Emerson Cole & The Wayward Souls

P A R T O N E : T H E T W I N S

Magic was a language in and of itself. Beautiful and seductive and intoxicating, it was easy to lose yourself to it, to be caught in the web of secrets it offered, the promise of power it granted for a price many didn't know to pay. What people didn't understand was that magic by itself wasn't good. It wasn't bad either. It held no concept of such things. It was natural. Fair in the way the seasons were. Did one seek to understand the whims of a volcano? Did one reason with a hurricane? No. They were breathtaking and awe-inspiring in one moment, catastrophic and terrible in the next. Never were they blamed, though. You couldn't assign responsibility to something beyond the bounds of shame.

This was magic. These were the rules--fickle as they may be--that it lived by. One could learn the language like a meteorologist learned the weather. One could predict an outcome like a statistician predicted possibility. But one could never truly understand. Magic was a force, plain and simple. All it asked for was an equal exchange, but what was equal remained ephemeral. Boundless.

People and the beings that wielded it—magic—often couldn't comprehend this nature. They were the ones who assigned it designations. Cunning. Cruel. Sly. More than that, they didn't understand that magic was alive, a sentient force, fractured and disjointed—its language broken into facets and affinities—but with its own childlike goals and desires.