along.

"Oh!" This time, all of the feigned dejection was gone, replaced ounce-for-ounce with happiness. "Perhaps I could try to divine some guidance for us, Miss Nevina?" Elke was ever scanning the scenery for signs and omens. It had, for at least three years now, become second nature to her. A broken branch here, a strangely colored flower there, and a sunbeam falling just so there were easy enough to spot for anyone mildly astute. But divination was a more intentional process and was more difficult to perform as an auxiliary function to walking, talking and looking.

"Maybe I could see him - the werewolf. Shall I try?"

[Seperallis]

Nevina, her assessment concluded, gave one final pass over the area as she moved to leave, to return to the "path" of their adventure by the stream, to continue onwards on their search while Elke was busy sounding so utterly disappointed. She only managed a few steps before she was once more interrupted, this time by yet another of the girl's overactive ravings. Honestly, how could she still be so bubbly about all things all the time when it felt so tiring just listening to her?

"The monster is dead. I killed it.'" The reply came flatly as she turned once more to regard the girl from this distance, and though not unkind or rude, it did leave an impression of impatience with her arms folded in her sleeves as they were. This line of questioning felt like a waste of time, having received a fairly personal account of the thing; while Elke couldn't have known, the body didn't bear any marks of a past attack, something quite typical of a lycanthropic victim if some other werewolf was involved. By all accounts, it looked quite healthy except for the exsanguination, but, well, that's what a stake hammered through the heart tends to do.

"However," she breathed with a pause. They weren't under any particularly urgent constraints, she had to admit. While she doubted anything significant could be learned, she it still might be interesting to see a demonstration of Elke's ability, albeit a small one, so why not, if she was so willing to oblige. "You do not need my permission. If you want to attempt a divination, then by all means, do."

[Sal]

Oh no.

"Ah- Well- Yes, of course!" Elke stuttered. "Pardon, Miss; I didn't mean to imply that you had not..." she paused, mustering up all the tact in her being, and continued, "completed your task to the fullest extent." On the contrary - Elke herself had seen the gored heap of a creature with her own eyes. It had been quite dead, indeed.

She felt flush with embarrassment now. Although not normally one to blush easily, the sick-hot feeling of carnation pink on her cheeks could not be ignored. This was different than any past faux pas. This wasn't at all like the time she had tripped over her own boots in front of a packed Tier Two Spellcasting lecture hall and spilled her books everywhere directly following a longwinded presentation on stealth and cloaking spells. No, no one remembered that incident save for her. That had been a silly but forgettable blunder. This was a tragedy - a suicide. She had insulted her idol. She had insulted Nevina.

"I-It's just," she carried on, tiptoeing through her choice of words with extreme caution. "It's not a typical precognitive divination. I know a spell that will allow me to see the trail of a man that has passed from an area or from the living." Or, in this case, "Well, maybe not strictly man."

Deciding she would look much more professional and far less like a lunatic if she could only just show Nevina what she meant, Elke gave a quick scan of their surroundings and then spun on her heels and made a beeline for a patch of meadow where soft, white clover blossoms fluttered under the teasing hand of the wind. She looked up. Fluffy clouds not grey enough to hold rain formed an incomplete halo around the sun. Ushered by the windy altitudes, they would soon be forming a veil. This would do just fine.

Lowering herself to her knees in the soft flowers, Elke was elbow-deep in one of her satchels and searching diligently. Her fingers brushed a smooth, hard object and wrapped instinctively around it. A pristinely polished stone, nearly black but a deep burgundy in angles struck by the sun, wrapped in curling thorn vines made of twisted sterling threads now oxidized into a brassy coal color lay in her palm. Within the gem were starburst fissures, almost as if the stone had been chipped away from the inside, visible as bright red scars. This was one of her favorite talismans: a red beryl forged from the heat of a salamander's flame breath and infused with the essence of the famed white wizard Egrimm whose story was whispered in the quiet corners of the university library. Egrimm was accredited with casting spells so powerful that he was known to sweat blood. The bauble had cost the student a fair bit of coin - the value of an entire summer's work - but it had been worth it for, if nothing else, the conversation it garnered.

