Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 57 - Leavi

The wooden living room floor is hard against my back. I tug my blankets tighter, trying to ward off the chill. Aster suggested we not light a fire, which makes sense. It's cold, though.

Everyone's breathing is soft and steady in the dark room. Even Sean, who was up fiddling with locks earlier, came and laid down about half an hour ago. But for some reason, even as exhausted as I am, I can't get my mind to shut off.

The fire, darting toward me—

Aster's warm arms around my waist, keeping me from falling—

The tree branch freezing and snapping off—

The Man from the East, miserable, leaned up against the tree. The shocked expression he quickly struck from his face as I covered him with the throw—

My dictionary flying through the air—

Jacin trying to kiss me.

I shift, struggling to get comfortable. I'm tense, and the circling memories make it impossible to relax. Yesterday was a lifetime ago. The Eleaviara Riveirre of yesterday didn't believe in magic, yet today, that same girl has used it. Magic has coursed through her body and stolen her energy and made the impossible happen. The Eleaviara of today has a magic charm tucked in her pocket, just in case she might need it. Tomorrow, she'll walk side-by-side with a 'wizard' and a 'kra'kaa' and trust in their skill to keep her from winding up dead.

Sean says their 'magic' is just science we don't understand yet, and the researcher in me agrees wholeheartedly. But the little girl who read fairy tales in her father's study?

She knows that there's something more to it than that. Something that's powerful and frightening, deeply visceral and wholly real. Something that can't be reduced to facts and figures, any more than art can be separated from emotion. Something that can't be simply studied and torn apart and replicated. Something that just is.

The researcher shakes her head at the superstition, nonsense, and willful ignorance.

But little girls trust their instincts.

So if Sean produces more evidence about the logistics of magic, I'll listen to him, of course. I'll probably even believe him. But, I think, no matter what happens, I'll always know that there's something more to all of this than the human mind will ever be able to explain.

My brain clicks off as dawn greys the sky.

* * *

I can't focus.

In one of the bedrooms, Idyne swipes makeup onto my face as she talks to herself. A rickety and splintering foot chest, one of the few items left in the house, functions as my seat. The slanting, afternoon light spills in through a dirty window.

I should be reviewing my plan, making sure that all the kinks are worked out, that I know what I'm doing, but I can't. Nerves block my mind, rendering all the details too hazy to grab hold of and manipulate. We're about to kidnap a woman, take her from her own bed in the middle of the night, and cart her to a country where she's a wanted criminal. Last night, everything was abstract, and the steps we laid out to kidnapping her seemed no different than the steps of a research plan.