Sparks and smoke.

Brina, the nine-year-old mage-in-training, glared above her honey-skinned hand at the pungent green smoke lingering after the flash of magical sparks--the results of a failed spell.

The little human girl collapsed limply into the birchwood futon of her instructor, Daemon. Her head lolled over the back and her limbs lay splayed. The thin throat and open mouth produced a frustrated croaking moan. 

Brina could best be described as 'cute'. Brown cornrows and bushy curls framed the heart-shaped face. Her wide nose, dark pink mouth, rosy cheeks, and mismatched eyes were round and sweet.

Brina's right eye could be described as 'discombobulating.' It was purple the way the sun was yellow, and contained a lavender-tinged window to the infinte cosmos. Looking in felt as though the world would slide away and let you fall into the sky. 

Daemon's appearance was demonic by nature and design. His natural skin was cloud white, but his arms were jetblack and shiny as wet ink, and his chest was red from skin grafts; he had smooth black horns and a long lizardlike tail; his teeth were sharp as a shark's; his nose featured viper-like pits halfway up the bridge; and his almond-shaped eyes' sclera, iris and pupil were black above spiky cheekbones. Brina liked looking at him most of the time, especially when she could see the fire on his horns, but right now he was doing a thing with his face....

Daemon's corner was in the front of the cozy cottage, set off the rest of the den with a pair of canvas folding screens, one of which featured a scorched circle from a stray fireball. A low table held a few books, a half-empty bottle of wine, and a small stone sculpture obviously intended to be modeled after his head as shaped by inexperienced hands. Brina studied the lumpy gray attempt at a bust and tried to think of a way she could have done it differently, which magics would have been better for working with rocks like that.

The tiefling sat on the end of his futon with his book propped in his lap. After the groan, the young student glanced at her teacher hopefully only to be disappointed. Brina rolled her head around, dragged it upright, then dropped her chin to her chest. He turned a page. Finally, Brina heaved a loud sigh.

"You can do it," Daemon encouraged in a deliberately pleasant tenor. Brina felt like he was making fun of her, or maybe mad at her. The brow ridge where his horns grew always made him look angry, but Brina never thought anything of it before now. 

Brina patted her cornrows to see if she could buy time, but they were in place. She adjusted her purple dress at her knees, fiddled with the hem to make sure it didn't need repair (it didn't). She puffed the puffy sleeves to be puffier.

She didn't want to try again. She couldn't get the magic right today. This hadn't happened since her magic came in a year and a half ago. Even before she could use it on purpose, she could always make it move around! Today was just impossible!

The impatient tapping of Daemon's tail on the stone floor was too loud.

Brina gave up, lifted her hand and made another attempt at summoning the spell ball. It was just a focus and control exercise, it was the first thing she learned from Daemon. It should have been easy! Come on, do it… 

Center the magic. Which took forever. Drag it forward. Push into hand. Put into hand. Get in my hand! Now, up!

Sparks. Again. They weren't even good sparks. Brina had magicked up better by accident, magnificent crackling purple and pink explosions the size of her fist that popped so loud they startled her family. These weren't even the leftovers of those.

Brina dropped back with another melodramatic groan. 

The peace of the stone cottage in the Haunted Forest of Tinian belied the difficulty of Brina's morning. Daemon was being patient and still as usual when Brina was making her efforts. The fire crackled low in the fireplace, the worn oak table against the wall held a waxed cheese wheel and the open pantry hung with fragrant dried meats and herbs. Furs of enormous beasts, fey and natural alike, carpeted the den and hung from the walls to keep in the fire's warmth. The oversized lounge chair in the middle of the den had been broken and repaired so many times that it was left with just two of its original legs and little of its original structure. At its side lay a scarlet cotton cushion big enough around for an adult human, lumpy and worn with sporadic patches in several patterns and colors. The three tall glass windows let in the midmorning sun and Brina glanced out Daemon's to see the day was going even more slowly than it felt. 