Talisman laid out neatly in the center of the clover patch, Elke leaned forward on her knees and placed her hands around the item, forefingers and thumbs creating a triangle to frame it. She did her best to recall the steps exactly as they had been taught to her; the last thing she needed now was to botch a fairly simple spell and come across as incompetent in front of the one person whose opinion mattered most. Leaning deeper into her kneel, her forehead lowered and touched the stone. The sharp, braided wires with silver thorns nipped the pale skin of her forehead as she pressed, drawing out microdroplets of blood. As the metal vines drew Elke's energy into the gemstone nucleus, the clover blossoms upon which it rested began to wilt, creamy petals turning a dingy brown and plump leaves becoming papery and crinkled. The effect radiated outward from the stone, the entire swath of clovers drying up as if after a long drought. As the perimeter of the clover patch was drained of its lost reserves of life, the sun became darkened by the clouds and the core of the wine red gem began to shine ever so slightly.

With little grace, Elke sat up rigidly, eyes clenched shut at first but slowly opening. Hands still placed with purpose around the gleaming talisman, she looked around, scanning the riverbank, the path she and Nevina had taken where they'd left behind the decaying settlement, the forest meandering on ahead of them. Unblinking, the young woman fixed her stare upon a cluster of myrtle trees with peeling sheets of bark just beyond Nevina. Her eyes followed something invisible along the river, stopping when it stopped and tracking its movements. They were certainly going the right direction.

Snap!

Elke whipped around, quickly pulling herself to her feet. Her eyes flicked side to side quickly until something drew them. She looked back to the river, and then away from it, and then back. The stone glowed and glittered in its bed of dead blossoms, and as the sun began to peek from behind the ever-lumbering onward clouds, it gave a sharp crack. The shining light died abruptly, replaced by a new fissure that smoldered with a dying light like old campfire embers.

Elke blinked in the bright sun and scratched lightly at the itchy prickles left behind on her forehead. She was silent as she bent to pick up the talisman and brush the dead leaves from its sterling filigree.

Placing the item away for future use, she returned to Nevina's side. Quiet still, she visibly pondered the answers from her divination, puckering her lips thoughtfully and keeping her eyes on the leaf-littered trail.

After some time, she broached the subject of her thoughts. "Are werewolves very fast, Miss Nevina?" Memories from her divination sequences were always a little hazy, memories foggy as the energy used was not fully her own and thus she could not take full ownership of the visions, but she distinctly remembered the flickers of an entity - or entities- in front of and behind her, perhaps not simultaneously, but in rapid succession. "Or... Do you think it's possible there was a second one? A second werewolf traveling with the one that you... removed?"

[Seperallis]

Nevina, never moving, nevertheless watched the dance with intent interest. Oh, she certainly knew her fair share of divinations, from simple readings to advanced scrying, and while use of trinkets and the like were not uncommon she'd still never seen anything that worked quite like this, nor heard of an "Egrimm" in her life. Obviously this ritual relied specifically upon the use of an artifact, and in a way the elf felt slightly disappointed; she had hoped for a demonstration of Elke's knowledge, not rote memorization for a set of instructions, but even knowing the proper use of the proper tool for the proper task was its own kind of knowledge.

Nevina squinted again against the sun as it returned from behind its veil, and Elke likewise returned from her trance; a shame about the clover patch, it was so pretty. As her erstwhile companion pondered her visions, the elf made for a spot of shade beneath the nearby stand of myrtle, removed and folded her robe into a cushion, and enjoyed the crisp late-morning shade.

