Arcadia: Amorphous

Chapter 13 : It's Tough Being Fragile

When a kestal is broken or shatter to the point where it can no longer hold a charge, for lack of a better word, it dissolves. Kestals are formed in the physical world by magic and the power of one's soul. When the magic holding it together is drained or lost and nothing is left to hold the husk together, the kestin will dissipate and the kestal will be gone. Five weeks have passed since I left home and came here to arcadia. 38 days and I don't know how many hours or minutes, but I've been trying. 19 failures, 7 too weak to cast simple spells, 6 cracked when used, 3 wouldn't cast more than one or two spells, 2 didn't do anything at all, and 1 literally melted in my pocket ruining a perfectly good pair of jeans.

I've gone to see Professor Osborn after class nearly a half dozen times, but I just don't seem to be able to get the hang of it. Eldritch and I had a normal childhood kestal problem. Cheap little bobbles that don't do much or last long. Gail was the one closest to having a real kestal. It didn't take very long before hers were better than mine. I have been learning and practicing, but nothing seems to help. Maybe I'm just using it more, but it feels like my kestals are getting worse. Eldritch's kestals might even be more reliable than mine right now.

Something I've begun to notice after taking with Professor Osborn is the importance of color. Kestals are colored by the aura, the state of the soul at the time of creation, meaning it's affected by the memory or thought used in its creation.

The one's the cracked seemed to all be orange, some more red or yellow, but I believe all were orange. The weak kestal seemed more blueish-purple. And the three that wouldn't learn new spells were all green.

My most recent attempt was to ignore the green and the other odd ones, instead, focusing on the orange and blue. I did what I was told not to do, I didn't think of just one thing. I thought of two things.

My current kestal was violet in color, and it's held up for the past few days. It casts more or less what I want to cast, even if I'm having trouble with control.

"Snake sister!" Sarah exclaimed as I passed them leaving our room.

"Hey, guys."

"Where you off to?" Sydney asked.

"Nowhere really, just going to practice a bit."

"Kestal still giving you trouble. You'll get it." Sydney confronted.

"Ya," Sarah added, "You're like actually a really cool person."

Actually? "Thanks, guys." What was that supposed to mean?

"Really though, you'll get it."

"Sydney is that?" Sarah screeched softly frolicking off with her sister in tow.

What had Sarah so excited was Brad, her kind of boy toy, flirty crush, person. Basically she talks about his face, arms, and butt, but they haven't done anything. If they had I'd be hearing about it, constantly. Or at least more often than I want to hear about it...

I think I might be bad at girl talk. At my old school, the other girls didn't really talk to me very much. I don't think it was anything I was doing, but we just, I never actually had any girlfriends, besides my sisters. And now I guess my roommates. It should be easy right, everyone does it. Everyone has friends, it's not some secret technique or languages I never learned. My upbringing might have been a bit unconventional, but my... Gail has lots of friends and Eldritch doesn't seem to complain much either, it's like something is missing and I just can't see it for some reason. I'm friendly, I think. I try to be nice to people, nothing ever just seems to click, it was always like I was standing on the outside, or interaction between a piece of glass like an invisible force made a distance between us, or I don't know, maybe more like a two way mirror and people just never really saw me. They just talked to their own reflections, like I was just there in the way and unnoticed, dejected and rejected as other people all went along happily. I don't think I was the problem, but what else could it have been.