Brina didn't bother picking her head back up, she simply left it on the back of the couch and lifted her hand, palm up, level with her shoulder, fingers slightly curled as though cupping something soft. She picked the space above her palm, then tried to dig for her magic. Normally all she had to do was let her magic know she wanted it to go somewhere and then she had to keep it from rushing all at once. 

This time, nothing happened at all. 

Brina let her hand fall back into her lap, dropped her chin to her chest and groaned yet again. The sparks were the most magic she'd produced all day. Her magic had been known to fizzle out for no reason, but it had never been inaccessible to her for more than a few minutes. It was usually the opposite of this, normally she couldn't make it stop, last week she even made Daddy's chair melt. She almost wished it would do that again. This was horrible.

Brina slouched over her legs and buried her face into her hands with still another dramatic moan. When she looked up at him, she saw Daemon was looking down at her, and their eyes met. Brina's bottom lip stuck out less and less as the frustration wore off through the staring contest. Daemon held out longer than she did.

Brina gave a frustrated moan and flopped sideways, knocking her head a little harder than she meant to against the side of the futon. She checked to see if Daemon noticed or cared (no). Not even a smile, much less the pity she was hoping for. Brina gave up and made a game of it and she rolled dramatically from back to front, flopping her top arm wildly. She threw in some kicking and whining, too, until her heel met Daemon's trunk too hard and she stopped under his withering glare. 

Eventually, Brina stopped flopping and redoubled her efforts for sympathy, curling on the couch with her arms tucked up to her chest. The round eyes glittered pitifully and her bottom lip trembled. "I'm tired," she said, her voice a played up whine of a whisper. "Can I have a nap and try again?"

Daemon did give Brina hope when he glanced out the window, but it was snuffed out when his posture only got straighter. "It's barely midmorning. You can keep going."

Brina gave still another low groan (even she was getting annoyed with it) and slowly dragged herself upright. She smoothed out the skirt over her leggings to buy herself time, futile as it was. She glanced around the room, looked at Uncle Peck in his ceiling hammock over the back window, then out to the garden. Brina could see her father, Brotz, lumbering around gingerly, too big for the job he was doing. She saw his straw sunhat disappear under the sill when he knelt. When he stood up, he was holding two pumpkins in his enormous hands, each as big as Brina's entire torso.

Daemon turned in his seat to see why Brina had smiled, and he used his tail to thump the trunk beneath her. The sound snapped Brina's attention back to him. The surprised expression on the sweet face became embarrassment, and she looked at her bare feet to hide her furiously blushing cheeks. "Sorry. I'm just tired."

"I think we need to come up with a better word for that feeling than 'tired'. Whether or not you are running out of willpower, you must continue, because you are running out of willpower," Daemon lectured tersely. "As with many things, practice is the only way to get better."

Brina dropped her head forward, brown curls bouncing around her face, and heaved a drawn-out sigh. Daemon hid the smirk as she made a creaking sound in her little throat. She was back into a better mood, at least. A little more encouragement, a line he picked up from her household. "You can do it. It's not impossible, simply difficult."

Brina took her time, but slowly, she fixed her posture and closed her eyes to meditate.

~

Brina was trying. She was really trying, really, and it was bringing her to tears. It was so hard! It wasn't fair! She always had such strong magic and today it was like… like… she guessed this was what it was like to not have magic, she didn't know, this was awful!

Nothing kept happening! Try after try, every way she tried to stir up or call on or spit out or cast or throw or whatever, nothing worked! It might have been another hour, but it felt like days that she sat on Daemon's couch, opening and closing her hands, her eyes, meditating, using her left hand, using both hands, refusing to use her hands, trying with her staff, Daemon's staff--and nothing, not even the sparks!

Back to bare hands, Brina had spent ten minutes in her efforts to center it and herself. The warmth built up, finally, she was doing it! 

Hold onto the warm, hold it… 

Brina felt it dissipate no sooner than she tried to put it into her hand. She panic-cast, "throwing" the weakening magic, but it barely made a popping sound, no light at all, nor smell, nor smoke.  