"Werewolves?" The crimson-haired woman rested against the tree and regarded the remains of the clearing with barely open eyes as Elke posed her question. She reached above her head, pulling her arms in a long, strained stretch before dropping them to her lap in newfound relaxation. While she was no expert on beasts, but she had read a fair amount in her time. "Hmmm yes, quite fast. Dangerously strong as well, and boundlessly aggressive, with keen senses to seek their prey. If one surprises you, chances are you'll neither escape nor survive the encounter. Even prepared, it's hardly guaranteed."

But a second werewolf? "N-no. No, I did not notice any signs of a second werewolf in Myerleigh, just the one."

No doubt the girl had seen something in her vision to prompt such a question. During her time in the crumbling town, Nevina had only ever seen evidence pointing to the one werewolf, and had only killed the one...but what if there had been a second one that went elsewhere? It was a possibility, and a disturbing one: an unknown werewolf free in the valley, traveling as it pleased. Were that true, news would soon travel of such attacks in the area, but the whole point of the exercise was to quell the "infestation" before it spread beyond Myerleigh. So far, it seems things weren't pointing that way, and this investigation was starting to turn up more questions than answers.

"It's a possibility. Why do you ask, did you see something?"

[Sal]

Elke certainly did see something, but whether or not it was something deserving of further investigation, well... about that, Elke was dubious.

The way the beast in her mind's eye moved in flickering, staccato motions seemed unnatural had there been a single being. The way it plodded along the riverbank, and then several paces away in the grove of trees, and then back to the riverbank - it didn't exactly make physical sense. But magic often tended to shirk physical sense at superficial observation.

And then again, both of the phantasmagoric things in her vision, or the one thing in two places - or whatever - did look essentially the same. Wiry, brindle grey tufts of fur and the eyes of something not wholly man but not void of humanity, either, flashed like the visual version of an echo through the wilderness. Getting the chronology of a divined sight jumbled wasn't unheard of. It was possible that the spell had been imperfect and that what the mage had seen and initially interpreted to be two beasties was actually just a mixed up replay of the same organism.

"Well," she reasoned with herself and with her two interpretations of her divination. "I did see something." Of course she had. "I saw a werewolf." With an outstretched hand, she pointed to the water's edge. "Over there." After a pause, she redirected her pointer finger to the trees just behind Nevina. "And there". Back to the banks. "And there again. And...." She let her arm drop to her side before she had fully returned her arm to the myrtle blind again.

"Well," she continued her line of reasoning. "They are fast, as you said. I'm sure it was just that."

Nevina was a much more experienced practitioner of magic. If there was something to detect, surely she would have detected it. And while Elke might not have been successful in her endeavors to impress her superior, dealing with only one monster was just fine with her.

"Should we get going again, then?"

[Seperallis]

"No, no, let us stay a spell. Come," Nevina said as she softly patted a mossy patch beside her on the tree. "We have walked since the sunrise, give your feet some rest." Invite sent, she took a long, deep breath before audibly releasing her fatigue in a sharp sigh, previously tense muscles finally finding relaxation as she accepted the mild euphoria of a simple sit-down. Still in the prime of her life by elven standards, centuries were still centuries, and the toll of time was starting to ever more insistently make itself known. Maybe Elke was too spry and youthful to notice the aches of the trail, a quality Nevina quietly wished she still possessed while she stretched her battered feet.

The solitary pillowy cloud above that aided Elke earlier puffed lazily along. Much like yesterday, the skies remeained clear save for that one blemish, and already the sun, a cruel overseer, pressed down from its perch.

"Divination is a notoriously, well, finicky art as you probably know," the elf spoke, eyes still transfixed upon the heavens as she fished beneath folds of robes for her waterskin. She continued, "Oh, you do get exactly what you put into it, but that is the problem; if you knew everything you needed for the perfect divination, then you wouldn't need the divination. It is a somewhat ironic paradox."

