She has seen magic at it’s finest, and she knows the power that lives inside her veins. Power that she simply does not know how to access yet. Her mother had just begun to teach her when she was taken from Weaver’s life, there one moment and gone the next. It is why she knows the little she does, this ability to flicker a small flame or snuff out the life of an ember. It is useful, but it is not power. The desire to learn more, to feel that power flood her, is consuming and distracting. As his palm bursts to life in flame, she smiles, and perhaps he will think she is impressed at him specifically or at this thing she has never seen, but she has seen it. She has seen her mother engulf the world around them in flames, a goddess in an icy wasteland.
It is not him she sees for a moment, but her mother. Straia, her hair long and wild, tumbling over her shoulders in curls always too close to the fire, palms outstretched like his is now, explaining to Weaver how to call on the magic. Weaver had been sitting there with a stupid little candle, of course, managing only to pull some of the flames to it’s little wick. She could not create, only manipulate, and only in the smallest of pieces. ”You will learn,” her mother had said to little Weaver, the flames disappearing from her hands.
The flames disappear from his hands as well, and she focuses on the present instead of the past. “Me too,” she says with a grin, nodding to the place where the flames had been only a moment before. “Only I haven’t learned to use it, not really. Just the basics.” Though as the topic turns to the armory the mischief in his eyes disappears, and his answer is the sort you give when you are dodging the answer. There are two possibilities. The first, that he is telling the truth and they in fact have an army to be concerned about. The second, that he is lying and there are too few. She doesn’t even know if Halo has an army to speak of under Neron, so keeping secrets from her doesn’t much matter, but she doesn’t press it. There may be no issues between Halo and the Grounds now, but she knows how easily things change.
She would like to be called opportunistic. That is exactly what she was, a girl who’d grown up learning to survive and as such, taking opportunities when they presented themselves. Sometimes that was simply a beautiful knife on a market table, snatched away by her hand for the cost of some dried beef or a collection of ningo feathers. She watches as another dagger takes shape between his fingers, the answer to her question coming at the same time. “You do fight like you were born with that sword in your hand,” she says. She puts the finishing touches on her basket as she works, hooking the handle to either side and swinging it around once or twice to make sure the thing holds together. It does, looking sort of small and silly, but at least not lopsided and sad like before. In his hands, the dagger has become something more, covered in etchings of frost, made of silver and white. He extends it to her, and she takes it, saying in the most sincere way she can, “Thank you. It is beautiful.” There is an empty sheath on her belt from Sascha, and she tucks the dagger in there, enjoying the pieces of the Grounds that she now carries with her.
It is not him she sees for a moment, but her mother. Straia, her hair long and wild, tumbling over her shoulders in curls always too close to the fire, palms outstretched like his is now, explaining to Weaver how to call on the magic. Weaver had been sitting there with a stupid little candle, of course, managing only to pull some of the flames to it’s little wick. She could not create, only manipulate, and only in the smallest of pieces. ”You will learn,” her mother had said to little Weaver, the flames disappearing from her hands.
The flames disappear from his hands as well, and she focuses on the present instead of the past. “Me too,” she says with a grin, nodding to the place where the flames had been only a moment before. “Only I haven’t learned to use it, not really. Just the basics.” Though as the topic turns to the armory the mischief in his eyes disappears, and his answer is the sort you give when you are dodging the answer. There are two possibilities. The first, that he is telling the truth and they in fact have an army to be concerned about. The second, that he is lying and there are too few. She doesn’t even know if Halo has an army to speak of under Neron, so keeping secrets from her doesn’t much matter, but she doesn’t press it. There may be no issues between Halo and the Grounds now, but she knows how easily things change.
She would like to be called opportunistic. That is exactly what she was, a girl who’d grown up learning to survive and as such, taking opportunities when they presented themselves. Sometimes that was simply a beautiful knife on a market table, snatched away by her hand for the cost of some dried beef or a collection of ningo feathers. She watches as another dagger takes shape between his fingers, the answer to her question coming at the same time. “You do fight like you were born with that sword in your hand,” she says. She puts the finishing touches on her basket as she works, hooking the handle to either side and swinging it around once or twice to make sure the thing holds together. It does, looking sort of small and silly, but at least not lopsided and sad like before. In his hands, the dagger has become something more, covered in etchings of frost, made of silver and white. He extends it to her, and she takes it, saying in the most sincere way she can, “Thank you. It is beautiful.” There is an empty sheath on her belt from Sascha, and she tucks the dagger in there, enjoying the pieces of the Grounds that she now carries with her.
weaver
-- ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies --
Quote by Charles Dickens