Brina dropped her hand into her lap and fell backwards again. She put her other arm over her eyes to hide the tears. "I don't have magic today!" Her squeaking voice barely hissed above a whisper in her efforts to stay quiet. "I can't!"

Daemon was silent, and Brina eventually picked her head up to see the lack of expression on his pale face. She could, she really should, even, just sit up and keep trying, it's not like Daemon had anything better to do today than be a butthead at her for not doing it. Plus she really didn't want her family to find out she threw a fit so bad that Daemon agreed she should have the day off. 

But she didn't want to keep going! It was awful! She'd never felt so useless before! She was the Prophesied Child of Chaos! That really didn't mean anything to Brina, except that she was supposed to have strong magic and had the eye-- but today she was almost mundane! So long with no way to make the magic stop exploding all over the place, now all of a sudden she can't make it start?! It wasn't fair!

Daemon continued waiting for her to sit up again, staring down at her coldly. His horns always made him look angry, but his mouth was always the best tell for his mood, he would press his lips closed when he was mad. And he was kinda angry, yeah...

She didn't want to keep going! Her magic wasn't working! She was supposed to keep trying, what was she going to do, keep trying to do nothing!?

Brina could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she tried to fight off the tears, and she buried her head in her arms. 

The quick tap-tap-tapping of Daemon's tail on the floor did it. Her heart boiled and choked her, she couldn't take it! Brina leapt to her feet and sprinted out the front door, knocking Daemon's screen over on the way. She ran past her cloak and shoes, dismissing them entirely, and she bolted down the westward dirt path to Ro-Ro's hovel.

"Stay away from the river!" boomed Brotz after her, and she broke into a desperate sprint.

The path to Ro-Ro's hovel was marked with pink carnations that never seemed to wilt or fade, not even during winter. Brina knew the way with her eyes closed and backwards, which was good, because she was running so fast she could hardly see. 

The dead leaves on the forest floor roared as Brina's bare feet pounded the ground, the cold air hissed past her ears and deafened her to the animals near the path, who scattered noisily through the leaves, trees, and the sky. The sparse forest featured underbrush, occasional branches and brambles that scratched and tugged at Brina's flowing skirt and bare arms as she raced furiously along the familiar path.

It wasn't fair! She always had magic, she was always up to her eyes with it, she froze Aunt Eupa's bath water a month ago, the chair thing, she had sneezed holes into no less than four surfaces with four different kinds of magic, she took a week to stop over-expanding and popping the spell ball in the first place, and now she couldn't even make one appear?! 

Brina's sprint slowed to a storming march. She tried to fling her spells like that, tried to work her power up with the anger by centering them together, tied her magic in with that fire in her lungs. She couldn't even stop doing it most of the time, why wouldn't it work today!? She flung her arms, it almost always threw something out if it would just work--but it didn't. She tried again, pushed at her magic, flung her arm and shook her fists, she wasn't even allowed to move like that in the house since last time--but nothing happened! 

The anger burned so hot that her eyes stopped seeing. Brina found herself sprinting again, practically kicking the ground for the way her feet were hitting it, her heart pounded and her lungs burned, every thought of her magic and Daemon's face looking like that and why couldn't she just--

Brina stopped running and stomped in a circle, shrill voice roaring wordlessly, she shook her little fists and kicked the ground for a full minute. "Dammit!" she cried squeakily, jumping and stomping a final time. "Dammit," she repeated with a huff. The burning fury in her heart subsided to low embers, finally spent. 

She breathed the chilly air deep into her lungs and faced the chattering, chirping forest; the few birds that remained despite the cold, the fat gray squirrels, the scuttling bugs on the leaves. Sunlight filtered through the molting brown tree canopy, and the dry smells of dust and wood mixed with the wet smells of dirt and the cold smell of pine. Brina was soothed as she took in the familiar path to Ro-Ro's hovel. 