Something approaching a smile broached her lips as she looked down from the sky. In her hands, pulled from within the folds of her robes, she held a plain deerskin pouch, a hole on one end plugged with a simple corked stopper. "Artifacts are the worst method for it, though. Rituals have their own problems, of course, but rituals of one stripe or another tap into the flow of time and magic, the lifeblood, the lifestreams of the world...which is inherently perfect, of course. It is the flaws of man that introduce error into the divinations. Flawed ideas, presumptions, incomplete knowledge, biases, incorrect or inefficient methods, all the imperfections no matter how little add error, but some can at least be forgiven of us through the performance, you see; of artifacts, all these imperfections are literally etched in, well, stone or whatever else."

For emphasis, Nevina reached out a hand and placed a fingertip to the tiny pinprick scab on Elke's forehead, then let her hand return to her lap. "To speak nothing of the impurities in its materials, limitations of skill, the diminished integrity owing to the inherent transient nature of both men and their creations...mmm, I am rambling again."

Nevina took a pause, using the time to drink of the deerskin now in her lap. She hadn't meant this diversion to turn into either a rant or a lecture, but as she continued, she enjoyed sharing what she knew with someone, especially both a captive and apparently willing audience. Back in the abbey, she tended to keep with herself as others tended to distract her from her studies. However, if she was out here away from her studies anyway, what harm could there be in, say, an apprentice of sorts?

Maybe Forlag had been on to something; best to keep that opinon to onself, though.

"Thank you, regardless. For your demonstration." Nevina nodded, trying to not at all sound like she was completely ripping apart on the mere concept of artifact use as a legitimate form of magicking. "It was...informative. I would return the favor, but, well, when it comes to divination, it is a very fluid art. It is not like the hard sciences of alchemy and thaumaturgy - and even the many softer -mancy schools - where 'put X in and get Y out' is the norm. Divinations rely upon your personal relationship with the world, knowing who you are and where you fit with absolute certainty. Most can go their entire lives without grasping those secrets to divination; some go mad over the quest itself."

An edge of Nevina's lips curled slightly at the last mention. Her gaze drifted across the field.

[Sal]

The muscles that held Elke's spine erect went taut as Nevina touched her forehead, due partly to the presumptuous intimacy of the action, and in part due to the reasoning for the poke - the patronizing lecture behind the impurities of her techniques. She felt very much at that moment like a child, brimming with unsullied confidence, who'd blurted out an incorrect answer in front of her class to subsequently be corrected of her mistake. Only, of course, this was much more debasing; this wasn't elementary arithmetic or spelling, and Nevina wasn't a teacher who would soon forget one child's face as waves of successive cohorts took her place. She'd felt that way a lot, today. It would be nice to have the chance for a redo, but she'd never heard of anyone successfully performing a time reversal spell (despite what Daudo from her third level Conjuring class had assured her he'd done once.)

But, on the other hand, Nevina was a certain kind of teacher for the moment, and Elke was here to learn. This sort of honest moment between the two women, one much more experienced and wiser than the other, should be something Elke should expect. It was nothing to be ashamed of when it was exactly what she'd asked for. And perhaps that very realization demonstrated the completion of Lesson One: Elke was not the master, and she would do well to ask for a demonstration before showing off her own technique. The young woman could already foresee the struggle she would face in applying the lesson going forward. It wasn't every day, after all, that the young upstart got to meet her heroine, and the compulsion to prove herself was one that imposed itself rudely into the front parts of her brain all the time.

"I hope I don't assume incorrectly that you would have your own technique for finding the facts in this case?" the younger asked, taking a seat to Nevina's right where a pile of fallen mountain laurel leaves decorated the ground like confetti. She took a moment to adjust her various bags and satchels, rearranging her tools of the trade and ensuring that all was in its proper place. Her filing system for her baubles and trinkets was rather one of ordered disorder. Arranged chaos. No one else would ever be able to find anything in her myriad of bags, but that was okay, because Elke could find them.

And it made her very important treasures all the harder to find and steal, besides.

"I'd like to see it sometime," Elke then confided. She'd located her journal and quill, spread the book over one of her thighs, and was flipping to the page that bore the ink sketch of Egrimm's beryl of which, if she had to admit, she now felt less fond knowing just how mediocre Nevina thought it to be. Had she been talked out of an entire season's work dusting every nook and cranny and mopping up every pool of unidentified liquid at her father's clinic for no reason?

