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Adarin - realizes he's one of the most shut in members of the household. It makes sense, really. He's their shield, if bandits or other nasty people show up it is up to him to keep them safe, like it is up to Jony to make the garden and Kesaven expands the house and keeps it in repair. Besides, where would he even go? All of his favorite people are right here. He'd be lonely if he went on the trips to the market.
So when there is a yelp from downstairs that sounds like it's from Tima, he's in the house and not outside chopping firewood, or at the market. He is upstairs, and he hears it, and he sprints downstairs and prepares to shield and -
And then he is eaten by a giant snake with a mirror for a face.
in_tatters
kindestgarden
"I can ask some people. Especially without a sorceress around there's probably a market for that. I'll have to describe you as a type of specialist."
in_tatters
"Sure. Uh. A specialist does only one thing with magic, while a sorcerer does everything? Or am I wrong there?"
kindestgarden
"Specialists wear a sort of pattern in their magic so it'll keep longer without exercise but they don't have general applicability - a specialist architect can't heal or fly or control the weather."
kindestgarden
"In the meantime if you don't mind the walk you can come down to the village and have dinner with me. What did you say your name was?"
in_tatters
"Let me know if there's any way I can repay you for helping me out. Or er, repay your daughter, for - borrowing a room to stay in."
kindestgarden
"She won't mind. There's more rooms in that castle than she'd ever have used herself."
kindestgarden
Rhana nods.
She leads Adarin down to the village - apart from the stairs it's a nice walk - and gives him dinner and a box of eggs to cook for breakfast the next morning before coming down to see if she has anything for him to do.
She finds him odd jobs - protecting people who want to go over the falls in a boat for thrills, or hike in the woods without enough magic of their own to fend off a bear, or specialists on construction sites who might misplace something and have it fall on their head. It pays well enough that he doesn't need to work every day to buy himself food - or every week, if he's not choosy.
She leads Adarin down to the village - apart from the stairs it's a nice walk - and gives him dinner and a box of eggs to cook for breakfast the next morning before coming down to see if she has anything for him to do.
She finds him odd jobs - protecting people who want to go over the falls in a boat for thrills, or hike in the woods without enough magic of their own to fend off a bear, or specialists on construction sites who might misplace something and have it fall on their head. It pays well enough that he doesn't need to work every day to buy himself food - or every week, if he's not choosy.
in_tatters
Adarin isn't very picky about the work involved with the jobs, but does stay very firmly on the correct side of moral. He grabs the jobs that pay well, he buys food, and he looks for sorcerers to put him back.
No sorcerer knows how to put him back. He checks. He travels around, after working up a savings. He asks several. One doesn't believe him and thinks he's crazy, two sincerely try and fail, another decides he's not up to it and recommends him to a better sorcerer, he goes, and she fails, too. It - does not look like he's going to be put back.
He misses everyone intensely. His sister and Chelasi most of all, but - everyone. He hates that they probably think he's dead. He hates that he doesn't know if they're okay or not. But he can't get home. Not anytime soon, not without more momentum than any sorcerer he's met so far has. So - he mourns his friends and family, but he can't do anything. Not in any reasonable amount of time.
Well. What can he do instead, then?
The obvious answer: become a sorcerer. Maybe he can get back himself, and if he can't, well, he's not going to turn down magic because he feels like being lazy. He can do lots and lots of little things. Decorate the castle, change the decorations, cook food, grow plants, amuse himself while protecting people.
The other, less obvious answer: help the cursed woman. That one - isn't as easy. But he understands, more than anyone, what it's like to be ripped away from your family and wake up in a strange foreign land. He doesn't want to wish it on anyone else. If there's a way to help, and it's obvious the best way is to find a really good sorcerer, or fulfill the traditional criteria. He's working on the sorcerer part, but that'll take, from what it sounds like, hundreds of years.
So how does one fall in love with someone who's cursed?
Well. She wrote a lot. There's an entire section devoted to things she wrote. He - can explain what he's going to try to her mother, and ask if it's okay to technically invade her daughter's privacy to try and save her.
No sorcerer knows how to put him back. He checks. He travels around, after working up a savings. He asks several. One doesn't believe him and thinks he's crazy, two sincerely try and fail, another decides he's not up to it and recommends him to a better sorcerer, he goes, and she fails, too. It - does not look like he's going to be put back.