Brina took another deep breath as she remembered why she was out here again. Ugh. They were going to be mad at her. Maybe. Sometimes Daemon or Ro-Ro would let her get away with things. If she woke up Aunt Eupa, she was going to be in trouble. Daddy wouldn't even mind that she ran from lessons, so long as she came back before dinner and kept trying. 

And Daemon would still want to do lessons. He was probably already going to make them harder. But he was going to do that anyway, so she might as well put it off. She was still on the path, so Brina got going toward Ro-Ro's hovel once more. 

Ro-Ro was sort of Brina's mom, but not really. Ro-Ro said that if anyone earned that, it was Aunt Eupa, but Aunt Eupa was her aunt, so that didn't make sense. Daddy said that Ro-Ro wasn't her mom because Daddy was her dad, and instead of being Brina's mom, she was helping Daddy by being the provider and information.

Ro-Ro was one of Brina's four guardians. She was Aunt Eupa's twin sister, but not her aunt, nor her mother. They adventured with Daddy before Ro-Ro found Brina and stopped traveling. Ro-Ro could teleport, and she was the Keeper of the Forest, and she was a Wild Hunt Rider and she was sort of Faerie and Infused with Nature Spirits and all kinds of neat stuff that ultimately amounted to a kinda strange, spear-wielding furry hunter lady with pretty eyes and floaty ribbons and a lot of really big hair who knew everything and frequently appeared out of nowhere.

Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa were werekin. Aunt Eupa explained that they had a werelion and a werejaguar in their bloodlines from a long time ago, and when werebeasts have babies, sometimes they come out as werekin instead of humanoids that transform. They were considered stuck between, Brina had learned at school, but both of them said that it was way better than anything else they could be. 

Ro-Ro in particular was way beastier than a lot of other werekin. She and Aunt Eupa were furry all over, Ro-Ro brown and Aunt Eupa black; and Ro-Ro's golden hair was very mane-like while her green eyes featured dark marks around them. Aunt Eupa's yellow eyes might have had black marks around them, but they would have blended in with the rest of her. She kept the hair on her head as short as her fur. Both their noses were flat and their eyes were big and Aunt Eupa's head looked smaller but they had the same face. 

Ro-Ro still lived out in her hovel instead of in the house because the house was too crowded with all five of them in it. Aunt Eupa said that Ro-Ro couldn't stand living inside at all and that it wasn't the crowd, but the roof and the walls.

The hovel could be reached by following the path of carnations to a ring of them; spinning three times inside the ring; taking ten steps south; taking four steps backward; turning a quarter circle to the right; walking straight forward until you reach the enchanted peach tree; and turning a circle and a half to face the other way. Ro-Ro refused to explain how she got it to do that. When Ro-Ro wasn't home, even if Brina did everything right, it would look like nothing more than a brush pile. Aunt Eupa said it was a dryad, and Daddy said not a dryad, probably just a living plant. Ro-Ro said it was a brush pile. It was sprawled over a frame of sticks interlocked together and a stretched leather hide of something bigger than Daddy's entire house, and it could pick itself up if Ro-Ro said a certain word--a row of trees would sprout around the edge and lift the 'lid' to make an awning over Ro-Ro's dug-out home. 

Ro-Ro was not home. Brina did take the chance to get a closer look to see if the plant was alive. It did not move when Brina touched it, nor when she touched the stretched leather and tied staves it was sprawled over, and Brina tried to lift the 'door' to no avail. The plant didn't seem to mind much.

She looked toward the river. She wasn't supposed to go to the river by herself….

The path to the river from the cottage was well-worn and plainly visible, even without markers. The underbrush wasn't invasive except at the height of summer, and the leaves were cleared from the ground simply by traffic, leaving a clean dirt trail from the road to Tinian to an inlet on the river. From Ro-Ro's house, the path was easy to find by simply heading northeast. If Brina went too far north, she'd find the river, and if she went south, she'd find the road into Tinian, and she could always find her way home from those. 