"You big dummy."

Still, in the spirit of accurate documentation of her education, she began immortalizing the new fissure in the stone, coloring in the jagged line on her previous sketch of the stone. When she'd began, there had already been one rather large fissure down the meridian of the talisman (it was only after she'd utilized it the first time and witnessed the formation of a new crack that she realized the original one it had come included with meant that the product was used, and not so gently). All the other cracks in the sketch had been added each time she'd used it for a spell, each one denoted with a letter - a, b, c, and so on in order - with footnotes explaining how each crack had arisen. This newest one corresponded with e, and she indicated in the footnotes the date, location, and cause.

"That is," she added as her fingers twitched back and forth into the shape of the crack, "if you have need of such a spell. I wouldn't want you to waste your, ah... energies on something not needed just to show me how it's done."

[Seperallis]

Another slight pause followed Elke’s request. Perhaps, Nevina thought, she had been too tactless, but what were they teaching in those colleges if their pupils act ignorant of fundamental truths? Apparently the great mages of Sidgard felt more content to churn rote magicians and obedient servants from their studies, than advance their sciences. Such a sad state of education that pupils should trek so far afield alone in search of a proper teacher!

Still though, Nevina’s lecture left much to desire as well. Filled with the moment’s passion she forgot many other important truths, and had surely insulted her pupil in the act: Elke’s words rung with a dejected reservation and sudden hesitation, her face creased in the unmistakable image of disappointment while scribbling her notes. Determined to correct the record, the elf leaned in towards Elke as she slipped herself out from the strap of her tubular pack and pulled it upon her lap.

“I am sorry,” she stated with a matter of fact as she undid the clasps on the case, “I was far too ahead of myself and did not give you proper context: my talents are not of an artificer, and I have my own biases. Still, Man is not an innately magical creature, and neither you nor I could hope to will a bush aflame or force the trees to dance any more than an ordinary frog could will itself to grow a lion’s face. We require preparation and practice, through the science and study of the world’s magics. As our understanding grows, so too is our practice more accurate and reliable.”

Nevina hung onto that thought for a moment as to catch a breath before diving back into her stream of consciousness. One hand cupped the unclasped opening of the tube in her lap while the other lightly rubbed the length of its felt exterior.

“So it is, one must remember what they teach in Sidgard - and the other realms of Man - as magic is a mockery...no, sorry, an imitation. Our rituals, your charms and baubles, my focus: none of these are magic, these are tools that allow us to experience magic. Our understanding is learned and not innate, and so it is incomplete, like a wolf who has learned to run and kill but not work with the pack. So are our tools, our rituals and especially our artifacts, flawed and limited. This is a hard truth for some to accept, for it demands a humility that is of such short supply among mages.”

“What I try to say, in too many words,” Nevina shrugged, speaking slower now as she tried to finish her thought, “is to simply remain mindful of your tools’ limitations.”

The elf ended her idle stroking of the case and slid her hand inside, where she retrieved her flute from its sleeve. As long as her arm and hewn from a single solid redwood branch, its heft in her grip did not match the delicate slender intricacies of its craftsmanship. Shallow, burned engravings etched with hot iron curled and twisted around themselves on a criss-cross journey along its length. A fine silverine filigree like mirrored strands of hair traced along the flowing etchings and around the instruments’ openings in a thin, near-luminescent outline which rippled and waved as she turned it, spotlighted in parts by the leaf-torn sun. She ran a finger along her magical focus, tracing along indentations of its decoration and gliding across rough-cut wood worn smooth and glossy from untold years of use.

She gripped it firmly.

“Despite our limitations, I believe people can come close to an innate understanding of magic. Magic flows through our world like winds washing over a plain, and if the beasts of the wilds can feel these waves and react from them, then it stands to reason we can know the same with only some listening and understanding. Tales of bygone ages told in a babbling brook. A breeze whispering a past epic yet to come. The earth grumbling against an injury done. And the heavens! Gazing watchful upon all creation, what secrets they are so eager to share!”