He misses everyone intensely. His sister and Chelasi most of all, but - everyone. He hates that they probably think he's dead. He hates that he doesn't know if they're okay or not. But he can't get home. Not anytime soon, not without more momentum than any sorcerer he's met so far has. So - he mourns his friends and family, but he can't do anything. Not in any reasonable amount of time.
Well. What can he do instead, then?
The obvious answer: become a sorcerer. Maybe he can get back himself, and if he can't, well, he's not going to turn down magic because he feels like being lazy. He can do lots and lots of little things. Decorate the castle, change the decorations, cook food, grow plants, amuse himself while protecting people.
The other, less obvious answer: help the cursed woman. That one - isn't as easy. But he understands, more than anyone, what it's like to be ripped away from your family and wake up in a strange foreign land. He doesn't want to wish it on anyone else. If there's a way to help, and it's obvious the best way is to find a really good sorcerer, or fulfill the traditional criteria. He's working on the sorcerer part, but that'll take, from what it sounds like, hundreds of years.
So how does one fall in love with someone who's cursed?
Well. She wrote a lot. There's an entire section devoted to things she wrote. He - can explain what he's going to try to her mother, and ask if it's okay to technically invade her daughter's privacy to try and save her.
kindestgarden
"I can't exactly say she wouldn't mind," says Rhana, after some thought. "But I think she'd mind a lot less than continuing to sleep for centuries. If you want to try."
kindestgarden
"They're color-coded - the notebooks. The blue ones are personal notes, the rest of it is things like grocery lists and ideas for magic to do."
in_tatters
He smiles a little, and goes back to fixing her floor, because he's still trying to be a sorcerer, eventually.
Then, he goes back to the castle, and starts on reading. While doing magic, because momentum is annoying like that.
Then, he goes back to the castle, and starts on reading. While doing magic, because momentum is annoying like that.
The personal notes are in tidy chronological order, labeled in local dates (the first few also say things like "Kithabel, Age 6, Keep Out This Means YOU" on the covers).
in_tatters
Wow, age six? Age six. That's absurdly early. Well. Okay. Probably not super relevant, and he can skip a few books, but let's see what she was like at age six.
Her spelling is pretty good for a six-year-old, but not perfect.
Writing things down is for not forgetting them later. Sometimes I don't remember why I did a thing. So I'm going to write down everything and then I will be able to look at it later.
Mommy made me let the cookies cool before I could have one and I don't know why she did that but as long as it was already cold I tried magic and I concentrated really hard and the cookie got hot again and this was because I wanted the chocolate to be melty and also because I have to practice magic to be a sorceress. That is almost the only thing I did today except read a book which was about frogs which I read because it was the next book in my stack of things from the library and I had to read it before going again for more books even though I don't remember why I wanted a frogs book so this is why I have to write it down.
Writing things down is for not forgetting them later. Sometimes I don't remember why I did a thing. So I'm going to write down everything and then I will be able to look at it later.
Mommy made me let the cookies cool before I could have one and I don't know why she did that but as long as it was already cold I tried magic and I concentrated really hard and the cookie got hot again and this was because I wanted the chocolate to be melty and also because I have to practice magic to be a sorceress. That is almost the only thing I did today except read a book which was about frogs which I read because it was the next book in my stack of things from the library and I had to read it before going again for more books even though I don't remember why I wanted a frogs book so this is why I have to write it down.
in_tatters
Huh. Interesting. In a - weird way. He'll skip a few sets of books, though, it's especially creepy to read a six year old's diary, he thinks.
When Kithabel is twelve, she has already left school so that she can prowl around looking for magic to do. She can walk, now, and if she concentrates really hard first, she can even run for a minute, sometimes two, before she falls. (And she can fix her scrapes.) She has managed to wrangle a volunteer position under a healer-specialist, but with partial hours compared to if she were going to be a healer-specialist herself; she doesn't want to fall into a rut. She still reads a lot of books. She visits her father, who lives in another city; she is looking forward to being able to fly there but for the time being she has to take an autonomous carriage (there's a sorcerer who makes those sometimes) to and fro. She has been experimenting with her sleep schedule since she managed to get her hands on an enchanted alarm clock: it will reliably wake her up however deeply she's sleeping so she's trying to do it in smaller chunks. She doesn't like losing progress overnight.