Hidden Before Their Eyes

Chapter 17: The Stone of Alcali

When we begin to collectively tire we stop, making ourselves as comfortable as possible given the conditions. As we are within a tower I decide it is safe without someone keeping watch all night. We all head to sleep, hoping for nightmares to not plague our sleep.

Upon waking I rub my eyes lightly, then stretch out my muscles. With no way to tell time and therefore no idea how long we have slept, I wake the others. I notice bags under Dracix's eyes but refrain from mentioning anything. What ever he saw yesterday was disastrous for him, I would not be surprised if he barely slept at all due to waking from nightmares.

As we once more climb the stairs the usual chemistry of the group returns, Pavlios and Cora are back to their normal bickering while the rest of us remain as onlookers. When a fight threatens to break out Codra intercepts, in a very graceful manner. She is very interesting in the way she acts and holds herself, especially in how she interacts with each person slightly different.

A while later I decide to start up a conversation with Pavlios. "So Pavlios, is there a particular reason why you are avoiding me?" I inquire.

"I don't know what you mean," he says looking away from me.

"You are being quite obvious," I muse. "Is it because I am a human?"

"I have no interest in interacting with humans," he mutters.

"Let me guess, your other parent was a human?" I inquire.

"Don't talk about that man," he spits out.

"Oh I struck a nerve," I laugh lightly. "Tell me about it."

I look ahead as he opens and closes his mouth a few times. Everything is quiet for a moment before he decides to speak. "My father was a very foolish man, of the happy-go-lucky sort. He knew nothing of what it was like. What it's like to have magic consuming your very being."

"But does that not also mean that you do not what know what it is like to be without magic?" I ask.

"It's not the same. I am a half elemental, nothing is quite the same because of that. No matter how hard I struggle I will never possess the power, nor the ability, that a fullblood like my mother possesses. She'll teach me something and I only get half that, because I'm a half I will never know what it's like to be truly one or the other," Pavlios says sadly.

"But that does not change the fact you do not know what it is like to be human. What it is like to know about magic and never be able to touch it. To have all this knowledge inside you, and yet that is all you can ever have. I think fundamentally it is the same problem, neither of us will ever know what it is like to be the other. We can lay out the very minute details of everything, still we will never have that exact understanding that we need such that we will be able to connect on a deeper a level. Because we do not come from the same place, you have magic, but you feel like you don't have all of it, I have none, the closest I can get to feeling magic is suffocating on it, it pressing me down, just reminding me that I cannot have it," I respond, my voice sounding very stressed.

A long while passes, us all walking in silence, reflecting on that which I have laid before them. Them all thinking in their own ways about what it would be like to be human. Luckily for myself I have been on both sides of the coin, are used to have magic and now I have lost it, granted by choice, but yet I still as a human feel like I have something missing. I cannot say that that is how was for all humans, but I have gotten as close as I can. Maybe for humans it is not something missing it is just something they do not have and since they do not know what it is like a lack of magic is just a fact.

" I apologize," Pavlios speaks up. " I understand, I guess, that they're very different perspectives and thus that it is not right of me to baselessly assume things of you based on someone else of my past who is also a human."