Nevina closed her eyes and inhaled, slowly and quietly. “Maybe even you felt it, though you did not yet know, the quiet whisper and gentle nudge of a breeze guiding you along the forks in your path to lead you here? If we can learn to listen and understand magic is more than a force - it is the coursing lifeblood of our world - then can we not feel it and speak with it? This has been my life’s work, Miss Elke,” she stated, turning to her captive audience, “to learn to act as its guide and partner, and not as the domineering slavemasters who seek to make it their thrall.”

She took her flute lightly by one end, mimicking circles in the air as one mixes cream with tea. “My aim is to simply stir it up,” she explained as a small patch of grass began to thrash violently beneath her motions before picking the leaves and debris near them into a small and furious dust devil.

“Then, I let it do as it knows how.”

Nevina’s stirring became a flick and she raised the hand of her impromptu wand at a precariously stacked pile of rocks that had once formed the base of a wall. Following her direction, the dust devil kicked apart, leaves and grass scattering left and right as a scar in the soil left the duo and sailed across the clearing to the “target.” The wall resisted for a moment, then its stones scattered on the grass in its slow and overdue final death.

She sat ponderous a moment, her stare blank on the fallen wall. She slid the flute back in its sleeve, and closed the clasps on the case. “I am still learning and growing in my study. Like any friendship you may have, my relationship with magic is personal. I can show you a divination, of sorts, but I’m not sure how useful it would be.”

[Sal]

For someone as skilled as Nevina - or at least, as skilled as Elke had grown to believe Nevina was - to admit to still having areas for improvement in her craft was a difficult concept for the mage-in-training to swallow in that moment. Perhaps it was the fact that it was coupled with the reality that Nevina’s skills were far, far superior to Elke’s, and if Nevina had room for improvement at her level, then the distance Elke still had to strive was abysmally long.

But, it was as Nevina said: Elke was only a human, after all - innately non-magical - and one in possession of imperfect tools at that. Still a student of the magic arts, to boot. There was only so much she could do in the face of these handicaps. It, perhaps, was meant to be a sort of apology from the older woman, but maybe not; Nevina, apparently, was not one to mince words, and Elke could respect the bluntness with which her thoughts and feelings came forward. Less an apology, more a summary of facts.

And so, when Nevina said that there was hope for Elke and mankind yet, she took her at her word. It was a solid “maybe”. Elke’s eyes traced the arcs and swirls created by the end of Nevina’s flute, and she hang on her words. She had almost fallen forward onto her face by the time she realized that she’d been leaning in to the woman closer and closer, enraptured by the woman’s one-sided disquisition on magic in the natural word. The fine hairs on the back of Elke’s neck and across her forearms stood on end as an electric chill shimmied its way between her nerve endings; she knew exactly what Nevina was trying to say. For some time now, she’d felt she had a certain connection with nature and its constituents. The subtle change in the scent of a wind that blows in before a dark presence comes to visit, the way the slant of the evening light indicates the correct answer to a difficult choice - Elke had noticed these things since her childhood, only recognizing them for what they were in more recent years.

She jerked herself back upright when she realized just how far toward Nevina she’d drifted, about the same time that Nevina’s mini-whirlwind dissipated.

“Incredible,” she murmured, leaning forward to rest her chin on her interlaced fingers and staring in silence for a few moments. Long enough to think over the last offer.

“Actually,” Elke said, standing, “I think, if you don’t mind, that I would prefer to see your abilities in action in situations which require such a thing.” A lopsided grin had found a home on her face. “I think the genuineness would be more impactful, and as I said, there’s no sense in tiring yourself now on the chance that you should actually need to use them in the near future. But I appreciate the offer.”

Standing, she nodded towards the path ahead of them. “Shall we? I think I’ve held us up long enough.”