The Tuthai Mot River was huge to Brina; five hundred feet across in some places, rarely less than one hundred. There were occasional barges and ferries, and the pollution from the city was mostly waste and lost shoes. High water seasons saw flooding a thousand feet wide, brown water roaring through, uprooting trees and rearranging long-standing stones. Droughts would see the river down to half its size at the bottom of a trench, huge walls of tree root, stone, and mud on either side of the slow, peaceful waters trickling through. It would be so calm that the mud would settle and Brina could almost see the bottom. Daddy told her never to push her luck swimming in the main river and to stay in the inlet, even when it was low like that, and just give up swimming until it got up again. Aunt Eupa snuck her off to do it anyway and taught her how to dive properly and worked on her swimming, and then Aunt Eupa caught lunch and Brina lit the fire for them on the first try… That was a good day.

The inlet was sectioned off the main body of the river by a line of gigantic rocks that came together to make a circular pool. It was perfect for Brina and her family to swim and gather water. The rocks on land were shaded and provided excellent places to relax, and a huge flat rock at the end of the row extended out into the water, perfect for sunbathing. During warmer months, Brina would easily find many animals living here--bugs and frogs and snakes, mostly, with intermittent rodents. Aunt Eupa and Ro-Ro had taught her how to see the snakes, and Aunt Eupa tried to teach her how to move like them. It being so close to winter, it was more likely that big beasts would show up here, but Brina hadn't heard any, yet. 

The sparse forest held a chill that Brina could only just see, a wispy fog floating through the trees that thickened to a cloud when the wind blew. Brina had forgotten today was a hot-cold day. Normally, it would have given her influence or outright control enough to spark a flame, dry fruit, boil or freeze water, and let her touch red hot metal without burning herself. She glanced at her bare feet and wondered how cold she should have been. Sunny as it was, her magic probably wasn't even doing anything, lazy stuff.

The path was well-lit by the midday sun. The streaks of light and cold-fog gave the forest a very ethereal look and feel. Brina felt like she was traveling through the spirit realm. Above the trees, Brina could see the few white clouds dotting the blue. The birds and beasts were getting louder now that the threat of Angry Little Girl was past. It was nice.

She stopped walking for a few moments and considered going home again. She really would get into trouble if they caught her at the river, and Ro-Ro might come back whenever and Aunt Eupa might have followed her and Brina would never have known…

But she still didn't want to go back home, and she didn't have anywhere else to go, and so she continued.

Brina could hear the roar of the river well before usual. The water was high, she guessed correctly. The leaf-covered ground got muddy as she continued forth. It was knee-deep at the mouth of the inlet, high enough that Brina felt the need to pick up her skirt. Some of the stones outlining their swimming hole had been overtaken and the current was strong enough to add the inlet to the main river. A few jutting stones led from the muddy bank to the Sunning Rock where a huge tree, elm maybe, had washed downriver and got hung up on the rocks by the roots. 

Brina looked close, decided that her family wouldn't want her to go out there, and she waded into the inlet instead. The mud squished between her toes and the rocks were sharp on the bottoms of her feet. She watched the water rippling violently with the river rushing so close, and lost herself for a long while. 

Once Brina shook herself from her reverie, she waded in a circle, tossed rocks around, looked at the tree, kicked and splashed, washed her hands and face. She had forgotten the morning's upset. She looked closer at the tree, waded around the edge of the inlet, then started hopping over the big lining rocks. She wasn't going to climb on the hung-up tree unless it looked safe enough. 

Upon further inspection, Brina determined that it was wet but not waterlogged, it looked like it had gotten hung up properly. Birch or elm with dark gray bark, bare limbed, tall but Brina didn't know how tall. Big enough that even her dad couldn't get his arms around it. The roots had it snagged on the Sunning Rock. The branches at the top stretched high like new trees growing from the old one. Her family wouldn't want her to climb on it, she knew, but they wouldn't know if she was careful.

The tree sat a little ways off and slightly lower than the Sunning Rock with a gap where the water flowed through. She tested the water with a hand. It pushed hard and splashed to her face and dress when she tried to hold steady. Brina could sit and stretch a foot out to ease herself over the flowing water without any chance of touching it. The branches of the tree provided good handholds for her to pace up and down its length. A short section of the trunk was without a handhold, but wide enough that Brina could pace it. She only lost her balance a little once, but that was enough to get her to go back to the part she could hold onto stuff. Once she was satisfied with that adventure, and with how firmly the tree was stuck, she climbed into the branches to find a place to sit down and look over the water.

The perch Brina chose was a good ten feet over the water. It was composed of a few branches that allowed for a comfortable sprawl, supporting her butt and neck and legs so that she could roll her head to look at the sky, into the forests on either side and along the oversaturated river. Brina liked watching the moving water, especially when it carried forces she could see. The energy of the cold was lost in the mud, but Brina liked watching the jumping, swirling water as it roared through the forest. This river in particular had either nearly killed her or saved her life, depending on why she was in it.

The story went that Ro-Ro had been wandering in the woods and felt the spirits calling to her, telling her which way to go, that something was over there. "Over where?" Ro-Ro would say. "Over there!" 

Ro-Ro said the only reason she saw anything was the water rippling funny. She said the basket in which Brina had been hidden was waterproof and invisible and woven shut so that nothing could get in and all sorts of things. Even the smell was hidden, the smell of the magic itself was hidden, and with Ro-Ro that was saying a lot. 

Ro-Ro said as soon as she picked Brina's basket up, the spirits went mad, and then she found Baby Brina and took her to see Daddy. Daddy would blush, but Ro-Ro still said, every time, "It was love at first sight."

Ro-Ro told her that they took to each other instantly and Daddy loved having Brina, and Brina loved having Daddy. Aunt Eupa was on a trip to a temple or something in the mountains, which was why Daddy got to take in Brina without question. Brina was told the story every year when they celebrated her Finding Day on the second half-moon of spring.

Aunt Eupa hadn't wanted to keep Brina, saying that the adventuring wouldn't work. And they agreed, and they said they were going to live near Tinian until they decided to take Brina adventuring, too, or whatever Brina wanted to do when she grew up. Daddy said that Ro-Ro and Aunt Eupa were both allowed to leave, but both of them said that they really weren't, he just didn't know how much they couldn't. 

Brina watched the water swirl and whorl and eddy past her, watched the rocks under the surface change the current, watched the leaping white splashes as they flew. It was beautiful.

It was also getting to be afternoon. Brina didn't want to go, but it was going to be trouble no matter what, and she might as well head back before it got ugly. She didn't want to get in trouble for making them worry and running from lessons.

The climb from her perch was easy, but the tree was slicker than she remembered getting here. Brina kept her steps small and her feet carefully placed, easing her weight to her hips like Aunt Eupa had taught her so many times. It was easy, but Brina didn't want to get too sure of herself. She found a good place to grab on the Sunning rock, hopped the gap with a knee up and her weight on her hands, and she clambered back up the flat stone where it stood above the water. She glanced back at the spot she'd been and saw a length of ribbon stuck on the branch she'd been sitting on. Oh. It was supposed to be on her sleeve.

Even Daddy would know that was today's…

Brina huffed to herself. Fine. 

She lowered herself to the tree once more, shuffled so carefully back to the ribbon, and took the moment to tie it back into her dress properly. There. Perfect.

A last trek up the tree to the Sunning Rock…

Okay, one last trip down the whole tree, then back to the Sunning Rock.

Brina couldn't resist, easing herself up and down the length of the wide, swollen remnants of the elm (probably) tree, taking the moments to feel the bark under her feet, look carefully at the branches where they sprawled and clawed and stretched and reached…

"Thank you for letting me sit here," Brina chirped merrily, and she returned to the Sunning Rock.

She placed her hands on the rock, did the little hop, but when she put her knee up, her other leg dipped too low. Other days, it would have just been her foot getting wet and that was it. Today, the current was so strong it grabbed her. The cold water pushed her sideways, dragged her balance off, knocked her onto her elbow. Brina clutched at the Sunning Rock as her other leg fell into the water, and the current ripped her away from the rock and downriver.